Category: God-Talk

God Creates A Story

Monday, December 20, 2021

God Creates the Heavens and Earth

For Us

To Live

and

to Love In

Isaiah 45:12

I made the earth,
and created humankind upon it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host.

John 1:11

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

Words of Grace For Today

The world is a wonderful place for us to live life, from the beginning to the end.

That’s what God does when God creates:

God creates the earth … and it is good and we can make enough evil to ruin it completely, or we can enjoy life fully.

God creates us … and creates us good, and free to love, so we are also capable to make enough evil to ruin everything completely, or we can enjoy life fully.

God creates the heavens and their host … and God creates everything good and we can make enough evil to ruin the universe completely, so completely, for ourselves and all future generations, or we can enjoy life fully.

Because we can be so evil, when Jesus comes, when the Holy Spirit comes (even though we are God’s own people) in our sin we reject Jesus’ way, we reject the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that makes us holy, that makes us saints. Instead of living well, we live … lost.

And lost we are lonely, and lonely we are desperate, and desperate we do so many unthinkable things to others, and at the same time to ourselves.

Thankfully that is not the end of the story.

Jesus comes as a vulnerable infant born in a barn, which starts a life that continues to a death and a resurrection … by which God creates a story of God’s unconditional love for us all, and God’s response to relentless hard hearts that make enough evil to ruin the universe completely, so completely, for ourselves and all future generations. In response to our Evil God forgives us and gives us renewed life, capable of loving again …

…

so that we can choose to enjoy life fully.

What is Our Portion?

Friday, December 17, 2021

No Matter the Weeds Or Ice In Our Way, Christ’s Light Guides Us.

No Matter What Our Enemies Do

Or Take From Us,

No Matter the Wilderness They Abandon Us To

God Walks With Us

Lamentations 3:24

‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

1 Peter 1:8-9

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

So many things challenge us each day, sometime making our day’s progress the usual grind, sometimes throwing up road blocks that could put us in reverse to find a way around them, and sometimes they stop us in our tracks, dead halt.

Whether it’s our enemies trying to undo us, or someone using us as a stepping stone to get ahead, or questions about our own worth brought on by lies about us or our own real limitations or others’ unreal expectations, or it is our health that fails us … no matter what it is that challenges us we all experience them every day.

The only way to live life abundantly is to be able to know that the Lord is our portion and only in God we can hope.

When we fear and love God, when we believe and trust God’s promises to carry us, when we know that glorious joy from knowing God walks with us … then we can know as well that God is at work in us, having given us faith and sent us out to share all God’s gifts with all God’s people.

God is at work in us showing us that our portion is the Lord, and that we can trust and hope in God alone.

Encounter God … And Live

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Hear God’s Word

As Clearly As We See

The Ice Between the Snow

Joshua 2:11

As soon as we heard it, our hearts failed, and there was no courage left in any of us because of you. The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Words of Grace For Today

To encounter God is an awesome thing,

more terrifying than anything we have imagined or ever could imagine,

which brings our hearts to stop, and all things in us to cease to be, other than what God has given us.

…

When we realize that everything we need for life, abundant life, God has already given to us, then we can but be grateful for all that life has for us

…

and we will be ready to hand on everything that God has given us to others so that they may also live and live abundantly.

So we go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey the commandment Jesus gives us, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and even our enemies, and first that we love God with all our hearts, minds, and strengths.

Even when we see the face of God and hear God’s Word for us, as awesome and fearful as that is for us, we then trust always that God will walk with us to the end of all time.

All courage is given to us by the God that walks with us, each day, no matter how cold, no matter how hot, no matter the challenges our enemies place in our paths.

Let us celebrate each moment all the great wonders of each day.

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.

Which Is It? Name It!

Sunday, December 12, 2021

No Matter the Dark Obstacles

God’s Love

Holds The Universe Together

Ezekiel 39:7

My holy name I will make known among my people Israel; and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.

John 17:26

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Words of Grace For Today

To know God’s name and to keep it holy is a gift given to us all, though we often, more often than we care to admit, we turn our back on the gifts from God and use God’s name in vain, and more as our own avenue for our own selfish wishes. All in vain.

God in God’s name is what brings us to live with grace and hope.

God in God’s name is what brings us to know the love that holds the universe together.

This is the gift that gives us life.

This is the gift that we turn away from when we follow our own ways, deceits, and greed.

This is the gift that God extends to us again and again, each time we turn away from God.

This day, which will it be for us, to turn from God, or to accept God’s grace bring us to return to God?

It will be both and neither, as God wishes.

So we live in God’s favour, blessed and living as we breathe.

For this we can be thankful.

God’s Justice and Mercy

Friday, December 10, 2021

A New Day Heralded

By the Light of Christ

…

and Christ’s Blood from the Cross

Spread Across the Sky

Isaiah 60:10

Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you down, but in my favour I have had mercy on you.

Colossians 2:13-14

When you were dead in trespasses … God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

Words of Grace For Today

God has a beef with us, and (in the terms of today’s many times corrupt courts) issues a warrant for our arrest and incarceration in hell forever.

God finds us, and leaves us at the mercies of our evil enemies, who control us and take our lives as opportunities for their perverse desires. This is indeed hell.

…

Thank God that is not the last God has to do with us, for God is clear in judgment against all who sin, who turn away from him, not just our evil enemies but us as well. Even more so God is loving and merciful to all people. God takes that writ and the consequences of our suffering in hell for eternity and nails it to the cross of Jesus, God’s only Son.

And there it stays …

and

when we again turn away from God another writ is issued, we suffer, and then God relents and forgives us and nails that writ on the cross.

So it continues through all time

as the cross

is weighed down with writs so countless not even the stars nor all the particles of the universe are so many.

This is how powerful and enduring God’s love is, God’s mercy is, God’s Grace is.

Thus (despite the chippiness of so many people around us because Covid continues with all it’s variants of concern to threaten and thus governments and wise people -no more so than us ourselves continue to restrict our lives) we wake to each new day thankful for all that God provides that contributes to our survival one more day, so blessed are we by God. In this our enemies’ and their destructive deceit withers up like crab apples left to be pecked at by birds and to rot on the trees until they freeze and drop as fertilizer for another summer’s growth.

God’s justice, mercy, and love have reigned, do reign, and will always reign supreme.

Living a Lie? OR Living God’s Truth!

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

By Faith

And Only By Faith

We Know God Created

The Heavens and …

…

The Earth and …

All That Is In It!

That Includes Us All.

Jeremiah 10:12

It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.

Hebrews 11:3

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Words of Grace For Today

In the Beginning was the Word.

God’s Word.

God created with Word.

Words are powerful, and

when words belong to God they are the ultimate power.

So many people through all time have wanted proof that God exists and that God created.

God created us so that we can imagine other realities than God … and though they are fiction we are fully capable of losing track of reality and living as if our fictions are actually real. So much so that we have

fake news,

fake science,

science deniers,

antivaxxers,

conspiracy theories,

governments that do conspire to lie and thus control populations,

international corporations that conspire to ‘own’ our private information, lie about everything, and thus control populations and governments,

women and men who gaslight others, especially the ones who love them,

pastors and bishops and religious leaders of all kinds who use religious words to control people and gain an advantage for themselves and their families and their kind (of wacky followers of faked religious words),

judges and lawyers for whom dark is light, light is dark, good is evil, evil is good, and their chaos allows them to continue to issue fake facts, fake decisions, and fake convictions to control hurt, destroy and destory people using the force of the state, which destabilizes society with this barbaric use of force, inviting chaos to overrun society,

and

Covidiots (who with their stupidity are ready to kill so many people and even themselves!)

…

and people who are ready to act illegally for no good reason other than that they can, like cops, bullies, and … well so many people thinking they must get more for themselves to be secure.

All of this fiction lived as reality seems to work …

until it doesn’t and

God’s Word,

God’s Creation,

and

God’s Steadfast Love

start to mess with their supposed ‘advantage’, ‘privilege’, ‘comfort’, ‘status’, ‘power’.

By faith alone, we trust God’s Word …

to have created all that is,

to forgive all that is sinful,

to offer renewed life to all sinners,

to accompany us no matter where or how we journey in life,

and

to promise that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

And we are able to live grateful for everything, beginning with our very breath each minute.

By faith

given to us

without us earning it or creating it.

By faith

responding

to be God’s Word

for others.

Teach Us Your Way

Sunday, December 5, 2021

We See It All, Right?

Yet What Is Most Important Among

Everything We See?

Sand, Water, Ice, Trees, Grass, Sun, Clouds?

Or That God Created It All?

Psalm 86:11

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

Words of Grace For Today

No matter who we are, what history we have, how many sins we have piled up, and no matter how many times God has forgiven us and the Holy Spirit has inspired us to live as God’s saints spreading God’s unconditional and steadfast love to all people …

No matter what challenges we face in our past and in our present and in our future …

No matter anything, God’s Grace pours over us in abundance …

and we still know we need Jesus’ way, truth and life more and more for our hearts are divided between serving Christ and serving our own selfish needs, and so are our decisions each minute.

Decisions.

We make decisions every day, every minute.

We make decisions by engaging in various steps:

1. we asses what the situation is

2. we consider what choices we have

3. we discern what choice best serves our self interest

4. we make the decision by acting on it.

Recent modern thought is that step three is the most important. Thus the common assumption behind modern society brings us to serve our own, greedy, selfish interests, thinking that is the most important thing to do.

Philosophers and thinking people of all generations have long since realized that step one is actually the most important.

Who we are and what we think, how we view the world, is the most important step. Therein we determine what the ‘problem’ is, and that determines everything about what choices we come up with, choose and act on.

When we know that first and foremost when facing decisions our only hope to do something good for us and for other people is to consider everything from the perspetive that God gives us: that God created, we all are free to love (and therefore sin, that is to turn from who God created us to be), that God forgives us our sin and calls us back to ‘see the world’ (and our ‘problems’) as God’s gift to us including our own lives, and then …

then we have some hope of choosing what is in our best self interest, which is always then in the best interest of all people.

It all depends on us knowing God’s creation as God created it to be, and us in that creation as God saves us and inspires us to be: God’s saints.

So we pray: Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name! knowing that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life.

Let Us Shine!

Saturday, December 4, 2021

Our Way Following Christ

Is To the Light

Always Connected to God’s Truth

Isaiah 45:17

You, Israel, are saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.

Matthew 13:43

The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

Words of Grace For Today

Since God has done such great things for us,

Since God has saved us with a salvation without end and promised that we shall never be put to shame or be confounded,

Since we have ears to hear, and we hear God promises that we, the righteous (made so only by Grace), will shine like the sun in God’s Kingdom.

Therefore, no matter the challenges that we face in this real and messy world, we shine with the light of Christ for all to see.

And the truth shines through all efforts to hide, pervert, and deceive in the all too common methods of ‘getting ahead’ which are really paths straight out of healthy life into the abyss of the Devil’s ways.

For once one lies and relies on it, all grounding in reality is up for grabs and it will slip away from one slowly and quickly until one has no bearings for what is real. Then the nightmares begin.

For us, who shine with the Light of Christ, our bearings to reality are sure and forever reliable, for our guide is God and God’s Grace.

Let Your Face Shine

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

We Are the Ones

Who Shine

With Christ’s Light

As Snow Sparkles Between the Shadows

Psalm 31:16

Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.

Luke 12:25

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

Words of Grace For Today

On the coin of money is inscribed ‘In God We Trust.’

This is one of the more blatant and dreadful ironies of our lives: the world seeks coin to enable the collection of resources (through payment with the coin) and to ensure the bidding of the holder is done by others (through payment with the coin).

Those of us who cannot or do not have enough coin, worry about our futures: can we keep at bay the despair of hunger, the life-ending extremes of the environment, the decay of life without good medical care, or the loss of sanity as we are isolated (as an easy target for our enemies and separated from the social fabric of life.)

This worry motivates us to work, and to work hard, to ensure some kind of safety in our future, some kind of food supply in our days to come, some kind of health care so that what ails us can be discovered, diagnosed and treated, some healthy connection with other humans who do not wish us harm. Our worry itself does nothing. It adds not even a minute to the span of our lives. What we do to work through our worry may or may not succeed in providing life and life abundant for us.

Life in all its great goodness that God created us to enjoy does not require any of this that we can work for, though. Life abundant requires only one thing and that is God’s steadfast love.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves to working to be God’s love for others.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves and on to knowing that we are marked with the cross of Christ, which does not just mark us like coins with the greatest irony of all times. The mark on us changes us from the root of our being to the last days we live in God’s good creation: we become God-made saints.

When our enemies or our shortcomings or the lack of things we require to stay alive threaten our future we can pray: Let your face shine upon your servants; save us in your steadfast love.

Like the sun rising for a new day, sparkling, dazzling in a field of snow, God renews Christ’s light in us, and we shine, and we sparkle, and we transform the world from misery to happiness, from despair to joy, from hunger to nourished … from lost to found.