Category: Morning

Monday, September 28, 2020

Precious, Long Awaited, Saviour

All Around With Us

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’

John 1:45-46

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’

Words of Grace For Today

To find something precious is a wonderful thing.

To find someone whom you’ve waited a long time to find is a life changing marvellous thing.

To find the one promised to bring God’s Promises to fruition for all people since times of old is fabulous, and even out of this world.

Knowing whom one is looking for is a place to start, so that when it comes time that one may meander down the right back alley and find this precious, this long awaited, or this Saviour of creation one would even know what one has found.

It’s like panning for gold. It sure helps to know what gold looks like before one spends a few years panning through tons of rock and sand looking for paydirt.

It is best, when one is looking for something precious, someone long awaited, or for the Saviour of the universe, that one start when one is young, for learning what these things are requires a young person’s fortitude, strength and quickness. It’s awkward in old age, when arthritis sets in and everything hurts when one moves, to have to run quickly through the gamut of possibilities in order to know what is precious, awaited or able to save creation.

After one, in one’s youth, has diligently sought for what is precious, whom is to be long awaited, or who can actually save creation, it is in one’s old age, when most of life is already spent, that one realizes the simplest and most common things are precious, like smiles and kindness. It is then that one realizes that the long awaited person is one that has always been there with you, and waiting is not what counts, nor in the finding, but rather it is in sharing kindness with that one becomes the one who is precious.

In one’s old age it is then that one realizes that the one who has saved creation, for it has already been accomplished, could not ever be found. For this one has walked with you from the earliest days of your youth through each day even into one’s old age when time moves so fast and things take so long to accomplish.

The Saviour of the Universe is the Creator of the Universe, is God’s own Son, Jesus. We need never say, ‘Come and See,’ for God is already here to be seen, known and heard.

Open your eyes and God can be seen. Open your ears and God can be heard. Open your heart and you will know God has been and ever will be with you.

No one is alone, not even with Covid 19 self isolation, for God is with us.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

or Dying Star

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

For The Traveller You Light The Way

Until In The End We Can Only Hope

That From This Star We Would Be Ever So Far.

Psalm 24:1

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

Ephesians 5:15

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.

Words of Grace For Today

Psalm 111:10 (and twice in Proverbs, once in Ecclesiasticus) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Be careful, live as wise people.

Wisdom requires fear.

Why fear God?

God made the world, the universe, and all that is in it, and all that live in it.

Fear is the appropriate attitude to take to the one who creates such a marvellous and ferocious and beautiful and destructive universe.

Watch a star through its life,ending in a supernova explosion*! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made?

Watch one’s child be born! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made and given one responsibility for?

Fear is a great motivator. It’s kept us alive as a species as long as we’ve existed. It’s given despots power since before history was written. It’s kept marriages together and blown them apart. It’s kept vulnerable persons alive and sane, and driven the strongest people insane.

By itself it helps move us to survive, but it does not move us to live fully.

Martin Luther begins each explanation in his Small Catechism with “We are to fear and love God so that ….”

Knowingly participating in God’s Kingdom requires fear and love of God.

Love of God, as our response to God’s unconditional love of us, when combined with fear of God, keeps us mindful of our place in the universe and before God, and mindful of the wonders and blessings God provides for us each day, undeserving though we all are!

Together, fear and love, bring us to seek goodness for everyone, to right injustices, and to sacrifice that others may know the good blessings God provides for all people to share.

That is the beginning of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that the Creator of all intended us to live with each day, even as we live with challenges insurmountable, like Covid-19, and the really dangerous rampant denial that Covid 19 is here and does seemingly randomly kill.

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* for those unfamiliar with what a supernova is: science.howstuffworks.com/star6.htm

Stars More Massive Than the Sun

When the core runs out of hydrogen, these stars fuse helium into carbon just like the sun. However, after the helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the core has turned to iron, it can burn no longer. The star collapses by its own gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. In less than a second, the iron core, which is about the size of Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6 miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core, thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes (supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space. The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole depending upon the mass of the original star.