Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honour him.
Matthew 25:40
And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Words of Grace For Today
Yesterday was six months since the first Covid 19 case identified in Canada.
More than 15 million people have been infected world wide. More than 640k have died.
In the USA more than 4 million people have been infected. Less than 42 days ago that was only 2 million. It took more than 90 days to reach the first million. More than 140k have died.
Canada reports 113,206 people in Canada have been infected, and 8,881 have died, 80% in long term care homes.
Alberta reported 112 new cases on July 23.
This M.D. where I live, as of 23 July, had 1 active case, and no deaths from Covid 19.
These numbers are those that are reported. Reality may vary markedly.
This is a serious pandemic, not to be taken lightly nor passed over as if one could simply dismiss it and be done with it. A person may indeed get away with being so stupid, but more than likely their stupidity will cause others to get infected and some to die. This is serious stuff.
Many lessons are evident for the learning. If care in long term care homes is sub-human, there will be a cost. It’s only a matter of time. If those caught in poverty and those without housing are not provided care commensurate with basic human dignity, there will be a cost. It’s only a matter of time.
It is less expensive to provide a basic level of humane care for all people (homes, health care, clean water and sufficient food) than it is to pay the costs stemming from not doing so. The costs in an pandemic include death of many people, not just the poor and homeless.
Since the beginning of time, and as a mainstream in Judeo-Christian tradition, the wisdom and rewards of caring for the disadvantaged has been recognized, or at least paid lip service to.
Jesus’ parables repeatedly refer to how blessed it is to provide care for the needy and vulnerable, the sick and the poor, the poor and the outcasts.
So we are blessed to be the ones who bring Jesus’ care and compassion to all in need.
So we are called to be the ones who bring Jesus’ care and hope to all in need.
Inevitable Grace; Like the Setting Sun, Always (even if we do not see it.)
100%
– Human Fatality Rate
– God’s Grace Coverage
– Percent of People to whom God Offers Grace
Proverbs 11:19
Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but whoever pursues evil will die.
Matthew 5:6
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Words of Grace For Today
Both these verses taken literally cannot be true.
For the first verse from Proverbs:
The mortality rate for all humans is 100%, also for people who live in righteousness.
Further, no one can live in righteousness, of their own doing. We all sin and cannot help but sin.
For the second from Matthew:
Any reasonable and sane appropriation of the history of humans will recognize that the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness continue, all through history, up to and including every today that comes our way, to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Righteousness from themselves is not possible, for we all sin, inevitably, and righteousness is not marked on a curve, it is an absolute. One sin and righteousness disappears from us.
Righteousness from others for those who thirst for righteousness is the same. Everyone else sins as well and righteousness disappears quicker than the rise of the sun at the summer solstice.
Righteousness as in justice based on truth is the same. Someone has to act with righteousness in order for justice based on truth to be possible, yet no one does 100% of the time, nor can anyone.
So what can these verses mean?
To begin we need remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love. We are reckoned to be righteous, not of our own doing, but because God replaces our pathetic sinful records with Jesus’ and God then reckons us to be righteous, again and again each day.
Proverbs:
To be righteous is to live reflecting that gift of righteousness as we can.
It is clear: righteousness is to be alive, as God created us to be. And to sin is to die, bit by bit (sometimes large bits) until, though we walk and talk, we are dead inside.
Matthew:
As we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we cannot earn righteousness or accomplish it on our own, yet as we humbly confess our sin and trust God’s forgiveness we receive our fill of blessings. Actually God pours so many blessings on us that our cups run over, spilling blessings in our wake as we make our way in the world.
There we go: hungry and thirsty, and simultaneously filled over the brim with blessings.
There we go: living as God forgives us and blesses us, yet simultaneously dying as we inevitably sin.
How to live? Blessed, we live at peace with ourselves before God, yet agitated and active in the world, working to bring justice to more and more people, and continually humbly confessing our sins and our total dependence on God’s Grace.
Therefore we recognize others’ sins as encompassed by God’s Grace and we deal with them with compassion and clarity and forgiveness … and hope.
We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.
Matthew 6:13
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
Words of Grace For Today
Like the meadow outside filled with more weeds than grass, and years of dead weeds and grasses rotting underfoot, we were once and still are filled with the dregs of sin, the work of evil in and through us, rotting at our core, infecting like a super-virus, all that we think, say and do.
Though the weeds and grass can be mowed short to inhibit the proliferation of mosquitoes, to which I am allergic after so many bites in the past months, it is not anything like a well groomed lawn. There are many visions of beautiful blue-grass image of smooth green mostly for viewing and showing off to one’s neighbours, which can be used for picnics and croquet or soccer and bocce ball. The work it takes to create and maintain such an unnatural thing is huge: mowing, fertilizing, watering, more mowing and thatching.
This is not unlike the visions the devil fills our hearts and minds with, that our hearts, minds, and strengths could be so perfectly groomed into artificial perfection by our great efforts of attending to our souls. The creating of such perfection is beyond us, though we do have the fertilizing part down pat. Falling so short of an unattainable perfection, the devil then plants in us innumerable rationalizations that we can still attain the unattainable, using all sorts of excuses as we try to attain perfection in vain, running roughshod over other people and creation without pause.
These temptations, to try to attain our own perfection and use that as an excuse to ruin creatures and creation, are not our first request of God. We start this petition with AND do not bring us to the time of trial … Yet we pray this fervently each day.
We know we are hopelessly outmatched by the Devil. Only God can save us.
Jesus’ story assures us, God does save us. We cannot and do not need to strive to be perfect. We can strive to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us.
We can recognize that all that crap in our lives can serve as fertilizer for the Word of God to grow in us. We can attend to mowing, trust God to bring the water, sunshine and warmth needed for life, and be at peace with what God makes us.
We are not perfect meadows or lawns. We are a mix of good grass and noxious weeds and thistles. There is plenty of old weeds rotting within us. We need not be concerned, for God accepts us as we are, replaces our records with Jesus’ record making us pure in each moment, and then the Holy Spirit sends us out to share this same story of salvation for all with all people.
Croquet on an imperfect lawn is more fun than on a perfect lawn, for the play of the mallet on the ball is not what brings success. Success is measured in the pure joy one shares with the time one spends with the other players and those who watch.
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.
Mark 16:15
And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.
Words of Grace For Today
…
Good God, is this it?
Awake again, dripping rain, cool, no mosquitoes.
I see the grass, the trees, and the lake.
God is here. I have seen him again and again in the most mundane and and the most spectacular.
Yet I know I am missing something. I missed so many clues along the way.
.
Each morning I remember that Jesus faced his betrayal, willingly suffering everything…
God knows exactly what this is like.
Jesus tried to show us it is not necessary that anyone else be scapegoated or sacrificed or Gaslit in order that we make our way through life.
We imitate Christ to make our way through life, striving to forgive the unforgivable.
.
Hoping that truth will be known.
Trusting God stands with us.
Leaning on the Holy Spirit.
Even as bit by bit our lives slip away into the hungry past as it gobbles up the present and our tomorrows.
Can we trust breath, ferocious wind, gentle silent breeze, spirit intangible
to guide our beating hearts, frantic minds, spasming muscles, and weary arthritic bones?
Truth, confessed, welcomes life and radiates it to others.
Let us strive for truth.
.
And sleep enough? Maybe?
Even as the dark of night retreats as light wriggles across the land and water
calling us to rise to a new day
.
But our minds slowly slip from us into the empty spaces between thoughts and visions
until in the bright baked light we scramble to catch up
with the obligations of life stacked up decades high
and search for
.
something out of the dim past … what is it … so fleeting. It is gone.
Oh, yes hope. It was hope.
.
Gone is hope?
..
Not at all!
…
The story that God gives us in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, so that we may know and believe God and understand that God is God, gives us all the purpose, love and hope we need.
….
Given that purpose, love and hope, we can go into all the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus’ story with our thoughts, words, and actions.
How can a mortal be just before God? … He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has resisted him, and succeeded? He who removes mountains, and they do not know it, when he overturns them in his anger … who does great things beyond understanding, and marvellous things without number.
Mark 4:26-28
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.
Words of Grace For Today
God is marvellous, all powerful, and all-knowing. God is irresistible. Creator of the earth that produces of itself.
We can sow God’s Word (as best we can). We cannot know how the seeds germinate, grow, and produce their fruit even though science, a product of Christian faith, has helped us understand much about seeds and plant growth. Yet when we come to growth in the Kingdom of God we are completely out of our depth. We can submit to being the dirt in which the Word of God is planted. We can allow the Holy Spirit to work through us to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God in others.
Understanding completely is not within our grasp.
Being just before God is not within our grasp.
Thanks be to God, Jesus is God’s story for us so that we can grasp all we need to understand about the Kingdom of God growing in us.
Thanks be to God, Jesus’ sacrifice provides for us a pure record before God, so though we cannot be just, we need no more than Jesus’ Cross.
Now we can get on with being good dirt for God’s Word … and imitating Jesus loving all the other ‘dirt.’
Yet, Lord, you have made [humans] a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour.
Ephesians 2:10
We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Words of Grace For Today
Yet … God created us a little lower than God, crowned with glory and honour.
Yet … what? What is the yet? Without looking at Psalm 8:4:
Is the yet about how sinful we are?
Is the yet about how unworthy we are?
Is the yet about how unappreciative we are?
Is the yet about how lowly other creatures/creation is created?
We really do not need to know.
We need to hear how God created us with glory and honour. Do we live that way still, today?
Can we?
Ahh, we are not left on our own. Jesus is in whom we were created, so that we could do good works … and that is how God planned for us, even before we were created!
This is our way of life (or the way of life that God created us for): that we imitate Jesus. We teach with wisdom that is not ours, it is Christ’s. We tell the old, old story with a tale that is not ours, it is Christ’s. We teach and reach out to the vulnerable with a love that is not ours, it is Christ’s. We strive for a justice with an energy and for a justice that is not ours, it is Christ’s.
We practice forgiveness with a Grace that is not ours, it is Christ’s.
We do this (we can do all this only) because Jesus has done it first for us.
The glory and honour we were created for is not our own. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that we share in Christ’s glory and honour.
It is the same for each person we will meet each day. We are all only mirrors of Christ’ glory and honour.
You can spring your snowmobile from this point to the lake,
until God brings Spring
and then it’s a disaster to spring here.
Isaiah 43:13
I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?
2 Corinthians 5:10
For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.
Words of Grace For Today
How simple it seems: life here and now is a proving ground of who and whose we are. After death or maybe before, God judges us on the basis of what we have done, whether good or evil. No one can deliver themselves or others from God’s hand. God’s work (also of judging us) cannot be hindered by anyone … not even the Devil himself!
It all sounds pretty simple, and devilishly difficult. Proving oneself is an ever failing project. We go from one compromise of good to the next compromise of our souls, just to make it through any 60 minutes of any day. All of what we think, say or do is catalogued permanently without error or omission under our name in God’s never ending knowing and memory.
Who could face God thus? For every single last one of us will fail that judgment. We cannot make it through one hour, yet alone a day, or a year, or a lifetime.
There is a vain hope, held by so many people, that though they have done terribly all through their life, they have somehow managed to say or do something really good, and they hope that good thing or two or even a series of things can somehow outweigh the terrible, unending bad things they have done. The scales are not so weighted in our favour. God is just, basing all judgments on truth and whole truth only. Everyone of us fail, and fail miserably as the scale rapidly hits bottom on the evil side overwhelmed by the weight of our sins.
Given this inevitable negative judgment, some people give up hope, and either more fully participate in evil to get ahead, at least in this short life on earth, or they despair and fail to give a day’s thanks for everything they have, hiding from life as much as they can, with consuming, praying, doing small ‘good deeds’, or – and this applies to the most people, nearly everyone somehow at sometime – they compare themselves to others and delude themselves into thinking that the judgment scale of God is somehow marked on a curve of averages and not absolutes.
Out of this delusion arises the nowadays all too common assertion that truth is never absolute, but it is all relative. We just see things differently.
Well … we do see things differently. God does not. And created in God’s likeness we too can see God’s absolutes more than we care to admit, even to ourselves.
Plato’s Ideals are not a mere figment of one’s imagination. They are real, as real as the water we drink and food we eat to stay alive.
The only way our judgment day[s] – it is likely we face God’s judgment each day and just do not know it – before God goes anything other than real ugly for us, is that God anticipated how we would be, and provided a loving, self-sacrificial manner in which we could understand both God’s firm judgment based on the truth of who we are and what we’ve done, and God’s endless mercy and love, which gives us re-newed life as many times a day it is possible.
It seems that God gives re-newed life more times a day than we are capable of imagining, for we still breathe … and pray in thanks … and share what God entrusts to us. The renewal of life is that Jesus’ record, unblemished and pure, is swapped in for our terrible sinful records, and God judges us as unblemished and pure, pure of heart and able to see God once again in the ordinarily mundane things of life. Those things become sacred. All things become sacred. All people become sacred, for God uses it all, us all, to make good happen, such good that we are wholly incapable of doing on our own. The Holy Spirit infuses renewed life into us, and pulls miraculously good thoughts, words, and deeds out of us.
We actually follow Jesus.
We don’t just practice some random and useless piety, like not smoking in beer country (but beer is great at church potlucks), not drinking in tobacco country (but smoking is great after the services), or as in Minnesota, smoking, drinking and dancing are all to be avoided; but us medical missionary kids knew it was all bunk. We didn’t smoke because it was unhealthy and stunk. We didn’t drink because it messed with our brains and our brains were fine, thank you. We did dance, and occasionally it led to sex, which was just part of life, because children are wonderful gifts from God, so is sex, and so is dancing – we just did not advertise it in front of other ‘pious’ weak-faithed Christians. We did not take sex or children lightly. They were great gifts from God, not to be messed with lightly, but to be celebrated greatly. Again, we did not go out to have sex with a great number of people because we knew that sex was powerful and if you messed about with it, it messed about with your brain, and our brains were fine, thank you.
Somehow growing up in all that lutheranism of minnesota (it is the state religion, or was, after all) many had not faced the challenges of world views that did not include God, and not as a small matter, but aggressively, determinedly denied God because that faith threatened their old, old religion of worshipping ‘things’ that medicine men and women could (supposedly) control. Our faith offered something beyond piety, or setting ‘old’ ways aside. Our parents as medical missionaries came with science and medicine (products of Christianity’s care for the world and the vulnerable and sick – Jesus was after all a healer), both of which set things in order in this world and offered, as Jesus had, healing.
Instead of latching on to some senseless piety that overshadowed faith, we knew out of necessity the essentials of faith, and it certainly was not some useless piety, or false faith. Our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith.
Back home, our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith, those that held some false piety as being the core of faith, as if we could behave our way into God’s favour!
No one can hinder God’s work, not God’s work in us or this wonder-filled world.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,
Matthew 5:8
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Words of Grace For Today
Bribes are the way of the world.
Some are blatant, demanded, extracted. Others are offered, subtly, as perks for understood unnamed favours.
The Church is not exempt from this. The Courts are not exempt from this. No part of life seems to be exempt from this bartering of favours for favours. Ideals are set aside too easily as palms are greased and the recipients on both sides enjoy a bit more of life than they otherwise would have. As if life were a zero-sum game, where one needed to get what is there before someone else beat you to it.
Since the Church is not exempt, even the faithful, confessing a faith that is otherwise founded on the cross, behave as if salvation is one more thing to acquire for oneself, as if it were insurance for after death.
It is challenging not to fall in line, as permits to build are denied for no apparent reason, or provided to others even with faulty plans; as jobs come to others (not even qualified) who enjoy high standards of living, and others (more than fully qualified and capable) are left to seek labour outside their field of training; as invitations, social recognition, and being included are offered to the most asocial people, and others dedicated to the well being of all people are ignored, socially derided, and ghosted by nearly all.
God, though, is not a taker of bribes. Salvation is given to all as a free gift. Claiming to be able to earn it can revoke the gift from one’s life. There is no effort, or favour, that one can offer God that would be sufficient to bend God to do other than what is God’s will. Attempts to do so are sufficient to see God’s will exclude one from life.
God is not one among many gods. God is the One and only God, the God above all other gods we may try to create. God is powerful, and loving, gracious and generous with all people. We are to fear and love God …. This is the beginning of our response.
The Promise is made often in many ways. Those who do not trying to bribe or cheat or step on others to get ahead, in a word, those who remain pure, they will see God. Perhaps as Moses did, face to face, turning Moses ashen white from the encounter that few if any others have ever survived. More likely the pure of heart will see God in the everyday. For without a heart that is bent-in-on-itself, bribing, cheating, and trying in every way to ensure it’s survival before anything else – without this bent-in-on-itself, one’s heart remains open to see the wonders, the awesome wonders that God works each day for others … and for oneself.
Wonders of wonders, to see God each day many times over.
That generous gift from God cannot be matched by anything we might try to acquire for ourselves.
Our salvation assured (a gift from God) and seeing God each day, we pray: Give us today our daily bread. Then we work, sweat, and plan to ensure we and others have the basic requirements for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved.
One day at a time, life is full of wonders, and God is awesome!
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
John 4:14
Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’
Words of Grace For Today
Water, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!
There is a story that comes to mind, of two young men shipwrecked and blown far away from their course and out of the frequently travelled shipping lanes. One trusts that God will save them. The other doubts God exists at all. While the doubter works to catch fish for food, the faithful one throws their desalinating water filter overboard. While the doubter sleeps having Gerry-rigged a rainwater collector, the faithful idiot dismantles it and throws it overboard.
With water everywhere, they thirst for the water that gives life: fresh water.
While the faithful believes he has water that will keep him from thirsting, the doubter does everything to use what water is available, mixing urine and scant rainwater to minimally re-hydrate himself. The faithful prays, trusting God will save him … and falls into a coma.
Idiot faith is not the faith Christ gives us. The faith Christ gives us is hope-filled and practical; wise and perceptive; overly generous and gracious; self sacrificing and self preserving.
The water Jesus gives us keeps us from thirsting, and common sense is not lacking. Life and all it requires of us is filled with Jesus’ water, gushing up like an artesian spring, not so that we can test God’s miraculous intentions towards us, but so that we can follow paths that give life, to ourselves and to all around us.
God does not exact a price for the living water. Jesus has bought and paid with his life for it, for us. Not only does God provide us water, living water, that gives us breathe, faith and hope; God also provides us all we can eat. We come, we buy with all that God has provided to us, Grace! And we are filled, never to be thirsty or hungry again; no matter the challenges life throws at us.
The two young men were rescued. Both were alive, barely, the faithful in a coma for hours already. He never recovered and died. – One has to wonder what St. Peter had to say to him! – the doubter after many difficult months recovered, and lived the rest of his life, never doubting God’s love for him and those around him.
Thus says the Lord: … In the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants, human or animal, there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank-offerings to the house of the Lord: ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever!’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.
Mark 2:19
Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
Words of Grace For Today
A paraphrase of Michelle Obama is going around about Covid 19. She said at the DNC 2012, “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.”
The paraphrase goes variously like this:
The stress and challenge of a pandemic, like Covid 19, does not change you, it reveals who you are.
When we live (though in cities and country-sides with houses everywhere and people once again scurrying about, the people nevertheless are or seem devoid of soul, heart and hope) in desolate uninhabitable places, sure that our lives have become a wasteland, devoid of mirth, gladness, singing, and thanks ….
When we live so afraid of the future that we dare not live in this moment as the people God created us to be: (only by Grace) good, generous with all God has entrusted to us, blessed to be a blessing to all others, bearing our crosses in order that others may know God’s Grace is for them ….
When we live so sure that there is nothing to celebrate, and we must ‘fast’, putting on the ‘sackcloth’ of our days, and grind ourselves into the work routine to make barely enough to pay the bills, smile (or really grimace) at the destruction of the vulnerable around us incapable of stopping the evil of power and privilege ….
When we live, caught by our own sins, and oppressed by others’ sins without any reason to expect it will ever change, not in our lifetimes, and not in all the generations to come ….
Then God comes,
sets the table in our midst for a feast and marvellous celebration,
invites all the downtrodden, the poor, those without hope,
and
pours out his steadfast love that endures for ever on to and into the guests, so that it spills over and out of the feast and envelops the whole earth (connecting with God’s love that holds the whole universe together).
Then we will celebrate like never before, as love which gives life overfills our hearts, minds, souls and strength.
This is not the return to a shadow of glory days long past. This is moving towards God’s will for all life. This is everything good that life can be, as God made creation to be, as God created us to be.
Though we may not experience this feast today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, our hope is renewed that this feast is ours. So we celebrate in small ways the in-breaking of the infinite into our finite vision; the table is set with bread and wine which God makes into Jesus body and blood given for us.
With our hope renewed we face the challenges of Covid 19.
The challenges do not change us, having seen and tasted God’s feast for all people, the challenges reveal who we are:
We are followers of Jesus, who celebrate his presence in and with us all. We bear our crosses, sacrificing what is entrusted to us as God’s stewards, so that others can experience God’s feast of Grace, forgiveness, and enduring, steadfast love.
