Simple Beauty – Page 15

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 16

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Rewards

for a good day at the harvest:

a great, golden sunset!

Proverbs 3:9

Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce.

Luke 6:35

Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Words of Grace For Today

The leaves have begun to turn, not colours wondrous, but brown spotted. This is not healthy I would think.

As the harvest is gathered, though I have no produce to gather in, we hear the call to honour God and God’s people by sharing, not the left overs, the trickle downs, but the first fruits of our produce and our substance!

Many people the world over have no produce to gather in. Food is grown in massive quantities by massive farm operations, processed and distributed in stores for sale for those who are so fortunate to live where and how food can be purchased.

So what first fruits do we share?

The brown spotted, diseased leaves of the trees struggling to stay alive against some unseen disease or environmental shift too swift for them to adapt to?

We may not have produce or even healthy plant life around us, but we do have substance. Each and every one of us has substance.

At harvest time, and at every time, God calls us to use our substance, our heritage and present being, our contribution to our lineage as God’s people, in order that:

We will love our enemies!

We will do good!

We will lend expecting not to be repaid!

We will imitate Jesus, being kind to both the wonderful people of God and to the ungrateful and wicked people, infested with Evil.

For by being kind and gracious, we imitate Jesus and share what he has given us, our lives. And more: we may indeed in our time bring others to hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all. And even if not in this generation, we live the story that will be told for generations, of how Jesus calls us to give grace upon grace, so that in future generations others may hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all.

The Harvest goes on to the end of time, and our contribution is only a tiny spot in a long line of hope driven love that will give life as a gift that keeps on giving … long after the leaves are all gone.

We give what we have received without merit: life abundant.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 13

Sunday, September 13, 2020

The Paths Forward

Press on toward God’s Light

Jeremiah 32:17

Ah Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

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

God is with us.

For some those words are the most comforting, promise-filled, powerful words that can be spoken, written or read. They name God’s choice to accompany one through all that life presents to us, both good and bad, marvellous and destructive, and hope-giving and despair oppressing.

For others these words can be the greatest cause of fear, dread, and angst. For they have chosen again and again to act selfishly, relentlessly destroying others for their own advantage, and trying to hide the truth from all. God still knows what they have done. To know that God not only knows, but God also accompanies one through life and the hell one creates for others, is to hear that God is not just aware of what one has done and still does, but God is profoundly affected by it as well. God’s wrath will rise up against one, in the end if not before.

God’s wrath is to be dreaded greatly!

For God has created the universe with God’s own power, with a word and an outstretched hand. Nothing is too hard for God. Destroying a person who has given themselves over to evil every day of their lives and only tries to hide this from others and themselves, and even from God … this kind of destruction is child’s play for God.

God is also so powerful as to send us to share God’s Grace with others, and to be ready to baptize them into the Way of Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. We know that Jesus has commanded us what is profoundly easy to repeat, and on our own impossible to obey: to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength; to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love even our enemies.

This is only possible since God is with us always, that we can love unconditionally as God first loves us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 12

Saturday, September 12, 2020

or Dying Star

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

For The Traveller You Light The Way

Until In The End We Can Only Hope

That From This Star We Would Be Ever So Far.

Psalm 24:1

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

Ephesians 5:15

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.

Words of Grace For Today

Psalm 111:10 (and twice in Proverbs, once in Ecclesiasticus) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Be careful, live as wise people.

Wisdom requires fear.

Why fear God?

God made the world, the universe, and all that is in it, and all that live in it.

Fear is the appropriate attitude to take to the one who creates such a marvellous and ferocious and beautiful and destructive universe.

Watch a star through its life,ending in a supernova explosion*! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made?

Watch one’s child be born! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made and given one responsibility for?

Fear is a great motivator. It’s kept us alive as a species as long as we’ve existed. It’s given despots power since before history was written. It’s kept marriages together and blown them apart. It’s kept vulnerable persons alive and sane, and driven the strongest people insane.

By itself it helps move us to survive, but it does not move us to live fully.

Martin Luther begins each explanation in his Small Catechism with “We are to fear and love God so that ….”

Knowingly participating in God’s Kingdom requires fear and love of God.

Love of God, as our response to God’s unconditional love of us, when combined with fear of God, keeps us mindful of our place in the universe and before God, and mindful of the wonders and blessings God provides for us each day, undeserving though we all are!

Together, fear and love, bring us to seek goodness for everyone, to right injustices, and to sacrifice that others may know the good blessings God provides for all people to share.

That is the beginning of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that the Creator of all intended us to live with each day, even as we live with challenges insurmountable, like Covid-19, and the really dangerous rampant denial that Covid 19 is here and does seemingly randomly kill.

* for those unfamiliar with what a supernova is: science.howstuffworks.com/star6.htm

Stars More Massive Than the Sun

When the core runs out of hydrogen, these stars fuse helium into carbon just like the sun. However, after the helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the core has turned to iron, it can burn no longer. The star collapses by its own gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. In less than a second, the iron core, which is about the size of Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6 miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core, thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes (supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space. The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole depending upon the mass of the original star.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 5

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Ice and Floods

Heat and Drought

Nothing compares to the Evil humans inflict on others.

Isaiah 25:4

You have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat, when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm.

Revelation 2:8-9

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Since Jesus’ record replaces ours, since our baptisms we have known and been able to trust even in the most horrific and trying times that our record before God will be sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not even the miracles of God (or so we say) can (other than by replacing ours with Jesus’ record) keep our spirit and soul and body sound and blameless at all. We have and keep free choice, which in exercising we continually sin, i.e. we are hardly sound and blameless.

The question is not if we can be sinless. If it were no one would be acceptable to God, and the Kingdom of God would be empty forever.

The question, after God favours us and blesses us, what are we going to do with this ultimate favour and blessing?

Then we may pray earnestly that it can be said of us that when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, then we have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

There is no shortage today of the blast of the ruthless. Now is the time to act. It is the time to be the refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needing in their distress, and a shelter from all that comes, whether it is the vicious rain, hail, snow and windstorms of climate change (the ‘new normal this year is last year’s extreme weather‘), or the blistering heat, wind and locust of drought, or the flooding of rain that will not let up.

The real blast, as in every generation, comes not from nature, not even pandemics like Covid 19. The real blast comes from ruthless and evil people, possessed by the empty promises of the Devil. The two legged wild animals bring more disaster to more people, more quickly than any new weather storm.

The dangerous ones are those who say there is no danger. They claim with words and/or actions: There is no more Covid19. It’s back to normal. We’re done with Covid 19. There is none here. They likely will not die or be maimed by Covid 19 or any other real danger. They will be oblivious to the loss of life around them, unless it invades their own home, and some even then pay it no heed.

May God protect us. We may wish that we can be sound and blameless, but that is the first step to ignoring our place, station, calling and weaknesses as the two legged children of God that Jesus calls us to be.

We still wish for what is not possible, and then we pray: May God protect us. May God protect you.

Before it is too late.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 3

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Red Sunset

Beauty

Like Joy, Kindness, and Forgiveness,

It’s always there for us.

Proverbs 12:25

Anxiety weighs down the human heart, but a good word cheers it up.

Ephesians 4:32

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Words of Grace For Today

The obvious is obvious. Anxiety is a weight on the human heart. Good words cheer the heart and lighten it.

Life is easier and more wonderful for those who are kind to one another, tender-hearted, and forgiving of one another.

We can only be kind, tender-hearted and forgiving because God has first forgiven us.

The question is, can we simply choose to be cheery with good words, instead of anxious? Can we be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving by simply choosing to so be?

Were it so simple.

Like wishing that the rain would come in time of drought, or cease in time of flood, our wishing can hardly change reality.

Except, forgiving others and accepting forgiveness from them, certainly does change our lives, and for the better. Forgiving is something we can choose to do. It is not a mysterious thing to do. We simply give the person we are forgiving all treatment and response just as before the offence. Then we simply give that person a gift, something the person actually desires. Giving changes our heart, and our minds, and we become the one who has forgiven.

Not a mystery at all.

It is a thing we can do: to choose to do the things of forgiveness.

There is so much that we allow to get in the way.

Of course when we do not forgive, then our hearts harden and hate festers and we destroy more than the sin that we are offended by.

The devil does easily run amok in us, if we do not actively choose to be forgivers.

That choice though is still impossible for us, unless we confess our own sins and accept God’s precious and expensive forgiveness for our sins.

When we have confessed our desperate need to be forgiven and God’s generosity in forgiving us, then forgiving others flows with ease from us.

It is then rather simple, if one is humble, and impossible if one is proud.

Which shall we be found to be this day?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 2

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Small part of creation?

Are we like the bark, the reed, or one of the shells?

We are like a grain of sand

Psalm 148:3.5

Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.

Revelation 4:11

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

Words of Grace For Today

I heard a repeat sermon, one of the joy of a city boy climbing a mountain with friends, and experiencing for the first time the wonders of creation.

Those of us who have lived outdoors more of our lives than in, who have engaged with creation for generation upon generation*, who have climbed mountains since we were able, having grown up with the likes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift Valley as a common enough background for family vacations (actually they were visits to other missionary families in Tanganyika, before it’s independence and merger with Zanzibar to become Tanzania) have known in our bones that God’s creation is marvellous.

*It turns out that at my father’s 90th birthday celebration now a few years ago, a cousin included in her presentation that the men in our family have sought out the wilds of creation, mountains, forests, and lakes for as many generations as we can trace back our family roots in Sweden and Norway, across Minnesota, and into western Canada. We’ve got good Viking blood that draws us to engage with creation as part of our daily living. Grampa Sam moved to live on a lake in the woods in Northern Minnesota (actually central, but like Alberta it’s the perspective that is used as a reference, not the geographical reality.) My father bought a farm 10 miles out of town back when that was a 9 miles from any acreage, loved to farm when he came home from his medical practice, and took us into the woods for vacations most every year. One of my brothers and his son live in the wilds of Alaska, loving every minute of it. Uncle Sam worked for the telephone company, spending work and vacation time outdoors. He loved to hunt, fish, and camp. Retirement was a pickup truck with a camper on it, a fishing rod and rifle, Aunt June (who was also at home in the wilds), and a prayer of thanks. His sons, my cousins, have continued that tradition.

First time or a very familiar experience, one stands bolderdashed in wonder, when one stops to think about how God, with a Word, created such a wondrous creation. First time or a very familiar experience, one stands tiny and humbled by one’s place in that creation, as if an ant before a cedar tree 12 feet in diameter and more than 200 feet tall.

(If you, like that preacher, honestly have never encountered the wonders of creation in the wilds, take that opportunity if it comes your way; you will not be sorry, hopefully.)

To think that God even knows of us, or bothers with us in all that splendour. More that

How can we respond other than to thank God with praise and honour … and to honour creation with the best care we can manage … before we kill it.

Creator of heaven and earth + tiny creatures = awe, praise, and honour.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 29

Saturday, August 29, 2020

No matter how cold life seems

God is with us, laying down tracks with us

shining on us day and night by sun, moon, and Holy Spirit

Thank God!

2 Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. The leper was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

False pride and arrogance or humility and gratitude, two apparently mutually exclusive manners of responding to all God has done for us.

In 2 Chronicles the writer interprets the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem as God’s response to Hezekiah’s proud and hard heart. In Luke the writer interprets Jesus’ healing the lepers as done in response simply to the lepers asking.

That one returns to thank Jesus, against Jesus’ directions that they fulfill the Jewish Law and show themselves to the priests (to be recorded as cured and therefore free to return to their families and position in Jewish society.) The one who returns gains nothing by visiting the priests. He is an outsider and gains no ‘return’. Leper or not, he is not accepted into Jewish society. He returns then to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus has more authority than any priests.

Luke’s message is that those who are burdened with their own religious authorities and practices may well fulfill their obligations to them, Jesus still comes and heals those people. People with no locally recognized religious authorities and practices to fulfill (the Samaritan perhaps had some, just not recognized by the Jews), are free to recognize Jesus’ greater authority and to respond with appropriate gratitude.

Who are we?

We wish we were like the Samaritan, free to recognize Jesus’ authority and power with thanks and gratitude.

If we are honest, we are like the other 9 Jewish lepers, bound to duty to other authorities, and easily able to miss the wonders Jesus provides and therefore easily able to miss out on thanking Jesus and living with wondrous gratitude. That gratitude is a more powerful force in life than ‘falling in love’, about which much is written, spoken and known – how it transforms life for the better (or worse.) Gratitude transforms life always for the better, and it does not wear off after a short few months.

If we are honest, we are also often like Hezekiah, proud and hard hearted, completely capable of pleading to God for help when life catches us in disaster or deadly illness or total loss. But when it comes to giving God thanks for all God has given us, our breath and very lives … Well then we are back to fulfilling our ‘obligations’ to other authorities and demands (like careers, money, status, reputation among those driven by greed and avarice, and false images of ourselves as above or without God).

Luther described all of these as happening simultaneously in our lives as responses to the same events. To which he prayed as we well can: God save us!

And save us, Luther knew as we can know, Jesus already has.

We can choose to live lives transformed by thanks and gratitude. Bit by bit each day.

Why not?

Where else are we going to turn for the living water? the bread of life? the Words of eternal life? the hope that does not disappoint? the promises that fill us so that we have more than enough to share with all who need life?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 24

Monday, August 24, 2020

Gold on Gold

God’s Gold Abounds Without End

For Us All to Bask in

Psalm 23:5

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Mark 14:3-6

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ And they scolded her. But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.

Words of Grace For Today

Waste.

When one has too much, wasting things is easy, and commonplace. Oil companies flowed with money as oil sold for over $90 a barrel, and office chairs with one broken, easily replaced, caster were thrown out and a new $450 chair replaced the not-broken-but-needing-simple-repair chair.

God blesses us with God’s abundance. God has plenty. We sit with our enemies at God’s table prepared for us where God’s oil marks us as holy and God’s Grace flows over us. Our elegant or plain glass, or any vessel or receptacle we could bring cannot contain God’s generosity. God ‘wastes’ Grace on us, on all of us, even on our enemies! There is so much, so much that one need not worry about what spills over. What we still hold in our vessels Jesus shows us by example is not to be hoarded or held tight. We can empty everything we have and are; and God will always fill us back up full and overflowing with Grace.

An the unnamed woman comes to anoint Jesus with her expensive ointment, though the disciples would have the money instead of the wondrous aroma giving Jesus the honour of being cleansed with such gloriously expensive suave. So they scold the woman and try to shame her for her generosity.

Jesus knows all about God’s unending generosity, and our ability to live without limit to our generosity. Jesus calls his disciples to stop their derision of the woman and to accept that he is so honoured.

How often we claim God’s generous Grace all for ourselves and use it as a club against others! Still God comes and remains faithful and generous and gracious with us.

God hopes we just might catch on. Life is not a zero sum game. It is, when we sacrifice for one another, unlimited in it’s blessings for all.

What a life God calls us to recognize is ours, all of ours!

Gold upon Gold

for all!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 4

Friday, September 4, 2020

Beauty

Even from Weeds Blossoms

Is possible to see

in God’s Kingdom

Numbers 6:24

The Lord bless you and keep you.

John 1:16

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Words of Grace For Today

Breathe.

Drink.

Eat.

Work.

Love.

God has blessed us immensely, if we can do this.

God has blessed you immensely, if you can do these.

A person does not have to think they have committed any terrible sin to know they need God’s Grace just to make it through the day.

Everyone, in many ways, turns from God each day.

To breathe the Holy Spirit, to drink the living water, to eat the bread of life, to work in the Kingdom of God, and to be able to love unconditionally, first one needs be forgiven and redeemed, ransomed and rescued, blessed and kept safe from all Evil.

It is truth that many people live, constantly fighting their way free from God’s Grace, to insist, though their sins are many and destructive, that they need no Grace. These people are to be pitied, prayed for, and kept at a great distance as much as one can. When one needs must deal with them, then Grace upon Grace is required, for destruction follows in their wake, yet God’s Grace overflows from ours. To keep their destruction from overwhelming us, we needs must be the conduit of God’s Grace spilling over them.

It’s immensely difficult to face the corrupt destructive intent of an evil possessed person and not want that God would eradicate them from all existence. Yet ours is to be the conduit of God’s Grace. God brings God’s wrath in God’s own time.

Since from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace we pray for one another, the Lord bless you and keep you, safe from all Evil.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 19

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

We bow to our Creator

Humble Glory

Exodus 33:13

Now if I have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favour in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.

2 Thessalonians 2:14

For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

It is easy to have silly hopes … and it is foolish to live one’s life built on those silly hopes.

One can, for example, hope that (contrary to all experience past and reasonable expectation for the future) that one will have a [fill in your desired, unreachable thing, like a ‘private lake’]. It is all silliness, hoping to possess things. It is foolish then to build one’s life so that one can finally buy a boat, and then store it away for the day that you can make it’s maiden voyage on your ‘private lake.’

To have hope that inspires the best of life into one and drives one to live the best and that draws from one better than one can imagine … to have that kind of hope one cannot foolishly build one’s life based on silly hopes. One needs to understand profoundly what is before one in the present, what is behind us in the past, and what lies ahead for us in the future.

Moses, wise as he was, is not always written about as if he were so wise. He asks of God, who has just told him that God favours Moses, that Moses will be able to live knowing God’s ways (in Hebrew this knowing is also to be intricately wound up in, to be active in the doing of God’s ways). And to what end does Moses make this request? To find God’s favour.

Yet, God’s favour is already pronounced by God! Moses is making a circular request.

This is us, all too often. God saves, loves us, favours us, and tells us so. We respond by asking that if God loves us and favours us we may know how to earn God’s love and favour!

We all too often want not to be in God’s debt, but we want to know ourselves, and be seen by others, to have earned all that God has gifted us! So Moses is written about as if Moses did not accept God’s favour, but wanted to earn it. Indeed, Moses wanted others to see without a doubt that God favoured Moses. It was required for his and his people’s survival.

There is so much more going on than a silly wish, to earn God’s favour. We can learn if we see.

The second passage also contains something to see. Paul writes to the Thessalonians that his proclamation of Jesus the Christ to them is to bring them Jesus Christ’ Glory.

Christ’s Glory is not something that many people would seek: it involves betrayal by one’s friend, a false conviction, a torturous cross, and death. Only then does it come to anything like what we might expect as Glory.

But Glory, God’s kind of Glory it is. It is that God brings us to life abundant through our being betrayed, being falsely convicted and our bearing our own crosses, which indeed kill us. Then we can start to understand the sacrifice for others lives that Jesus accepted, that Jesus calls us to accept.

On this cross, on this glory, we can hope that God will show us how to live the abundant life … not so that we can earn God’s favour. Rather we ask that God will show us how to live the abundant life that does not require things at all. Rather we ask that God will show us how to live the abundant life as our response to trusting that God saves us, loves us (unconditionally), and favours us.

Knowing this love, trusting this love, we are able to answer Christ’ call to sacrifice our selves, even our lives, so that others may have life, and have it abundantly.

That’s Glory. That’s Grace. That is us as Jesus’ humble followers.