Daylight – Page 17

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 15

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Were our ancestors Vikings or Voyagers?

That may be where our joy of canoeing comes from.

Genesis 12:4

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Galatians 3:7

You see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.

Words of Grace For Today

Ancestor stories are one’s identity. Who are we in this time and place starts with who are we descended from. It hardly stops there, though one’s ancestry often reveals more than the obvious, like what hereditary diseases are you susceptible to and what precautions can you take or preparations if precautions are of little help. Like what values have you been surrounded with as you grow/grew up. Like why are you fascinated with a particular way of looking at the world (which may influence your profession or avocations.)

Is your hair orange, your eyes green? Is your hair black, your face oval? Are you short and stocky, tall and lean? Are you near sighted or far sighted? Do you have a ‘liver spot’ on your left hand between your wrist and your thumb? These are interesting though not too significant.

Most significant is your identity in relationship to the Creator of the universe. What heritage do you have, can you claim, do you trust and rely on? What faith have your ancestors handed on to you? Was it life giving for them? Is it life giving for you? Does it offer the best of life to those around you, or is it a selfish faith that destroys others around you or different than you?

Abram and Sarai are characters in our ancestors stories of our relationship with God. It is clear enough that while Abram and Sarai were historical people, real people, the stories that are told and the characters developed in those stories are most certainly a collection of stories that belong to a number of historical people. They are then a collection of our ancestors’ stories attributed to two individuals. That’s a marvellous way to collect stories about one’s ancestors, and it is done for us.

While we may or may not be from the actual blood lines of Abraham and Sarah, by faith we are ‘adopted’ by God into the family of their children, and made children of God. DNA testing is not relevant. Here if one views ancestry as both nature and nurture, we are included by virtue of nurture. That’s a marvellous thing as well. It’s like being made honorary member of an indigenous family by virtue of one’s participation in and contribution to the life of that family. Yet God makes us members of Abraham and Sarah’s family, and children of God, not by virtue of anything we do or are. It is all gift. Undeserved gift.

That is something most marvellous.

God includes us, though we are strangers, and though we are not worthy, nor have we inherited from anywhere something that makes us worthy. Pure gift.

So into what kind of family are we adopted?

Abram and Sarai’s story begins: at his ripe old age of 75 God calls Sarai and Abram to uproot themselves from everything that is home, and to venture out into God’s world, to a land unknown and foreign and a family that is not yet and will be long in starting.

No matter our age, God calls us to uproot ourselves from all that would hinder us from following Jesus’ Way. That Way is simple to describe: we follow Jesus’ example of sacrificial, unconditional love, giving everything, even our very lives, so that others may live and live abundantly. (That’s got next to nothing to do with material abundance, it’s life abundance!)

Covid 19 or not, Christians have always been the people who volunteered to stay and care for the sick and dying as others moved away from diseased areas and inexplicable widespread death.

Our ancestry is marvellous, and it challenges us to go places we have not imagined, to do things we hardly envisioned possible, and to share that astounding attitude of God towards us with everyone: that God loves us, unconditionally.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 14

Monday, September 14, 2020

Rocks

Rock on With the Wonders of Light

The Light of Christ

Isaiah 41: 14-16

Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you insect Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. 15 Now, I will make of you a threshing-sledge, sharp, new, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff. You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. Then you shall rejoice in the Lord; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.

Romans 5:11

More than that [i.e. having been reconciled, we will be saved by Christ’s life] we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Words of Grace For Today

Worm Jacob and Insect Israel, judging the mountains!

Jesus reconciling wretched sinners, so that we can boast of the mighty sacrificial love of God.

When we know our place, there is no joy in threshing, crushing, and scattering the mountains and our enemies.

There is only boasting in what God has done for us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Who can give us life?

There is no life in judging others, especially not for what you have done yourself in order to make yourself appear better than you are. Worms and insects abound and do not make good judges.

Doch, to receive reconciliation, that is to receive as a gift that everything between us and God is made right, not by our own feeble and futile efforts, but by God’s own miraculous work through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now that is a gift that keeps on giving every minute right into eternity.

Now every day, the simplest visions of light, colour and hope spread God’s glory before us to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated.

We may be mere worms and insects, doch through God’s own will and work we are made to be saints, bearers of God’s blessings of light and grace for all the world.

Shine Jesus shine, in us and through us.

Let Jesus wonders be scattered throughout the universe.

Let us remember the marvellous light of Christ, even on cloudy days when it rains, even when Covid 19 still runs rampant, aided by fools and deniers and ‘I’m done’rs’.

Because God has made everything right between us and God, the our lives are made right in every way. Challenges become opportunities to share God’s grace, in our mundane tasks and among our enemies that work to kill us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 8

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Tilted Log,

Tilted Water,

Tilted World.

Not the end, like an arcade game, tilted, cheated.

God gives us all another chance to make it right, now.

Ezekiel 20:44

You shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or corrupt deeds, O house of Israel, says the Lord God.

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

In a country, powerful and wealthy, rich in precious resources, a country known for it’s open spaces and opportunities … for those who had the power and wealth (at the expense of everyone else) … In this marvellous country those with power and wealth constructed history from fiction, leaving truth behind, leaving all human rights aside, as they dealt with those not of their kind.

Inexplicable deaths, inexplicable disappearances, people suddenly relocating far afield, and never anyone of the wealthy and powerful were held to account for how they killed, forced disappearances, and terrorized people until they, if they were quick enough, moved as far away as possible.

Police and Courts enabled this with arrests and convictions of innocent people for things that never happened. More often though it was the blind eye they turned to the deaths, disappearances and carloads of people moving away under cover of night, leaving their property and wealth to be assumed by the already powerful and wealthy.

With cries for justice for their own kind, raped, murdered, disappeared (horrendous as these atrocities are) the powerful and wealthy ignore that more than four times as many people not of their kind die of violence, physical and psychological leading to suicides unspeakable in number. Even more are maimed, disappeared, or forced to flea for their lives.

Leaders, from among those who used to rule, not so justly either, rise up. With protests for justice, peaceful in organization and perverted by agents of the wealthy and powerful into riots, these new leaders manage (despite the violence wrought amongst them by their enemies) peacefully gain the power, though they do not have the wealth. Two leaders among the new take primary positions.

Unlike the leaders of previous times, recent and far past, they follow Madiba and Tutu’s lead. Instead of assuming the same injustices against others and for themselves, they offer something new, forgiveness. Forgiveness for all the previous leaders of the once powerful and wealthy. To receive forgiveness and amnesty a person only needs to appear in public and tell the truth of what they have done, the whole truth.

In the new powerful previous leaders from among the women are welcome, even encouraged to work to build a just and fair country, so that regardless of gender or previous position, one is valued for what one can offer for the new country.

The new leaders have taken to heart, head and hands Jesus’ command to love even one’s enemies. They have understood well that we shall know that ‘I am’ is the Lord, when God deal with all people for God’s name’s sake, not according to our evil ways or corrupt deeds.

This country is our country, your country, the country of the present as it moves into some time of the future. This country is God’s Kingdom, here on earth.

Let all with ears, hear; with minds, listen; with hearts, wisely understand; with blessings, forgive. For God will come to judge … and shock us all with Grace … even today.

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 26

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Left Behind by Accident or as Sacrifice?

Christ reconciles us to God, no sacrifice required!

We have a blemish free record, no matter how many ‘gloves’ we’ve lost.

Isaiah 43:24-25

You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Colossians 1:21-22

You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.

Words of Grace For Today

The sacrifices made to God have changed through the centuries and generations. Once we offered birds, animals, and before that other people, even children. We knew that, having done something wrong, having sinned, we owed God payment for our sins.

When we know we have sinned our minds recognize how estranged we’ve made ourselves from God. Knowing what we’ve done we become hostile to God as well.

We ‘dig our own grave’. Yet God does not leave us there.

No sacrifice by us is sufficient to pay for what we have done, and continue to do, and will do. God knew this, knows this. God sent Jesus, his Son, to sacrifice himself, the one last sacrifice needed to set things right between us and God, between all humans and God.

Nothing is needed on our part.

Now since God sets us right with God, holy and blameless … well the possibilities are astronomical, and wondrous.

Jesus calls us and the Holy Spirit equips us to be the voice, hands, and feet of Christ on earth, extending unconditional love to others, providing justice based on truth combined with mercy and wisdom, and blessing all people with more than just the basics of life. As the Holy Spirit equips us we can offer others abundant life. That may require sacrifice on our part, yet all we have is given to us, so it is not really ours to give up, it is ours to share with everyone.

Makes for a wondrous life for us, and for all people.

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 18

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Shadows.

We may only see Shadows

But they point to the Light.

Psalm 100:5

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures for ever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Titus 3:4-5

But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

We try so hard. In life we try so hard to make life turn out our own way.

God moved with love to save us. God did not wait for us to do what is right. God jumps right into the middle of all our plans and rescues us from our wretched sins, sets us back into good life, and calls us to be the instruments of Grace for others.

Amazing Grace. You know the story most likely of John Newton, ships’ captain who loaded slaves in Africa and delivered them into the New World. God reached out and touched his heart. He gave up slave trading and became a pastor. He penned the hymn, Amazing Grace, as an expression of profound and utter thanks for what God had done for him, saving himself from his life of sin, carrying for profit people carried as cargo with little care for their survival or decency or that they are humans.

There are many ways in every age that we treat other people cruelly, demeaning them, as less than human; all to think that somehow we are better than others. Ahh, the sin in it, which destroys our victims, so many bystanders, and even ourselves.

We may Gaslight, scapegoat, and falsely convict others, not once, but over and over again. Even then God reaches out to us and offers us new life, life renewed, life based on truth, and dependent on God’s goodness, loving-kindness, mercy, steadfast love, and faithfulness – for generation upon generation.

From our wretched existence God rescues us.

God loves us unconditionally, when we deserve nothing, not even the breath we breathe.

If we are fortunate, we will have time in life to learn to share God’s goodness, loving-kindness, mercy, steadfast love, and faithfulness with all people in for our generation.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 17

Monday, August 17, 2020

Royal Purple

God’s Glory and Favour

For All to See

Zechariah 8:23

Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’

Acts 2:46-47

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Words of Grace For Today

Living with thanks, and with success that others recognize and want to be a part of, to join in. This is to have the goodness of heart and faith, of a purity and strength that others will …

No … that’s all wrong.

The way of following Jesus does not guarantee at all that others will notice the abundant life that God gives to us. That kind of prosperity is not to be equated with being blessed by God, otherwise there are so many evil ways to get there, and the ends could be seen to justify the means. This is exactly what the Devil wishes us to do. Reduce following Jesus into a code that we keep and which keeps others out.

Jesus embraces all nations, all creeds, all colours, all every kind of human. We humans are the ones who create artificial boundaries and exclusions in order to pretend we are special.

Jesus brings all nations to our doorstep to show us how varied the Kingdom of God is, and how much work there is for us in welcoming all people. So they flock to us for help. It is not because we are special, it is because God is special.

This account from Acts is remarkable, that the followers of Jesus had the goodwill of the people. That was in some ways true and in so many other ways it was not true. Jesus was a threat to so many people and so many people wanted to be done with him … and it will not take long before the followers of Jesus are hunted and slain like vermin in the floor boards.

In preparation for the persecutions to come, God gives them a respite, a time of calm, a time of relative safety … before the persecutions begin. Then all hell breaks loose against them.

Whether we are grieving a loss, reorganizing our lives after a loss, resting from the ‘funerals’ or caught in the middle of the persecutions, Jesus has a task for us. Even or especially in the middle of this Covid-19 pandemic Jesus’ task for us is to welcome the stranger into our midst, just as they are. We get to exercise God’s unconditional love.

What a life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 16

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Looking out from down low

Psalm 136:23

It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures for ever.

Hebrews 13:3

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

Words of Grace For Today

It is so easy to forget our past, when we were so much less than we are now. Become wealthy and soon one easily forgets what it is like to struggle to survive without enough money. With God and God’s people it is different, though.

Become educated and it is easy to forget how it is to be ignorant and vulnerable. With God and God’s people it is different, though.

Yet as one becomes more educated one learns that one really did and still does know so little. This is closer to how it is in our relationship with God, if we care at all for the Truth of Jesus’ love and life for us.

When God forgives us our sins, it may seem easy to forget our sins, now that Grace has saved us. We can easily pretend or delude ourselves that we somehow no longer need forgiveness, though as we grow, if we learn to be honest with ourselves then we recognize that we still sin, and more profoundly and profusely then we care ever to admit. We desperately need to be forgiven, more it seems each passing day.

When we learn this anew each day, then it makes sense to give thanks to God for all that we are, for we have and are nothing on our own. Only by God’s hand do we have anything given to us as stewards of it, nor are we anything other than the chemicals our body is made of, except that the Holy Spirit breathes life into us each day.

As we remember how much we daily depend on God’s good Graces, then it is not difficult to remember each day to pray for and work to support those in prison.

Yes, there are some real criminals in prison. They are people capable of great destruction to property and person without much thought of the damage they do. There are also many minorities, especially men, who have been taken advantage of and invited into a world where crime is the only way of life. There also are a great number of people, men and women, who are falsely convicted and never did anything to deserve to be put in prison.

Someone decided they would be their target. They would be lied about, false witnesses would be found against the person, and false reports and charges are brought against them … and judges easily lie about the evidence before them and convict people, on the basis of easily identifiable lies. The measure of correct judgments is that a fully informed, reasonable person would agree with the judge’s decision. But one has to be willing to lie, and reasonable has to be not that the person is actually guilty, but someone with enough money or power wants this person convicted, and the fully informed part of that has to be understood as meaning one had to understand that someone with wealth or power or a sadistic habit has to be satisfied … and yet another innocent person goes to jail.

We are to remember all the people in jails, not from our place of comfort and privilege, but as if the prison director had us in custody and was using the guards, some violent, some friendly, to sadistically ‘play’ with us, to torment us. And that some health care people working in prisons go out of their way to provide inappropriate, even deadly health care to prisoners/us; because if we are in jail then surely we deserve no good health care.

For people tortured, well it helps to have been tortured at some point, so that we can not only empathize with those who are tortured, but that we can also remember what it was like to be tortured.

If you have made it thus far in life without being tortured, then watch perhaps 12 Years a Slave, for an insightful presentation of what being enslaved is like, and to be tortured, having one’s life taken from one, piece by piece.

Then we can wake to each morning, give God thanks for all we have, and fervently pray for others’ in real need. One does not need much to be thankful. One needs only eyesight to see the world’s beauty. Or eyes to see the people in the neighbourhood. Or ears to hear the loons’ cry echoing across the water. Then one can be thankful, that one has something, has eyes, has ears.