Simple Beauty – Page 17

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 18

Saturday, July 18, 2020

You can spring your snowmobile from this point to the lake,

until God brings Spring

and then it’s a disaster to spring here.

Isaiah 43:13

I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?

2 Corinthians 5:10

For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

Words of Grace For Today

How simple it seems: life here and now is a proving ground of who and whose we are. After death or maybe before, God judges us on the basis of what we have done, whether good or evil. No one can deliver themselves or others from God’s hand. God’s work (also of judging us) cannot be hindered by anyone … not even the Devil himself!

It all sounds pretty simple, and devilishly difficult. Proving oneself is an ever failing project. We go from one compromise of good to the next compromise of our souls, just to make it through any 60 minutes of any day. All of what we think, say or do is catalogued permanently without error or omission under our name in God’s never ending knowing and memory.

Who could face God thus? For every single last one of us will fail that judgment. We cannot make it through one hour, yet alone a day, or a year, or a lifetime.

There is a vain hope, held by so many people, that though they have done terribly all through their life, they have somehow managed to say or do something really good, and they hope that good thing or two or even a series of things can somehow outweigh the terrible, unending bad things they have done. The scales are not so weighted in our favour. God is just, basing all judgments on truth and whole truth only. Everyone of us fail, and fail miserably as the scale rapidly hits bottom on the evil side overwhelmed by the weight of our sins.

Given this inevitable negative judgment, some people give up hope, and either more fully participate in evil to get ahead, at least in this short life on earth, or they despair and fail to give a day’s thanks for everything they have, hiding from life as much as they can, with consuming, praying, doing small ‘good deeds’, or – and this applies to the most people, nearly everyone somehow at sometime – they compare themselves to others and delude themselves into thinking that the judgment scale of God is somehow marked on a curve of averages and not absolutes.

Out of this delusion arises the nowadays all too common assertion that truth is never absolute, but it is all relative. We just see things differently.

Well … we do see things differently. God does not. And created in God’s likeness we too can see God’s absolutes more than we care to admit, even to ourselves.

Plato’s Ideals are not a mere figment of one’s imagination. They are real, as real as the water we drink and food we eat to stay alive.

The only way our judgment day[s] – it is likely we face God’s judgment each day and just do not know it – before God goes anything other than real ugly for us, is that God anticipated how we would be, and provided a loving, self-sacrificial manner in which we could understand both God’s firm judgment based on the truth of who we are and what we’ve done, and God’s endless mercy and love, which gives us re-newed life as many times a day it is possible.

It seems that God gives re-newed life more times a day than we are capable of imagining, for we still breathe … and pray in thanks … and share what God entrusts to us. The renewal of life is that Jesus’ record, unblemished and pure, is swapped in for our terrible sinful records, and God judges us as unblemished and pure, pure of heart and able to see God once again in the ordinarily mundane things of life. Those things become sacred. All things become sacred. All people become sacred, for God uses it all, us all, to make good happen, such good that we are wholly incapable of doing on our own. The Holy Spirit infuses renewed life into us, and pulls miraculously good thoughts, words, and deeds out of us.

We actually follow Jesus.

We don’t just practice some random and useless piety, like not smoking in beer country (but beer is great at church potlucks), not drinking in tobacco country (but smoking is great after the services), or as in Minnesota, smoking, drinking and dancing are all to be avoided; but us medical missionary kids knew it was all bunk. We didn’t smoke because it was unhealthy and stunk. We didn’t drink because it messed with our brains and our brains were fine, thank you. We did dance, and occasionally it led to sex, which was just part of life, because children are wonderful gifts from God, so is sex, and so is dancing – we just did not advertise it in front of other ‘pious’ weak-faithed Christians. We did not take sex or children lightly. They were great gifts from God, not to be messed with lightly, but to be celebrated greatly. Again, we did not go out to have sex with a great number of people because we knew that sex was powerful and if you messed about with it, it messed about with your brain, and our brains were fine, thank you.

Somehow growing up in all that lutheranism of minnesota (it is the state religion, or was, after all) many had not faced the challenges of world views that did not include God, and not as a small matter, but aggressively, determinedly denied God because that faith threatened their old, old religion of worshipping ‘things’ that medicine men and women could (supposedly) control. Our faith offered something beyond piety, or setting ‘old’ ways aside. Our parents as medical missionaries came with science and medicine (products of Christianity’s care for the world and the vulnerable and sick – Jesus was after all a healer), both of which set things in order in this world and offered, as Jesus had, healing.

Instead of latching on to some senseless piety that overshadowed faith, we knew out of necessity the essentials of faith, and it certainly was not some useless piety, or false faith. Our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith.

Back home, our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith, those that held some false piety as being the core of faith, as if we could behave our way into God’s favour!

No one can hinder God’s work, not God’s work in us or this wonder-filled world.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 17

Friday, July 17, 2020

See the Light?

See God?

Deuteronomy 10:17

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,

Matthew 5:8

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Words of Grace For Today

Bribes are the way of the world.

Some are blatant, demanded, extracted. Others are offered, subtly, as perks for understood unnamed favours.

The Church is not exempt from this. The Courts are not exempt from this. No part of life seems to be exempt from this bartering of favours for favours. Ideals are set aside too easily as palms are greased and the recipients on both sides enjoy a bit more of life than they otherwise would have. As if life were a zero-sum game, where one needed to get what is there before someone else beat you to it.

Since the Church is not exempt, even the faithful, confessing a faith that is otherwise founded on the cross, behave as if salvation is one more thing to acquire for oneself, as if it were insurance for after death.

It is challenging not to fall in line, as permits to build are denied for no apparent reason, or provided to others even with faulty plans; as jobs come to others (not even qualified) who enjoy high standards of living, and others (more than fully qualified and capable) are left to seek labour outside their field of training; as invitations, social recognition, and being included are offered to the most asocial people, and others dedicated to the well being of all people are ignored, socially derided, and ghosted by nearly all.

God, though, is not a taker of bribes. Salvation is given to all as a free gift. Claiming to be able to earn it can revoke the gift from one’s life. There is no effort, or favour, that one can offer God that would be sufficient to bend God to do other than what is God’s will. Attempts to do so are sufficient to see God’s will exclude one from life.

God is not one among many gods. God is the One and only God, the God above all other gods we may try to create. God is powerful, and loving, gracious and generous with all people. We are to fear and love God …. This is the beginning of our response.

The Promise is made often in many ways. Those who do not trying to bribe or cheat or step on others to get ahead, in a word, those who remain pure, they will see God. Perhaps as Moses did, face to face, turning Moses ashen white from the encounter that few if any others have ever survived. More likely the pure of heart will see God in the everyday. For without a heart that is bent-in-on-itself, bribing, cheating, and trying in every way to ensure it’s survival before anything else – without this bent-in-on-itself, one’s heart remains open to see the wonders, the awesome wonders that God works each day for others … and for oneself.

Wonders of wonders, to see God each day many times over.

That generous gift from God cannot be matched by anything we might try to acquire for ourselves.

Our salvation assured (a gift from God) and seeing God each day, we pray: Give us today our daily bread. Then we work, sweat, and plan to ensure we and others have the basic requirements for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved.

One day at a time, life is full of wonders, and God is awesome!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 16

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Living Water

Reflects

The Creator’s Glory

Isaiah 55:1

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

John 4:14

Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’

Words of Grace For Today

Water, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!

There is a story that comes to mind, of two young men shipwrecked and blown far away from their course and out of the frequently travelled shipping lanes. One trusts that God will save them. The other doubts God exists at all. While the doubter works to catch fish for food, the faithful one throws their desalinating water filter overboard. While the doubter sleeps having Gerry-rigged a rainwater collector, the faithful idiot dismantles it and throws it overboard.

With water everywhere, they thirst for the water that gives life: fresh water.

While the faithful believes he has water that will keep him from thirsting, the doubter does everything to use what water is available, mixing urine and scant rainwater to minimally re-hydrate himself. The faithful prays, trusting God will save him … and falls into a coma.

Idiot faith is not the faith Christ gives us. The faith Christ gives us is hope-filled and practical; wise and perceptive; overly generous and gracious; self sacrificing and self preserving.

The water Jesus gives us keeps us from thirsting, and common sense is not lacking. Life and all it requires of us is filled with Jesus’ water, gushing up like an artesian spring, not so that we can test God’s miraculous intentions towards us, but so that we can follow paths that give life, to ourselves and to all around us.

God does not exact a price for the living water. Jesus has bought and paid with his life for it, for us. Not only does God provide us water, living water, that gives us breathe, faith and hope; God also provides us all we can eat. We come, we buy with all that God has provided to us, Grace! And we are filled, never to be thirsty or hungry again; no matter the challenges life throws at us.

The two young men were rescued. Both were alive, barely, the faithful in a coma for hours already. He never recovered and died. – One has to wonder what St. Peter had to say to him! – the doubter after many difficult months recovered, and lived the rest of his life, never doubting God’s love for him and those around him.

There is living water for all!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 9

Thursday, July 9, 2020

God Protects us

Alone or Overrun by Others

God’s Presence

Never Leaves Us

Psalm 91:9

You have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place.

2 Corinthians 3:12

Since … we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.

Words of Grace For Today

Today a crowd of tents overflowed from the Web campsite and filled the Birches campsite with an accompanying number of vehicles so many there is not enough room to park them all, and at least 5 large dogs. Awake, there is hardly room for the correct Covid 19 physical spacing, and sleeping the tents are close enough that one is already within a few metres of at least a few people in other tents, not to mention others sharing the tent you are in.

As the clerk at the drug store said (as sick people come for medicines), she’d had it and she’s done, completely done with this Covid 19 thing.

Wishful thinking until it kills you or someone you love, or compromises your organs for the rest of your life. A personal declaration that your done certainly does not cover it all.

You become one of the most dangerous people on earth today.

Thankfully we have made the Lord our refuge. We dwell in the Most High, and we dwell in a place isolated from everyone, including that dangerous drugstore clerk, every other dangerous carrier of Covid 19, and the fools who walk right up to me at Canadian Tire while I’m quickly finding the one thing I’m there for, having waited a good ten minutes for the two fools to move away from me down the isle 25 feet. While I’m determining which of the five different spools of plastic string I need, they return, walk right up to me and stand over me, breathing heavily and grunting impatiently for me to be done, and then as I stand up they walk within a foot behind me, push my cart out of the way and say I should get out of the way. Later the same two guys nearly run me over as I back up one foot to change course since the isle ahead is blocked by an elderly man on his cell phone. This time I politely ask the two if they could keep their 2 metre distance. They huff that I backed up into them, as I stepped back a half step at most to turn my cart to the left down an isle.

There are hundreds and thousands of other shoppers I have no close encounters with when I’m shopping.

Brash stupid boldness, like declaring Covid 19 is over because you say it must be, or walking over people with no respect for physical distancing, is not the kind of boldness that Christ gives us, through the hope the Holy Spirit creates in us.

The boldness Christ’s hope gives us is to

– do the right thing when everyone else is not,

– say the right words to a bully, when everyone else is cowering and capitulating,

– risk everything we are in order to save children at risk of horrendous abuse by their parent,

– not work to protect oneself, but to protect others who are vulnerable,

– and many other inspired risky actions,

since we know we need not protect ourselves or make our own security.

Christ has done that already.

All that we are and have, is for Christ, so putting everything on the line to do the right thing is exactly why we live and have anything to work with.

Martin Luther was right, too. We are bold in all we do, unafraid that we will inevitably sin. That knowledge does not deter us from risking everything to do the right thing. We trust that we have been, are, and will always be forgiven by Jesus the Christ. This is not some reckless abandon to do idiotic things to no good end or imaginable benefit. This means that we do not allow the Devil, or the inevitability of our sinning, stop us from trusting that God will guide us to do the right thing, and to know it is right.

We sinners, of course, so often try to justify our own sins. Doch with the Holy Spirit’s help we resist that as well, easily confessing, and re-adjusting our path, our plans, our hopes and our dreams to reflect Christ’s self sacrificing way for everyone we encounter: we sacrifice ourselves, not others.

For those who cannot comprehend the true risk of a virus, compared to the true risk of life and limb in order to save others, compared to the true risk of losing one’s own soul, we must pray and bless them: Lord bless these utter fools and keep them and their deadly virus far, far from us, all of us, humans.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 8

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Leaves fall

Our wisdom falters,

God is everywhere, with us.

Isaiah 29:14

I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Mark 6:2

On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!

Words of Grace For Today

A few nights ago a man came telling me that the surveyors would becoming, that he had made an offer on this land. (This is crown land, never will it be for sale.) He said that this land had been in his family many years ago. It was coming back into his family. The fences would go up, he would bring his truck in and plow the road. (The road is impassible and would need numerous culverts, lots and lots of clay roadbed compacted into place and layers of gravel over that to make is something that could be plowed.) He was going to develop the shoreline. (Twenty metres in from the edge of the lake is always Crown land and it cannot be developed without a special permit, which are few and far between.) He said he was going to divide up the land into 5 acre plots for various members of his family. (It would take millions of square miles of land divided into five acre plots to accommodate his whole family, the family of all Canadians.)

Jesus comes doing amazing things that shock people. They ask where he came from? Where did he get this wisdom that he teaches?

The surveyors cannot find the borders of the Kingdom of God. They cannot determine how to divide it up into little plots for each family. They do not have the instruments to determine how big anything is according to God’s measure.

Any wisdom we put together is no more than this man’s puffed up claims to be able to buy crown land for his own, when it is used already by so many for random camping. Watch carefully, and we may see God at work.

Who in your life makes false claims, haughty claims of ownership of things that cannot be owned? Are you the one? Does God’s wisdom show you up to be foolish in God’s Kingdom?

Only God’s Grace can show us a path forward wherein we can imitate Jesus’ way of the cross, bringing Grace to all people. Only by God’s Grace can we avoid making foolish claims of how we are buying up God’s Kingdom for ourselves.

Only by God’s Grace, today we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us forward into an abundant life. Thanks be to God.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 7

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

What do you see?

What do you dare to see?

Do you really want to see

What Jesus has to show you?

Psalm 31:23

Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.

Mark 10:46-49

As [Jesus was] leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet …. Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’

Words of Grace For Today

Last evening a big greyish pickup truck, a deep-throated, noisey Dodge Ram, with flood lights on a roll bar, two burly men riding in the bed, and a beefy grill guard on the front came prowling the dirt lanes, round and round as if looking for someone and not finding their target. An intentional threat to someone, either as a threatening show of force, or an actual hit. Apparently I am not the only one with an ex who is not above breaking or bending the law to end someone’s life.

How can one respond with Grace?

It is easy of course to respond not with grace but with a wish to physically end the threat of violence with greater violence. Pre-emptive revenge. So goes the world. Today one sees the crumbling of the social contract we live inside of, and the breaks in the thin veneer of civilization that we take for granted. Covid 19 stresses us, stresses the social contract, and the social contract starts to crumble.

How is one to respond with Grace and Honour?

The others certainly are beyond that. They act with blatant disregard for truth, rightness, goodness, and preservation of the social contract which serves them as well.

Jesus lived in the social contract of the Roman Empire, which contract was imposed and maintained by force in many foreign lands which were then included in the Roman Empire.

Jesus lives in this contract, giving to Caesar what was due Caesar. Jesus teaches not revolution, but bending down to notice those left on the wayside by the progression of the empire. Jesus hears a nobody, a blind beggar, sitting on side of the road calling to him to have mercy. Everyone else tells the man to be quiet, that Jesus has no time for him. Jesus stops, though, and calls Bart to him, and shows him the greatest mercy possible: he forgives him his sins. And oh, Jesus also gives him sight. Bart can see for the first time.

Jesus does this for all of us. If only we dare see. God’s love, poured without end or restraint over us, is impossible to ignore. Once blind and wretched sinners, we see and can respond. Like Bart we can follow Jesus and love God with all our hearts, minds and strength. We can imitate Jesus, and bend down to see, heal and forgive all those the world has left in the dust.

We can entrust those threatening vulnerable people to God’s care, which may be Grace and new life, or God may give the haughty their due.

Either way, we are Christ’s. We stand by the vulnerable to protect them, even if it means it costs us our lives.

Covid 19’s huge stress on each of us and on the social contract does not make us into violent, vicious animals that we were not before. The stresses of life do not make us different. They show to others more clearly who we have been all along. Let us pray that we have learned how to be who Jesus makes us to be: following his Way of Grace and the Cross.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 6

Monday, July 6, 2020

Middle

East

Psalm 103:12

As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.

Romans 5:20

Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Words of Grace For Today

Look at the news of this world. People play stupid games, lying to the media, trying to turn what was not into something that supposedly was. Or they try to turn what was into something that was not. This ‘spin’, or clearly named, these blatant lies, have an immense destructive effect on us all. At the core of it all, truth is sacrificed over and over again to gain someone’s unfair advantage. Those lies always come back to bite their authors and adherents.

It is too easy to condemn those who play those games. How can they get away with the lies? What is wrong with people that they do this?

Closer to home, there are people who make such bald-faced lies, for their own advantage, sacrificing even their faith communities, in order to gain some empty advantage. How can people think they get away with these lies? How can others who participate in the lies justify what they do? Do they think that God does not see what they do? Do they think they are somehow exempt from their own judgment day before Jesus?

At home, we each live lies, little lies, sometimes big lies, with each other. We say it is to get along. We say it is necessary to keep the peace. We rationalize, justify, and hold ourselves to be correct, even when we know we are guilty as guilty can be.

I, of course, do no such thing. I am better than all that. And you either laugh at that false, self-righteous, self-justifying statement, knowing you wish it were so for yourself, or you quickly jump to judge me for lying about my lying. Layers upon layers pile up of us judging others in order to justify ourselves. There is no end, and like the Romans, under threat from others’ evil deeds we turn to more evil deeds ourselves, we ‘hire assassins’ to eliminate our enemies, until our ‘assassins are hired’ to eliminate us, and then those who ‘hired the assassins’ are eliminated, until only ‘the assassins’ are left to run everything, and when the ‘Goths attack’ there is no one to adequately defend our ‘Rome’, and we and it fall, and fall hard we do, into the dust of history that barely remembers our names or reality, either the truth of who we were or the lies we created to make ourselves into something we never were.

How can God save us from this vicious cycle of deception, scheming, lies and self-destruction?

God removes our sins from us, ‘as far as the east is from the west’. Since we understand that east and west meet on the other side of the planet, today’s image is: as far as one end of the universe is from the other (no ‘worm holes’ or time-space folds or faster than light travel allowed.)

The clarity of how bad we all are, clear and fair judgment on us all, and condemnation of us all is brought by the Law. The Law arrives and appears to increase our sins, though it only makes clear how corrupt we all are even before the Law. The weight of our sins in clear view overwhelms reality and drags us all down into the pit of hell.

Except or DOCH

God is not done with us. God brings the Law to make us all aware how hopeless we all are. Then God sent Jesus to give us his story, of love and grace, which even death cannot defeat. Jesus replaces our sins with his perfect record, again and again as we continue to sin. God does this without demand. God only tells us the old, old story of Jesus and his love. With that story God sets us free from the burden of our sins.

The more the Law clarifies and makes obvious our sins, Grace abounds even more, to set us free.

We are not absolutely free. We are free from our sins. We then can choose (again and again as Grace answers our sins again and again with forgiveness) to whom we will be slaves: to our own sinful will, owned by the Evil One, the Devil, OR we can choose to respond to Grace, by being slaves to Jesus’ will for us.

God created us to be able to choose, to choose to be slaves to Jesus, and therein to sacrifice everything we could or would claim as our own rights. We sacrifice, as Jesus did, in order that others will know God’s Grace is for them! God created us, precisely so that we could do this with every opportunity life provides to us.

Without sin burdening us, with the Holy Spirit guiding and enabling us, with Jesus’ example before us, and with God’s love overwhelming us, we can miraculously (by God’s power) actually choose and follow through with thoughts, words and deeds that allow God’s Grace to flow through us to others.

And sin has no bite in us anymore.

Such is Grace.

Until the next moment we must choose, and we choose to pretend, that of course it is not so with me, I am free from sin. And by that lie we enslave ourselves to sin once again, and God starts all over with us … and again God starts all over with us … and again God starts all over with us. God never abandons us, not even as Covid 19 increase the stress and challenges and our sins increase moment by moment. God never abandons us and God’s Grace overwhelms us.

Thanks be to God!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 4

Saturday, July 4, 2020

God’s Yes

Our amen in the weeds.

Leviticus 26:9

Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.

2 Corinthians 1:20

For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Understanding to learn God’s commandments is a child’s first step in following Jesus. Next the difficult part comes in following the commandments. The ten commandments are a beginning to what following Jesus’ commandments (to love God, self, others and even ones’ enemies) are all about.

Love is a life long challenge that is worth every bit of energy and time we put into it.

We are only able to follow through because God promises to love us, accept us, forgive us, and set us on a path to follow the Holy Spirit guiding us to do God’s will.

God’s promises are always Yes to life according to God’s will.

Trusting God we can put an amen ready on our lips for every occasion.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 3

Friday, July 3, 2020

Beauty

is God’s daily word

“I love you, enjoy!”

Psalm 119:73

Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.

1 John 3:23

This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Words of Grace For Today

Following Christ brings us to recognize we cannot do anything good on our own. Only by the Grace of God carried in us by the Holy Spirit can we do anything good at all.

Choosing to follow God’s commandments is something we can do. Actually fulfilling the commandments that we choose to follow is something else. Choosing to not follow God’s commandments is something we easily can both choose and accomplish on our own.

So when we hear, that we should learn God’s commandments, or obey Jesus’ commands, that may seem a simple thing. It is certainly not. It is impossible.

What does Jesus command us to do: To love the Lord our God before anything else and to love one another and ourselves as he loved us, and to love even our enemies.

Because God steps into our lives and replaces our track record of our past and future with Jesus’ track record, we can not only imagine fulfilling this commandment to love, we can live it in thought, word, and deed.

1 John 3 describes this love:

¹⁶We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. ¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Simple, just choose and do it, Right?

Not so simple, we get to choose and do that, and are aware we can, only when the Holy Spirit wakens us to see through our worldly goods to comprehend our brothers’ and sisters’ needs and our ability to meet them, even if it may hurt us a bit or a lot to help them.

That’s loving with the same love that Jesus loves us.

The words spoken to one’s beloved are precious. They words spoken and not lived are the most powerful destroyer of speaker and the person spoken to. Love is powerful, wield it carefully. Wield it and trust mostly that the Holy Spirit will guide you to love as God loves us all.

It isn’t ‘rocket surgery’* after all.

It’s life.

…

*just in case ‘rocket surgery’ is not understood (since it is a construct):

the idioms are rocket science and brain surgery, both needing a great deal of knowledge, skill and even an artist’s creativity. Used as examples of work that is beyond most people.

Rocket surgery is a comic’s play of an idiot’s mix of the two, (though some say it was Don Cherry’s mix, go figure) which makes it even less attainable by the speaker, or as I have used, it is accessible for even the most confused.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 1

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

What Joy!

To See God, filling the heaven and earth!

Jeremiah 23:24

Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.

1 Corinthians 8:3

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.

Words of Grace For Today

What is it that we do, in order to try to hide in secret places from God?

We try to be little ‘godlets’, masters of our lives and of others. Sometimes it even looks like we succeed. The delusion required to make it look like we succeed is fascinatingly stupid.

God is with us always, not tagging along, but we are in God’s omnipresence wherever we go. God sees our foolish pretending to be masters of most anything. Ah, how painful that must be for God.

We all sin. Most often it seems people try to pretend that their sin is something else, or that someone else did their sin and that they did not do it, or that they really did not do that evil thing, but something else that only appears to look like sin. The cover up is worse than the sin.

We ALL sin. The only way forward to goodness is not to pretend at all. Certainly we cannot move forward to health if we pretend that we know enough to talk, manipulate or manoeuvre our way out of the sin we’ve done.

The only way forward towards an abundant life is to already trust that God will forgive us, freely, without cost to us. To trust that the price for our sins (every last one of them) is already paid for by Jesus’ death. To trust that the loss of God’s own life is recouped in the resurrection. With that trust (that only the Holy Spirit can give to us – but which we certainly can refuse) then we can face God, deserving condemnation and knowing that we will be forgiven. Not just that our past sin is wiped away. We also have our future life renewed, so that hope is real. So that our expectations can be for a good future for us, for our loved ones, for God’s people around us, and for the strangers among us on this planet earth – so that we can expect (and thereby help bring to be) good things to happen.

What joy!

It is no less than being told our lives are over … and then we hear that miraculously we are healthy and will live. Or it is to know that everything good we have worked for and been and become will be taken from us (not possessions, but our selves). We anticipate with horror living as mere shells, having the innermost things that make up who we are ripped out of us and shredded away to dust and water. Then we discover that, though our expectations were accurate, by some inexplicable change in history and current events, we are left intact, whole and looking forward to living a full life for years to come.

What Joy!

How different it is for people like the church council who have breached their own constitution and legal process to falsify a vote to hire a man who is not qualified to be a pastor. What kind of guts and prideful foolishness does that take? What kind of innermost self are those people made up of that they brashly contravene their own constitution, and work to deceive and lie and cover up what they are doing? To be them must be terrible!

For to be them is as terrible as it is to be any and every other kind of sinner who cannot find forgiveness in the ‘godlets’ they have perversely begun to worship.

Catching Covid 19, whether one barely has symptoms, one suffers symptoms and recovers (either with chronic issues afterwards or not), or whether one succumbs into death (and still have the promise of life eternal) is not as bad as losing one’s self, that spirit that God has breathed into us at our baptisms, which gives us life. That is a horror that never stops no matter what one stuffs into one’s life.

With profound gratitude, even as we are caught in the snare of the Evil One, we trust that we will find our way forward to goodness and health, but only through God’s unending Grace, forgiveness and the gift of renewed life.

What joy.