Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all.
2 Corinthians 1:5
For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
For God’s people there are abundant sufferings matched by abundant consolations; the righteous suffer many afflictions and the Lord saves us from all the afflictions.
Covid 19 is not the only source of suffering for so many people this year.
Even before Covid 19 there were all sorts of sources for suffering that disrupted lives, ruined lives, falsely jailed innocent people, disappeared people, and even killed people.
For every suffering that we have known, God provides us a consolation. Therefore we can hope that even in our time God’s desire for all people will be realized. God’s desire is that all people will come to know God’s Grace and Justice (as Martin Luther King Jr called it: a double victory). For even people who work terribly against God, God wishes (and with a wish makes it to be so) that they know life as blessed by God and enjoy the benefits, challenges, sufferings and consolations that God provides to each and every saint.
We remain sinners and we are also God-made saints, completely, wholly and simultaneously.
Afflictions from within ourselves and outside ourselves, and to match each affliction we receive consolations.
…
Why then do we continue to suffer, day after day, year after year, and decade after decade?
Our time is simply not God’s time. We are so blessed to enjoy God’s blessings … and we remain alive in this world, still broken humans in a broken world, able though to share God’s blessings with all people.
Ours is not to ask when God will convert our enemies and persecutors into saints. Ours is to live lives as God’s saints, able to know God’s Light and Love because we are so broken, and able to bring God’s Light and Love to bear on life for so many people … as we wait for God’s desire to be fulfilled in our time.
Can mortals make for themselves gods? Such are no gods!
1 John 5:20
We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Words of Grace For Today
We all need clean air, clean fresh water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and the ability to love and to be loved.
At our core we strive to provide these necessities for ourselves and those for whom we are responsible. For some this striving (their own or others) results in great comfort, luxury, wealth and power. Still those who enjoy these exorbitant benefits strive for yet more. So it is with this in-born striving of us humans.
All of us get lost in this ‘dream of success;’ those who enjoy so much more than the requirements of life, and strive for yet more, AND the rest of us who can dream that such exorbitant comfort, luxury, wealth and power may one day be ours … we all get lost.
Lost we look for orientation and create ‘gods’ who can provide meaning, order, and verification that we are RIGHT in having or dreaming for such extreme privilege while others die for lack of the basics for life. The ‘gods’ can be called ‘gods’, or they can look like a sport, or a business goal, or a way of being ‘better’ than others, of succeeding at something other than serving God’s Grace to all people.
These ‘gods’ are not real. I call them godlets; we try to foist onto something quite finite the infinite of the divine. It does not work. Instead our minds, hearts and strength are perverted, twisted, and ultimately destroyed.
We are fortunate. We have the story of Jesus and God’s Love expressed in his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. This is the truth of life. This is an absolute truth, unchanging and eternal. This is the source of all that is life, of all that holds life together for individual persons and for communities.
Because we have received the Truth of God’s love and grace for all creation, then we can enjoy the necessities of life as those things that God calls us to share with all other people, exorbitantly …
as God has shared them with us,
even if we are homeless, poor, persecuted, and our death is sought by our enemies.
Compared to God’s work for us and all people, our enemies’ threats to us are nothing.
So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Acts 4:29-30
Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
There is much that we humans try to accomplish, sometimes with success. Sometimes we fail spectacularly.
God accomplishes everything God chooses to accomplish: God need only speak a word and it is accomplished.
We face a world that is broken, terribly so. God’s Word offers us true hope in the midst of the profound brokenness of the world around us, and as we are honest we recognize and confess the profound brokenness begins in each of us, in each of our ‘me’.
Only in the face of knowing the horrendous brokenness of us and the world do we know God’s power in God’s Word.
The disciples have been imprisoned and interrogated by the rulers, elders, and scribes; and then are released. Knowing their lives are always at risk by those in power they gather with the followers of Jesus to pray. Under real threats of persecution and death they pray that they may speak with all boldness of the wonders of God’s love demonstrated to them so clearly by Jesus’ life, healing, forgiving. Under threat they know that they will have opportunity to speak (and make a difference) even as God stretches out God’s hand (usually in the form of a saint’s hand) and as they are able to extend Jesus’ power to heal those who are ill, taken down by the evil that strangles life in this world.
Under threat they pray that they will be able to speak, and that their words will be used by God, as part of God’s Word, which goes out and always returns successfully … always returns having accomplished what it was intended to bring about.
To pray that we may contribute to the success of the Word of God is a bold prayer!
This we pray today, again; and tomorrow, and another tomorrow again … and again.
Everyday Marvellous Things Make Our Lives Livable.
We Rarely Notice Miracles.
Miracles, Everywhere All the Time!
Genesis 18:14
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’
Luke 17:5
The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’
Words of Grace For Today
If one takes an honest look at the world, sunk deep in trying to respond to Covid-19 and all it’s variants overwhelming the best minds and health care systems, where in Tanzania there are no more cases just because the President says he prayed and God delivered them all – though cases just like Covid 19 keep showing up in overwhelming numbers in the hospitals – and corrupt leaders use the cover of Covid 19 to do in all sorts of justice with destructive injustice –
Yes, if one takes an honest look at the world, we need a miracle to deliver us.
If one takes an honest look at one’s own self and family, the view is likely not that much better, and we need a miracle there, too.
We need miracles everywhere in our lives!
Vaccines were developed in less than a year with an efficacy far above past vaccines, nearly 95%! That’s a great miracle. Not just once but in different countries by many different scientific teams developing multiple vaccines!
So what do leaders do to cover their failures to safe guard their people: They complain that production facilities have to be redeveloped, to ramp up a much larger production than original capacity provided for … which means delivery schedules in the short term are reduced.
Ahh, we have fewer vials, of the miracles, when if there were no miracles we’d be waiting months if not years for even the first vials.
We need another miracle: the miracle of gratitude which grows out of strong faith. So we cry: Lord, increase our faith!
If God can bring a son to barren, post-menapause Sarah and ‘as good as dead’ Abraham, surely God can bring about a few more miracles for our time … to save us all.
Our response is to start with an open and honest take on the world around us and our own part in it.
God needs us saints to share the old, old story of Jesus and his love; that’s our response to wonders of wonders, that God makes us saints.
The Holy Spirit guides us to work in this world to bring God’s Grace and Justice to bear on all circumstances, for all people, so that all people will know how blessed we all are together.
When we have so much and still cannot share generously and freely,
We drive in circles,
leaving tracks all over others,
bearing witness to our craziness, the emptiness of our lives,
and our inability to live abundantly.
1 Chronicles 29:9
Then the people rejoiced because these had given willingly, for with single mind they had offered freely to the Lord; King David also rejoiced greatly.
2 Corinthians 9:7
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Words of Grace For Today
Why do we give?
Why do you give?
We do not give in order to earn God’s favour. That is a futile way to earn God’s favour and a destructive way to live.
We give because 1) others are in need of what we can share, and 2) because giving cheerfully, not reluctantly or under compulsion, reflects and determines who we are and who we become.
We give because God has not left us poor!
The Sheldons were a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. The help they received was not adequate, yet they managed their meagre income with ingenuity – and without complaint.
A new social worker in poverty-stricken Appalachia was assigned the Sheldon family and shared this story about her first visit with them.
One fall day I visited the Sheldons in their ramshackle rented house where they lived at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear that strayed into their yard once too often. The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for. There would be meat in their diet even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high.
Mr Sheldon offered a jar of bear meat to me. I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance firmly. “Now you just have to take this. We want you to have it. We don’t have much, that’s a fact; but we ain’t poor!”
I couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the difference?”
His answer proved unforgettable. “When you can give something away, even when you don’t have much, then you ain’t poor.When you don’t feel easy giving something away even if you got more’n you need, then you’re poor, whether you know it or not.”
Florence Ferrier Gospel Notes 2001, Brian Stoffregen, reworked KAS and TL 2004 &2020
Just because one is wealthy, powerful or famous does not mean one does not need, for one’s own well being, to give and give generously. Even King David joined the people in giving and in rejoicing!
As for people that are so flush with luxury and comfort that they have forgotten that others are in need, and who are so poor the hoard their untold wealth, only God can deal with them. We cannot nor do we need to deal with them. That’s one more blessing for which we can be grateful to God!
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
The world’s equations are simple and messed up. They speak of just rewards. The wealthy and ‘successful’ hold that they have earned their wealth and ‘success’, and the poor just have not worked hard enough!
Those in deep poverty don’t have time to waste on such equations: life demands everything of them just to survive another week, maybe even just one more day!
Those in between, afraid they may end up in deep poverty, buy into the work-reward equation as protection from sliding into desperate poverty (until they do, not a result of their own doing) and as a faint hope that some day, if they work hard enough they may climb up into better circumstances, even become one of the wealthy or ‘successful’.
God’s equation is not tied to our efforts, not efforts at good works, nor efforts at true belief, not efforts of right thoughts. God’s equation of ‘success’ requires only God’s acting on us, in us, and through us …. By grace alone we are saved.
So what do we do with these biblical texts and many like them that seem to throw us right back into the ‘our good efforts and good results net us eternal salvation or eternal damnation – so buck up pal and do good OR else!’ equation?
First of all: it is a life long challenge to remember and hold to God’s equation for our eternal salvation. Some hold (not us) that it’s all up to God, so what we do does not count at all! It’s just that our lives will reflect God’s choice of salvation or damnation for us: that is if we look like God has saved us it means we are and the other way around. In this way of living one falls right back into desperately trying to be or at least look good, so as to show in this life one is chosen by God to be saved! And that brings us right back into the futile equation of ‘it’s all up to us, so buck up pal Or else.’
Second of all: it is not up to us to get it right. We do not hold that we can save ourselves, but we certainly can ignore God’s good work in us and live like hell. Literally we can sin madly and never take claim of the gift of salvation that God has already given to us and constantly newly gives to us.
So our salvation is a result of God’s good work for us.
And our damnation is a result of our own evil work in creation.
A paradox, but what else is faith, than a tension beyond comprehension, requiring trust each day, each minute.
Before God we are all in deep poverty, needing God’s gift of redemption. We are all sinners.
Before God we are all given the greatest riches and real success, claimed as God’s own children. We are all saints.
So how to live each day: simple! Share God’s Grace with everyone.
As Jesus summed it up: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself, even your enemies!
That equation for each day is like the bright sun in the mild air on the cold snow returned after weeks of cloudy, snowy, deep-freeze weather: it’s filled with thanks for the light, love for creation, and hope for each new day!
So That We Can See, Believe, Understand and Live Wisely
Isaiah 29:24
And those who err in spirit will come to understanding, and those who grumble will accept instruction.
James 1:5
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.
Words of Grace For Today
Once we accept and start to live in response to 1) our accepting we deserve only perdition, 2) God’s Grace having saved us from perdition, and 3) God’s Grace saving us daily, then there is much to understand, there is always instruction to take to heart, and there is always wisdom to seek so that how we live will reflect God’s Grace for us and for all people.
On our own we can do little, and it is easy to grumble about how life treats us poorly. It is all too easy to act like fools, not fools for Christ, just fools that mess up life royally.
The solution for us is simple: ask God, for God is generous and ungrudging as God pours Grace over us, and after Grace, understanding, gratitude, instruction and wisdom.
Ask and God will give us all that God knows we need to live life abundantly.
The wisdom of our lives lived abundantly starts with the fear and love of God, ourselves, our neighbours and our enemies … and sharing the abundance of Grace, love, and life with those we know, especially those we know are in need.
Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
Luke 12:49
I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Words of Grace For Today
In the dead-cold of winter (so mild before this week, but no longer at all mild at -36⁰C) a bit of fire is a welcome thing. Vented, directed, contained with plenty of snow at shovel length to put out anything that approaches too much fire, the heat of fire meets the bleeping cold air and provides a livable space.
Most people in homes enjoy the balance of fire against cold as a product of natural gas ignited in a furnace with the heat distributed to the rest of the home by electricity (either an air fan or a water pump.)
There are cautionary tales to be told or rather seen: the house that one day is an example of a grand house on a hill in the woods, and the next a scarred roof line behind an untouched facade, which on closer viewing displays the chimney standing on it’s own with the building around it on the side and back of what used to be a house, missing and what is visible is jagged and charred. A chimney fire it seems consumed a home, hopefully without loss of life. The 5th wheel RV appears setup along side the remains of the house for the remainder of the winter, spring and summer, with the dogs running outside as they usually had.
Fire.
Or
One sees on the news videos of thick smoke and vehicles making their collective and slow exit out of Fort McMurray as wildfires wipe out huge areas of the city.
Or
One sees the photos of a railroad accident fire that has burst and melted rail cars and rails themselves.
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. Not every life can be a success, just like not every vessel can be seaworthy. But there’s no shame in being one spectacular shipwreck.
God’s Word is like all that, taking what is evil in the world, what is evil and sinful in us, and burning it up like chaff ….
Ah, what a fire that will be!
God’s Word always is a two edged sword, cutting away evil, also from us, among us, and from within each of us!
The Word of God cleanses with fire, and what a fire it is already in us!
The Word of God cuts away and burns away our sin and evil, and cleanses us, pure and righteous! By Grace we live through the cleansing fire.
God provides more than an RV replacement for a home. God provides us a home in the New Jerusalem, the City of God, the New Creation.
For some of us so connected to nature in our existence God provides that we need not move into a city; God provides a home in the wilds of nature’s wonders and beauty.
God’s cleansing fire that Jesus brings is destructive, powerful and wonderfully just. We pray it will be kindled soon among us. We pray the hammer of God will break apart Evil from within us and from among us, so that all will have homes, all will have food, all will have a good life, an abundant life!
For I am with you, says the Lord, to save you; I will make an end of all the nations among which I scattered you, but of you I will not make an end. I will chastise you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished.
1 Peter 5:6
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.
Words of Grace For Today
The world works under simple rules: do well, do good, and get rewarded. Do badly, do evil, and get punished. At least those are the rules that people talk as if applied, and that supposedly ‘good’ people abide by (or appear to abide by.)
The dark reality is that the simple rules do apply, just a different version: Do badly enough, do great evil, and get rewarded. Do real well, do great good, and get punished by those who do not want to be know as those rewarded for doing evil.
So preachers come to the pulpit, with little experience, or much experience, and they preach a foul message: that in the church we good people must pull ourselves up, pull ourselves together, and gather together in our efforts with each other to change the way the world works, so that the simple rules, the first version, the version taught to small children, is the way the world works.
The words may vary a bit: it may be that the reward is that justice is done for all people including the guilty who we must stop and punish. Or it may be that the homeless will have homes and the hungry will have food because we do the work to make it so.
Always the message is: get up and get it right. Get on with doing good. Our reward will be in heaven, or some such thing. But those who do terrible things will be punished and put to an end.
Ha! The evil that is in such a message is immense.
It corrupts God’s message in Jesus Christ down to the same formula as humans always play with: Do and be rewarded or punished. Now get on with all that you are able to do (good or bad.)
Only by Grace are we good enough for God, otherwise every single one of us fall short of God’s measure of what good enough is.
God’s simple rules are completely different. First God comes, rescues and saves us. God marks us as God’s own children. Because God saves us, not just once but our whole lives long, therefore we are able to hear the story, understand the story, accept the story, and share the story of Jesus and his unconditional love for us.
Therefore we are able to go out into the world that seems to work on a ‘do’ and ‘get results’ equation. In this wonderful world we are able to live out a different equation, the one that describes Jesus’ story.
That equation is ‘God does for us’ and therefore ‘we get to do for others.’
That’s amazing Grace.
That’s wondrous Love.
That’s a basis for undeniable Hope.
…
Because God does for us, we can face anything that comes our way. Even that which appears to be ‘discipline’ from God for our sins.
God promises, through everything, not to abandon us, not to destroy us.
In God’s own time we will be transformed, with gratitude, to those who can reflect God’s Grace to all around us.
There is no need or possibility of us good people pulling ourselves up, pulling ourselves together, or gathering together in our efforts with each other to change the way the world works. That may happen from our efforts, but only if God works in us. Our goal can be to transform the world. But only in that more and more people know Jesus’ story as the story of God’s unconditional love – done first for us by God when we do not and cannot deserve it, so that we can share that with all others.
That’s an equation that has God’s wonders as a wildcard variable, that makes everything possible … for God, and by God for us.
‘Why do you complain against me? You have all rebelled against me,’ says the Lord.
Romans 3:23-24
Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
The all seniors cross country foot race was held yesterday in the land of the faithful.
One young woman, really a girl still and the star runner among the girls, decided the night before, that she would meet with her friends for supper, to celebrate that this year for the first time the senior girls would run along with the boys.
It was a fine celebration, with duck, wine, and chocolates, and it went on and on for the victory of being able to run against the boys was a long two year battle. The later it got, the harder they celebrated, until it was midnight, then 1:00, then 2:00 when the bar, long since closed, booted them out into the taxis called for the girls.
The star male runner kept to his pre-race routine. He had a solid supper, with plenty milk and fruit juice to drink. He went to bed at his normal 10 pm, woke up at 7:00, and did a short 1 km jog to warm up before a good breakfast. He was confident he was ready when he got a ride to the race grounds. He had received a call from his friend who had test-run the race course as soon as it was set at 8:00 to get the details of what it looked like.
The star girl runner woke at 8:10 with a headache and queasy stomach. She ate a full breakfast, with lots of coffee. She arrived at the race grounds looking a bit worse for wear but not anything like she looked at 8:10.
There were a number of sprints, and shorter races held first, so it was 12:30 before a lunch break was called. The girl ate a light, nutritious penitent lunch with plenty of juice. The boy grabbed french fries and a burger with a coke. By 1:30 there were two more shorter races to be run before the main 5K cross-country race. The girls in each race had held their own, winning one and placing second in a few more. Predictably the boys were stronger and faster.
At 1:40 there was one more race. The star boy ran to the wood with his nervous stomach and emptied the fries, burger and coke into the bush. That was common. Then, so confident of himself, he forgot to eat the sugar cubes he normally ate for his empty stomach to give him energy. The star girl, penitent to the core, visited the washroom and relieved herself of the vestiges of last night’s revelry.
Then their race was called. They lined up. Set their marks. At the gun they were off.
They started, almost slow compared to the other races, but fast for this long distance. The girl drafted off the boy as they entered the woods where the trail wound up and down and around the river valley before coming back into view for the last half kilometre to the finish line.
In the woods something happened that had never happened before ….
When the runners appeared the star runners where shoulder to shoulder. Not just next to each other, but with an arm around the other racer, they struggled to run. The pack came into view easily behind them, and though they could have passed the two, they stayed in formation behind them. It was a sight to see.
As they came closer it became obvious that the girl supported the boy with his arm around her shoulder. He was limping badly on his left leg, barely touching his right foot to the ground.
So it was they came in tied for first place across the finish line, with the other five boys and one girl runners in formation close behind them, tied for third.
… In the woods something happened that had never happened before to the boy in a race as the various racer’s recounted afterwards. His right ankle turned, he fell, rolled and lay in pain. The girl, just 2 strides behind him – some other racers say he was toying with her and was not looking ahead – stopped to help him up. He was ready to quit, his sure victory lost. But she kindly reminded him he was a racer not a quitter. She wrapped his arm over her shoulders, grabbed him by the waist and they hobbled on. The other racers, a few at a time coming upon them, at first stayed in the order they arrived, but when the path entered the last half kilometre they joined arm in arm in a line behind the two, who had developed a faster pace.
…
In the ‘race’ of life, if we think we are headed for the finish on our own, ready to win the glory of God, we are sorely deluded. Not a single one of us is pure enough for that.
It is only the Grace of God that picks us up (usually borne by another human who God’s Grace has saved) and carries us, each year, each day, each minute towards the glory of God promised to us at our baptisms. Not a single one of us can finish the ‘race’ on our own. Only by Grace do we move forward at all, and then only humbly with others’ aide.
…
The victory party for that race was more subdued by far than the girls’ party of the night before, though it spread across the whole community, as people heard what Grace and the other racers had done that day … for both the girls and the boys … and the whole community.
…
We are in this together, and only together by Grace can we make it through life, yet alone the pandemic … or anything else life and evil throw at us.
