The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
Luke 11:10
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Words of Grace For Today
There are enough challenges to everyday,
even ordinary everyday days.
Through in upheaval like a pandemic, or injustice focused at oneself, or … [fill in the extraordinary upheaval that meets every life] the challenges can seem to be a bit overwhelming.
Then it is good to know that God’s Angels ‘encamp’ around we who fear and love God.
Then it is good to know that when we ask, God provides (what we need, not necessarily what we ask for). When we search, God guides us to find (what we need, not necessarily what we thought we sought). When we knock, God opens (the door that God knows we need to have opened, not necessarily the door we were banging away on).
To fear and love God.
To fear and love God is the beginning of everything good.
To fear and love God is the beginning of every good day, every good hour, every good minute.
To fear and love God is the beginning of every good relationship, project, or yearning.
Help us, we pray, to fear and love God before all else, (more than all the things that threaten to and do upend our lives.)
Help us, we pray, to trust God’s Angels are with us, (no matter what threatens to and does upend our lives.)
Gideon answered him, ‘But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?” But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.’
Mark 4:38
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’
Words of Grace For Today
Why is this happening to us?
Where is God?
Does God not care?
When unjust judges take life from us …
When the one who said, ‘I love you. Marry me?’, turns on you with physical violence or worse (because it is unseen) psychological gaslighting, lying to police and to church and to courts, destroying your reputation, leaving you so far in debt you will never get out, and your health plummets into pain and disarray …
When friends, bishops, and seemingly good people join the gaslighting as if you were a social pariah or dangerous sexual deviant, scapegoating you instead of dealing with their own failings to deal with reality and truth …
When there are no friends left to stand by you …
When flood waters wash away your home and life and hope …
When wildfires rage wiping out your home and life and hope …
When petty warlords churn your homeland into a war-wasted horror of death, bombs, night raids and killings, rape, torture, and dread of your neighbour falsely (or rightly) betraying you bringing death squads to your door to take you away never to be seen again …
When powers turn on your way of life, destroy it, and work to extract resources and power from your home land, leaving masses of your people without the necessities of life …
…
When you have lived in the wilderness for years, eking out a living of a kind, and you read of the wondrous deeds of God, as God saved our ancestors from these, similar and other worse assaults on their lives,
Then you and we will rightly ask, “God! Where are You!?! Do you not care for us!? Will you not save us, NOW! Before it is too late!”
Gideon asked this for his people. In time, as God instructed him, ((his ‘army’ blew the trumpets marching around Jericho, bringing down it’s walls, delivering it and then the rest of the Promised Land into their hands. — That was not Gideon. That was God delivering Joshua and the people. God did this so many times.))
In time, as God instructed him, Gideon with just a small army, drove out a great army and captured it’s kings … using surprise and loud noise making.
The disciples asked this as the storm of un-creation on the sea tossed their small boat about at whim between the tall waves and battered it with wind. They knew their deaths into the deep of the void (what was before creation) was imminent. Jesus wakes and speaks only a word. The un-creation void of the deep waters and winds of the storm settle into the fresh breeze and calm waters on which life was sustainable as the fishers knew so well.
God may not resolve the danger that threatens our lives. God is not a puppeteer, interrupting our freewill and others’ freewill as we choose our ragged paths forward in life through creation and human-made un-creation as we go (which we and others must then try to survive if it possible at all!)
God loves us.
God stands with us.
God suffers and weeps with us … at the loss of any of creation and any of God’s creatures … for God loves creation and all in it, and created it GOOD!
God does give us, sometimes, the possibilities to struggle against the evil that threatens us and to survive. If we live, God is with us. If we die, God is with us and gathers us home … home at last.
So whether we live or whether we die, we are God’s beloveds, blessed and grateful for whatever life we get to live in this miracle of creation!
God does not ever abandon us. Not ever. Not even during a pandemic. The stories of God rescuing our ancestors provides us witness to God’s love and care.
Thus, no matter how great the waves of evil pound over us, we do not lose hope.
As we live, we are God’s people who stand with others as the great waves of evil pound over them.
This is love. This is grateful, hope-filled living.
Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?
Words of Grace For Today
Since the beginning of time people have wanted to ‘see’ God, and in seeing be the one to control what others heard about God, thus ruling over others.
Others like Moses, when God calls them, want to be shown that the one calling them is really God. They are preparing to ‘lay it on the line’ and they want some reassurances. Nothing like the Glory of God to convince one to answer God’s call to serve.
Others like the disciples, Philip among them (who speaks up this time), are called to serve by Jesus and they want to know that Jesus, the human they see in front of them, is able to call on God and have God show ‘himself’ (for they thought of God as a father). Then they will be satisfied, or so they think and say.
But seeing God’s Glory is not likely going to satisfy anyone who is not already satisfied seeing and living in God’s presence, in God’s creation, day after day. Those people are sacramental mystics, and that is what we can see of God’s Glory.
That and God’s work (including sending Jesus to live among us as a full human, full God) to demonstrate that God’s creation works for us when we live out the same gracious generosity that God shows us in giving us life abundant in this miracle of creation.
“Show us God!” we say with so many before us.
God responds with miracle after miracle of meeting our sins with Grace. Grace is God’s unconditional love demonstrated with forgiveness, redemption, more abundant life, and sanctification!
When we rest in God’s Grace, then we can build the best life we can for us and ours, and all our neighbours, AND we can serve Christ by being God’s Grace for others.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Luke 11:28
But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.
It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.
Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.
All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!
The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.
And for the faithful it does not matter.
We do not bridge the gap.
God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.
In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.
Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.
First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.
We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.
God has us.
Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.
So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.
Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.
Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.
Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.
If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!
Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
Romans 14:8
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
Words of Grace For Today
When trouble threatens us, though we have done nothing to bring that trouble to ourselves.
When hoards of people believe the lies that created that trouble, repeating and augmenting the lies against us.
When the courts join in believing obvious lies and creating more of their own, and covering up their lies.
AND
There is no one to help.
OR
When the violence of greed for resources spills into our communities, forcing us to choose to acquiesce to the greed to secure a small respite for ourselves at others’ cost, or face the violence that will surely destroy us, or we run for our lives to join the other millions of refugees.
AND
There is no one to help.
OR
When the greed of unjust people rob us of our food, of our land, of our ability to provide for ourselves.
AND
There is no one to help.
OR
When the world is against us in any way at all, taking from us the abundant life that God has given us
AND
There is no one to help.
THEN
We remember
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
God’s truth renews our courage to face whatever comes our way. We do not succumb to the temptations to give up God’s truth. We do not succumb to the temptations to fail to proclaim with our words and deeds God’s Word. We do not succumb to the temptations to fail to invite even our enemies to seek God’s peace, to be converted by the Holy Spirit, to provide justice based on truth, and to contribute to God’s double victory, standing with us and all people who face the trouble of other’s sins and evil that would rob life from us and them.
We pray with confidence:
Do not be far from us, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
For we know God is with us always.
Though no one stands with us, God walks with us and we are God’s children. Nothing nor anyone can separate us from God.
Certainly not Covid 19, nor Covid19 restrictions, nor Covidiots!
Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Romans 12:13
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Words of Grace For Today
Strangers and aliens are citizens with us in God’s Kingdom, which is at hand, here on earth already today.
We love because we are loved first by God.
We accept the alien, the stranger, because we were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land. If we do not have that story in our lifetime, we have ancestors who do.
An elderly woman, frail of body and sound of mind asked the pastor visiting her to help her make a donation to CLWR, a donation to give a goat for Christmas in a far away, never seen country. She did not care where. She did not need to know the circumstances of need. She trusted her church for those details. She had to make the donation as she had every Christmas. This might be her last Christmas. She had to make the donation.
The pastor asked her why it was so important. Could she not rest in these her last years and leave that work to others, for she was barely able to provide for herself as it was.
No, she insisted. She must make that donation. She recounted how as a young teen, she and the others in her village were rounded up, and set on a march west. The crops had been plentiful, but all the grain was taken away by train, so they marched. There was so little food, day after day. Then there was no food, and they filled their bellies with grass to stop the pain of an empty stomach eating away at itself.
No, she insisted. My son was here and he refused to help me. Now pastor, you must help me. I have to make that donation, for I am still here.
We do what we can. Sometimes it is no more than a donation. Sometimes it is our years. Sometimes it is all the energy we have to welcome refugees and strangers, aliens come into our land hoping for a life, a new life.
We do what we can, for we know (if not from our own history, then from our ancestors’ history) what it is to be a stranger and an alien in a new land … in a new land with nothing to our names but trust in God and God’s people.
The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
There are too many people ready to lie, and lie, and lie, and do as much damage to others as they can with their lies.
How can we respond?
We can be sure only that God loves us, and as God enables us to love God, God abides in us. God continues to be faithful to us.
While voices continue the lies, shutting us out, denying us voice, gaslighting us, expanding the terrible lies about us, how can we respond?
We can respond with grace, only truth and grace.
Those ready to destroy us will show no mercy. They care not at all for the truth. They care not for God’s creation or any of God’s children. They care only for their own advantage, their own power, their own false record of appearing to be just but actually being very unjust.
Those who wish to destroy us are of all kinds, from the smallest child to the highest powers, and many in between.
How can we respond except with grace, only truth and grace?
For while those ready to destroy us will persistently pursue us, God is more faithful than any person could ever be, even those who relentlessly pursue us to destroy us.
We count on God, for God has continued God’s faithfulness to us.
We fear and love God greater than we could possible fear or love anyone else.
Who are we that God continues God’s faithfulness to us?
We are God’s children, God-made saints, yet simultaneously still sinners – though we are not guilty of the charges made against us, nor of the convictions falsely made against us. This is truth. This is Grace.
Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.
1 Thessalonians 5:5
For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
Words of Grace For Today
Are we to be good?
Are we to be evil?
Sometimes the difference between what we are to be is what we know about ourselves.
In knowing truth, there is hope that cannot be lost.
Darkness is powerful. It tempts many to lie in wait, to prey upon the weak, to put all their weight into the lie that will bring them forward.
The Light gives Life as God created us to live it.
Who are we?
Who have we been in the past?
Who are we going to be in the future?
God knows.
God knows who we are.
God knows who we are is what most of us have lost track of.
So God expends so much to show us who we are, to give us freedom from our past to be what we are, to guide us into the future so that we will be who we are, and who God created us to be.
YET
YET we always are so eager, able, and willing to choose to work the dark work of the Devil, to try to take shortcuts to a better life. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts or cuts at all are not what is needed.
God’s work in us is all that is needed, and it is the only thing that can move us to live in the Light.
The Light is frightening for most of us, we’ve hidden from our sins for so long. The light is the only way that God created us to live. So we remember even in the face of our enemies:
when we fall, we shall rise; when we sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to us, for we are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
Asa went out to meet him, and they drew up their lines of battle in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.
2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans are so ready to test our strength against others, to draw up the battle lines, to commence fighting to gain what we want.
We do not need warriors or real war. We create battles, with battle lines, against those who stand in our way. So it is in a world run on greed.
Our world runs on greed.
God’s creation, the Kingdom of God, runs otherwise. It is not our strength that wins us anything. It is God’s strength that brings life to all people, not just mere struggling to survive kind of life, but life abundant. God does this by giving away God’s favour freely, generously, unconditionally.
The way God’s way of living, by Grace alone, becomes clear to us living in a world of greed only when we allow our weaknesses to be the opportunities that God’s strength is made obvious for all.
God accepts our weaknesses, pays whatever price we think needs be paid, and sets us on our way to be renewed, living in God’s favour. Thus we are able to reflect in our way of living the Grace and unconditional love that God created the world to live on.
In today’s world the greedy and ‘strong’ prey on those who are ‘weak’ to gain advantage for themselves. In today’s Kingdom of God the saints pray for the greedy and the weak that they will see God’s Grace at work in life all around them, and join the work of the saints in light.
The saints work is to be the faith that will give hope to the coming generations; our weaknesses do not separate us from God. As Leonard Cohen penned well enough in his song Anthem, “It’s through the cracks the Light gets in.”
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’
John 19:26-27
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Words of Grace For Today
There is something very wrong with this creation account in Genesis. How it has been used makes this very clear to anyone who wishes to pay attention.
While humans are both female and male, the story places one as the first consideration for God, and the other as an after-thought, a help mate for the first.
This story came out of a male biased culture and has been used to devalue females as second class humans. Abuses have abounded through history based solely on this false preference of God’s for males. These biases and their subsequent abuses used to seem so acceptable to some people, especially those that benefited from them. In truth they always have been an abomination for the whole species.
Today, as if this helps at all, many have turned these biases and abuses on their heads. Females are given free license to devalue, abuse, lie about, gaslight, and even kill males freely, as if it were their birthright as females. This ‘new’ bias-abuse of males can never set right the bias-abuse of females. In fact it is worse. For many the bias-abuse of females was unintentional, even by females who saw it as something for their benefit.
The ‘new’ (to our culture) bias-abuse of males to benefit females cannot be claimed by any to be participated in unawares. It is the flip of a terrible bias in history. For that matter continuing male-favouring biases is no longer excusable (because one was unawares) either, if it ever was.
A bias participated in aware of the bias and one’s participation in it is worse than an accidental bias in that it , on top of everything else, consciously chosen.
Female favouring biases are also most often pursued with revenge in mind. For example it is as if the abuse is pursued against this good male to take revenge for the abuse of other abusive males, even though the males are related only in that they are males.
That kind of blind revenge bias is many measures worse. It claims to set things right, yet it adds layer upon layer of lies and deception and damage to every situation.
Only Grace brings us to live past bias of any kind.
Jesus, on the cross, does not change that woman have next to no possibility to ‘take care of their own business.’ They require a man to own the property and from that provide for the woman. Instead Jesus acknowledges the disadvantage this places upon Mary, his mother, and he ensures that one of the disciples is now recognized by Mary as her son, and she is recognized by him as her mother.
Jesus does not remove the bias. Instead he ensures, despite the bias, that his followers and his mother are cared for as all people should be.
We can make changes, if all too slowly, to cultural biases. We need to do this with great courage and persistence. We need to work to remove the bias and all vestiges from our own lives. We need to actually remove and end the bias, not to merely replace it with an equally if not worse bias!
As we recognize our own sin (including biases), and the sin of our culture’s biases, we need swiftly and effectively mitigate the suffering all our biases cause people, including ourselves. We need to provide the care every human deserves for everyone we can.
This is the meaning of life, and the purpose of each day; to provide God’s Grace to all people.
