My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
James 1:3
You know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
Words of Grace For Today
You have heard it said that whatever challenges do not kill you make you stronger.
You have heard it said that testing one’s faith produces endurance.
The first is phooey.
Covid 19 often does not kill the person infected, but there are a number of ‘long haulers’, the people who do not die, and they do not recover. Instead they suffer pain, fatigue and organ complications without end.
Covid 19 is not the only challenge that may not kill you fast, but it will almost make you wish it had.
Testing one’s faith is different. God gives us faith as a gift, and it grows as we face the challenges that life throws at us.
It is different when the challenges of life, more than Covid 19, bring our heart to throb, our strength fails, and the light of our eyes slip away from us.
It’s the beginning of the end of life, threatening our breath, our time, and our hope.
In this time of huge challenge, as life slips on a slippery banana peel on the edge of our graves, we discover exactly what our lives are made of, what our hope provides, and what our faith sustains.
If we think we can somehow go it alone, when our last foot flies into the air and our other foot only has a small grip on that slippery banana peel, it will be quite the surprise …
as God stands, firm on the ground, and catches us, so that our days do not come to a crashing halt.
It is hard to be humble when everything is going so well we can pretend we accomplish life on our own. It is easy to be humble when we can barely breathe, our arms and legs fail to move as we ask they would, and our eyes no longer distinguish between light and dark, colours and black, blessing and curse, and we experience how clearly it is that only by God’s Grace do we live, breath, move and see.
God’s presence with us in the best of times and the worst of times leaves us so humble that there is nothing else in us, but the breath we use to give God thanks. It is good to be so humbled as to give God praise for creating us.
Now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name.
Ephesians 5:18-20
Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
Now.
Whenever now is, where ever now is, it is always the time to give God thanks for everything in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amidst the second wave gone bezerk in Alberta with new cases doubling in a week, contact tracing broken down, parties continuing, hospitals overwhelmed with Covid 19 cases shutting out other health care needs, and Covidiots running loose everywhere in town …
It is time to give God thanks for everything:
For every thing one has, or has at one’s disposal.
For every gift, skill, and talent one has.
For every minute of life one has.
For the air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love one has (maybe such as it is, or even some of the requirements of life may be missing).
For every challenge one faces, making the day’s efforts worthwhile.
For every thing of beauty one can see in creation, for this is God’s hand writ large for all to see.
And most of all, for forgiveness, adoption, redemption, and being transformed into saints even as we remain sinners, for this is life the way God created us to live it!
For every opportunity we have to extend God’s Grace to others with forgiveness and inspiration.
Now.
If not now, when?
For one cannot know how many more years, days, minutes one has of this life built on Grace.
Complacent self-indulgence will be punished, those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
1 Timothy 6:17-19
As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
Words of Grace For Today
To take hold of the life that is really life!
That is a proper ambition and motivation for any sentient being.
The Biblical stories and writings record so much about how humans have done wonderful and terrible things with the comforts of wealth.
We could learn much, for in today’s world more people enjoy more comforts than ever before in the history of humans, perhaps more than all humans collectively before. Yet there are also more humans today than ever before who do not have secure access (if access at all) to the basics necessities for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, secure shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved unconditionally.
Worse is that there are among us a select few, getting smaller and richer each year, who have more wealth than most of us could imagine.
The worst is that the gap between the few wealthy and the majority who do not have the basics is growing each year as well. The systems that are in place, the social contract that keeps barbarism at bay (or not in so many places around this globe today) or the barbarism that has replaced a social contract, and all the institutions that support either the social contract or barbarism, and even our individual attitudes and actions all feed that ever increasing gap. Shame on us all!
The biblical accounts and other accounts of the past make it no secret that this destructive inequity has been a plague among humans since the earliest days. Our striving to survive the hunt, whether hunting for food, or being hunted for food, translates in to us striving to survive by ‘hunting’ others in order to try to secure our future.
We simply cannot secure our futures. Every effort to do so is evil, and it destroys those striving to secure the impossible and those who pay the price for it to appear as if the future were secure.
Joseph is ruined. This Joseph is not just the foreigner put in charge of Potipher’s household, only to be imprisoned on false charges by Potipher’s wife, who then interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and is elevated to be in charge of everything of Pharaoh’s, the whole of Egypt. This Joseph then is a refuge for his family, including his brothers who jealously sold him into slavery. These families are the Hebrews who multiply and, feared by future Pharaoh’s are enslaved and put to hard labour. These slaves are Moses’ people, a Hebrew not-orphan, who is raised in Pharaoh’s home as his own son, who commits murder in response to the abuse by the guards of his own people, who flees to the wilderness. This Moses returns to bring Joseph’s descendants out of Egypt, into the Promised Land via the wilderness.
This Joseph is also every blessed country, community, and gathering of God’s people, which has been laid in ruins, while the rich and the collaborators have indulged themselves in luxury. These are the people who eat, drink, and are drunkedly merry, while God’s people are enslaved, oppressed, and disappeared. This Joseph is also the present day USA, polarized by millions who think Trump speaks anything like truth, which chews up and spits out the democratic social contract in ruins. This Joseph laid in ruins is also our own Alberta, where church leaders, community members, and witnesses are gathered to lie in court, and where the courts add to the lies to convict and condemn honest and innocent people, where children are taught that truth is expendable if money is to be gained or courts lied to. In today’s ‘Me-too’ nightmare men are targeted for ruin more easily than woman, but all false convictions and rulings against anyone contribute to the ruin of Joseph.
What are honest people to do?
We grieve the ruin of Joseph.
We do good, are rich in good works, generous, and ready to share what great or little we have been entrusted with.
First and last, and always, though, we remember: God’s Grace saves us anew each day. God calls us to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to the poor, outcast, strangers, and homeless.
God also chooses to save those who lay Joseph in ruins by Grace. God calls us also to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to those who try to secure their future with riches.
We, by Grace, help all people take hold of the life that is really life.
(Yes, by Grace we help even the Covidiots, who threaten our lives with their stupidity and recklessness, take hold of life that is really life.)
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.
Mark 4:21
He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?
Words of Grace For Today
God’s victory!
The imagination runs wild, how the celebration would fill the universe, and our lives from bottom to top.
God’s victory … doesn’t look quite like we imagine. It’s the look of a double victory: first that justice is done, and truth wins out! Our enemies no longer can do us harm.
The second part of the double victory is that our enemies are forgiven, redeemed, and set free to reflect God’s Grace to all people.
This is the Light of Christ.
We do not put a lamp under a bushel, especially not in the dark evenings and mornings of winter as we approach Advent.
Neither is God going to put the Light of Christ, nor the fragile vessels that reflect it to the world, under a bushel, especially not in the dark days of … winter, or politicians who want to Gaslight the whole world by not acting responsibly in the face of Covid 19, or people drowning in other’s lies.
Christ’s Light is good, always, but especially in the dark days like today.
Pray.
Pray that God’s double victory comes soon to our enemies, for the light of life is almost extinguished in the dark of winter.
Pray.
Pray that God places the Light of Christ high over us, that all may see God’s justice, truth, and unconditional love.
To Accept the Mystery of God’s Work In All People, In All Religions,
Including that People Worship Differently, Apparently Different Gods,
…
For which do you think God created the universe?
Isaiah 43:11
I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no saviour.
Ephesians 4:5-6
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Words of Grace For Today
Who are we, if we are true to the confession of our faith, to be the ones to denigrate God’s work in other people, even when that work shows itself as faith different from ours.
Who are we to determine who God is?
We are totally incapable of such a determination!
Wars based on differences of religion are foolish. In truth they are always about other things, using religion as a motivator to bring people to fight and justify their evil actions as right.
The same is true for countless conflicts between peoples, down to battles between spouses and between siblings.
God is God.
We hold that we are saved from our sins by Grace alone, clearly shown to us through the life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
Our faith, faithfully lived, provides for a wonderful life, for us and for all who embrace this faith. Many who say they embrace this faith, actually misuse it, instead of living it faithfully. They misuse it for their own means to cruel ends. Such is the history of humans since they imagined that God existed.
Our faith provides that God also forgives those who misuse faith. Our faith provides us the courage to confess we all misuse faith. Such is the history of humans since we imagined that God existed.
Our Lord, One Lord, Three-In-One, provides for life abundant … not in material excesses, but in blessings in all circumstances. So we hold on faithfully to the gifts of the One Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and the one hope of our calling: one God, who is above all and through all and in all.
That makes for a marvellous life.
Our faith gives us the strength and resilience to face whatever evil comes our way, whatever challenges come our way, whatever abuse of faith is exercised around us or through us.
Covid 19 is only one of many challenges we face, always God walking with us.
To Make Our Way with Hate and Vengeance and Injustice
OR
To Abide in God’s Blessings and Love, Shared With All People,
For which do you think God created the universe?
Psalm 63:4
So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
There is a lot of excrement that people produce from their hearts, minds and strength, which has nothing to do with the digestive system.
Trying to make one’s way through it each day is a huge challenge.
We can see that challenge as the evil created by others, which impedes our progress in life, so that we respond with hate and vengeance and injustice in our futile efforts to make right what is wrong.
Or we can see the challenge as a dance, in which God enables us to participate, with the goal not to put it all right. Rather we participate in the dance of life each day in such a way as to reflect God’s love for those excrement makers, God’s unconditional love for them … and for us.
We know that dancing, especially into old age (80’s and 90’s), provides tremendous benefits to one’s body and one’s mind … and to the love one has for one’s gracious partner, who can move in response to the music, the words if there are any, and to the ‘traffic conditions’ on the dance floor.
Viewing life as a dance around the Devil’s Work, the excrement abundant, brings great benefit to one’s heart, mind, and strength. Thus we are able to bless God, God’s people, and all creation, and to lift up one’s hands in thanks, joy, and hope as we call on God’s name, in whom we abide, and who abides always in us.
We are not ever alone.
No matter the lies told about us. No matter the false convictions against us. No matter the Gaslighting directed against us. No matter the Devil’s attacks on us in all guises.
No matter the isolation and distance required by sensible Covid 19 restrictions, we are not ever alone.
God walks with us each hour of every day.
Fearing and loving God, how then would we choose to live: filled with hate,
OR
filled with love?
How do you choose again this day?
If you choose to fear and love God, then reach out to others, and share God’s love, unconditionally.
He changes times and seasons, deposes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.
Revelation 15:3-4
They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.’
Words of Grace For Today
While it is so easy to proceed through life under the illusion that one has made one’s own success, or to accept that one should have and failed by not making one’s own success; this is the curse of persistent evil from generation to generation. We learn that one must work hard. The modern myth is that everyone is equal and has equal opportunity; thus those that are wealthy, powerful, and famous have done something to make it so for themselves. And everyone else has failed to live life the way it should be lived.
God gives us all sorts of signs, messages, and roadblocks in life to help us see that God alone determines who the powerful are, and which powerful people fall. God alone gives knowledge and wisdom to whom he chooses – though it is not the self-help book kind of pull yourself up and make something of yourself. God alone changes times and seasons
(though one has to wonder if Daylight Savings Time is not the work of the devil to disrupt our lives on such a fundamental basis – all so that the wealthy can become wealthier, at the expense of the safety and sanity of the populous.)
God alone is pure holy. God alone judges the nations. God alone is just and true, always.
Wealth, power, and fame may seem to be attractive, something to strive for, something to covet. Who would not wish that life be at least a bit, if not considerably more comfortable, secure, controlled, and longer. This is not, though, what God created us for.
God created us to worship and praise God, in all we say, do and hope for. God makes it possible for us wretched sinners to do this, by Grace alone, through Jesus’ sacrifice to redeem us and free us from our sins.
So what will you do this day?
Will you strive to make your own way in life? And take the credit for your success … or for your failure to become wealthy, powerful, and/or famous?
Or will you give God thanks and praise for all the life, the gifts, and the wisdom that God pours out on you each day?
The sinner in us will certainly strive to make itself.
The child of God, saint by God’s Grace, will recognize the giver of everything
with a grateful heart
and with a voice, with hands, and with feet that reflect Christ’ Grace to everyone.
We are simultaneous saint and sinner, all the time, everyone of us. We can but beg for God’s mercy, grace and love.
To be Fearless in All Things or to Fear and Love God at All Times,
For which do you think God created the universe?
Psalm 34:9
O fear the Lord, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.
Luke 14:17
At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.”
Words of Grace For Today
To Fear God; this is the ancient, constant beginning of awareness of God. We lived on the plains, lived in caves, hunted for food, were hunted as food. Fear kept us alive. We could not understand many things of the world around us. We came to know that God created us, that God who created us was an awesome power, more fearful than the animals that hunted us for food. It took generations for us to begin to understand that God loved us, and that fear alone was inadequate a response to God’s love. We needed to fear and love God.
To fear and love God; this is the beginning and the end of all our lives and our purpose in creation.
While food does not come our way freely so that we must work constantly in order to have food to survive, God provides the food of life that nourishes us beyond the basic physical needs. For God created us hungry for truth, order, understanding, community, and love.
God sets the table for us again and again, to come and eat so that we can know truth, see and maintain order and gain a fuller understanding of the universe and our places in it. God feeds us so that we can dance our way through the challenges of community, and so that we can love as God loves us, freely and unconditionally.
Fear drives us. Love draws us. Together they help us sustain life for ourselves and those with us, and hopefully for all people.
How will you live this day, and all the days you have on earth?
Will you be fearless in the face of all challenges, diving headfirst into Evil’s temptations to be your own godlet?
Or will you fear and love God, the God who created the universe, and loves you and all people, and all creation, unconditionally?
If we fear and love God we can do no other than commit ourselves to living out the gifts God gives us, by promising: to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone.
Acts 5:29
Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’
Words of Grace For Today
Human history is filled with cruel rulers, greedy despots, and evil dictators.
Trump is only one of many alive and ‘ruling’ today.
How is it that so close to half of the 140 million people who voted in the States, voted for Trump?
What comes out of his mouth has been and is still hardly anything that is true, yet millions of people accept it as true.
If you doubt that they actually think it’s true, one only needs to hear about people in the Trump supporters’ Dakotas dying in the ICU from Covid 19, who refuse to accept that the pandemic is real. Instead they insist it is just a hoax. They refuse to acknowledge they are dying. They refuse to speak with their families. And they die, alone, still believing Trump’s lies.
How can this be?
We know that cognitive reality therapy works, works well, works fast. That is, if a person wants to believe (based on what they have already accepted as true), constant repetition of an alternate set of ‘reality statements’ will bring that person to accept that alternate reality as true.
Media that spew propaganda, and advertising focused at individuals is a danger to the continuation of civilization; they attack people’s understanding of the ‘social contract’ that holds barbarism at bay.
Trump is right that there is a lot of ‘false news’ out there. It’s the news that reports what he says, as if it were true. Ever since networks and news stations were no longer required to present both (really all) sides to a story, stations have been bought up in huge conglomerates to present an alternate reality to millions upon millions of people, over and over and over and over again.
People buy into the thin wedge of Querdenken, an apt German word for it. It means crooked-thinking, or cross-thinking, or contrarian-thinking (contrary to reality.) Those who buy into the less extreme ‘alternate reality’ easily buy into the next potion, and the next, and on and on, until what they perceive as real is so far from real it is scary. Thus they vote for Trump, deny Covid 19, and ‘drink the bleach Kool-aide.’
Words matter. It matters what people hear, read, say, and write. Words shape our perception of reality. That is why leaders target truth. Truth is the first victim of war, and of any evil ruler. That is why evil rulers try to control media, arrest dissidents, and exterminate anyone who questions their authority and means of maintaining power.
In countries that supposedly allows free speech, the dangers are very real. Truth is constantly under attack. Chaos is created to cover the huge lies and evil that is allowed to flow under the guise of ‘free’ speech.
One needs to be vigilant, so as not to accept false words and eventually make them into one’s own pseudo-reality. The Kool-aide is sweetened so that at first sip, it seems delightful. Evil always is so.
One needs to hear God’s Word, often, clearly, well stated, graciously presented. Repeating a sermon from decades or centuries ago may be instructive. It cannot replace a sermon written for now, in this place and time. God’s Word proclaimed needs to be written so that the current names of challenges to truth and all other evil as well are provided, and God’s Gracious response to evil is also stated in our terms.
Who will we serve today: human authorities, or God? Simple question; from our answers flow radical consequences for everything we do each day: who we listen to, what we hear, how we hear it.
We cannot hide in a bubble of holy talk. We need to hear the Querdenkers out there as well, so that we understand what God’s Grace needs to respond to. That is we need to know to what we need to respond with Grace.
Human history is filled with cruel rulers, greedy despots, and evil dictators.
Before and above all of them is our God, who did, does and will always create, redeem and renew all of Creation.
For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, so that I may not cut you off.
2 Timothy 1:9
God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
Words of Grace For Today
It is a marvellous thing that God does for us, saving us and calling us (as God’s children) to a holy calling.
God does this for us.
We do not earn it, or deserve it. We can take no credit for it, not in the least.
With Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension we encounter God in a new way; yet God did not change to meet us in this new way, living the life of a human being. Indeed God’s Grace made so clear in Jesus’ story, was God’s Grace for us since the beginning of creation.
Why does God do this for us?
God does this because God chooses to do this; God defers God’s anger, restrains it toward us, so that we and the whole creation can sing God’s praise. Dead people do not sing. People who receive Grace have every reason to sing and sing at every opportunity!
Pastor Erin from Trinity Edmonton preached a sermon 15 November 2020 on Jesus’ parable of the talents given to three servants, and the condemnation of the servant who hid his talent in the ground, instead of investing it. Her point was that the traditional interpretation of this as a parable about ‘investing’ our gifts in order to return even more to God is wrong. Instead it is a parable about denouncing the greed and avarice of the owner that demands unfair use be made of millions given to the servants. The owner’s condemnation of the servant who ‘plants’ his owner’s talents in the ground is all wrong; in fact that servant rightly refused to participate in the avarice of using wealth against others to multiply one’s wealth. But Pastor Erin insisted, since the parable was told by Jesus long before capitalism it was not a parable against capitalism. She said the point of the parable was: we need to subvert systems that take advantage of poor people. We must tear down these systems and replace them with ways of being equitable and fair to all people.
Which is interesting if poorly stated. What’s missing is that as Lutherans we proclaim that we are saved by GRACE, and Grace alone. We are not save by what we do, or how we think rightly, or how we subvert unjust systems … nor MUST we do anything. Trouble is so many pastors are ready to ‘tell us’ what we ‘must do, think or believe.’
Worst of all, what Erin and others preach is simply another form of telling us what we must do in order to please Jesus and God and thereby earn God’s favour. It is a futile exercise in the ‘power’ of the office of ministry entrusted to a pastor. This is all Law, in the most destructive, subversive way: debunk traditional interpretation of scripture and then point to what Jesus ‘said’ with a parable (interpreted through one’s own eyes/history/perspective/drive/hates/self-chosen-life-purposes) we must do as Christians, so that people will make changes to the perverse and evil world order that we live under.
God, fortunately, does not wait for us to subvert unjust systems, as just as those actions may be; God acts first, not by overpowering or undercutting or destroying unjust systems and the people who support them and benefit from them. God acts by graciously forgiving, renewing and guiding us, all of us.
Therefore we are free to think differently about unjust systems, and in thinking differently we change how we interact with them; which forces the systems to change in response to us.
Jesus tells parables in such a way as to shock his listeners into imagining that something can be different, that God enables us to be different, that God enables us to be God’s Grace for all people. (That’s what any good sermon has at it’s core.)
God gives us ‘talents’ (i.e. gifts of a great variety) in an overabundant quantity and quality. Like money, we get opportunities to ‘invest’ our gifts in God’s kingdom. Our investing in God’s Kingdom (unlike investing in the unjust money systems humans always have had, which Jesus slams in his parable) reaps great increases in our gifts, of which we are only stewards All we are, have and can believe, think and do belongs to God. We ‘have’ it all only by Grace.
Wasting Grace by reducing life to what we must do, whether that is to believe the right things, to maintain a particular piety, or to work in whatever ways to subvert injustices, is a waste of the Grace given to us; it is like burying a great treasure in the ground, instead of using it to do God’s work in this world.
Why does God do anything for us? Why does God chose to exercise Grace for us?
Because God so chooses.
How can we respond?
By giving God thanks and praise!
Once we do that whole-heartedly, then God can use us in new ways to share God’s way of being, to share God’s Grace for everyone with everyone.
Why us? Because God so chooses! Despite our deserving only God’s anger.
Thanks be to God.
Now let us get on with giving God thanks and praise, by sharing Grace with all the people we meet … even if our pastor has forgotten the beginning and end of God’s Word is always GRACE.
