Category: Morning

7th Day of …

Thursday, December 31, 2020

In the darkness of the woods,

the sun still shines.

In the darkness of our suffering at our enemies’ hands,

Christ’s Light still shines.

We get to be Christ’s Light

even for our enemies.

Psalm 6:10

All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror; they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame.

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

Enemies shamed, our joy complete.

It sounds like schadenfreude, our joy at others’ misery. Is this part of our Christmas tradition, too?!

It sounds like God’s justice is actually our revenge, or that God’s justice is like Karma: ‘what goes around comes around’.

It sounds like we can ask for anything and it will be done for us … and our joy is completed in having our wishes and whims fulfilled.

When it sounds like that, it is the devil messing around with the Good News, bringing us to suffer perdition even as we live our days on earth.

What a shame to suffer, to be so skewed as to think that the devil’s ways are God’s ways. That is the real shame, for that mix up is the root of all sin. Often instead of knowing they are the devil’s ways we think that they are the good ways we have chosen to pursue for our own good. Hah! How foolish we humans can be, and what a shame we suffer for being such fools.

The Good News is simple: God loves us, all of our fore-bearers descendants, and all of our descendants … and all our enemies! Of course we wish to be freed from suffering at our enemies’ hands. But, though our instincts are to pursue revenge, to cause our enemies suffering, God does not delight in their suffering, nor in their deaths. Instead God wishes that they be converted from our enemies to our friends, from followers of the devil to followers of Jesus.

In this is God’s joy complete.

In this double victory we are freed from suffering at our enemies hands, and we gain new friends and new siblings as children of God.

And in that our joy is complete, as we wish what God wishes: that our enemies be saved as we are saved by Jesus’ sacrifice of unconditional love.

We have waited to celebrate Christ’s birth, because in waiting we can see what otherwise we could not: the patience God has with us and with our enemies. This tradition of Advent waiting is not one many keep anymore. Yet it is a tradition that is more valuable than many others.

It is a tradition that Covid 19 cannot interrupt, rather it disrupts our jumping on the early Christmas bandwagon so easily. It helps us remember Advent is … significantly … for waiting.

In that tradition we may encounter the mystery of God, and be overwhelmed yet again by God’s grace and love for us all, even for our enemies! As the mysteries of God surround us, carry us, and astound us, with our humble praise we give God thanks in all things.

What a life!

3rd Day of …

Sunday, December 27, 2020

What Do We See?

Birds: A Father and Child Carved from Snow?

The Wonders of Creation?

…

Or dirty creosote drippings from a dirty chimney burning junk wood?

Psalm 40:5

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.

2 Peter 1:19

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

We may think we can proclaim the great deeds of God, wondrous deeds and thoughts towards us. We can, sort of, proclaim God’s great deeds, though we rarely get the story to reflect the awesome Grace God begins, continues and ends with when God thinks of us.

God ensures the story of God’s Love and Mercy are told in every generation, and at least partially understood by every generation. The stories of God in every age shine like lamps in our dark places, bringing us hope, which is the fuel for life.

On this third day of Christmas, the 1st Sunday of Christmas, we traditionally have services of readings and carols. It provides a bit of recovery time for pastors and gives us time to sing Christmas carols and hymns that we did not on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

What though is Christmas for us, in truth?

A German tradition was discovered by a niece: a pickle is hung and hidden on the Christmas tree. Then the children come in and hunt for the pickle. The first one to find it receives a gift of special treats, chocolates or sweets.

The question by one of the uncles was whether the pickle was a real pickle, for then the smell of the pickle would easily give it away. But no, the pickle in question (now a daze) was a plastic pickle, which then a nephew produced for all to see. A fine plastic pickle with a string through one end to make hanging on the tree convenient.

The tree, is of course, environmentally ‘friendly’, a plastic and reusable tree with tinsel and lights already in place.

The ‘old time’ German tree was a tree out of the woods, a fresh pine or spruce tree. The lights were candles burning with real fire – so no old dried out trees would do. The decorations were of many kinds, none plastic, some wood, some metal, some ceramic (maybe), but more were natural like pine cones dipped in flour-water to look frosty, home-made jellied fruit and sweets, some soaked in rum and/or brandy. The pickle was real as well, and the prize was almost certainly home made sweets. The tree wafted the smell of it’s sap. The decorations filled the house with smells of sweet and delicious and special treats. The pickle’s smell was well concealed by the aroma of Christmas.

But what does this all have to do with Christ? With Christmas?

Nothing, other than it is how families for generations kept traditions about how they gathered and spent time, special time, with each other, playing games, inviting children into simple games of hide and seek, and all partaking of the ‘special’ time, eats, and drinks.

These ‘Christmas’ traditions are not bad or wrong. They simply are not about Christ.

So it is with most of what today we call Christmas, and which so many people during the restrictions of Covid 19 bemoan not being able to partake in.

On this 3rd day of the 12 days of Christmas, what have we done to celebrate God’s wondrous deeds and thoughts towards us? What have we done to keep the lamp shining in every dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in hearts? What have we done to tell with out thoughts, words and deeds the old, old story of Jesus and his Love … for all people?

Advent’s Last Days: Facing Everything!

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Wonders

of Fishers Returned

And Light

Short but Marvellous

Psalm 3:6

I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

Mark 10:15

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

Words of Grace For Today

Close to Christmas, and enemies have not relented.

And if you do not have enemies who have not relented, then perhaps you have not lived well and righteously, or courageously.

Still we like to say others cannot enter the Kingdom of God, for they are not humble like children before God.

This we say with our pride swelling, for definitely we are God’s favoured and God’s chosen and at least we are assured of great place in God’s Kingdom …

just like the disciples who argued who would be first in Jesus’ rule!

First are those who have nothing left, who like children are fully dependent on their parents, and on God, for their survival,

which is not going to be much longer on this earth

for the powers that be are quite willing to kill off those who stand righteously before them with truth and grace,

testaments to God’s Grace and Truth.

Like children then, let us take these final days to prepare for God to come, as a helpless child in our midst, as a human, suffering all we do in this hard, short and brutish life,

which by God’s blessings alone (not our material wealth or comforts or privilege) is blessed with challenges and meaningful labour, eternal and overfilled with wonders, and filled with kindnesses unending.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 18

Friday, December 18, 2020

Repent?

Is this the Way? Is this God’s Way for Us?

Is this the Way of Christ:

to the Cross to Give All Life Abundant?

Hosea 4:1

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.

Matthew 3:2

‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

Words of Grace For Today

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Repent is to turn around, to proceed in the other direction, in the other manner, to proceed with the Grace of God instead of pounding one’s head against the wall of the Devil’s empty promises in vain trying to make something of life, something that cannot be made … it can only be received …

And God offers it freely.

Beethoven would be 250 years old this year. Overcoming all temptations to decay into decomposition humour, he still connects people with their own powerful and profound emotions and with through these emotions to other people. His 5th and 9th symphonies pound down in all the force of life in bar after bar of melody circling to a full climactic ending, that is both a relief to reach and leaves one wanting more. His pastorale melodies encircle the fog of the early morning’s kiss on the lake and bespeak the yearning that connects us all in the hope of being loved and being able to love purely, simply, profoundly. ZDF provides a tour of the world to places and people touched to the core by Beethoven’s music; Bonn, Osaka, Medellín, Ruhrgebiet, Brisbane, Rsumeb (Namibia), Queensland, Chennai (India.)

Music like Beethoven’s reaches deep into us, moves us, heals us, connects us to other people, creates empathy in us for others, and miraculously sets the world right … if for only a short moment.

This is one way in which the Kingdom of God has come near. It is one way in which God reaches into our hearts and calls us to repent, and moves us to proceed in a manner more fitting the wonders that God created us to be and to know in this tragic and beautiful existence we all know.

Where there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land (which is everywhere in every generation) let music probe deep into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we may repent and proceed in a new (ancient) direction of walking humbly with our God, sharing the Good News (the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love), and always working for justice for all people.

For this Christ came. This we prepare to celebrate, quietly, at our core, with the midnight darkness of our lives sparkling as our candles of remembering, thanks, celebration, and hope, held by people of all sizes, colours, creeds, and experiences pierce through the darkness.

Light one, two, three, [four] candles to wait for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 15

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

God’s Creation is Filled with Beauty

even the drippings of creosote from a chimney

from burning junk wood

1 Kings 8:24

The covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand.

Luke 1:68-69

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David.

Words of Grace For Today

A mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David

So often we wish for power and might, with God’s backing, that we can direct at our enemies in order to make our lives better. God promises a saviour.

David, King David, ruled Israel by most historical accounts successfully, conquering the neighbouring enemies, solidifying power in his hands, securing a place for his people among the many.

As generations passed, and Israel was weakened by corruption and their neighbours grew powerful, Israel’s independence was crushed again and again. Sometimes it’s civilization, culture, and religion were left in shambles. Sometimes they were all subsumed into a foreign rule, to various degrees benevolent or cruel as opportunity and whim arose for that power and it’s agents.

Israel, as we humans are wont, equated their world power or lack thereof with God’s blessings. God promised a saviour. So the people hope for a powerful ruler of Israel, God’s appointed and anointed, to conquer the foreign powers, to run them out, to rule over them in their lands, to expand Israel’s territory to ensure their domination of the future. This was the image they carried of King David, so a saviour from David’s house was this kind of a saviour.

God’s blessings are, fortunately for the majority of humans who are alive and who have ever lived, not equated with world power, wealth, or privilege. God sends Jesus to demonstrate this very clearly: God’s power is that of sacrificial love, of forgiveness and grace, and of justice and mercy. More clearly stated God’s justice is always based on truth and on God’s steadfast mercy. Thankfully, or we’d all be doomed to eternal damnation.

Jesus comes to teach, heal, forgive, save, renew, and equip us to be God’s grace for others.

God has promised with God’s own mouth and have this day fulfilled with God’s own hand. The Lord God of Israel has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.

This Advent we prepare again to give witness, among all the things that detract us from God’s Word in Jesus, the Saviour, to God’s power, the power of sacrificial love.

The trappings of Christmas are not all available to us, so what will we use to give the world this clear witness during the coming 12 days of Christmas?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 14

Monday, December 14, 2020

God Promises and Delivers

Homes For All People

Righteous Homes,

not Windblown Shacks and Outhouses

Isaiah 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

2 Corinthians 9:10

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

As the vaccine is promised ...

Like in every generation before we yearn and hope, sometimes beyond hope. Yet sometimes in despair we give up that last strand of hope …

In the dark of the night, when monsters rear their ugly head occupying all the challenges of our days which we thought we could deal with well enough and those monsters eat at the foundation of the order of our lives amid the chaos …

There is always the darkness, the evil that threatens us.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises to judge all with real justice and grace, out of which will come righteousness for all … whether we experience this righteousness or not God’s promises are the only promises that are sure!

God promises to walk with us, giving seeds that we can sow and harvests abundant that we can gather in, increasing in and around us God’s righteousness – for Christ is come.

God’s Son came, and will come again, to make clear God’s will towards us, namely that God loves us and judges us with mercy and truth. Jesus will judge all for everything they have done.

How can righteousness come out of the evil of all humans, which is so destructive, pervasive and enduring? Jesus offers us his record, pure and sinless, and on that record we are judged. Our records, our sins, the evil we have done to others, and the destruction we have wrought on creation … all this is erased as if it never occurred in all of time at all. So we emerge, all of us, righteous.

We do not get to wait for Christ’s judgment until after we die. Christ judges every day, every hour. Christ renews us as righteous every moment. We still remain sinners, yet always are we fully God-made saints.

So we yearn …

We yearn for judgment …

We yearn deep in our bones for judgment, so that we are made righteous, and those that do us evil will be rescued from their sins and we with them.

Advent is the time we relearn to trust God’s promises, and we live this abundant life waiting, alert, holding to the Promise that draws us onward, and draws from us righteousness we did not know we were capable of.

We are the harvest. We are the labourers in the harvest. The harvest is ready, each day. The harvest is so abundant it cannot be stored in all the earth or even the universe. Such is God’s promise to walk with us and bring us to live life abundantly!

No Covid 19 pandemic can rob us of this abundant life. Not even when our usual Christmas habits are not possible this year while we remain safe for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for all our neighbours.

Life is still abundant. Perhaps just because we must rethink what is essentially Christmas, our celebrations in the future will regain a significance we have not previously known.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises and delivers life over abundant for all!

Let us make it so for all people, also this Christmas!

Take Advent to truly prepare.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 11

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Life Goes On

no matter the challenges evil places in our way,

More Sure Than the Return of the Fishers

on the Ice.

Psalm 41:5

My enemies wonder in malice when I will die, and [when] my name [will] perish.

James 5:15

The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

Words of Grace For Today

If one has led an honourable life, then enemies are in no short supply, for there is no shortage of humans who hate goodness in others and who seek its destruction, hoping for a good person to die.

Perhaps it is that in comparison they come up so short, or perhaps it is that goodness and honesty get in the way of their evil schemes to secure more and more for themselves on the backs of other people.

Whatever the reason, many enemies gather about, fearful for the truth I sustain, and can disclose; they wonder when I will die, how long can I possibly last, bombarded with Gaslighting and false convictions and evil rulings and financial ruin.

They have had power over so many, and for years it took more than I had available to see their evil effect on me as a statement not about myself, but about them. It is odd and familiar that evil focused on a good person drives that person to wonder what he or she has done wrong to deserve such abuse. Now, by Grace alone, for years I have realized the true statement made by their attacks on me.

I am still the same person I was before, the same good person, the same forgiven sinner, the same God-made saint … and more so, for all the trappings of life that I used to presume were mine to enjoy have been stolen from me. What is left are the essentials of life. I work hard to ensure I have some of them. Others are a given still, and I am grateful for them. Others I am fully dependent on the generosity of others. Hard work, God given, and people shared: these make up the contributions to the essentials for life.

Eternal life, though, is long since secured as only it can be: by Grace alone.

Covid 19 is a real threat. But hardly as great a threat as evil scheming people, dead set on bringing destruction, ruin and early death to all that is mine. Yet not Covid 19, not evil scheming people, nor anything else can separate me (or you) from God’s love and promise of eternal life given and sealed in baptism.

Advent is the time of precious blue hope, time to prepare for Christ, time to see Christmas celebrations anew: God’s Grace in action … for all people.

In the Darkness there is Christ’ never failing Light.

Light one, two, (three), (four) candles to watch for the Messiah ….

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 11

Friday, December 11, 2020

Signs

of God’s Wonders

Are as clear as the cracks in the ice.

Daniel 6:27

He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth; for he has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

Lions are not common in Alberta.

Alligators and wolves and elephants of the 2 legged variety abound, but no lions. It’s more difficult to be saved from the 2 legged variety than even from lions.

God steps in to save Daniel, and God works to save us, too. God delivers and rescues, works signs and wonders. The greatest wonder is the love God demonstrates for all people in becoming one us, to save us all. Grace comes

Jesus changes not a bit, not at all. Always gracious, forgiving, healing, and renewing. For all people.

The work of God never ends, never changes, and always gives us life and breath. Against those that would do us harm, God has no end of work and signs to make clear to us, that is God’s never ending wonder.

Signs and wonders fill the days and the nights of all our lives, for us all to see, and for us to give God thanks.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace December 8

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Heading Out West

Joel 2:1

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near.

2 Peter 3:13

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Words of Grace For Today

They said go west young man.

So I went …

…

north instead.

And

Decades later I’m still  going, and waiting,

for a home with the righteous.

If only I could find one of them,

Everyone here is a sinner,

Then I hear the trumpet blow

and see the Lord is coming

bringing

a new heaven and earth and a new home for all these wretched sinners made saints by Grace

Grace alone.

Just like me.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 6

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Second Sunday of Advent

Saint Nicholas Day, Remembering the Bringer of Gifts

Like Tracks in the Snow Disappearing Toward the Light,

The Signs and Wonders of God’s Work for Us All

Are All Around Us.

Daniel 4:2

The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.

1 John 1:2

This life [the word of life that Jesus brings to us] was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

Words of Grace For Today

Signs and wonders … the word of life revealed, eternal life even today for us.

These are everywhere to be encountered, seen, heard, touched, inwardly experienced.

The sun rises in the cold morning, light spreading and pushing back the darkness until a clear burst of light is visible through the trees near the horizon. The Light of the world is here, as a blessed sign that God is with us.

The periodic drone of fisher’s ice augers rumbles like bumble bees across the snow covered lake and through the trees. There are fish in this lake, stocked as it is, which provide food for many, except in the shoulder seasons when the ice forms or melts and is not safe enough to support a fisher. When the water is open boats bring fishers to all corners and bays of this lake. Then the ice is solid, on foot, by quad and side-by-side and snowmobile, or by truck, fishers spread across the lake to harvest for their families sustenance, signs of God’s blessings unceasingly flowing for us all.

After more than seven years with various people seeking my destruction, death and/or exile based on lies and greed, and a mental illness perverted view of life, fuelled by misandry and hate-based, perverted faith, I wake each morning, here, alive, accepting my life as blessed, though I am financially so far in debt I will likely never emerge, though my reputation among corrupt people of power will likely never be restored, though I work desperately hard to survive the challenges of living rough: cold requires lots of work but it is constant and properly conquered with care; moisture, heat, and bugs are the most difficult, fickle, and most dangerous. Each day I still breath is a gift from God, a sign of the wonders God works sustaining my life though it is under constant attack by so many, and so powerful.

This is eternal life, for today. (Yes, eternal life has already begun. We do not wait until after death!) For the Word of life, Jesus Christ, has come, is here, and will return.

Advent, these precious few days of blue hope, suspending us in waiting, holding us alert in watching, guiding us with Light into the darkness of winter … Advent is filled with signs and wonders of God working for us. We only need take a breath, pause, reflect, … and notice all that God does for us each day.

This day there are millions of people who through terrible injustice and cruelty do not have clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter. Many, many people will die this day across the face of the earth … and it need not be so.

So many more millions have those basics of life, but lack the other two that keep us give us resilience to face the challenges and evil that would rob us of our hearts, minds and strength: meaningful labour and love (both being able to love others and to be loved by others).

Facing Covid 19 and our feeble efforts to slow it’s progress through the populations, if we do not have an ever-renewing reserve of resilience, we can lose our hearts, minds and strength to face each day. We can instead forego all precautions and put others at great risk, we can gather as if we thought that would help (participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream), or we can join the insane protests with no masks or physical distance (also participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream).

What will we do this day, if seemingly small, to reach out with the Word of life, to all? What will we do reaching out to others, for therein we build our own resilience?

The Word of Life works signs and wonders for us all.

Stay alert, lest we do not notice, or hear, or see Christ in our midst, calling us to be Christ’s signs and wonders for us all.