For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.
Ephesians 4:23-24
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah Ephesians, Ephesians. So like so much truncated and 1/4 turn twisted faith. Jesus shows us we cannot save ourselves. The twist is simple: after Jesus saves us, then we are able to save ourselves.
Ha!
The world and people in it would have to be of an entirely different creator for that to be possible.
Yes, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to recognize that we should, and by God’s grace sometimes do,
put away our former way of life, you old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This is a marvellous miracle for us when God accomplishes this in us, and in those around us, or anyone on this planet … and then we go off the rails, back to our old ways
like Ephesians, thinking we can save ourselves, and not being able to at all, but making up story after story as if we can, have and will …
which is the devil’s fertile ground for all the destruction that follows in such self-delusions.
So we beg: God save us again,
and again,
and again,
and again without end,
so that we might reflect the power of your grace for us, so that others may know your grace for them.
Oh, God, give us a bit of righteousness, today, if you could. We certainly do need it. We all need it.
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 14:12-13
So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another.
Words of Grace For Today
Today I repaired a wire on the truck I borrow. Not a big deal, just a speed sensor for a wheel, without which the computer stabilizer to help avoid sliding (it’s the computer program that nearly threw me into oncoming traffic when the roads were icy!) , to supposedly maintain traction (when one or more wheels is wont to spin), and to determine when to use the ABS braking. Only the last is worth much, but still it’s best to keep everything in repair. One can turn off the other two if need be.
The thing is the wire to the speed sensor is not in a place where it can get caught on anything, and the wire did not wear through or break. It was cut, not just once but twice (so the wire did not hang down I would guess after the first cut!) Someone came out here while I was bicycling to town and intentionally cut the wire, twice. Talk about … well dirty dealing, sabotage, and something someone is going to answer for! Well, not because of me.
It’s just we always trust or at least hope that those that do dirty deals will eventually be caught and will pay for what they have done.
Our scriptural record tends to support that as well.
‘Even if other humans never know what you’ve done, God knows and you will have to pay for what you thought you got away with’, or so goes the thought. Much like the wall hanging I once saw and was caught off guard by enough to take a photo of it:
Karma, I have a list of people you seemed to have missed. Come around again, please.
The list of popular sayings along this line are endless, for example:
What goes around, comes around.
Crime does not pay.
If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.
Everyone gets what’s coming to them, eventually.
Except, despite all our wishes that it were so, this is not how God tells us God works.
Yes, what is hidden or secret will come to light.
Yes, though everyone else may not know, God knows. God knows everything.
Yes, there will be judgment for everyone.
Yes, yes, yes … except.
God’s clearest statement for us is in Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, by which it is clear that God’s foremost and consistent manner of dealing with us is grace, ie God judges us and forgives us our sins. God judges our enemies and all evil doers, and all people, and God forgives us all … except some sins God does not forgive … but we will never know what sins God will not and does not forgive.
We can bind or retain all the sins we deem worthy of such note, but we do not judge others. Only God judges, and God judges us all, as God knows all, sees and hears all, and reads every mind and heart.
Where does that leave us?
Should we toss every care to the wind and make our way through life of sin and evil with no care in the world, because God will, after all, forgive us anyway?
Should we not notice other people’s sins and care that their sins hurt not only us but many, many other people?
Should we just give up!
No, none of that, not no way, no how!
God graciously deals with us and equips us to love … to love ourselves, to love our neighbours all, and even to love our enemies.
Our task is to share God’s Grace, not to pretend we can judge others for God.
Yes each of us will be accountable to God.
But the best we can do is get out of God’s way, and not get in other people’s way of seeing God.
Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another.
That is the tricky part: not being a hindrance to others, and not putting stumbling blocks in others’ way to seeing God’s Grace for them!
Tall order, for short people … but short people well equipped for the gift of life and grace for all.
(The Parties are the BEST. I do the sweaty labour, God does the drinking, Works out the best for us all!)
And I Keep Getting New Invitations!
Isaiah 42:6
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.
Ephesians 3:12
We have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
When Sheila gave gifts they always spoke loudly of the strings she attached to them. She gave her husband, a high school math teacher, two airline tickets to Hawaii one Christmas, and a membership in a local fitness club. It went without saying that she expected him to get fit to show himself off in a bathing suit by the middle of February when they would be on their way to the sun and beaches and the surf.
Sheila gave her three kids full scholarships to the university of their choice along with memberships in the local chapter of the conservative political party. It went without saying that she expected each of them to pursue a career that would gain them recognition so that their contributions to returning the conservatives to government happened sooner rather than later. When her oldest daughter decided to major in philosophy, political science, and economics she was pleased. She was not as happy that her daughter chose the university most noted for it’s liberal, even socialist, professors. She didn’t know about the anarchist movement among the PPE students. When her daughter decided to continue on to law school, her mother was so proud. She even offered to pay for law school. Her daughter graduated at the top of her class and passed the bar in three provinces. And she accomplished the extraordinary: she passed the bar in three American states as well. About that time her second daughter was just finishing her degree in education. Her mom didn’t say much. But when her oldest, the lawyer, took work with the innocence project and then her second daughter started teaching in an inner city school, both living, working and contributing to political parties not their mother’s conservatives, she demanded they repay her for their education costs.
Both thanked her again for her generous support, and told her there was no way they would think of trying to repay her.
About then the youngest, Sheila’s only son, looked at what his mother was demanding of his older sisters. He passed on university and his plans to double major in architecture and engineering. Instead he took an apprenticeship. He figured he could work 5 years and save enough for his first year of university and maybe figured it out on his own from there to get his degree. He had no plans to owe his mother for anything, and he had no plans to join any political party. He volunteered at the local food bank and helped out at a weekly soup kitchen. His long term plan was to design and build low cost housing that promoted healthy living, but he’d never dared tell his mother that.
Sheila’s husband graciously accepted the airline tickets for two, visited the ‘fitness club’ of his choice, and in February took that trip to Hawaii with his ‘fitness’ club’s owner, who was two years younger than he was, but about as committed to nothing as anyone Sheila knew. After the first 5 hours he and the ‘fitness club’ owner agreed to go their separate ways. Sheila’s husband didn’t need to put on a swimsuit once during the vacation and he enjoyed every minute of it out in the sun and inside in the air conditioning. He’s filled for divorce and never looked back.
God gives us greater gifts. There are no hidden, unspoken expectations. There are no performance reviews, or right political party to join (though there may be a few not to join). God provides everything we need, and only asks (and asks clearly for anyone to hear who has ears to hear) that we share everything God gives us (less things and more so Grace, forgiveness, love and life abundant) with everyone we possibly can figure out how to share them with.
Most importantly God takes us by the hand and guides us, if we but listen. We are not on our own, ever. Secondly, God does not deal with us so graciously so that we can hide it all under a bushel basket in the back yard and pretend that life is somehow the same. Everything is different, not because we have earned it or changed, or done the right things, or not even that we’ve believed the right things. What changed is that we have acknowledged that God is there with us.
God presents us, like any proud parent would, to the world. God is not bragging about us, but showing off what God can do … with sinners like us. God invites the nations into God’s kingdom of grace. God puts us on the invitations as examples of how life is good for those who acknowledge, with boldness and confidence through faith in Jesus, all that God has done for us!
Have you seen the invitation with your name on it, or are you still trying to ignore it? First God wants to give you everything that life has to offer and then God wants to show you off as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.
Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth! Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Colossians 1:21-23
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
Words of Grace For Today
Colossians puts it right: God reconciles us to Godself, we who were once estranged and hostile in mind [and often physically against God’s people.]
Then the writer goes off the ‘Jesus rails’! The writer makes our being reconciled conditional on our continued life of faith, without shifting from the hope proclaimed to all creatures. No, no way. If our salvation (our being reconciled to God) is conditional on how we continue, then we are all hopelessly toasted! None of us can do our way forward on our own continually doing the right things as God would have us. We always remain sinners, very good sinners, too.
We are saved by grace alone!
Paul became a servant of the gospel of Jesus, as many of us even today.
Because God reconciles us, therefore we can sing a new song to God, each day.
CBC Ideas presents 29 April Part 1, and 4 May Part 2[yet to be broadcast at this writing – available only for about a month], Myth of Normal reclaiming Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia as evolutionary advantages, exactly those that have helped humans flourish! “Neurodiversity” as the gifts that helped and help us adapt to rapid changes.
The restless gene, the nomadic gene, helps us regulate dopamine, reward and pleasure; those with less sensitivity to dopamine, the neurodiverse, need more endless and exciting stimuli to feel good, rewarded. Today it’s thought to be the source of ADHD.
The big bang of the human mind is recognized as that moment when persons started to have an inner voice, thought of self and reflection of one in the world around; and then human thought flourishes and develops.
So these are God’s gifts to us all, Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia: “Neurodiversity” of all kinds.
Without them we humans many not have survived at all, and with them we homo-sapiens flourished through the last 50,000 years.
We can all sing new songs. That’s quite easy, and doable, given God’s blessings.
Even us neurodiverse can sing a new song to God, in fact we are the ones who create those new songs!
O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
Ephesians 1:4-5
… just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will ….
Words of Grace For Today
Oh Ephesians, Ephesians! The end of one thought ending a sentence and the beginning of another in the next sentence, and both thoughts could stand separate from their sentences, to be placed together as they are here, in one sentence, and since there was no punctuation in the original Greek maybe we can get away with it, and maybe not. Though I’d think so, for now.
By contrast the thoughts in the Isaiah reading are repeated often enough in scripture: God created long ago, marvellously created the entire universe and it was good; and it is all created as God planned and we are a part of that.
So the Ephesians writer (psuedo-Paul) is on track: God created us. More than just create our species and let it run its course in time, God planned for each of us in the particular, knowing we would sin, and answering that with a plan for salvation for us all. In that salvation plan, demonstrated to us in Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, we are not merely grabbed and dragged along for the remainder of our lives. We are given a history (Jesus’ record) of being holy, pure and blameless, filled with God’s love for all of creation and all people, and then sent out free.
More than free we are adopted, and destined to be adopted long before time began, – adopted we are as God’s own children. Just because God so chose this for us. And as God’s own we get to be God’s grace for all other people!
Covid Blues, and anything else that may come our way, you are nothing compared to the life, pure and blameless that God adopts us into. Come what may, God has prepared us for all that, and for being God’s adopted for other people.
A 5th wheel 40 foot camper unit was moved in last fall before the snows fell. The owner said he was there, homeless with no where else to go, but there only for two weeks, the legal limit. Two months later his truck still came and went until …
nothing.
No tracks.
No guy.
Spring melt came, traffic came.
Still no truck.
Still no guy.
Still the 5th wheeler sat unattended back off the road, yet so visible along the entrance road to the random camping area.
Fishing season is done.
Very little traffic comes and goes.
The two huge dips in the entrance road fill with ice-water-slush.
For weeks it takes an off road, raised 4×4 to get in or out.
Then two guys, one tall and lean the other shorter and stocky, show up in a red diesel truck on a Sunday afternoon, ‘just back from working up north’ and they wanted some peace from their women, or they say.
The next day with no sign of any other traffic in and out the locks on the 5th wheeler are broken, the door left swinging in the wind, and things have disappeared out of and from around the camper.
The next day a crossover stalls after getting through those water-ice-slush filled dips in the road into the random camping area. Lucky for the couple within a small infant, with an hour a truck comes along, and pulls that poor wheel-locked crossover back through one of those dips (the deepest one) and out of the way. But the crossover sits there for two days, unmoved before the couple returns to retrieve it.
The 5th Wheeler, though, still sits there abandoned as it has all winter long, though now it’s door swings in the breeze.
For this, the owner of that old camper, homeless as he may have been, certainly was not prepared.
Maybe no one can be prepared for losing nearly everything and then having the little bit that is left vandalized and open to wild animals (especially the real wild and dangerous kind on two legs).
Even if that were to happen to us, we are adopted, and given new life, pure and blameless, as God’s own.
God save us!
Still we pray fervently to be spared this further indignity and threat to our very life … and we work diligently to prepare that nothing is left unattended, un-watched, secured as best anything can be. It cannot be God’s plan, that homeless people are victims of thievery, losing the last bit of everything they have to keep them alive. So we pray, God save us. And we work to be ready for all the tomorrows that we may yet live to enjoy.
Always,
Always,
Always,
Especially in the face of dangerous wild animals,
We trust God,
and since God has chosen us as children, long before the beginning of time, so that in this time all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
1 Corinthians 13:9-10
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
Words of Grace For Today
The most difficult part of life for most humans is to accept how any idea or work we would accomplish, at best is incomplete, humble, and foggy. We just do not have God’s perspective on anything. We are mere beggars for God’s mercy, no matter how hard we work.
So are we to give up, or work less diligently, or forget entirely about doing anything good and settle for whatever will ‘get us ahead?’
No, by no means.
God equips us with everything we need to do good in this lifetime, so it’s time to put our shoulders to the yokes, to engage our brains at full steam, and to imagine the best we can …
it’s just we must remember how humble our efforts really are … no matter how majestic or impressive they may seem to us.
We work hard and
trust that God will in due time show us everything.
…
For now we trust that God walks with us, and suffers more than us are our half-baked attempts at making life good.
And we are thankful
for all that God makes good to come out of our efforts.
A world of wonder lies ahead of us each day, if we are humble enough to apprehend, as God makes us able, what’s what.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favour in my sight, and I know you by name.’
John 10:14
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.
Words of Grace For Today
The challenges in life are real, and real dangerous, and very destructive. Some would take us out of life in one fell swoop. Others chip away at us, trying to incapacitate us until we fall like a tree felled by stroke after stroke of an axe. Often it feels like that axe aimed at us is huge and dull, or hitting us broadside.
Covid, the restrictions and the fools who rebel against the restrictions and the foolish politicians who lift the restrictions leaving us all at such great risk from each other … all this is certainly another sharp axe swung at us with a freshly sharpened and mutated edge first, though most of us just get the broadside, or the 2nd sharp edge on the back swing.
God walks with us.
Promises of God’s care abound.
Rainbows, Music, fresh bread: all signs of God with us that provide sacramental hope.
Rabbits and robins play and feed in the meadow in the early morning sun, warming away the frost with a 10⁰C warmth.
Deer have fed, played and meandered on.
The geese and ducks will fly over, some honking, some silent, some with a loud whoosshh from their passage through the air.
The owl, after a night of hooting regularly, from various directions, is quiet, resting, waiting for the dark of night again to emerge to hunt for food. Go get the mice!
Human visitors come and get their vehicles stranded in the water ditches the road passes through, unfamiliar with the dangerous deep and the way to get through in the shallowest part. Others with big trucks come and pull them out. Others, very familiar with the area, drive in with a full case of beer cans and litres of rye or rum or vodka to pass an evening into oblivion.
Life proceeds.
The dangers still await us.
God’s promise provides us the courage: God knows us by name, and favours us, and protects us, … and even when death finally wins it’s grip right tightly on our breath and pulls us away, God will welcome us first home.
No danger is more powerful than God’s favour. We live in safety, the best and only safety this life has to offer.
A quiet word of thanks begins each day, as we celebrate Christ’ work for us and all people.
Now let our dance of this day begin, in tune, stepping to the rhythm of God’s blessings pouring over us, turning gracefully, pausing to rest even these arthritic old bones, for the next beat, and then onward into the day.
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Acts 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
Words of Grace For Today
In the quiet of the hermitage, holy by years of holy celebrations, the rain fell mixed with snow, and chilled the air, still above freezing.
This is peace.
This is peace,
For there is no war,
not here.
This is peace,
For there is no one seeking to kill me,
not right now, right here … that I know of.
This is peace,
For in the cool of the evening just begun the warmth from the woodstove promises safety and comfort against any chilling cold.
This is peace,
For there is plenty of clean water, plenty of healthy food and drink, and plenty of work to do so that boredom and lack of purpose have no purchase here … for now.
This is peace,
For the wind that has beat the tarps about is calmed, and the music of the meadow is natural other than the fans to cool the solar power systems, and they are reminders of what can be done with next to no carbon footprint.
This is peace,
For this is what God has provided, for this day, hear and now.
This is peace, for come what may, God walks with me in this meadow and beyond, as God walks with you where you are and beyond.
For all this we give God endless praise and thanks.
There are so many places and times that are not peace.
We remember the people who suffer
causing the lack of peace, and
those suffering the lack of peace.
For them we pray this day, that God will provide them peace, and a peace that ends violence and suffering.
But hold fast to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day.
2 Corinthians 3:5
Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.
Words of Grace For Today
How does one remain focused, determined, clear headed, and adamantly sure of one’s identity when …
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by hunger (can faith feed one’s body?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by the struggle to survive in an environment that would do one in were one not vigilant, determined, and persistently at work preparing for the next challenge to life itself (can faith protect one from minus 40⁰ cold, plus 40⁰ heat, wasps, mosquitoes, bear, and coyotes?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by dependence on the good will of those who would strip one of any identity they cannot bear to acknowledge (can faith please the demands to be other than faithful, when those demands are made by those who provide the necessities of life?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by the overwhelming apparent ‘successes’ of those who have surrendered their identity to become other than God’s people and the overwhelming apparent ‘failure’ of one’s own life while maintaining one’s identity as God’s chosen, forgiven, restored, and sent messenger of Grace embodied in thought, word and deed? (Can faith provide success when there is none in the past, present, or future to be seen?)
Old Joshua, after years of leading the people to conquer and claim their place in the Promised Land, reminds the people to remember Moses’ Law and not to deviate to the beliefs of the foreigners taken into their midst and the ways of their new neighbours.
Paul reminds the cantankerous Corinthians to trust that their competence in all matters depends not on themselves, but on God’s work in and through them.
Does that help us maintain our faith and identity, when it is under siege? Will God send us a competent new ‘Joshua’ to lead us to claim a place in our ‘Promised Land?’ Is there a ‘Promised Land’ for us here on earth?
Will God provide clarity in Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) for us so that we will receive justice when we stand before the courts that continually work from the lies presented to them, and the lies they add on to the pile of lies, to further rob the security of life that even the government would provide to seniors caught in poverty, a poverty created by the courts injustice?
Does Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) or God’s competence build us sufficient shelter each season to protect us from the increasingly dangerous climate and the animals of the wilderness?
Does Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) or God’s competence preserve our identity and continue to provide us the basics of life in the face of our generous providers who demand we become someone else, more like them as hypocrites who profess faith in God and yet live by lies and destruction of others to cover their sins, instead of accepting forgiveness and restoration and being that restored truth-justice-grace for all other people?
These all seem to be impossibilities that leave us vulnerable to the demands and challenges placed on us by the injustice based on lies worked against us.
This is not the end of the story! Not by any means!
God sends messengers to revive faith in us amidst the greatest challenges.
A scriptural passage, a devotion, a commentary, an insightful sermon, a soul probing song and melody, a book, a news report, a quote: all of these God uses to restore faith in us, to remind us of who (and whose) we are, and to rejuvenate hope in us, a hope that carries us forward through all challenges, blessed to be a blessing to all people.
Malala Yousafzai Malik is one such person. Her book, I Am Malala, is full of inspiration as she spoke out for education for girls (and boys). Wikipedia provides the following among many words about her that inspire one to persevere as God’s chosen:
She left Jon Stewart speechless when she described her thoughts after learning the Pakistani Taliban wanted her dead, saying:
“I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do Malala?’ then I would reply to myself, ‘Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.’ But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’ Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”
Stewart visibly moved by her words ended the conversation saying: “I am humbled to speak with you.“
Stewart would again have her as a guest on the show after the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting, in which he started the show citing no jokes saying, “our guest is a incredible person who suffered unspeakable violence by extremists and her perseverance and determination through that to continue on is an incredible inspiration and to be quite honestly with you, I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world I would rather talk to tonight than Malala so that’s what we’ll do and sorry about no jokes.”
In the face of violence that threatens her life, she would eschew violence of any kind and speak, offering education and then say ‘now do what you want.’
May we all acknowledge that we have the Peace of God, the competence of God, the guidance in the Law of Moses which we need in order to remain faithful, always, even in the face of those who would kill us, undo us, try to corrupt us, and name us as failures.
So we pray: Help us Lord, to remember the successes you have brought in our lives to many others, the faith you have shared with many through us, and the hope that you have poured through us to so many people. In gratitude we acknowledge all your people whose thoughts, words and deeds inspire us (and many others) to trust in your promises to walk with us, and, in the end, to bring us home with all the saints in light.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!’
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
Words of Grace For Today
In our lives there are all sorts of challenges to finding one’s way forward to a life of purpose, meaning, and maybe even success.
There are plenty of songs about those challenges and the Covid pandemic has certainly made clear for us how these challenges play out for us. Take all those challenges and add isolation and separation and the risk of breathing one’s last in great pain, or recovering and suffering long-Covid for years and … well it’s just overwhelming.
We want to speak out, and have for years, about the lies made up about us, the lack of truth in so many times and places, lies told to help others accumulate money and power. Yet our voices are taken from us. Our words squashed into oblivion.
Our words echo in the wells of silence … as if the best we can do is get them whispered in the sound of silence.
In this place with no voices, a deserted place, this wilderness of a ‘twilight zone’ where nothing is real and everything stands against us no matter what we do … and so little makes any sense, we are just about to give up hope until …
Just when every ray of hope was gone, I should have known that you’d come along, I can’t believe I ever doubted you, my old friend the blues.
We think there is nothing and then we realize that this is as good as it gets and we still have one friend left.
Another lonely night, a nameless town, if sleep don’t take me first you’ll come around, ‘cause I know I can always count on you, my old friend the blues.
All the other people in our lives drift away, if they ever were really an actual part of our lives.
Lovers leave and friends’ll let you down, but you’re the only sure thing that I’ve found. No matter what I do, I’ll never lose my old friend the blues.
Yes, at least we have our old friend the blues.
Except, God knows this about us as well, and the blues are not the only one who sits through the lonely, sleepless nights, with us. In this place with no voices, a deserted place, this wilderness of a ‘twilight zone’ where nothing is real and everything stands against us, God sits with us as well, keeping watch, looking for ways to inspire us to live fully, no matter what our past is like, no matter what will come in our futures.
While we may end up down in the dumps, all around us the heavens are glad, and the earth rejoices, they say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king! And the hills, mountains, lakes, rivers, trees and meadows resound with the chorus ‘The Lord is King!’
If only we had ears to hear!
For now, we pray, Lord Jesus, take my hand and lead me, whither I do not know, but teach me to trust your guiding hand, to share your Grace and love with all peoples.
Maybe there’ll be a bit of chicken for lunch, and juice for supper with popcorn. These are the blessings of God, walking with me.
For this is as good as it gets.
So we learn to speak truth into the silence, welcome the blues, and watch for the dawn to break in on another day where God’s glory is everywhere, and, even if we are alone, we see God everywhere, as the deer graze the meadow and the rabbit nibbles an early meal, and geese fly from nest to food and back, here in God’s own country.
