The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Revelation 19:6-7
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.’
Words of Grace For Today
When the evil of those who are entrusted to be just and honest and good reaches arbitrarily into so many lives, destroying the old and the young alike, then we have pause to wonder:
Is God at all listening, watching, caring at all?!
Our travails are no greater than many humans have experienced through history. Truth is they are not as great as so many. We read the witness left by those who suffered so much more than we do today.
The witnesses through the generations are clear, wondrous and sure:
God has established God’s throne in the heavens, and God’s kingdom rules over all.
There will be many days that Evil will drive us to doubt God’s love, God’s promises and God’s deliverance. On those days, in those moments, the witnesses that have gone before us bring us back to trust the power of God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, and the All-Loving.
We can join the chorus crying: ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory!’
We, too, give witness for the generations that follow us, that God has given God’s heart to us in love, with a love that created us, rescues us, and sustains us!
No matter what comes our way with hearts filled with wonder we know that God has given us all lives of great challenge, love, and adventure!
He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Words of Grace For Today
Lord have mercy on us!
The people, led by Joshua, move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. They are going to take it, occupy it, and claim it as their God given right. They have something of a claim to some of the land, for this is where Abraham and Sarah raised first Ishmael and then Isaac, and their grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and after them the great grandchildren including Joseph. The 2nd generation of those who ran from Pharaoh’s slavery to be delivered into the Wilderness are all there is left, for those that were delivered from Pharaoh’s chariots and army through the Red Sea, turned against God at Sinai, made a godlet, an idol of their own gold in the form of a calf, and worshipped it.
Now, the story is told that God has subdued the ancient gods, shattered the forces of old, driven out the enemy before them and called on them to ‘Destroy.’
For the Love of God, how can we mess up God’s story for us so badly.
And then Luke continues in the same vein, for it is not a seldom embraced idea that somehow ‘we’ are good or at least ‘chosen’ and ‘blessed by God’ and they (or all others) are bad and not chosen and not blessed, and here as it reads are destroyed.
First off we ought to notice with open minds that the ancient gods are not subdued. They and their supports in force have risen up in the form of ‘new age’ religions.
Second off we ought to notice that God has not driven off the enemy before us. The enemy is still here, doing great damage to so many people. Further, the greatest enemy is not those that work against us; it is ourselves working against God who give power to evil from others and from within ourselves. We end up worshipping that ‘golden calf’ of our own making from our own ‘gold’. We turn from God as fast and thoroughly as any of God’s people ever have!
Third off we ought to notice that humans have used God as an excuse to ‘destroy’ since the beginning of time. The story of Jesus, the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love does not include destroying our enemies. It teaches us that we, like God does for us and all people, are called to love, forgive, and hope that God can save our enemies, as God has saved us.
Lastly we ought to notice that God’s mercy, in so much of Jesus’ story this is made blatantly obvious, extends not to just a chosen few, not to just those who fear and trust God, but to all people, even our worst enemies! God’s mercy extends to all people, from generation to generation.
Those who God has saved, as we are, received abundant life. That is not a life of comfort and abundance. It is life lived, no matter our circumstances, blessed with God’s truth, with God’s Promise, and with the call to extend Grace and life abundant to as many people as we possibly can in our ‘3 score, ten’ that we breathe.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
1 John 5:15
If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many choices we must make each day or make by trying to not make the choices; they catch us no matter.
The wiser we get, hopefully before we get too old, the more we notice how little we know of everything we need to know. We see how desperately we need help.
So we learn to plead to God for help: lead us in your truth, and teach us.
Where else are we to ask for what we need?
Where else in this world of corruption from top to bottom are we to find truth, about us, about others, and about God?
We know when we ask God, God will provide what we need.
This is God’s promise, which we can trust.
There is no more we need from life than what God provides, for it give us everything worth waiting for; God’s truth that is irrefutable.
Trusting God’s truth gives us life in the face of so many lies about ourselves, about others, about what God is and is not.
Trusting God’s truth gives us life, life abundant.
Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.
John 6:63
It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Words of Grace For Today
May Day
God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.
God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.
God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.
Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.
What a marvellous thing to wake up, without having had to have a fire going to keep things from freezing, to light the fire laid last night, and walk about under the trees down to the lake, in the sun and in the shade absorbing warmth in the just above freezing fresh air and the cool breeze from the ice piled on the shore from yesterday’s westerlies.
What a wonder that the air moved as wind is powerful enough to move the weight of the ice against itself and pile it up four and six feet high on to the shore, exposing crystals formed last fall to the open air and camera lens.
What a wonder it is that these tall trees (tall for Alberta at 40+ feet) can stand against gravity and those winds, until they do not. In the recent high winds (the new norm) more than a few have had their tops snapped off falling to the forest floor they are so weighted. Old trees have been knocked clear out of the ground, broken at the root. One green and budding 50+ foot poplar is snapped clean off just above the ground, falling through everything on it’s way to bounce not at all off the ground, around 1000 lbs of tree become dead become wood at the onslaught of one last wind. Other trees in the nearby woods similarly have taken it ‘on the cheek’, or rather ‘off the root’.
It is a glorious morning time, before the noise of the day, of human activity and campers’ abuse of the woods, of oil industry traffic dimming in the distance to be replaced by the dull roar of the plants processing heavy bitumen into heavy oil, thinned enough to pump through pipe networks to gas plants and shipping ports.
For now all is still here near the lake and far into the woods, until the birds sing and flit about, the birds on the ice screech and geese honk, the owl hoots a few last times before the day’s rest. Shadows from the sun reaching past the bare tree trunks reach the grass and leaves on the brown and green grass, striping it with stark lines pointing toward the water.
The one huge pain of this tree budding season lays in wait ready to ambush my body’s immune system, overloading it, scratching at my eyes, piercing my sinus with pain, running fluid into my throat and into my lungs. Allergies will sap more than half my energy as my body fights an invisible, unknown, unassailable opponent for more than the 60th season, giving it everything and losing it all to not even a tie-breaker. Medicine will relieve the losses, day by day, and take days off the end of my life, even now leading to infections in my lungs, bronchitis which robs me of my breath, and occasionally pneumonia laying flat on my back inches from needing a hospital’s oxygen to survive.
This is a glorious morning, with it’s inherent promise of surviving another -30⁰ and colder winter that will still come my way, God willing and ‘the creek not rising’, and it’s twinges in my nostrils and scratches in my eyes that foreshadow the battles to be fought and lost yet again against an invisible, unknown and unnecessary foe.
This is a glorious morning, a blessing provided by God’s unending Grace.
This is a glorious morning, which I will enjoy and be profoundly grateful for, for God has rescued me so that I can survive the lies, the scapegoating, the gaslighting, the false testimonies and affidavits, the injustice, the false convictions, and the cruel rulings that benefit no one, especially not the children.
Breathe.
This is a glorious morning in and by which God continues to bless me.
Breathe.
And prepare for the days’ hard labours, which keep this aging body able to move against arthritis, decay, gaslighting, and cruel injustices.
Breathe.
…
…
…
God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.
God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.
God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.
Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.
Breathe even, and especially, in these times of new normals.
I took you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.’
Romans 11:1
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
Words of Grace For Today
The history is that God chose the Israelites, only the Israelites. Everyone else was unchosen and unclean. This we humans do to make ourselves special: we claim that we are chosen and all others are not. This does not make us special. It makes us typically self-centric, arrogant, and judgmental.
When Paul was converted after Saul went blind on the road to Damascus, he studied for years, held himself in retreat from activity. He underwent a profound change, from an effective, eager, persistent pursuer and persecutor of Christians, to a leading proponent of Jesus’ Way of living, i.e. by Grace.
Paul did not restrict sharing the Good News, which he encountered as Jesus’ Way of being God’s people, with just the traditionally ‘chosen’, the Israelites. Paul went out to share the Good News with anyone and everyone who would listen and wanted to be baptized in this Way of living.
That brought the obvious question: were the Jews wrong to claim God had chosen them, or had God changed God’s mind and rejected those God had earlier ‘chosen’?
Paul’s answer is simple: No. God’ choosing people is expanded, not ended. The Jews are still chosen, as are all other people who Christ calls to follow his Way.
History repeats itself. Many times God’s people have declared that only they are God’s chosen. As many times God’s message comes to bear on the mess this exclusive claim creates: God’s chosen are chosen, DOCH God does not choose only some people. God chooses all people.
Our human way of living does not make sense of this very well, if at all.
It does not need to. God still chooses all people and offers them abundant life. Not life in abundance (of wealth, things, etc.), but life filled to overflowing with blessings and the ability to share those blessings with others, all others.
God gathers us from the ends of the earth, from all corners of creation, claims us as God’s servants, does not cast us off, and sends us out to share the Good News. (Like Paul.)
This is God, our God for ever and ever. He will be our guide for ever.
Philippians 1:6
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
There is work for us to accomplish each day. We can sometimes easily ignore it, or pretend that life does not demand that we accomplish anything …
… as long as someone else is providing our lunch and lodging.
The real challenge is to keep moving towards getting something good accomplished, and first to know what is the good thing to do.
If we try to calculate that on our own, we will inevitably fail.
Only God can guide us to know what is truly good, and what we can accomplish this day that will be truly good.
God starts with us, and no matter how much we try to run and go it on our own, we need God to guide us toward the good we can accomplish, that God would have us accomplish this day.
Thankfully, God will be our guide for ever.
We are not in this alone.
The one who began a good work among us will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
With joy they celebrated the festival of unleavened bread for seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel.
Luke 10:20
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Words of Grace For Today
There is great reason to be joyful when those who rule over you turn their hearts to you and aid you in your nearly impossible, but necessary work, whether that work is to provide a house for the Lord where people can gather (after Covid 19) or to provide a home for a new family (like a refugee family or a new couple) without a home or to provide a home for a homeless person.
The disciples nearly impossible work is to cast out demons, to renew the ill people’s spirits, to give life. As they work the ‘spirits submit to them’ and they are able to give life to many people. We are to follow suit today, bringing renewed life, full life, abundant life to as many people as we can.
So the people of Israel celebrated the festival of unleavened bread (the Passover?) for seven days.
We have great reasons to celebrate our festivals as well. Usually we merely take a break, a pause, and focus on our own enjoyment, or gathering our families – or we used to before Covid 19.
All this, Jesus reminds the disciples and us, is barely cause to celebrate.
At first glance we do have to shake our heads, trying to clear them of some unknown cobwebs as we try to make sense of Jesus’ words. Certainly bringing life to others is THE reason to celebrate. Or is it that the disciples and we celebrate not bringing life to others, but rather the power they and we are able to exercise in order to accomplish our tasks?
That power is not ours. We have no right to claim it, nor to celebrate as if it were ours. That power remains God’s and God’s alone. We exercise it for others, doch it is God would exercises it for us for them.
God exercises that power, like many other life-giving powers at work in the world around us, along with our efforts, because God has written our names in heaven as God’s holy workers.
Therefore our celebrations are most life-giving for us, when we celebrate not that we ‘have’ power or can ‘exercise’ power. Our celebrations are most life-giving for us and all people when we celebrate what God has done for us miserable beggars and sinners: God has written our names in heaven, claiming us a God’s holy people.
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God.
Matthew 6:21
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Words of Grace For Today
I never understood young men who spent so much time working on their old trucks or muscle cars, fixing, tweaking, and adding 8 track tapes and speakers to them. (That dates me if nothing else does!)
I had to get old to read that whatever one spends a great deal of effort and time at, one falls in love with. So those young men, who invested so much time in their vehicles, fell in love with them, which brought them to spend even more time with them, until they did things that were not reasonable or logical or purposeful. They were continuing beyond all that into the realm of love.
Who would of thunk?
Thus it is that we humans assign value to things in our lives, which in and of themselves have no more than utilitarian value, if that, simply because we invest time working on them.
I can only imagine that someone who spends a lot of time accumulating wealth, power, or fame ‘falls in love’ with that as well.
What we treasure, owns our hearts, and brings us to do things that are not reasonable or logical or purposeful.
So it is in God’s creation. We humans, like the rest of the universe, operate on the principals of love.
This is God’s love permeating through the entire universe.
There is no power equal to the power of love, to heal, to give life, to give hope, to sustain life.
Once God has spoken God’s love to us and we have heard it once or twice we come to know and trust that power belongs to God, the real power that holds the universe together and gives us our very life and breath.
We can also, by investing our time and effort into things and projects and ideas that do not give life to us and others, ‘fall in love’ with evil and destructive forces that rob us and the world around us of life.
God intends, though, that we invest our lives (every bit of time and energy we have) into providing God’s care and unconditional love to other people. Thus we ‘fall in love’ with God’s creation and God’s people.
Then our hearts are found invested in the treasure that God created for us to live for: people, and people of all kinds.
When we live for other people, life never gets dull or boring, and we remain ‘in love’ with God and God’s creation, no matter how old we get. No matter how old or tired, or ill, we remain fully alive and in love.
Thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Romans 8:31
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Words of Grace For Today
The challenges of our days can overwhelm us.
The challenges of Covid 19 can overwhelm us.
Other people’s lack of compliance with restrictions in place to protect us all from Covid 19 and it’s debilitating long term effects can not overwhelm us, it can maim us for life, or kill us.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
We may be terribly afraid of what can happen to us, or what others will try to do to us, even when we have done nothing to warrant such threats to ourselves.
While we may seek security in all sorts of manners and means, there is only one real source of security, no matter our circumstances, no matter how luxurious our ‘boat’ through the waters of life and Covid 19 may appear to be: Our only true security is God’s blessing and claiming us.
What does God say?
Thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
We can relax, think clearly, plan and work as best we can, be thankful and generous with all we have, even our lives … for we can trust that we are in God’s hands.
