For thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.’
Acts 4:29
And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness.
Words of Grace For Today
The people are just returned from exile and Jeremiah wants them to sing with loud gladness, to give praise as they beg God to save the remnant, what little remained after yet another attempt to wipe out God’s people.
Wiping out peoples is as old as it gets. Erase them. Eradicated them. Burn them to the ground. Be rid of them.
Not hard to feel that way. I get that way about wasps that are so plentiful out my door that it’s hard to get anything done. Let them be no more! All of them, Gone!
God does not guide us, God’s people, to be so with our enemies. Instead, God calls us to extend God’s mercy even to them.
That’s a bold move in a world that eats you alive when you are merciful. That’s as old as it gets, too.
So we pray often, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness.
The courage to know that grace is the only way to live a life that is abundant as God created us to live, even when that may well mean the backlash is enough to wipe one out.
To have that courage requires that one know how, when one has almost been wiped off the face of the earth, to give God praise and thanks with great gladness.
To whom else are we going to turn for life abundant?
How else are we going to enjoy it, if not celebrating in the face of adversity?
Today is another one of those days: lots of challenges, many from our enemies; lots of cause for thanks and praise given to God, and overwhelming joy.
O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Matthew 21:15-16
But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’
Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
Words of Grace For Today
Thieves struck.
Simple deception taking things that can be fenced for money for drugs, and
I am left without essential tools and money that I am so short of: my life is not threatened, but bankruptcy moves closer and closer, which may lead to my death, if it is not brought on sooner by other dark powers.
More, I am betrayed yet again.
When Jesus does the amazing things of healing people of all kinds of illnesses, or bringing people together to share, trusting each other, the leaders know that Jesus is undermining the very reality that their power over the people thrives on and requires: fear. Fear of each other. Fear of those in power. Fear of those who speak the truth. Fear of anything and everything. Fear fuels greed. Greed makes people predictable and easily manipulated.
When Jesus does these amazing things, the children (and with this term is meant also the simple people in the temple) sing out his praise, honouring him as the descendant of David that he is. Jesus has calmed their fears so that they can see clearly the world they live in.
They see Jesus and know him to be the Son of David, the one promised and hoped for for generations.
They see the leaders in the temple, and know the corruption that guides their leading the people, not in the people’s best interest, but to the leaders’ advantages.
They see the poverty they are caught in, the forces that keep them down, and the promise that they will have life abundant even today. They have begun to realize the blessings of life are not given nor taken by possessing power, riches, and reputation.
Looking at the world around them, they see the wonders that God has created and rightly ask how it is that God cares a wit at all about humans, so small we are in the universe. They see clearly that though humans are so small in the universe, though they are so small in their own world, God cares most about them, and showers blessings on them each day, blessings that others toss aside as if they were mere trifles.
Today, the summer solstice, a 50th birthday, a day of light, and the shortest night of the year … even today the children (the simple, honest people blessed by God even if poverty holds them the rest of their lives,myself among them) are able to sing God’s praise with clarity. It is that clarity and truth that threatens corrupt powers, falsely gained riches, and those who parade themselves as leaders. The Light of Christ always shines. Today it shines intensely on the darkness of those who steal by deception, who take from others to feed their addictions and amass their wealth, who claim to lead the people from positions of honour.
Today all glory is God’s as Christ’s Light shines revealing all the dark of human hearts and deeds and the brightness of God’s blessings.
Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’
Words of Grace For Today
It’s all too easy to say, ‘Yes, I have God before all other gods!’ And then run off to serve the requirements and demands of life as we have chosen to put together for ourselves of those promoted or sloughed off on or left for the dregs by this society. Still we choose a life, and it’s demands are ‘other gods’ to us, taking our lives and life energies and time, so that we barely have anything left for God.
But we still say, ‘I have no other gods before God!’
Everyone agrees with us, because they do the same deceptive dance.
This civilization, it can be argued, requires this of us. God will have to make do. So we choose this civilization that is more barbaric behind the scenes, behind closed doors, in dark alleys, and all too often in the open bright of the day for all to see. Then we are aghast at the barbarism displayed. We demand better gun control. We demand better care in senior’s homes. We demand more housing for the homeless. We demand fairer taxes. We demand sanctions against the unwarranted aggressors.
There is nothing we are able to do, because we are not willing to pay the price of eliminating all barbarism, for it would take too much from us.
Which, if the cost would be nuclear bombs going off in North America near cities and military bases, I guess I’m not quite willing to pay that price either (since I live near the biggest air base in Canada).
So how can we honestly, wholeheartedly, say with Peter, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’
How can we honestly and wholeheartedly follow the first commandment, putting God before all else, and not allowing anything else to gain the stature of a god in our lives?
We cannot.
Thank God, God knows this long before we figure it out.
God planned before time for this, too.
God forgives, cleanses, and renews us, and sends us out to tell of God’s great mercy and bountiful grace that saves us again and again from ourselves and all evil … and God gives us the Holy Spirit to guide us so that we can at least strive and somewhat have no other gods before God, and know that only Jesus has the words of eternal life. So we turn again, to Jesus, in prayer begging for forgiveness and life, and in thanks for the promise of life abundant.
Just another day, God watching our every thought, cheering us on to blessed living sharing God’s wonders with all people.
He satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.
Philippians 4:19
My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
To be satisfied.
When one has so much, that may seem to be a cart blanche that will fill one’s every wish, a great fulfillment of whatever one can dream of.
When one has not much, and really not enough, to survive even one day at a time, God’s promise that the thirsty will be satisfied and the hungry will be filled, and not just filled but filled with good things and the promise that God will satisfy our every need … well there just is not better news that anyone could give us. No more going hungry. No more enduring thirst with nothing good to drink. (That’s not a reference to finding a good Scotch, or a good wine. It means good, clean, cool water!)
To be satisfied.
For most of the people in the world, it’s great news!
If you really though that ‘satisfying the thirsty’ meant Jesus provides a good wine or scotch, then this probably is not good news for you at all. Someone is going to help God provide the food and drink, and all that satisfies people’s every need. That probably means those that have more than they need.
So today, for those already with all their needs met, is probably going to be another bad day. But for those of us who need to work just to stay alive another day, God’s promises give us a boost.
Food, Drink, and all our needs. Yes, thank you God!
It’s going to be a rainy, thunderstorm kind of day, so sit safe and work when you can. Just because God promises, doesn’t mean that we are not going to be the ones doing the work to make it happen! Rest for bed at night. Joyful, thankfully onward. There’s lots to be done.
You shall worship the Lord your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you.
Matthew 6:31-32
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
Words of Grace For Today
Quite sure sickness is rampant among us. Coming out the back end of the Covid pandemic, and it’s not done with us yet by any means, is anyone ready to say that as we worship God our food and bread is blessed and we have all sickness taken away from among us? Covid is simply so contagious that measures to stop it are useless (well not really but people are no longer willing to pay the small price of wearing masks and keeping physical distance and restricting their social interactions to a small group of people so … well so measures are not kept and therefore governments are giving up on keeping them). The greatest sickness is exemplified by the guy who says Covid was a big hoax. Tell that to the families of all the people who died!
I’m sure that if I do not work hard for wood to heat with in the winter, and persist to find money to buy groceries with and show up at the food bank to supplement the ever smaller amount of groceries I can afford, and, and, and … I am sure if I do not strive heftily, I will meet my physical death.
So these passages are difficult to hear.
The truth of the matter is, when we worry about food and water, rather than actually working to ensure we have them, our worry sucks the life right out of us.
The truth of the matter is, sickness will never be wiped out from among us, not completely, and when we either think that it can be and behave like it has been or we ignore that sickness is part of life, we endanger ourselves and so many people around us.
The truth of the matter is that God created the world and said it was good! Hunger, poverty, drought, thirst, illness and death are part and parcel of our being able to choose to either love God or not.
Today is another day of opportunity: to ruin our days with worry and denials of sicknesses and death OR to enjoy our days with thanks for everything God gives us, and appropriate work to secure our daily needs and have enough to share with those without enough, and to live sensibly and cautiously so as to foster our own health and the health of those around us.
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Ephesians 4:26-27
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.
Words of Grace For Today
Anger is many things. Actually we use the word anger to mean many different things often not realizing that we are talking about different things. It makes conversations about anger difficult.
Anger can mean 1) the emotion we have when we are hurt by another person. It is not properly anger, but the precursor to anger. We may or may not know by whom, or what it is that hurts. It’s just the hurt is known (or thought to be known) to be caused by another person. Our emotion is the hurt of being done poorly to by another person. This is purely an emotion. It cannot be avoided. If we deny the emotion it will grow on it’s own. We can (sometimes) pause our further response, let the emotion settle (sometimes counting to 90 works, by which time the emotion will subside – if it does not re-fire from a repeat of a hurt, or some replaying of the hurt as if it were real again). When the emotion has settle we are able to rationally choose how to respond to the hurtful event.
If course we can feed the hurt and it will grow into anger proper:
Anger can mean 2) the emotion we allow hurt to develop into when we do not let it settle. This happens in increments. A slight intensification is that we identify who did us the hurt and we focus our hurt back on them as resentment which loops back on us as more hurt, until the hurt is so great it is anger. We are mad or angry at another person.
Anger can mean 3) the emotion of being angry at a person to being obsessed or overwhelmed with the hurt that this particular person has done us. We want to strike back, not that we will or have, but that we want to ‘get even’ as if that would sooth our own hurt. It will not. But that is the illogic of being hurt and letting it grow to overwhelm us so that it ‘needs’ resolution.
Finally anger can mean 4) an emotion that is past anger, more correctly referred to as rage. We become consumed by the irrational need to ‘get even.’ This feeds on itself until we somehow find a release. Out of rage come acts of revenge. Rage is beyond thinking about ‘getting even’ or even thinking. It is the motivation for irrational acts that will damage the other. The problem is all too often we misidentify the person who hurt us in the first place, and secondly no act of revenge can ever relieve our pain. It can only lead to a false sense of self-righteousness about planning and maybe carrying out an unjustifiable act of hurting another person.
This act of revenge can be limited to words, spoken or written, or it can involve physical acts of violence against the other person.
If we allow hurt to grow into anger and anger to intensify, and then to overwhelm us as rage there is little that can be done to stop it. Best is to stop it while we can. It’s not likely we can stop it later on from growing into acts of revenge. We ought not let the sun set on our hurt-anger. It only takes 90 seconds to let that emotion to dissipate.
Out anger, when acted out in acts of revenge start the hurt-angry cycle for others, often not even the person(s) who hurt us in the first place.
Being hurt is not avoidable, but the rest really is.
Words to the wise: Learn to speak soft words to oneself when one is hurt, so that the hurt is taken in stride. Learn to speak soft words to others so that their hurt (whether it really is caused by us or not) does not grow into anger towards us.
Life is full of hurt.
Life has more than it’s fair share of anger coming and going for all of us.
Life can be miserable if we seek revenge as a way to resolve our hurt that has festered into rage.
Rage never brings peace. It creates more hurt in us and in others.
We can choose to wait 90 seconds and then rationally respond to hurt. Best to stop hurt before it grows into anger.
Simple wisdom.
Hard to live.
Every day is an opportunity to practice choosing how we respond until it becomes second nature to let hurt dissipate. That’s the beginning of finding peace with a world that does not seem to want us to know peace
‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!
1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Words of Grace For Today
David built himself a fine palace. He wanted more. He wanted to build God a temple, God’s own house on earth. That would demonstrate to all that David served God … well, really it would demonstrate that God served David, so God says no.
Solomon moves ahead with David’s plan to build God a home, a temple on earth, even though Solomon is wise enough to know that God cannot be contained by … well, God cannot be contained by anything! Solomon builds the temple so the people have a place to go to pray to God and know that God hears them. Of course God hears us wherever we pray, but sometimes we people want more. We want to be convinced by mind games others play on us, that God is with us.
It’s hardly ever enough for us humans to know that God is with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us. We want more.
The verse from 1 John points to how we frail humans can fully know that God is with us. When God’s love is perfected in us as we love one another, then, though no one can ever see God, we can know that God lives in us.
True: God lives in us. True: when we love one another it is God in us that makes that possible. False: then we must work to love one another to convince ourselves that God lives in us. Nope, doesn’t work like that.
Start with God. Continue with God is for us. Then on to trusting that God lives with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us.
And we want more.
So we go off on all sorts of quests to achieve the unachievable in order to fully live life, leaving behind us in our dust the only thing that gives us life at all, and full life at that: that God lives in us.
There is no more. From that we can be more than we can imagine, bringing God’s love and grace to other people.
Still we want more.
So we pray: God save us … and give us more.
That’s what the Devil plays with, and it is that which brings so much suffering to us, other people, and to God who lives with us.
If we could only admit that we see God every day, in the most ordinary and the most extraordinary things and events. We would know that life on this planet earth is everything because God lives in us, walks with us, hears us, and guides us through every day.
Oh well, today like every day, we will do the best we can to reflect God’s love to all people and creation!
… the rest we trust God will somehow forgive, mend, and renew.
Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’ Selah
And I say, ‘It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’
Romans 5:20
But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more!
Words of Grace For Today
It hurts.
That sums up much of the evil that we encounter in life, whether we are the cause or others are the cause.
It hurts.
We cry to God, but it seems God does not answer.
Selah
[Selah is an unknown word in Hebrew that shows up as a refrain in the Psalms – ‘God be gracious!’ or ‘God hear us!’ … or it may mean ‘so it is’ … or it may just mean ‘Sigh!’ or some other onomatopoeia.]
There is nothing more hurtful than to have all the evidence before us that God has turned from us and condemned us, that God has ‘forgotten to be gracious and in anger shut up his compassion!
Were God to abandon us to our own ways and means and the Devil’s guile, deceptions, and seductions there would be no rescue, no respite, no release from such a terrible state.
In all circumstances, though, no matter who convinced we are otherwise, God does not abandon us. From all evil and the hurt it does to us people, God still reaps greater demonstrations of grace. While we dig ourselves deeper and deeper in the muck of life, God shows how powerful Jesus’ saving love is for us. God’s love is always more powerful than any evil we can make or be subject to.
A young man pulled a 32’ foot bumper pull camper in to the random camping area a few nights ago. He tried to pull it on the ‘Low Road’, through trees and turns that no one has ever even tried to pull a camper except for the first 30 feet, and that only with a 12’ camper. He did not smash the camper sides against any tree, though. Instead he caught the roots of the first tree with the hitch jack, bending it back 30⁰. Which means he probably did not have a weight distributing hitch in place. He left the foot by the root where it was ripped off the jack. The propane tanks were taken off and the regulator left hanging in disarray. The battery was missing as was the cover to the battery case. On one side half the lug nuts were missing on one wheel, and the lug nuts were loose on the other wheel (one barely still on it’s lug). A support set of boards, screwed together for stability was dropped 100’ away.
It had all the signs of being a stolen camper, though the young man and woman returned last night at 3 am, and ‘parked’ their big Ram truck next to the camper where they had left it, backed into Lake3 or Wet3, which is always soggy unless it’s near drought conditions. When they tried to pull out with the truck the front end sank into the soggy grass covered ground and (from the hours of the truck roaring ways) they spun it deeper and deeper into the muck.
This morning the truck sits on it’s oil pan and lower frame under the engine, a jack is set up half way back on one side, rocks and branches are on the ground or poked into the holes made by the wheels. A straight edge shovel stands poked into the soft ground.
He needs it lifted off the frame or a big tow truck to pull him out. By grace there are people who will help him, people who have big equipment. People who once helped me out of my folly of trying to pull a camper through soft sand. I had three days more to work my way out of that and the winch pulled the camper and truck back up on top the sand and out. The truck and camper were not bottomed out, though. I had enough sense not to keep spinning the wheels when there was no movement forward or back.
When we try to get ourselves out by spinning our wheels, they act as little shovels, round and round they go, digging a deeper hole in the muck of life, sending us deeper and deeper.
Selah.
Our only hope is help, help sent by God.
Grace abounds.
Love is more powerful than Evil.
God’s creative power flows through the universe, like a great big tow truck and winch, pulling us up out of the muck, healing and restoring us. The greater the mess we get ourselves into the more obvious the power of God’s great love becomes, as we are set free.
God’s right hand has not changed, neither God’s left.
Grace brings renewed life to us, every day and every moment that we need it, often before we know we need it so badly.
Be of good courage today, this is (another of) God’s time with us!
God Created Not One Person to Live In the Dust and Ashes
1 Samuel 2:8
He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Words of Grace For Today
God creates the universe, and, though evil and the results of it are always a necessary possibility (so that we can choose to love) God did not create people to live in the dust and ash heaps of life.
God created all people to live with honour,
with respect,
with sufficient clean air, pure water, adequate clothing and shelter,
meaningful labour,
being loved and able to love.
This is God’s blessing for us, that creation provides more than plenty for all to enjoy the necessities of life all their days on earth.
Through history (and certainly today) human greed and self-righteousness have driven so many into the dust and ash heaps of our excesses. What are we to do? Shake our heads in disgust at those living in the dust and ash heaps? Develop religions and ethics that allow us to ignore those poor, those without the necessities of a blessed life? Arrogantly assert that God created us and by our own hard work and merit we have earned and deserved more than the necessities of life even though that has thrown so many other people on to the slags heaps of life?
No!
God’s blessing pour over us.
We need not fear that there is not enough, no matter what the world (that’s all of us) tells us. We can share, and sharing every person will have the necessities of life. That may as well free those caught in the despair of having too much, for having more than enough drives one’s mind and way of living to become unnatural, other than as God created us to live.
