Security Based on God’s Truth

Sunday, September 25, 2022

In Overwhelming Darkness of Evil,

God’s Light Is

Always With Us

Psalms 121:3

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.

1 Corinthians 1:4-8

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

As the challenges of every day and of facing corrupt and even evil people continues without end, there is only one security available to any person. This security is that God walks with us, guides us (as much as we listen), and protects us. Before God we need not fear anything at all. Given that assurance is there anything we need fear?

No.

Yet, as the scheming is underway to blame us again for what we have nothing to do with as guilty people are let run free to commit crime after crime, one rightly fears both those who claim to be agents of justice, and those who openly declare with words and deeds that they have no concern for their crimes. For history has shown they run far from truth to find someone to blame, guilty or innocent.

In the end, the unjust and evil will answer to God’s justice. And we will live always walking with God at our sides, suffering with us, bringing hope into every situation. That security has no equal.

So we take this one day at a time, preparing for winter, justly hoping it will not be as hard as last year.

Thanks we give for all the gifts God gives us, as they provide us avenues to see God, right by us.

Those Darn People!

Saturday, September 24, 2022

It’s All Weeds,

Beautiful Weeds

In God’s

Good Creation!

Zephaniah 1:12

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people
who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts,
‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.’

Revelation 3:17-18

For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Words of Grace For Today

We are all wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Okay, I’m often of a different assessment of my situation. It’s not often that good.

Except I do keep myself clothed, mostly appropriately; and I do wear glasses, terribly scratched as they are, so that I can see clearly enough to prepare for winter and keep producing photos that are sometimes even good; and occasionally I have two quarters to rub together and use to fill the water tank (so that’s $25 to drive there and back) and I have not yet run out of water though it’s been close a few times; and while people may pity me, though I think it’s not many, as most cheer my unjust suffering, and I try to make a blessed case of my circumstances; but I’m caught on the wretched part. Don’t know how to change that, since I’ve confessed since I was a young child that I am a wretched sinner, needing God’s forgiveness.

I would guess everyone can produce a similar short accounting of how they are or are not wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. All of our efforts to say we are not simply help prove how so we are, and blind to the fact.

All too many people through all time have lived neither fearing and loving God, not caring, assured in themselves that God ‘will not do good, nor harm.’

There are and always have been the saints, people faithful to God, if still wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked, we are also humble or so about it all, and we turn our eyes and hopes to God.

In return God promises to walk with us. That makes God quite familiar with our wretchedness, pitiable-ness, poor-ness, blindness, and nakedness. God knows what God is getting into long before we realize where we are at, where people have been for so long. Why did God create and why does God continue to create such a universe with such people in it?

Love.

It’ll make you do the darnedest things.

(Thank God for that, too!)

Since I Have Chosen You …

Friday, September 23, 2022

Life is Golden All The Way Down,

Even Amidst Death

When We Know God Has Chosen Us.

First Samuel 12:22

For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.

Ephesians 2:8

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Bill sat next to Janet after their dance. They’d danced a dance each day together for the last year, after they were married, both in their late 60’s.

Remembering as Bill did how wonderful it was to be chosen by Janet so long ago on the floor of the High School dance, in the semi-darkness, so lonely, so frightening, so foreign. Then Janet came along. Janet who had dated Ted for as long as anyone in their class dated, until they’d broken up three months ago. That Janet, who’d he’d always watched and admired and wished he were Ted, until they broke up and Ted started dating Daniel and Janet dated almost anyone she wanted and not many were chosen. That Janet asked him if he would dance.

She said she’d been watching him. Watching him watch her. For years she had seen him. For years she had wanted to watch him, to ask him out. It was so frightening.

That had been the start of a whirlwind of wonder and a world that was so colourful Bill barely had time to catch his breath. Senior year, she said she wanted to be with him for the rest of their lives. A week later Bill had asked her to marry him. She had stood up in shock and walked off … and never came back.

That Janet now was his wife, and he was her husband, after two separate lives of joys and sorrows, wonders and such deep loses. And they danced.

Always one or the other would ask, ‘Since I have chosen you, will you dance with me tonight?’ And always the other answered, ‘Since I have chosen you, there is no greater honour than mine to be able to dance with you.’

So God asks us, ‘Since I have chosen you, will you dance with me today?’

Rocking Chair

Thursday, September 22, 2022

The Fog Rolls In,

The Fog Rolls Out,

Always Fuel Is Needed for

the Fire of Life.

Psalms 89:9

You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.

Ephesians 1:17

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.

Words of Grace For Today

Janet Rogner sat in her rocking chair wondering what had happened. Where had all the time gone? It seemed like yesterday that she and Ted met every day, sometimes on the lake, sometimes on the river, more often at school or on a date. Marriage, 2 kids, divorce, marriage and one more kid. That’s what they told her anyway. She did not remember any of it. They told her about the accident that killed her 2nd husband and 2 kids, and how it had left her in a coma for years.

She remembered Ted, but they told her he had died of a heart attack. They had reached out to his wife and two children. They came to visit, but she did not know them at all, even when the son reminded her of how Ted would twirl his finger in the air, like directing music. They said he went on to become a band director like his father, and more. He was an engineer of something called computer science.

She’d seen those things, computers. But they made no sense to her at all. They said they set her’s up to just listen and respond to her. So she swore at it nearly every hour. It still did nothing.

Now she looked in the mirror as the sun rose. Another day. Who was that old woman in the mirror anyway?

Then one day the storm gates broke open with memories that sent her scurrying for her bed, where she curled up to hide from them, from all the wonderful and beautiful memories, the challenges she and her husband and her friends had met with varying success, and then she remembered the old woman in the mirror and the accident and the deaths of her husband and her children.

It was days that she spent curled up, trying to hide from the pain. Until one day her son, Bill, walked in. She recognized him and he sat with her. He said he had come for years every week, but then he had to move for work and his wife’s job and his two children’s schooling, in computer science. And Janet remembered she had been good with computers, though she never had a degree, she knew more than most programmers and technicians.

They talked for hours, as Bill helped her remember things that were just on the edge of her awareness. He had to go but he came back then every day for a week and then once a week. The memories flooded in, like an angry sea in a hurricane at first, and then they started to organize, settle, smooth out. She started to dance in the morning. She swore at the computer, for the fun of it, before she sat down to type in her journal.

One day she saw a photo on line. It caught her, bounced her up out of her chair and tossed her back against the furthest wall. She didn’t know why. As the raging storm settled, she dared to look again. It was a photo of a lake, like the ones her family lived on through her High School years. Memories flooded in, of her mom walking with her and Bill. He was her first love. She’d never told her husband that is why she insisted they name their son Bill. Ted was earlier and Bill was everything to her, and then nothing but pain.

The love, the wonders, the fights, the break up and unequaled pain and chaos of life for months in her senior year in High School. She’d met her first husband, Greg, at a grad party and escaped into his life, but he turned out to be abusive and unfaithful. She stuck it out with him longer than she should have. He should have been in the car accident instead of her 2nd husband, Roger, and her kids should not have been there at all. But Greg would not bring the kids back after their visitation time with him, so Roger and Janet had gone to pick them up … and the drunk driver who rear ended them into the oncoming train brought them all to an end. Except Janet sort of survived in the storm of nothing remembered, loved or lost.

That weekend when her son came to visit, he brought his two grown children with him and their spouses and their little kids … and Bill said he had a surprise for her.

Her Bill from senior year in High School walked in and time stood still. He an old man. She an old woman in a rocker with her family all around. And she remembered before he spoke that she was the one who broke up with him because he would not marry her. She’d buried that for years through all that pain that it brought.

Her family talked. Bill talked. Janet sat stunned, quiet. Then Bill’s family, all ten of them came in. His wife had died decades ago. He walked with a limp, turns out from a surgery that was not quite successful. His grandchildren and great grandchildren danced and played and mingled with her children’s children.

Her son put some music on, one of her favourite waltzes. He danced with his wife. Then Bill asked Janet to dance. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, smiling for the first time in so long.

Today, may the wisdom of God be yours, that you may dance and smile and remember all that God has shared with you, the sorrows and the joys, as the water laps on the shore of the waters of memories.

Swords, Pens, and Tongues

Thursday, September 15, 2022

Words Can Sooth

Troubled Waters

With The Golden Presence

of God’s Mercy and Love

Proverbs 12:18

Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Romans 14:19

Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification.

Words of Grace For Today

The power of the tongue is famous.

More powerful than the sword. As is the pen. Though the mouth can out do the pen when wielded effectively.

The power is not necessarily damaging and evil. It can be more destructive than the sword. The power of the pen and of the mouth can be exactly opposite that of a destructive sword.

The words of the mouth and of the pen can be words that reflect God’s grace, and in that address the greatest evil that can ever come at us, and turn it from destruction to healing.

Smooth words of deception are not healing words, though. They are, despite all appearances and sounds, more destructive than the sword. Only truth can heal. Only truth which names evil as it is, and offers God’s merciful response to it, can heal.

So we go into each day, confessing our sins, acknowledging the great destructive power of deceptions and evils of all kinds, and trusting that God has a response to it all which brings us to live life as God created us to live it, in peace.

In All the Moments After …

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

In the Dark, We Learn to See the Light.

Psalms 118:14

The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

On this side of disaster, destruction, and demise (unearned but foisted on us by our enemies that claimed to be our family) we breathe and know it is a miracle.

We see the sun rise, and know it is a miracle.

We see the grass grow, the pine trees fill with acorns, the chicks grow to mature ducks and geese, and we know it is a miracle.

We work hard to prepare for the hard winter predicted ahead, and see the resulting piles of wood, completed repairs and improvements, and we know it is all wonder-filled miracles.

For God has become again and again our salvation, our breathe, and our hope.

So we would hope for you, that you would know the miracles that God works wondrously in your days, and thus find peace in the Holy Spirit’s power to transform the worst of the worst into blessings unending.

16 Tons?

Monday, September 12, 2022

Pilot or Passenger

Every Flight,

Every Life,

Has A Beginning

That many others have made possible.

Psalms 78:3-4

[Remember the glorious acts of God,]
things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.

Matthew 10:8

Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Words of Grace For Today

While living a life, self-sustained and self-determined, no great mishaps interrupting one’s plans and trajectory, it is all too easy to forget so much.

How one’s ancestors worked so hard to bring us to the beginning we were given as a gift.

How God provided for their survival in wondrous ways.

And how at each turn in our own lives, God is there, walking with us, calling us, blessing us, begging us to return to God.

Then disaster strikes. Small or huge, particular or general. And our self-sustained life is no longer possible, as if it ever were that.

Then we will only survive if we remember what our ancestors have taught us about God’s great blessings, and we return to God.

What then?

Simple: Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

One day awaits us each morning, filled with opportunities to remember, to return, to serve others with the love that cures, raises, cleanses, and casts out.

It’s not 16 tons and deeper in debt to the company store, but it is that each day we receive more than we can possible give back, and we live blessed to be deeper and deeper in debt to God for all the blessings poured over us. It is impossible to repay that debt, and it will never be called. Miracles and wonders.

Repay

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Painted Sky,

by God’s Hand.

First Samuel 24:20

Now I know that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand.

Romans 12:17

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

Words of Grace For Today

While the world is going to hell in a hand basket …

While the world is filled with wonders and profound goodnesses …

While the world is filled with the results of so much hate …

While the world is permeated with the effects of unselfish love …

Whether we be made king, or remain paupers forgotten by all …

How will we respond to all that comes our way?

With all that would we consider everything good our right, our due, and justified in the presence of so much evil?

With all that would we consider ourselves noble, and kingly?

Or shall we remember the humble, corruptions buried or not in our closets, and the amazing gracious response of God’s forgiveness and renewal to our shtako and uncreating messes, and with gratitude offer that same grace back to a world so hungry for evidence that our accumulated evil will not have the upper hand, that our futures will be bleak on the slide to extinction or worse (survival in unlivable conditions)!

Let us this day choose as if God has made us ‘king’ of our little part of the universe, so unforgotten by most everyone. Let us reflect God’s amazing grace no matter what comes our way.

How about that for a day’s plan, that only God can carry out, and we get to bask in!

Mercy Me, Now Ain’t We All One of Them?!

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Stumped, Cut Off, Dead:

That’s Us and All Creation,

Until/Unless

God Has Mercy On Us.

Daniel 9:9

To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him,

Luke 15:1

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.

Words of Grace For Today

We would like to believe that we are good people.

Honesty escapes us when we fall into the trap of not just liking to believe, but actually lying to ourselves and convincing ourselves that we are good people.

God looks down on the devastation that we have collectively brought down on the earth and, seeing into the future, sees a void as bleak as it was before creation. God is angry and sends a dry, life-sucking wind across all we have done, drying it of all water and life and hope, until it is returned to the dust of what it was before we were created.

So it is with all we humans do. We undo the creating that God does. God sees it, and burns it away, back to as it was before we existed.

Thankfully that is not the end of the story of our lives on earth.

God sees us with mercy.

God sees us with mercy, forgives us, and welcomes us in to God’s Kingdom, not because we deserve it, but because God ‘don’t create no junk’ and we are precious to God, every last one of us!

God sees us with mercy and sets the table for us in celebration that we are found, and carried back home.

God sees us with mercy and Jesus sits with us ‘tax collectors and sinners’ at the table.

So it is we get to eat each day, and celebrate with thanks all that is, all that we can do, and all God does through us to welcome in every last lost soul.

Now ain’t we all one of them!

Amazing this Mercy God has for us. It’s not at all what we expect of each other. It is what makes life so precious and wondrous.

Another day, another miracle or a million.

When Is Enough Enough?

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Looking and Seeing, In the Haze Everything Is Unclear.

Psalms 130:7

O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.

2 Corinthians 9:8

God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

Words of Grace For Today

Everyday we set our eyes on something. If we are fortunate we have the opportunity to set our eyes on a goal or more goals for the day, that may eventually lead to an achievement some future day, or solve a problem or challenge that sits like a heavy cement barrier in our path forward.

When we only see our own challenges, problems, and limitations our horizons shrink day by day until we live in a haze, barely able to see life as God gives it to us.

Into this all too often deep haze, Christ comes to shine the light of life with a great power to redeem on all that we are and all that the world is around us, with all the other people in it. Then the haze begins to lift. As we lift our heads and eyes and hearts to see others’ challenges, problems, and limitations, and respond with empathy, love, care, and mercy, then the light begins to shine on our visions of each day.

We can see that God gives us more than enough. We have plenty to share with others to help them see the light, the steadfast love of God, shining in through the haze of their troubled days with a great power to redeem.

In the blessed moments of wondrous light we can see our hopes for each day expand beyond our own small bubbles to include all the grandeur of God’s creation, and the spectacular gifts God has given us through other people, and the blessed possibilities God offers us through God’s steadfast love and great power to redeem it all and us all.

In the Light, We See What We Missed Before.