O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gained him victory.
Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
Words of Grace For Today
When we recognize how great God’s deeds are for us and all other people, there is nothing else to do, than to sing songs to God.
When we recognize for the million-times-millionth time how gracious God is to us, though we certainly do not deserve any of it, the old songs simply will not do. God will give us new songs to sing so that we can tell once again the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
We have so many new songs, a million-times-million, … and today we have yet another new reason to sing!
What is your new song today? Is it like the twins studying their dreams, or Maggie’s parent’s enjoying their dream home?
Or is yours, like mine, a simple song of surviving another day: dreaming as I breathe, eat, drink, rest, work and love enough to make a life abundant, as God walks with me, even though I am too old to study and I am homeless and attacked by relentless enemies who are afraid of truth, for they have built their lives on their lies about me?
It is never too late, as long as you are breathing, to sing a new song in thanks for God’s grace and mercy!
He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.
Luke 24:30-31
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many things that people do to others that are so hideous one can hardly believe we humans are capable of such things. There are so many things that people do to others that no one ever finds out about. Some are so evil that every effort is made to conceal them from all time. Others are so marvellous, and yet no one gets to celebrate that at least every once in a while a human being is actually capable of doing something to others that is a gracious and merciful … and generous … as God is with us all.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what evil things that person has done. They have concealed them well enough from us.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what great things that person has done. Somehow we do not put two and two together.
Fifty five year old Joe had never married. He was not gay, or mean, or uninteresting, or poor. Nor was he wealthy, addicted to chemicals or work or anything at all. He was just plain, not aggressive, not driven. He was an introvert so life alone did not bother him at all. He was well educated and still he found work as he could doing this and that, never for much more than a simple living. He loved the outdoors, not shooting at it or fishing food from it, just to be in it. He hiked mountains to find solitude. He took photos of some magnificent things in nature, moving and still, large and so small though he rarely shared them with anyone.
When Maggie met him climbing a mountain taking photos of a pair of eagles playing in the sky they hit it off right away. They shared a love of being in nature, enjoying the solitude, finding beauty in unexpected corners. They spent months out in nature together, and it did not matter to either that he was 15 years older than she … they fell in love. Despite her children from her deceased husband and her parents not approving at all, they were married.
Her parents had been looking for a home of their own for decades. Maggie, as the only child, knew exactly their mantra of what they wanted: a three bedroom house, with a garden and shed out back for her mom to grow a garden of vegetables and flowers. A garage large enough for their small car and a boat on a trailer for her father to use fishing. A few months after the wedding, which her parents did not go to, one of their oft-contacted-realtors called them. They’d found the perfect house for them. They thought for sure they could not afford it, but the realtor said that it was listed at a rather unbelievable price for a fast sale, and they could afford it. They bought it and moved in within the week.
Maggie’s twin daughter and son each had their eye on different colleges, but neither could afford it. They applied and were accepted. Both were offered financial packages that made it possible for them. So off they went to their dream studies.
Then Maggie was diagnosed with cancer; she battled it with Joe at her side. Her children and her parents came once early on and then stayed away, showing their judgment against Joe. Within a month she died, the pain only somewhat mitigated by the large morphine doses.
Her children and her parents openly blamed Joe, though there was little reality in it. They were angry, looking for someone to blame. Joe was devastated to have lost his only love in his life.
Three years after her death Joe invited Maggie’s parents and twins over for a coffee at his simple house. When they sat to drink tea and coffee, Joe asked about the garden and the boat, and about the twin’s studies. It was not until they had finished their coffees and teas, along with homemade cake and ginger snaps that they realized the details of Joe’s questions could only be asked by someone who knew so much more than they had told Maggie about even before their marriage. It was minutes later as they said good bye and walked to their cars that it became clear: Joe and Maggie together had made the parent’s house and the twins studies possible.
As the parents and children had condemned the two, they had responded with grace and generosity to give them their dreams … and they had only discovered it years later after Maggie’s death … and after they had blamed Joe for Maggie’s death.
God does not let us go on and on without recognizing the wonder of God’s deeds of grace and mercy for us. So after Jesus has spent the day with the disciples teaching them everything (and they do not recognize him because he has died) when Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
By God’s grace and mercy we know all that God needs us to know of his wondrous deeds.
The question of our lives each day is this:
What are we going to do, since God equips us to be the doers of such generous grace and mercy?
The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Words of Grace For Today
Though we strive for to secure our lives as we imagine they should be, these struggles matter very little in the end. We have 70 years or perhaps 80 or more, and only sometimes we are strong. The least desired, least by me, is to remain alive, though not healthy of body, unable to move and provide care for the world around me, or worse to be alive in body but to suffer some disease of the brain, so that my ability to think (a treasure my whole life) is gone.
What far are all these concerns, these fears, and all the struggle to avoid what will come regardless of what I or you or anyone else do. We all die, and dying is seldom comfortable or as we wish it would be. Death comes our way, the time, day and year we cannot know.
All our toils and troubles are for not.
What for then is life given to us?
Re-orient our thinking, our approach to life and death, to our doing. We are not given life to secure a good life for ourselves, though that may well be something that drives us onward day after day. We are given life to provide what has been provided to us, God’s Grace and Love.
That then may well include great and difficult work to ensure we have the basics of life, in order that we are alive to share the basics of life with others … and in that sharing to provide also what we have received, God’s blessing.
As the seasons turn, from frozen to greening, and life in suspension, hibernation, or in new seeds and eggs starts to inhabit the woods, the grasses, the air and the waters, we recognize that (in spite of the restrictions of Covid 19 and the 3rd wave’s illnesses, death and lockdowns – and irresponsibly dangerous protests) we also turn each morning to our God, pleading for mercy, renewal, love, and hope.
So as also God renews this season our hearts, minds and strength we pray: May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort our and your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
We have no time to languish. God has work for us, and for you! There are so many people who need from us to experience God’s mercy, renewal, love, and hope. On this foundation of Grace we live, allowing our hearts, minds, and souls to bask in the renewing light of the Son.
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!
I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
Acts 1:6-8
So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’
Words of Grace For Today
Oh, what assurance it gives to us this day, to be able to look forward with full trust that God will deal with all our oppressors and the oppressors of all people in all time!
Yet, we want God to act on our timetable, Now, please!
Or at least we want to know the time when God will act, so that we can fully trust God’s deliverance from our enemies who seek our death!
God provides no such time.
God provides a Promise.
God promises that we will receive power from the Holy Spirit.
God promises that we will be God’s witnesses, here at home, in the neighbouring countryside and countries, and to the ends of the earth!
That will require everything we are and have and can be – which is only possible as the Holy Spirit makes us able.
So we pray, discipline ourselves, and see and speak with God each day.
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’
1 John 5:14
This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
Words of Grace For Today
The greatest danger in life is fear, which drives us to instinctive responses, and schemes to secure our own lives and our own futures.
Seeking such security is a futile effort, and it always will be.
Only God can provide us such security.
What we can do is give every once of energy and life we have received in providing life abundant for other people, all other people, not just our chosen few!
Trusting that God hears our pleas, God abides in us, and we abide in the shadow of the Almighty brings us to live with a boldness that is the beginning of worshipping God, serving God, and loving all other people as God loves us.
We know where our refuge and my fortress is; God is with us, no matter what.
We can face every danger, every evil, every challenge with grace-filled hearts, breath to spare, and grateful generosity. We can be generous with all God has entrusted to us, as God is generous with us.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Colossians 2:2-3
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Words of Grace For Today
Here we find God’s truth. God is all powerful and to be feared more than anyone or anything else!
Without that fear there is no path to find knowledge, wisdom, truth. Without fear of God all our efforts will be bent, perverted, and misguided. Without fear of God our paths begin on a foundation that will shift and disappear out from underneath us.
Fear will not do it alone. The pseudo Paul who wrote Colossians (a disciple of Paul most likely) got this right. We need our hearts and minds encouraged and built up, united in love. With fear of God but without the love of God (bringing us to love God, all people, and all creation) we walk a dismal path where understanding is only partial, and that part is treacherous. Love brings us to understand life as God intends us to live it. Love enables us to move beyond understanding to contributing to God’s work in this world among us here and now.
The fear and love of God brings us to trust God with everything we are and have and can do. We begin to get glimpses of God’s mystery revealed in Jesus, the Christ.
We begin to live a life guided by true wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit for us at our baptisms.
That life is not a life of comfort. It is not a life of ease. It is not a life of capitulation to evil, or evil forces, or evil in others directed at us, or even to evil in ourselves.
This life is a difficult, seemingly chaotic (though by the Spirit very ordered), seemingly risky path that winds hither and yon. This is a life that gets us in to trouble, good trouble, trouble for Christ, trouble for the children, for the outcasts, for the poor, and for the condemned.
This is life, wisely lived life, life abundant, life blessed, and the life that God intends for us.
What are you waiting for?
The Son of God to come and give you directions, to die for you, and to be risen back to life thus conquering death and all evil for us?
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Acts 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
Words of Grace For Today
Sometimes, unfortunately not always, when a child is born the parents and others hold such hope for the child. They wish the best, the greatest, the most for this child. They hope this child will become an amazing human.
Sometimes this hope for the child becomes something more. It can become something ugly, destructive, and evil. It can become that the parent or others take the life of the child and try to force the child to become what they hope the child will become.
It can also become something beautiful, life-giving, and blessed. It can become that the community sees the individual, respects her/him, and gives everything they have to allow the child to grow into a full human, a sinner and a saint.
Being a parent is a great and marvellous honour and responsibility. Sometimes that responsibility creates so much fear a parent does not parent. Sometimes a parent completely ignores the responsibilities and the child suffers immeasurably.
Sometimes that responsibility is met with new found maturity, and both the parent and the child grow to know God’s blessings. The first of those blessings is the daily (re-) discovery that one cannot do it on one’s own. One needs family, church and community to help out. Even that is not enough, not ever and one learns to trust that God will walk with us parents, guiding us, forgiving us, loving us, and renewing us, so that we can be that example for our children.
Then, every so often a child is born, and the weight of all the hopes and dreams of a community, a people, a planet rest on that infant’s shoulders even before the child is able to talk. There is no lack of need for saviours for the people and for the planet. Today is no exception! History records many times a saviour was needed, and almost as many times that the people saw a saviour come their way, a few times it was a child. Very seldom the saviour actually was able to save the people.
Jesus arrives, the Isaiah passage is repeated this time apply to Jesus, and all the hopes and dreams land on the infant in the manger. This child does grow to be a saviour, one for all people of all time, and for all creation!
What we’ve made of Jesus is always an interesting reflection on the us. In Acts Luke reflects that Jesus came to bring peace. Except Jesus says ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew 10.34)
This leaves us with much to learn from Jesus’ story. We are never done learning from it. So we need to hear the familiar old, old story of Jesus and his love. When we think we are so familiar with the story, or parts of it, that is when we need to hear the story again and again, told simply, clearly, gracefully … so that we do not ‘self-correct’ the story we remember into something foreign to Jesus’ story.
There shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light.
1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Words of Grace For Today
North and South of the 60th parallels the continuous day is well known in the summer, though it is matched by continuous night in the winter.
As fierce as the winter cold, wind, and dark can be, this is not the darkness that we need to take heed of and can well fear.
That darkness is the darkness that envelops our souls, convincing us that we are nothing, nothing at all and that we need to make our own way in the world, that we need to make something of ourselves, that we are alone, and that life must be gained at other’s expense.
This darkness is the Devil’s darkness.
This is the darkness that robs it’s victims and their victims of life abundant.
This is the darkness that convinces us that reality is not God’s creation, but some twist, some perversion, some Godless experience that we can make up as we wish or as we feel we must.
This is the darkness that teaches that there is no Truth, only relative experiences which give us at best subjective truths.
This darkness is like the wind that swept through my camp, shifting supports and tarps. The light of day shows that it is a wonder that it all did not come tumbling down in a pile of tarp and supports, rolled together like child’s playdo, taking me with it.
The light of day allows me to make repairs, and to be thankful that in the light of days past I put things together with extra support, and a 2nd layer of extra support, and a 3rd, not unlike the Trinity: One God, yet three persons, together working wonders for us, in us, and for all others.
In the light we can see and anticipate what might come upon us like thieves or wind in the dark of night, and we can prepare.
We can prepare our hearts, inviting God to dwell in us, resigning ourselves to our constant need for God’s Grace and Forgiveness, and practising God’s Grace and Forgiveness for all others.
Then we live each day, trusting that God walks with us no matter what comes our way, for we know, as Kathleen Thomerson wrote for us: We want to walk as children of the Light. We want to follow Jesus. God set the stars to give light to the world. The star of our lives is Jesus.
In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus.
This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.
Romans 12:12
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Words of Grace For Today
There are lots of complaints floating about, people tired of Covid19 restrictions, and generally people stressed out about life’s little challenges.
Those of us who know who we are (God’s people saved even though we are miserable sinners) know that our cries are heard by God and that God saves us – and there is in all things great cause to trust God’s promises, to remain firm in hope (and resilience), to not be overwhelmed by suffering, and to persevere in prayer.
It is a life of gratitude no matter what comes our way.
It’s so much better than a life of bitching, complaining and draining goodwill from the people around us.
So why do we continually chose to complain about other people and their stupidities?
God helps us remember that we too can be the ones doing stupid things, and are each new day.
Which keeps God active saving us from ourselves,
For which we can, instead of complaining, be ultimately grateful.
What a life, filled with opportunities to be saved and to be grateful!
