Category: Daylight

It Only Takes …

Saturday, January 22, 2022

It’s quite simple to be

the Light of Christ

For those caught in Darkness.

…

Smile.

Isaiah 9:4

For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Words of Grace For Today

It only takes a smile …

It only takes a smile to express the greatest things in life …

It only takes a smile to express the greatest things in life, which are to know that God has delivered us, and will deliver us,

for God has broken the rod of the oppressor. With tender compassion God has brought light to those who live in darkness and those who live in the shadow of death. God guides our feet (and our whole being) into the way of peace.

It only takes a smile to express thanks to God,

especially when that smile is given freely to strangers in need of hope,

especially when that smile comes flowing from the heart,

especially when that smile is followed by the hand and feet of the body of Christ freeing, and moulding, and assembling all that is needed to provide the basics of life to those who have nothing,

especially when that smile carries a promise that God’s favour is forever and always present in the generous, gracious gifts that share life abundant.

It only takes a smile that flows from the heart to the other person’s heart to say

I love you

and

God loves you.

Free up a smile or two or ten thousand today, add a twinkle from your heart … and make the world bright with hope.

Cleansing and Enough

Thursday, January 6, 2022

If it is enough,

Fly Baby Fly!

Jeremiah 33:8

I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.

1 John 2:2

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Words of Grace For Today

To have enough,

Not too much,

and

not to litle,

and

to know one has enough,

and though one could use more and dream of that perhaps, to still know

that for today, this is enough:

That is the gift God gives the saints.

…

One may think that has to do with things, food, property, profitable work, toys, power, reputation … or a host of other things.

Yet, none of that is all that important: one may consider air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love more important than the others.

What we need enough of is God’s love,

and forgiveness,

and promise of renewed life.

Enough is not that we have God’s gifts and promises, but enough is to know that God provides these essentials for life for all people.

That is enough.

That is enough for this day.

That is enough for any day for any person.

Thanks be to God for giving us enough.

Mercy! Mercy Me! Mercy All!

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

God’s Mercy Shines As Life-giving Light On Us.

It may be below -40⁰ out,

And still we live only by the grace and mercy of God,

that allows us to keep warm and

breathe and

love and

hope

In the Light of Christ

Joshua 24:16-17

Then the people answered, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.’

Jude 1:20-21

But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

Words of Grace For Today

After a full generation wandering in the wilderness, and before that generations in harsh slavery in Egypt (that is the thanks Joseph’s people are given for his saving them all from famine!) Joshua puts to the people a choice, to serve God who has delivered them, or to serve others gods, the gods of the people of the lands they have entered and will enter.

The people respond with a choice that pleases God: they choose to follow Joshua and to follow God, their saviour, who has protected them all the way in every time.

Jude, as many before and since, present to his beloved readers, that they should act righteously, that they should build up their holy faith, that they should pray to the Holy Spirit, that they should keep themselves living and speaking and acting in the love of God, and they should look forward to the mercy of Jesus that will lead them to eternal life.

There is always much to do to be about doing God’s will, living out one’s faith, building up one’s faith, to pray in the Holy Spirit for all people and to keep oneself in the love of God … and to choose to serve the God who has been our Saviour through every generation, and will be our Saviour in every generation yet to come.

Ah, to always be able to make the right choices, and to always do God’s will, live out God’s love for all people, to build up our faith. It is never so with us.

Joshua’s people enter the Promised Land and their stories are just like our stories: we continually choose to do the right thing, to follow God … and then we go about the sinful and evil things, we serve other gods, the gods of the land we are in, the gods of consumerism, the gods of capitalism/greed for money, the gods of privilege and comfort at others’ expense, at the cost of other people’s lives.

The only thing that saves us is …

as always,

the mercy of God demonstrated to us in the story of Jesus the Christ.

The only thing that gives us any hope that God will continue to walk with us, to guide us, to love us … is that in spite of our sins, God continually comes to save us, to redeem us, to forgive us, and to give us new life in God’s love.

From this we hope that our enemies may also experience the truth of God’s mercy and relent from trying to kill us to save themselves (which cannot work for them anyway.)

For this we hope.

And with this hope we live, each day, blessed by God’s doing mercy for us, not our choices.

Judgment

Monday, December 27, 2021

Like Sin

We can say all we want that

those are not weeds

But the sin is always there,

Like the weeds are always there.

Jeremiah 2:35

You say, ‘I am innocent; surely his anger has turned from me.’ Now I am bringing you to judgment for saying, ‘I have not sinned.’

1 Peter 1:13

Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.

Words of Grace For Today

It is one thing to sin terribly. It is another degree of a thing to then claim that one has not sinned. That leaves one unable to redeem oneself.

Even then the only thing that saves us, that can save us, is what God has demonstrated through Jesus. Jesus’ story is clear and simple: God always has loved us, been ready to forgive us, and given us everything we need to know how God is always gracious towards us.

So our hope is set on Jesus Christ’ grace.

We are thus prepared for the action that the Holy Spirit calls us to do, namely living out grace for all other people.

It’s quite a life God has for us, and quite a life we have to offer others.

Celebrate!

Saturday, December 25, 2021

The Light of Christ

Shines Always,

Warm or Cold,

Snow or Rain,

Sunshine or Dark.

So We Celerate.

Deuteronomy 13:1-3

If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, ‘Let us follow other gods’ (whom you have not known) ‘and let us serve them’, you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.

1 John 3:23

And 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

By the faith that God has given us …

by our faith in the grace that God demonstrates in the birth of Jesus Christ,

by the gifts given us by the Holy Spirit,

We celebrate today the birth of Jesus.

Blessed Christmas brings us all to God’s reality for us:

We are blessed

to be able to celebrate.

…

So we celebrate.

We celebrate, no matter what else, we celebrate.

Locusts or Honey Bees?

Thursday, December 23, 2021

The Beauty

In Situ.

God’s Way

For All Generations.

Lamentations 3:41

Let us lift up our hearts as well as our hands to God in heaven.

Ephesians 6:18

Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

Words of Grace For Today

Lift up our hearts … as well as our hands … to God in heaven.

This will then enable us to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to choose, with each thing we do, to work like mad for all people in God’s good creation.

Otherwise we will inevitably work, heartlessly, and without pause, consuming all we can on our way, destroying everything in our wake.

Locusts come in hoards and work their little hearts out.

When they leave, they leave because there is nothing more to consume.

When they leave there is nothing left behind for anyone else.

When they leave the goodness of creation must be re-established by God’s healing work built in to nature … if it can.

This we do not want to be as a species, because when we try to move on there is really no place for us to move to

on God’s good creation of earth, our host planet.

Instead,

we pray with endless supplications

that we would work with our hands

as honey bees do.

They work at least as hard as locusts.

They work with the plants like the locusts do.

They work differently, instead of consuming and destroying and moving on …

They work for the benefit of all creation, helping plants to flower and produce food, for us all.

In their hives they create enough honey to sustain their hive’s next generations and

they create enough honey to provide for many others to feed from the sweet products of their tireless labours.

Locusts destroy and move on to destroy more.

Honey bees work in the eco-sytem and they stay in that eco-system (if we allow them to) to help it continue to provide for this generation and many to come.

So we pray endlessly with supplication and thanksgiving that God has provided our ability to work hard, and to work as honey bees, providing for this generation and for many generations of saints to come.

Forgive

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Tilted World

Dark Challenges

Deceitful Enemies

…

And Gracious God.

All Will Be Well.

Numbers 14:20

Then the Lord said, ‘I do forgive, just as you have asked.’

Ephesians 1:7

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

Words of Grace For Today

When the whole world falls apart around us from the sins of our enemies, and our lives seem to fall apart at their roots

The only hope we have is God’s promise to forgive, even to forgive our enemies.

This promise gives us life when all life seems impossible to enjoy.

As rich as Jesus’ Grace is we will live, redeemed, forgiven and given life. Our enemies find no life in all their empty desires and no hope in all their dreams of might by deceit.

This is God’s way of giving life to those to whom God has chosen as God’s own people. So we learn to forgive even when our enemies’ only continued efforts are to try to destroy us and life around us.

Mighty in Gentle Service

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Choose to

See the Pen of God Writing in the Heavens

‘Forgive and Heal and Love One Another’

or

see only the smoke that clouds our eyes of the beauty of reality.

Which will we choose to see today?

Psalm 24:8

Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle.

Matthew 21:9

The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

Words of Grace For Today

We have this vision from the earliest of times that God is mighty as we are mighty, when we are mighty (or think we are), namely when we are violent and fight in battles to make our way in the world.

So God (in our shared fictional image) is a mighty warrior who show God’s strength in fighting more mightily than we ever can.

Jesus, God’s son born in a most humble way to poor parents (not the privilege and comfort that so many enjoy and would demand their Saviour be born into as well), teaches and heals the people God’s way, God love, God strength in service and forgiveness. The people, having that image of God from of old as a mighty warrior, see Jesus taking over the ruling of the country, staging a revolution like many before have tried and failed to do. Jesus enters Jerusalem and the people are ready to throw off the injustice and oppression of their foreign and home-grown corrupt rulers, political and religious.

They throw down their palm leaves and garments for Jesus’ donkey to walk on as he enters Jerusalem. No one is wealthy enough to have found a horse for this ‘new king’?

No, that is not it. God is not about conquering our mighty corruption of the goodness of creation by being like us. Jesus enters as a humble ‘king’, a peasant at most, a teacher and guide, a healer, riding a small donkey.

It matters not really how we imagine Jesus enters our lives, enters our world. What matters is that God is not mighty as a warrior, for God created and rules the universe. God need not defeat any enemy. It is already accomplished. The work God seeks to accomplish is to let us, free willed creatures that God created us to be, God seeks to have us choose freely to love God and each other and all creation. That is a work that violent might simply cannot begin to accomplish.

Our choosing can only be accomplished by inspiring us to not be mighty in violence, but rather mighty in meekness, service, healing, and forgiving one another.

It’s your God-given choice! What will it be today?

God’s Downtrodden, Poor, And Needy

Monday, December 13, 2021

God’s Miracles Are Not Mysteries

But Lovingly Given to Those Most In Need

Of Blessings

As Leaves In Spring Grow On Branches Once Frozen

Psalm 74:21

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame; let the poor and needy praise your name.

Luke 1:58

Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.

Words of Grace For Today

The way the world works, the downtrodden, poor, and needy are left out to ‘flap in the wind.’

God works through the downtrodden, poor, and needy as Jesus’ story makes so clear:

John the Baptist and Jesus are each born of mothers who are of no account, Jesus’ mother even more so than John the Baptist’s/ Elizabeth is married to a priest. Mary is not even married and she is engaged to a poor carpenter, from a nothing place called Nazareth.

Those who fear and love God know how to celebrate God’s work through the downtrodden, poor, and needy: we celebrate for God raises up the lowly, and brings down those who consider themselves to be on high. The wealthy are brought to poverty. Rulers are brought down to be peasants. Powerful are brought down to powerless. Oppressors are turned on and oppressed. This is justice, God’s way.

The miracle is not this justice.

The miracle is that without making the downtrodden, poor, and needy new occupiers of the wealthy, ruling, and powerful who ignore those on the outside of their privilege and comfort, God takes the outsiders (the downtrodden, poor, and needy) and blesses them with the blessings so amazing and over-abundant that those wealthy, powerful, rulers, and oppressors have no hope of living as fully, as blessed, as well.

God brings us on the outside to be God’s insiders, who carry blessings enough to share with all people. That is the miracle; to be feared by those who try to gain it themselves, and to be celebrated by those to whom God gives God’s favour and Promise.

Advent Darkness, Advent Light

Thursday, December 2, 2021

What Little Truth There Is

What Little Hope There Is

What Little Life There Is

…

Christ’s Light

Has Come,

Is Come, and

Will Come Again

Isaiah 51:4

Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples.

1 John 2:8

Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

Words of Grace For Today

The daylight grows shorter each day, at this latitude markedly, as we are only 20 days from the winter solstice. When clouds and precipitation block the light during the few hours the sun is above the horizon the drear and darkness grows on us, as if the end of time were approaching though we trust that is not so. In these times the winter darkness teaches us well what we may or may not know so well from our own experience: that injustice of the nation is prevalent, here and now for so many people, and the injustice of the world order (or chaos as it really is) tears so many people from life, and even more from living a life respected as a full human being.

Then we read the promise that God will bring words of truth to bear on our world, that Christ’s Light shines already bright for all people. We read these words of promise and hope with eager hearts, though hardly more so than the billions who suffer the chaos of injustice worked for the privilege, comfort, and power of the few.

When people recognize the Light of Christ, the world chaos can but fail as Christ’s way replaces human greed.

For this day we wait, for freedom from darkness, for freedom from blatant injustice, for freedom from all evil, and for freedom to serve Christ fully, without reserve, with our whole hearts, minds and strength. For this day we wait. On that day we will celebrate the coming of Christ as we have not ever yet.

This is the advent of awareness: that Christ has come, is come, and will come again, to bring into the light all that is done now as if in darkness, all that is done to throw others as captives into darkness, all that is done to supposedly ‘set things right’ when the actions are more unjust than those they pretend to correct.

This our advent. Advent as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming, again.