Category: Morning

Whether We Are On or Off, God’s Love Is Always On!

Saturday, May 29, 2021

The First Wondrous View Each Sunny Morning.

Wonders Never Cease

Whether We Notice God’s Miracles

Each Day Determines Much of Our Lives

Psalm 48:9

We ponder your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.

Ephesians 2:22

In Christ Jesus you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

Words of Grace For Today

God’s temple, that temple built by humans, is a great place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works.

God’s temple, that temple built by God – that is all of creation and especially the wildernesses untouched by human ‘domination’, development, and destruction – is the place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works visible and obvious before one’s eyes, if one will open them and notice what is there.

God’s temple, that temple, the body that God dwells in, in each of us provides no end of cause to pause, contemplate, and ponder all of God’s great works that give us breath and life, re-newed life, and hope.

God’s temple, that temple, the body of Christ made up of all the followers of Jesus the Christ, through all time and in all places, is the most remarkable opportunity to contemplate and ponder the great works of God, for in the gathering of Christ’s followers (not at all the greatest people ever) the evidence of God’s Grace is blatant to even the casual observer. Here, in those Christians alive now, great sinners we each and all are and by Grace God-made saints we each and all are, along with the sinner-saints of all times and place, give ample witness to God’s greatest work; that by Grace God claims us, walks with us (even when we sin, trying to ‘run from’ God), forgives us, renews us, and sets us free (sin-free, though we always choose otherwise) to live each day again. That marvellous Grace, for each of us, and that marvellous Grace among us, holds us alive, in body, mind, and spirit. That Grace does not cease when we try for the million-times-millionth time to ‘run from God.’ God’s Grace, miraculously accompanies us through all our lives and into eternity.

If the trees create remarkable shadows on the ‘dark side’ of the sun’s light, we humans cast a shadow far more obvious with our ‘trying to run from God’ efforts. The Grace of God, in the Light of Christ, does not fail to shine even on the cloudiest of days or the darkest moonless nights. Our sins make God’s Grace as blatantly obvious as the trees’ shadows on the dew lit grass of the early morning sun.

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love.

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you (no matter what you have done ‘running from God’, or how desperate your enemies are that attack you, or how lost in it all you may find yourself!)

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you, this day, this night, and your every tomorrow.

This is worth pondering, and being awestruck by once again.

God Creates, We Make It Up, Doch Truth is Still Truth

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Seeing the Whole World

In the Tiniest Drop

Of Creation

Ecclesiastes 3:14

I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.

Romans 11:29

The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

Words of Grace For Today

There are plenty of awesome things that exist and events that happen in the universe that give us more than enough cause to pause and stand awestruck, observing what God has done. The moon eclipse this morning is just one small such event. That the planets and moons, sun and stars continue in movement around each other, in galaxies, and more: that super novas bring some of those stars and planets to their end, that black holes absorb even light, that tadpoles in such great swarms survive and grow to become frogs, minnows fish, and puppies full size dogs. The world is full of things marvellous and wonderful, standing for generations as the mountains, canyons, and lakes do, or living a generation as short as a day, or as long as ‘4 score and 20’ or hundreds of years as turtles do.

Our eyes and ears are given to us, made in such a manner, that we can experience the wonder.

Our brains are given to us, made in such a manner, that we can choose … well we can choose so many things, including whether or not to notice and protect as sustainable the things that have stood for generations and the living things that have but a generation on earth, however long that is for each.

The real miracle of God’s creating comes directly at us, us humans who have bodies and minds, and live with more, a spirit. This is something we can only tangentially observe. Though poets, artists, philosophers, theologians, mystics, and scientists of the ‘soft’ sciences make great efforts to give us evidence of what our spirit is, what our spirits are, we are at a loss to fully comprehend and be able to describe what a ‘spirit’ is, what our ‘spirits’ are, or even to definitively establish that ‘spirits’ exist.

Yet by faith we live, adopting well established patterns of thoughts about one person’s spirit, our collective spirits, so that we can proceed through our days with some kind of claimed purpose, order and meaning.

Faith as a living out one’s life as a member of a religion is also such claimed purpose, order and meaning. It is foolish hubris of so many ‘faithful’ people to claim that their religion, their brand of their religion, their particular expression of their religion or their individually tailored, customized, made up faith or spirituality is somehow THE ONE God gave to humans to live by. That foolishness and hubris has fuelled much religious fervour, many wars, and countless lives – and long before death it has cost people their spirit.

The healthy, faithful people know full well their religion is a human construct in response to God’s work and will, that it is fallible, sometimes seriously unhealthy, and always in need of reform yet as a religion that has stood the challenges of time it contains many kernels of life-giving beliefs, beliefs that encourage practices, which in the doing they bring holistic health to the doer and those around, that respect the Creation and Creator, and the many people of the same and of different faiths, whether healthy in their faith or not, yet they are still creatures of God.

In our faith we recognize that God calls every person to their own vocation, their way and manner of participating in the precious life that is given to us all. God does not set us out on into the ‘wilderness’ of the unknown without first well equipping us for the sojourn; God provides us each many of a variety of ‘gifts’, insights, abilities, skills and compassions so that we will find also in the ‘wildernesses’ of our journey’s the great variety of God’s Work, everywhere in the universe from the grandest scale to the tiniest of scale, and more so than in any other way, in the ‘spirit’ of each person.

God’s greatest miracles are always those that transform a human spirit from unhealthy, foolish, hubristic, to life-giving and sharing, wise, and humble … and faithful.

The order that we live with recognizes not all fiction is based on reality, that reality is a definite thing, and lies are lies as truths are truths; we are not lost or snaffle-baffled by corruption’s claims that reality is other than it is. Gone are the Trumpite fantasies, the Covidiocies, false testimony and convictions, and the denials of real science, like the denials of climate change and Covid19’s existence, deadly existence.

Always present are gratitude, generosity, truth, grace and real hope, from the tiniest view of the universe to the grandest view of God’s marvellous creation.

Thanks be to God.

Fear, Love, Wisdom, Trouble

Monday, May 10, 2021

Everything Grows

Until It Dies,

Except Wisdom.

It Is a Gift from God,

Starting with Fear and Love!

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Colossians 2:2-3

I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Words of Grace For Today

Here we find God’s truth. God is all powerful and to be feared more than anyone or anything else!

Without that fear there is no path to find knowledge, wisdom, truth. Without fear of God all our efforts will be bent, perverted, and misguided. Without fear of God our paths begin on a foundation that will shift and disappear out from underneath us.

Fear will not do it alone. The pseudo Paul who wrote Colossians (a disciple of Paul most likely) got this right. We need our hearts and minds encouraged and built up, united in love. With fear of God but without the love of God (bringing us to love God, all people, and all creation) we walk a dismal path where understanding is only partial, and that part is treacherous. Love brings us to understand life as God intends us to live it. Love enables us to move beyond understanding to contributing to God’s work in this world among us here and now.

The fear and love of God brings us to trust God with everything we are and have and can do. We begin to get glimpses of God’s mystery revealed in Jesus, the Christ.

We begin to live a life guided by true wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit for us at our baptisms.

That life is not a life of comfort. It is not a life of ease. It is not a life of capitulation to evil, or evil forces, or evil in others directed at us, or even to evil in ourselves.

This life is a difficult, seemingly chaotic (though by the Spirit very ordered), seemingly risky path that winds hither and yon. This is a life that gets us in to trouble, good trouble, trouble for Christ, trouble for the children, for the outcasts, for the poor, and for the condemned.

This is life, wisely lived life, life abundant, life blessed, and the life that God intends for us.

What are you waiting for?

The Son of God to come and give you directions, to die for you, and to be risen back to life thus conquering death and all evil for us?

What ARE you waiting for?

Today the Kingdom of God is here!

Desires of Birds, Bees, Beasts, and Fish

Thursday, May 6, 2021

God’s Value

Is Everything.

…

God Values

Every Thing and Being

In Creation.

Psalm 145:15-16

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.

Luke 12:22-24

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!’

Words of Grace For Today

I am not sure about this:

You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.

We humans have a way of ‘desiring’ so much more no matter how much we have.

Further the birds, bees, and beasts, and not to forget the fish, struggle under the effects of our ‘possessing the land’, ‘dominating it’, and destroying ecosystems that have taken millions of years to establish!

So?

The truth is God created the world quite capable of sustaining all the life created on it, satisfying the desire of every living thing. God promises to provide for the needs those desires are given to life of all kinds, in order that all life can continue on God’s good earth.

That includes our desires that God gave us so that we could continue to live among all the life on this planet.

How did we screw it up so badly!?!

Well, God loved us, wanted us to be able to love, which means we need to be able to choose to love or not, and …

Well so much of the time we humans have chosen, do choose, and forever will choose to do other than love! Youch, what a price!

We are destroying what provides us the ability to live on earth! It’ll take us maybe 100 or so, maybe only 25 or 5 years, to unmake the earth capable of sustaining life, something God created in 6 days, or millions of years measured in our time.

What power we have … to destroy!

And what power we have, as well, to love, when we so choose. Choosing to love is possible, for any one, for every one, of us … though only as God makes us able.

The beginning of God making us able is to promise that God values us greatly. Knowing that we can choose to act responsibly and responsively to that unconditional, life-giving and life-renewing love!

God willing and ‘the creek not rising’ (maybe it ought to be ‘the oceans not rising’) we may still live on planet earth in 1000 years and more!

God’s Word started this all. God’s Word sustains us all. Certainly God’s Word is able to bring us to that miracle of miracles.

So what are we going to do today, with God’s love?

Limits Are Nothing Compared to God’s Delight

Monday, May 3, 2021

Dark Above

Dark Below

Danger on the Horizon

...

Yet God Is My Stay,

Each Day.

2 Samuel 22:19-20

They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

Matthew 9:9

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.

Words of Grace For Today

The life I live is limited by many restrictions. While so many others feel the restrictions to protect us all from Covid 19 (or sort of at least), years before Covid 19 the reality of abject poverty, a ruined reputation, and injustice profound kept my horizons down to surviving one day, one week, one month, one season interrupted by desperate, life threatening needs.

As at no other time in my life, though some have come nearly as close, I have known that God walks with me,

and

that I am blessed with a life abundant.

I, with so many other humans through history, know well these words as my/our own:

They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

Perhaps you do, too?

This I have known as well, that God has called me, perhaps not like Jesus calling Matthew away from a life as a hated tax collector, but to be one who shares God’s Grace with as many people as I am able.

As I have followed Jesus, knowing that God delights in me, I have given my all each day as I was able. I have delighted in God’s claim on me, and the promise that God will walk with me no matter what, and that there is nothing that can separate me from the Love of God. For God has claimed me, a sinner of my own making, and made me a saint of God’s own making. In that everyone has hope. If God can save me, attacked as I am by foes yet each day, surely God can save anyone.

God created this earth, and us in it … and when it was done God said, “It is Good!”

So we can be good this day, too. Why not! If not now, when?!

Calves and Hubris

Thursday, April 29, 2021

The Glory of Gold:

of God’s Creation

Or

of Our Hubris

Exodus 32:11-12

Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, ‘O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.

1 John 2:1

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Words of Grace For Today

There is not one person who will not sin, turning from God even after God has made clear that by Grace (forgiveness and renewed life freely given by God) alone we live well.

Our human response to such great generosity given at such a great price, but taken and then squandered would be to wipe such a person from the face of the earth. We would so judge others, and hope that we would not also be judged. Or, for far too many people, we fear and ‘know’ that we will not be met with Grace again by God, so we go about blasting our way through life, destroying people left, right and centre, taking all we can from others and from life, sure that there is no God for us.

So Moses fears God will do to them, killing them in the mountains, and consuming them from the face of the earth. Answering God’s call Moses has led this rag tag band out of Egypt, but they have many times revolted in small ways against God and Moses demanding more and more. Then this hubristic band turns to worship their own smelted golden calf; it’s a full out revolt against God.

It is our story. It is the story that each of us can find in our own behaviour. We wish we would not sin, yet we still do. Too often in our hubris we turn in full revolt against God and worship our own gold-smelted-whatevers.

God could just as well kill us and consume us from the face of the earth. Yet God does not. God sends Jesus to save us yet again, and we live abundant lives by Grace alone, again … and again … and again. Jesus advocates for us. We learn how not to sin. We return to sin gravely. And Jesus saves us.

Now, given that God sends Jesus to save us, not once or twice or 77 times 7, but as many times we turn from God to sin, how are we going to respond to others who sin, again and again?

We can judge them, ‘killing’ them, and working to consume them from the face of the earth

OR

We can exercise God’s Grace for them … as Jesus calls us to. As God called Moses to lead the people out of slavery.

It’s a no-brainer …

because it’s not rational or reasoned or effective or productive or pious or righteous.

It requires pure faith,

…

which is by Grace alone possible.

Healing, Snow, Courage: All by Grace

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Hosea 11:3

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.

2 Peter 3:15

Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. … Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him.

Words of Grace For Today

In time everything changes. This morning it’s a thing, quite  a thing, to go to bed with grass showing

grazed on by deer

and then

to wake at 3:00

to see the flakes flying in the flashlight

and to wake

before breakfast

to see the whole of everything and beyond covered

well by snow still falling.

But then that is life

and weather in Alberta by the lake.

Change is not always so survivable, especially not when it is evil, aimed at eroding or emptying our souls of unconditional love, forgiveness, grace, courage and hope.

Then we come to know that we need God every day, whether we see and know God or not, to heal us and to fill us with wisdom of living as those who have received salvation as a gift from God.

Only by grace are we able to live having received and sharing unconditional love, forgiveness, grace, courage and hope … with all people no matter what comes our way,

whether it is snow or Covid 19.

Grating or Grateful?

Thursday, April 22, 2021

God’s Royal Colours

Show Every Day

…

To Address Our Very Not-Royal Realities.

Psalm 34:6

This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.

Romans 12:12

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

Words of Grace For Today

There are lots of complaints floating about, people tired of Covid19 restrictions, and generally people stressed out about life’s little challenges.

Those of us who know who we are (God’s people saved even though we are miserable sinners) know that our cries are heard by God and that God saves us – and there is in all things great cause to trust God’s promises, to remain firm in hope (and resilience), to not be overwhelmed by suffering, and to persevere in prayer.

It is a life of gratitude no matter what comes our way.

It’s so much better than a life of bitching, complaining and draining goodwill from the people around us.

So why do we continually chose to complain about other people and their stupidities?

God helps us remember that we too can be the ones doing stupid things, and are each new day.

Which keeps God active saving us from ourselves,

For which we can, instead of complaining, be ultimately grateful.

What a life, filled with opportunities to be saved and to be grateful!

Zero Sum Or Prodigious Blessings

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Life is about seeing blessings in all things,

Looking also down to see beauty.

Isaiah 53:12

Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Luke 6:28

Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Words of Grace For Today

If life is a zero-sum ‘game’, then the goal is to get ahead by whatever means, destroying as many enemies and people who get in your way.

With the earth overburdened with nearly 9 billion people, we are pressing the limits of what the earth can sustain, with our ‘great’ life style, comforts, and luxuries. It is the generations old solution to compete for the ‘limited resources’, and to ‘take no prisoners’ along the way.

We humans thus reduce life to a zero-sum ‘game’, a project of limited resources which each person or family or nation needs to seek to gain for themselves before others do, or to take them from others if they have the resource you want.

It is hard to imagine in this zero sum ‘game’ that anyone will stop to bear the sins of the many and make intercession for the transgressors, or bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.

Since God did not create life to be a zero sum ‘game’, rather that life is abundant for all if all share what is available, it is obvious that we will bless those who curse us, and pray for our abusers and the transgressors.

Life is a project of being grateful.

God has provided plenty … for everyone,

including blessings.

Life is not sustained by things, consumables, resources, comforts, or possessing more than others, or enjoying luxuries.

Life is sustained in being God’s blessings for others.

That changes the colour of life from a zero sum ‘game’ to a ‘game’ of giving to others what they need in order to have an abundant life (which is not the same as a life of comfort or luxury).

We get to celebrate all God’s blessings for all people, even those who curse us for not playing their ‘game’.

A Humble Cottage Enjoyed … Or … Hellish Greed Suffered

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

The Humble Cottage View

Spectacular

Proverbs 23:17

Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always continue in the fear of the Lord.

Luke 23:34

Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

Words of Grace For Today

Those who want more, demand more, comforts in life will always take short cuts and dishonest paths to get more, tramping down others to get and get and get … for such wants are never satisfied but always want yet another and another and another. It is a hellish way to live.

Reminds me of the fisher’s wife who always wanted more.

The fisher meets a magical fish who grants his wishes, as he repeats more and more his wife’s wish to have more than their humble fishing cottage, which becomes a mansion, then a palace, then a ruler’s grand house, the pope’s cathedral …

until she wishes to be God and live in God’s house

and he returns from that last visit to the magical fish to find his wife living happily (or not) in their original humble fishing cottage by the sea.

We are to continue to fear God, know our place, live everyday filled with gratitude for all we have, and work hard to provide others what they need to enjoy an abundant life (as God provides us). We start by forgiving them their sins (as God has forgiven us – when we did not know what we were/are doing.)