For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover them with favour as with a shield.
Acts 13:52
The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Covid 19 presses challenges on us all, unequally.
The homeless and outcasts in Canada are recognized as deserving homes and inclusion, so thankfully an effort is made to provide for them. They receive safe places to live and eat if for no other reason because not to do so would lead to an outbreak among them that could not be contained and would spread to us all. At least this care is provided in the cities … well sort of … in some cities.
Immigrants who live multi-generationally with many people to a housing unit, many people to a bedroom, are now and again provided separate housing in hotels for those who must self isolate or quarantine themselves … again for our protection.
Pastors gather to discuss their ministries … and it becomes mostly a ‘bitch’ session, complaints of how difficult life is for them and their families, though most retain full pay and adequate work, and none lack for the necessities of life, even in Covid 19 times. Humour creeps into the conversation lessening the dark tone of complaints. Yet where is their overwhelming sense of gratitude? How does one inspire people to remember how blessed they are?
How often Scriptures record gratitude and thankfulness as the most appropriate and life giving response to all of life, all that appears to be good and all that appears to be bad.
For God covers the righteous with favour as with a shield, and in the face of great threat to their lives for being Christian still the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
How then will we live this day?
Full of complaints, self-righteously expecting more from life?
Or
Filled with joy and gratitude, no matter the challenges that come our way?
With joy they celebrated the festival of unleavened bread for seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel.
Luke 10:20
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Words of Grace For Today
There is great reason to be joyful when those who rule over you turn their hearts to you and aid you in your nearly impossible, but necessary work, whether that work is to provide a house for the Lord where people can gather (after Covid 19) or to provide a home for a new family (like a refugee family or a new couple) without a home or to provide a home for a homeless person.
The disciples nearly impossible work is to cast out demons, to renew the ill people’s spirits, to give life. As they work the ‘spirits submit to them’ and they are able to give life to many people. We are to follow suit today, bringing renewed life, full life, abundant life to as many people as we can.
So the people of Israel celebrated the festival of unleavened bread (the Passover?) for seven days.
We have great reasons to celebrate our festivals as well. Usually we merely take a break, a pause, and focus on our own enjoyment, or gathering our families – or we used to before Covid 19.
All this, Jesus reminds the disciples and us, is barely cause to celebrate.
At first glance we do have to shake our heads, trying to clear them of some unknown cobwebs as we try to make sense of Jesus’ words. Certainly bringing life to others is THE reason to celebrate. Or is it that the disciples and we celebrate not bringing life to others, but rather the power they and we are able to exercise in order to accomplish our tasks?
That power is not ours. We have no right to claim it, nor to celebrate as if it were ours. That power remains God’s and God’s alone. We exercise it for others, doch it is God would exercises it for us for them.
God exercises that power, like many other life-giving powers at work in the world around us, along with our efforts, because God has written our names in heaven as God’s holy workers.
Therefore our celebrations are most life-giving for us, when we celebrate not that we ‘have’ power or can ‘exercise’ power. Our celebrations are most life-giving for us and all people when we celebrate what God has done for us miserable beggars and sinners: God has written our names in heaven, claiming us a God’s holy people.
This city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them; they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.
Luke 2:29-32
‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’
Words of Grace For Today
God’s blessings …
God’s blessings are named by us humans in many and various ways.
God’s blessings often are equated with prosperity and power, independence and might, progress and children.
Except for the children, all this seems to be a complete misapprehension of God’s way of providing for God’s people.
God, rather (as so often made clear in Jesus’ story and people’s reaction to him and his story) blesses us with salvation, which God prepares in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to God’s people.
This salvation rarely looks like worldly prosperity.
It is a life coloured first with gratitude, humility, service, and grace … oh, and the wisdom to recognize God’s blessings as salvation, i.e. forgiveness (freedom from the bondage to sin) and sanctification (making us holy, set apart, to be the presence of God for all people … as the people of light who exercise God’s Grace and love for all people.)
God’s creation has a greatness in it, and we as part of creation share in that grand wonder: that God provides this as a way, place, time for us to exist and be awestruck.
God provides.
We get to receive and share …
and hope that also tomorrow will bring opportunities to be bedazzled by God’s love.
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God.
Matthew 6:21
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Words of Grace For Today
I never understood young men who spent so much time working on their old trucks or muscle cars, fixing, tweaking, and adding 8 track tapes and speakers to them. (That dates me if nothing else does!)
I had to get old to read that whatever one spends a great deal of effort and time at, one falls in love with. So those young men, who invested so much time in their vehicles, fell in love with them, which brought them to spend even more time with them, until they did things that were not reasonable or logical or purposeful. They were continuing beyond all that into the realm of love.
Who would of thunk?
Thus it is that we humans assign value to things in our lives, which in and of themselves have no more than utilitarian value, if that, simply because we invest time working on them.
I can only imagine that someone who spends a lot of time accumulating wealth, power, or fame ‘falls in love’ with that as well.
What we treasure, owns our hearts, and brings us to do things that are not reasonable or logical or purposeful.
So it is in God’s creation. We humans, like the rest of the universe, operate on the principals of love.
This is God’s love permeating through the entire universe.
There is no power equal to the power of love, to heal, to give life, to give hope, to sustain life.
Once God has spoken God’s love to us and we have heard it once or twice we come to know and trust that power belongs to God, the real power that holds the universe together and gives us our very life and breath.
We can also, by investing our time and effort into things and projects and ideas that do not give life to us and others, ‘fall in love’ with evil and destructive forces that rob us and the world around us of life.
God intends, though, that we invest our lives (every bit of time and energy we have) into providing God’s care and unconditional love to other people. Thus we ‘fall in love’ with God’s creation and God’s people.
Then our hearts are found invested in the treasure that God created for us to live for: people, and people of all kinds.
When we live for other people, life never gets dull or boring, and we remain ‘in love’ with God and God’s creation, no matter how old we get. No matter how old or tired, or ill, we remain fully alive and in love.
Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.
2 Corinthians 4:16
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
Words of Grace For Today
What used to take little effort and next to no time or thought, now takes great effort and forging onward through pain, dealing with lack of clear sight, and being exhausted way too soon each day.
Fear makes it worse.
There is almost no resolution.
‘If you have your health that is everything.’
It’s a nice sentiment, though the truth is more clearly ‘if you do not have your health, then nothing else can compensate for that. Life is a finite experience, and without health (as old age takes if from us piece by piece) that finite experience becomes smaller and shorter and smaller and shorter and then will soon end.
Our real comfort is that God does not ‘unbless’ us as we get old and ill.
Even as our bodies and minds seem to waste away, God renews our faith and trust, and thus we are able to continue on, blessing others with all we have left in life, of life itself.
He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.
Words of Grace For Today
As we receive from God, we are given the ability to give to others.
God provides for those most in need.
We can provide for those most in need.
The world works out to be a wonderful place to be alive in.
Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?
Luke 24:26
Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?
Words of Grace For Today
A family of four, the parents of whom had chosen to serve as pastors in the church, arrived back on Canadian soil, ruined by a congregation that had a history of ruining pastors. Financially broke with only two old cars, they needed a place to live. They could not afford a house and rents were kept out of reach by artificial manipulations, to enrich the wealth of the few landlords that lived locally and the many who lived elsewhere.
So, the father decided they would look for property so that he could build them a house. They found and bought a property with an old, falling apart, mouse-infested homestead house on it, he built them a sound and environmentally responsible house, and they had a secure and safe place to live.
It sounds simple.
A young couple in their thirties, living between their parent’s houses, needs a place to establish themselves, to live together and forge their own way in life. They cannot afford anything available on the market, so they look at what they can afford. The best option is a repossessed townhouse that has the carpets ripped up, holes in the walls and doors from feet and fists, and lots of wear and tear everywhere. They buy it and recruit their friends and family to help them ‘make it right’ and safe to live in.
It sounds simple.
Life is much more complicated than the simple stories or dreams we have.
The family of four lived planed that the house would take a better part of a year to build as they lived in that homestead, two bedroom house with an earthen basement. Finances and construction were stressful beyond belief as step by step the father learned what needed to be done in the next step of construction. There was no room for errors or redoing any step. Fortunately a retired house builder volunteered to draw out building plans from his hand drawn design, research the new processes and materials they used, and generally keep the project from going off the rails. The parents both worked, he half time as a pilot, sinking every penny and every minute they had into the building project. In the end they moved into the not quite finished new house when the old house started to fall apart and become unlivable.
It took three years of literal blood, sweat and tears … and a lot of help from friends and family, and in the end the family did have a sound house to live in.
…
The young couple looked at the ugly, dirty insides of an otherwise sound duplex and estimated that it would be livable in a few weeks. Friends needed a place to live and they would share their new place with them. The friends apartment they were in flooded. The project started with volunteers joining in to gut the townhouse of thousands of nails and staples on the floors, dirt soaked carpets on the stairs, a huge assortment of things stuck into the walls, a folding door that did not work, and … and … and.
The project could not be completed in a few weeks. Drywall patching took that long, as the obvious holes were finished and then less obvious ones were found, outside walls without insulation were discovered, and useless space was made into useful closet space. Dingy curtains came down, ripped out curtain rod supports were removed, rotted baseboards and trim were removed, thousands of nails removed from nearly everywhere, and tens of thousands of pin holes in the drywall were patched. Finally with most of the walls bare, the priming and painted started, a sliding door was custom fit to the poorly designed bathroom near the entrance, the kitchen cupboard fronts were removed, the hinges soaked and cleaned of paint and grime, new paint freshened the kitchen, the upstairs floors were covered with a proper sub-flooring, and finally one, then two, then three rooms had new flooring installed. Painting continued, clean up continued, door bottoms where cut to fit the new floor height, and after cleaning up every day the construction mess, out went all the garbage to the appropriate disposal sites. New material for flooring, baseboards, and the assorted things that had to be replaced came in and were stacked even as the saw dust filled the air from cutting wood. The odd fix like a dryer vent needed to be installed. Appliances arrived. Old ones were carted off.
Four weeks past with painting to be done, trim to be cut, painted, and installed, flooring to be installed, but the end started to look possible in a week or so.
It took more than a month and finally the couple has a place to live and share with their friends.
…
God provides. Sometimes it requires lots and lots of blood, sweat, and tears to get to the basics, a safe and secure place to live.
…
God provides all we need, most of all to trust that God is with us, that God is for us, that God saves us. For this the Messiah suffered an agonizing death on a cross, unjustly condemned. Only then, three days later did God raise him back to life, to demonstrate to us hard-headed, hard-hearted people God’s glory is not in quick fixes or miraculous resolutions or taking away our free will. God loves us and wishes us to learn to love God, ourselves, our neighbours and even our enemies. That does not happen overnight or in an instant. It takes much more time than renovating an ugly, dirty townhouse. It takes much more time and effort and investment on our part than building a house from the ground up with the minimum of experience and money.
God’s glory is in saving us from our twisted ways and view of God, God’s creatures, and all of God’s creation.
For us to learn to love God, ourselves, our neighbours and even our enemies takes more than a life time. It takes the bending of time and space and reality that we build around us … until we can see the world and all that is in it as God created it to be … Good!
He said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’
John 14:19
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
Words of Grace For Today
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
Though we Christians have said this for generations, I would guess that for most Christians and non-Christians the events we celebrate today have had little effect on their lives. Either we simply ignore the consequences that follow from God raising Jesus back to life after being crucified unjustly and cruelly, or we’ve become so accustom to the story, it’s so familiar, that we take it for granted. It’s not like anything we do today is going to change what God did, right?
Right!
God keeps trying to reach us, to communicate with us, to bring the Good News to us so that we hear, and accept God’s will for us and all people: that God would love us and have us be that love for each other.
Christ is Risen, and may that make all the difference in the world, for you, for us, and for all the people we can make a difference for …
He grants peace within your borders; he fills you with the finest of wheat.
Ephesians 2:14
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
Words of Grace For Today
While we struggle to get more than the next person, or more than we had yesterday, or maybe just enough to survive, we put ourselves in competition with others for limited resources.
Or so we think and say.
It is not so much that resources are unlimited, it is that life abundant does not require that some have so much, and others not nearly enough. More and more and more does not provide life; it only corrupts the life right out of us.
God’s peace, not only between nations, but within our borders, and between us all, even in our families and homes, does not require more and more and more.
God’s peace requires a reality check: we are God’s creatures, ‘they’ are God’s creatures, which means there is no real ‘they’, only ‘us’ all together.
Today we remember that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice to demonstrate that God is not interested at all in our sacrificing each other in order to ‘get ahead’ or ‘to get our fair share.’
God is very interested in us sharing life, and all that makes up life, with others. Sometimes that looks like we sacrifice our own possessions or privilege or comforts … or even our own lives … in order that others may live. In reality we can only share what God has given us, a loan, as stewards. Everything is intended for everyone. God lived and died as a human to demonstrate that to us as clearly as possible.
Dr. Bonnie Henry points out that during Covid 19 we may all be in ‘the water’ together, but we certainly are not in the same boat. Some have luxury yachts and others are bailing out the dingy to save their lives.
Why do you contend against him, saying, “He will answer none of my words”? For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it.
John 18:20-21
Jesus answered, ‘I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.’
Words of Grace For Today
Listen.
God created us able to love. It is what life is about. It is what God is about for us.
Listen.
God created us able to listen. Able to hear God’s Word and Grace and Love for us.
Listen.
God also created us able to refuse to listen, refuse to love, and to refuse to understand what life is all about.
Whether we listen or not, God speaks clearly, loudly, and demonstratively obviously … in many and various ways, and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus most obviously.
Life abundant is available to those who listen. It is part of listening that we come to know the abundance of life is not in material things, nor the absence of material things, or in having more than others.
There are more ways to get through life than living an abundant life, loving God, self, others and all creation as God created us to live and love. None of the other ways is worth pursuing. The Devil collects payments all along the way until there is no life left.
Living by lies eats at you, until there is nothing left.
Living by injustice eats at you, until there is nothing left.
Living by greed eats at you, until there is nothing left.
Listen.
Living by love feeds you, until you realize life is wonderful, most wonderful when it is spent giving life abundant to others.
That’s the truth.
Listen or not, lies always remain lies, injustice always remains injustice, greed always remains greed: that is the truth.
Listen or not, God loves us unconditionally and wishes us to share that with all people.
