Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 26

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Buried Beneath the Ice
Not Nice.

Jonah 2:3

You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.

Mark 5:22-24

Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

Words of Grace For Today

God rarely delivers us from our trials. Most often God delivers us in our trials.

Jonah tried to hide from God, to no avail. Neither can we hide from God. Jonah was tested severely, as we are, too. In the deep, the heart of the seas, the flood over our heads, God’s waves pass over us.

When we face our own demise we see life more clearly for what it is. When we face the demise of our children, we ought to see life more clearly for what it is. Sometimes though anxiety makes us act as if we were just plain stupid. Anxiety explains a lot of inexplicable behaviour, even during normal times.

Jairus, a leader at the synagogue, faces the death of his daughter. He comes and pleads for Jesus to have mercy and come and heal his daughter, so that she may live.

That should be an account that tears at every parent’s heart. My child is being ripped from life here with me … and what can I do? Jairus has heard of Jesus and goes to beg, to humble himself before Jesus, to beg for his daughter’s life from a man he knows can save her.

That’s faith.

That’s faith that can only be given by God!

That’s faith that brings life to those who have it and those near them.

Jairus’ faith brings Jesus to save his daughter’s life, and she does live.

Beneath the waves of Covid isolation, loneliness, shortages, fear of illness and death (our own and our loved ones’ … and even our enemies’) we gasp for breath,

We gasp … and humbly pray that God will deliver us and our loved ones, heal us all, and bring us all, even our enemies, back to live full lives, filled with gratitude and complete joy!

Still we gasp for air. Where are we caught so dark and deep, that we find little air?

Anxiety.

So we pray, free us from all fear, and make us into the people that can heal others with a word.

Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 25

God’s Great Creation Teaches Us to Prosper and Know
Complete Joy

Deuteronomy 30:9

The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors.

John 15:10-11

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

To prosper. That is what is not happening for so many people the world over. The economies of most nations is at a near standstill, as essentials only are made, distributed, for sale and purchased.

So much that the world thrived on was not necessities, but the benefits of a very advanced global economy. Yet I have not met nor heard of a person who has truly prospered, who did so without doing on the backs of many other people who could not prosper.

To prosper seems to be equivalent to being able to get away with terrible crimes and sins against other humans, all in order to get ahead.

This is not at all what God would have us do or be in this marvellous creation.

Jesus comes to show us an exactly mutually exclusive way of being in creation; self sacrifice so that others may live well. Prospering at others expense is out of the question. The only kind of prospering is when one moves forward through ones days choosing goals and actions so that others may live and live well.

This is a quite foreign concept for many caught in the ‘logic’ of global capitalism, built as it is solidly on greed and making gains at others expense, accumulating power in wealth and using it to continually succeed in getting more money from others getting less money, endlessly.

Jesus had not yet seen global capitalism, but the previous generations had certainly seen themselves either among the conquering Romans or those the Romans conquered and ruled, to the Romans’ advantage. In spite of many wishes that Jesus conquer the Roman occupiers, Jesus instead offers to us that our joy be as his joy is in doing God’s will, and that our joy be complete.

To prosper, and to have our joy complete, all coming to us as we abide in Jesus’ love, so that God’s love will abide in us.

All this is gift; God chooses and acts. We receive and benefit. We live in God’s love. God is in love with us. And we in turn are in love with all creation and all God’s creatures.

Since time immemorial, God has called faithful people to retreat from the demands of normal life, and ask why and how one lives as one does.

This is now the time for us all.

Cancel that world tour vacation. Cancel that entertainment holiday. Cancel that weekend of expensive travel, motor sports, or casual sports. (OK, we’ve been required to do so anyway.)

God calls us to take this time and ask: how does God want us to abide in God’s love and have our joy complete? How does God want us to prosper … now during Covid 19, and after isolation is not needed for everyone’s health.

This is how we prosper: we love and give sacrificially of ourselves to others, as Christ did for us … on his cross.

Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 23

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Knowing All Will Be Well …

Isaiah 44:21

Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.

Hebrews 10:35

Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.

Words of Grace For Today

Confidence!

Wikipedia defines it as: Confidence is a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a latin word fidere’ which means “to trust”; therefore, having a self-confidence is having trust in one’s self.

Oh, to be able to have a confidence that is not bound by one’s own self, or about one’s self. Trust in one’s self is as fleeting as the beauty of the butterfly, the wisp of smoke rising into a clear sky, or of the moment of forgetting one’s own sins.

God provides this basis for confidence. God formed us! We are God’s servants! God will not forget us!

God. Now there is a Rock from which confidence can rise to hold us no matter what assails us!

No matter what we face, life or death, riches or poverty (and riches are so much more a threat to us than poverty every could be!), and kindness of truth or the cruelty of lies … no matter what we face God is our Rock. God made us who we are, claimed us, redeemed us, and equipped us as saints in this broken world.

This is confidence that cannot be broken. It is con– (with) fidere (trust) that prevails, even in the face of death, even death on the cross of Good Friday which is defeated in Christ rising in the early light of Easter morning.

Let us remember, and pray that God will hold us mindful of, the price paid for our holiness, the miracle that frees us from sin, and the reward that God gives us every day. We live in God’s blessings, no matter what.

We can say out of the confidence of faith along with Julian of Norwich who wrote and said (as the devastation of the Black Plague raged on the other side of her hermit-cell’s window – 30% to 60% of Europe died within 4 years):

All will be well.

All manner of things will be well!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 22

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

God’s Love Colours our World

Ezekiel 16:8

I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love. I spread the edge of my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness: I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.

Galatians 3:26

For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

Words of Grace For Today

Everywhere one hears the words of love, of romantic love that turns one’s world right-side-up, that sets the fears of the night to rest, that provides balm to one’s ills, and brightens the future with brilliant light.

God uses these experiences and images to speak through the prophet to describe how God claims us. When we were at the age of love! When we were but infants we were already at the age of love poured out on us by God, so God claims us. We were robed in white, marked with the cross, and blessed for each day and each challenge …

including the many challenges we face these days!

By faith God claims us through Jesus Christ. The faith that brings an infant to the baptismal font is not the infant’s faith. The faith that brings us as infants to be claimed by God is our parents’ faith … and our godparent’s faith … and the person ordained to baptize us’ faith … and the people who gather’s faith. All this faith is in each instance not earned or acquired. It is given by God.

There is no challenge that can defeat the faith that God creates in us.

Play the music of your faith, the music that rings through all of creation, the music that inspires the soul and heals the body and mind.

In this music experience the love that captures us and sets us free in a world made right with us in it!

Be courageous, calm and kind. We are in this together. Share the love that makes life precious!

God is with us, even when we think we are alone, and if God is with us, then the saints of all the generations walk with us as well. Their love surrounds us no matter what we face.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 21

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Our lives are to mirror God’s, in our thought, words, and actions.

Daniel 6:24

The king gave a command, and those who had accused Daniel were brought and thrown into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. Before they reached the bottom of the den the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.

1 Corinthians 16:13

Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.

Words of Grace For Today

The king gives a command, which decimates Daniel’s enemies who were bent on killing him. They and all their families face the death they had set Daniel to suffer.

I saw this sign in a furniture store, among the kitsch hanging about:

Karma, I have a list of people you seem to have missed.

No matter our enemies, our faith given to us inspires us to love even our enemies. Revenge or Karma’s actions, or what goes around comes around are not what we wish for those who would destroy us, even when they do their best from or through seats of the highest powers, the richest businesses, the most influential families, and not even from or through the force of armed police. We forgive, except when these actions go unrestrained, unnamed, unnoticed (except by their innocent victims). Then, ordained as a select few of us are, we must name those sins as bound, and leave them to God’s judgment. We trust that the Light of Christ will shine on their evil deeds. We treat them as those outside God’s people, with empathy and care, even when they deserve none of it.

This is no easy task.

It is also no easy task to forgive those who blatantly breach the health orders. Their foolishness puts themselves and so many of us, at terrible risk of coming down with Covid 19, which will lead to the death of those most vulnerable. The fools will likely live on to continue to threaten others again.

Still we pray: God helps us Keep alert, stand firm in our faith, be courageous, and be strong.

Help us to forgive the unforgivable.

This, too, shall pass.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 20

Monday, April 20, 2020

God’s Eternal Word has Broken into This That We Know.

Genesis 18:19

For I have chosen him [Abraham], that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what the Lord has promised him.

Romans 6:22

Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.

Words of Grace For Today

Wikipedia provides that ‘Sanctification is the act or process of acquiring sanctity, of being made or becoming holy.’

We believe firmly that only God can make us holy. We cannot act to become, or enter a process of becoming holy. Sanctification is a gift given at Baptism. Thereafter one chooses in each minute/choice to act out of being holy, or not; and truth is we all act out of both all the time, simultaneously.

As generations rise and pass, we may well charge the successive generations to ‘keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.’ This is Abraham acting then, but it is ever since God acting in the lives of the successive generations, one generation, one person at a time, to inspire them to act out righteousness and justice. God and any human who lives, eyes even a bit open, knows there are plenty of people with lots of power, influence and money who, in each generation (also ours), have no inkling for righteousness and true justice. It is all self interest, the rest of humanity be damned. Which really is the condemnation of themselves in eternity.

Given the gift of sanctification we are holy! We have the ability to be holy in every moment. In these choices, compromised as they may be by our still being sinners, we not only have an end in eternal life, we have the blessings of eternal life already today, every day!

As Covid 19 health concerns and orders foist so many new limits on our lives, new challenges, and new frustrations. Humour provides a view to this. My 88 year old Mother, living alone 10 miles from town provided these:

Who would have thought that when the time changed we would go from standard time to twilight zone time, where:
I need to practice social distancing from the refrigerator.
I am so excited! I am so excited. It’s time to take out the garbage. What should I wear?
This month’s biggest decision was where to go for Easter!
the living room or the bed room.

Simple Daylight Savings Time does not look that terrible anymore.

God’s holy people know God’s time is eternal and already it breaks in every day into our mundane lives, making each minute remarkable!

Take that Covid 19!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 19

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Do Not Be Afraid …

Deuteronomy 32:10

He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.

Luke 12:32

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Words of Grace For Today

Isolated as we are, not completely cut off from the living, though keeping our distance, not able to see our loved ones as before, we experience the real effects of living in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste land.

Even isolated though, we are not alone, for God is with us. God gives us the Kingdom, and in that Kingdom all live, and live well!

Fear cuts us off from our wonderful abilities to reason and place ourselves in reality, and then to choose how to respond … to choose to respond with Grace and Love.

Fear is the enemy greater than all others.

Repeatedly angels and messengers of God’s Word repeat what Jesus said often: Do Not Be Afraid!

It is too easy to let ourselves take in the new reality of being isolated because of Covid 19, of being likely to contract this highly contagious and for some painful and even deadly disease and forget all God’s blessings.

It is too easy to let ourselves despair.

It is too easy to let ourselves spiral into fear

that becomes frantic,

that becomes panic,

that becomes rash and foolish thoughts, words and actions

that put us at great risk, not only from this virus, but at great risk to lose our sanity, our God-given calm and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that equip us to be God’s Grace to others.

God treasures each of us.

So we can treasure one another.

Reach out to others as we still safely can:

especially

if you feel the walls closing in on you,

if fear grows on you,

if you feel despair circling.

Allow God to use each of us to sustain one another through this desert wasteland where fear grows too easily. Connect yourself and each other each day to the Grace that gives us breath, to the Courage that gives us life, and to God’s promises that give us hope, no matter what assails us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 18

Saturday, April 18, 2020

The Laws of Physics. An Empty Glove Grows Cold Even in the Light

The Law, Greater than an Empty Hand

Jeremiah 8:7

Even the stork in the heavens knows its times; and the turtle-dove, swallow, and crane observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord.

Romans 2:14

When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.

Words of Grace For Today

Today all to often sinful people (like us) rationalize anything and everything, as if truth, goodness, purity, and obedience were all relative or in the eye of the beholder or fully dependent on one’s perspective.

Quatsch!

Absolute reality does exist, and those who pretend that they can change reality so that they get to take control and rule over others, are only working out the Devil’s own way.

The ordinances, the Law of God, given in the Old Testament, were not equivocal. Generations spent countless hours interpreting, applying and writing guides to them, but that never changed the Law given by God. Reality is reality. God is God. Law is Law.

Do not murder. Do no commit adultery. Do not steal. Do bear false witness. Do not covet.

These are not complicated, yet a life long challenge to obey.

Jesus’ command is simpler: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength! Love your neighbour as yourself, and your enemy.

Jesus’ command is a greater challenge to obey, for instead of proscribing destructive behaviour, Jesus prescribes life-giving behaviour. Jesus’ command impacts everything we think, say and do!

Of course one does not need to hear Jesus’ commands to be able to love God and all people.

On the other hand just because we are baptized hardly means that we will love God and all people. So we need to hear the command again and again, so that we remember what the Holy Spirit equips us to be able and ready to do, each and every day of our lives.

None of us are above God’s law, or above Jesus’ command to love God and all people.

Following the law perfectly is impossible. We remain sinners who break it constantly, but that does not mean that we can pretend the Law does not exist, that we will not break it, and that we are not condemned for those breaches. We are only saved by Grace. That we are saved by Grace alone inspires us to forgive others as we are forgiven.

What a beautiful world that makes, for we are in it, together.

Covid 19: Music Heals the Soul and Body

Covid 19 Advice?

In devotions and sermons plenty of advice is dispensed, as proclamation of the Gospel: that we are equipped to be God-made saints (though simultaneously remaining sinners), so why not do what is good and right, and healthy; and if not now, When!

Today I offer a simple observation about Covid 19 that certainly is advice:

Get good music, and listen to it often.

…

There are of course hammers and blows, rage and chaos, yelling and ranting, or all sorts of dystopia expressions that are viewed as music.

If that is what turns your crank, don’t let me separate you from what keeps you going.

This is not the time, though, to sink obliviously into dystopia. This is time to find a connection to the music of the spheres.

One of the forefronts of physics today is String Theory, which is, in a superbly simplistic peak into it: the universe is made up of teeny strings that vibrate, like strings on a guitar, at different frequencies etc. to make up the differences of energy-matter-time of which the universe is composed.

So, the ancient idea of the music of the spheres re-emerges. And a basic truth of the human psyche-body comes into play: music touches the soul, and if it is music that reflects the marvels of creation, it can heal mind and body.

Dystopia music, music of rage and rant, and music of chaos, on the other hand, actually works against the healing of both body and mind.

What does this mean for us during the quarantine experience of Covid 19? (Okay, I got it: only in the Quarante province of France is it quarantine, for the rest of us it’s sparkling isolation, but the name is not that important, is it? Yes, even the music of words make a small difference in our health!)

This all means that one part, and it can be a large part, of our staying healthy, is to create, or at least listen to, music that heals.

I played Euphonium in college with a professional level band at Concordia College, Moorhead MN. Thanks to Russel Pesola! and all the music classes I took I learned to appreciate the intricacies of brass music.

So these moved my heart and soul once again. They are about bringing health, to the players and to the audiences:

Precisely during Covid 19, a piece for us all:

A Hope for the Future at

and

Cancer Blows 2015 at

Which Ryan Anthony, professional soloist and former member of the beloved Canadian Brass, organized, first as a lark when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2012. Then it solidified into a series of concerts and a foundation, The Ryan Anthony Foundation.

And yes, he is the soloist that closes out A Hope for the Future from his isolation bed in hospital.

The Light of Hope for the Future is There! Play it!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Apr 17

Friday, April 17, 2020

When They Attack …

Psalms 71:3

Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

2 Timothy 4:18

The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

You, O Lord, are our rock and salvation!

Whatever enemy attacks us, a minute virus, a devilish temptation beyond our resisting, or a deceitful person bent on destroying us by whatever means, God is our refuge. God is a fortress that protects us.

We may be infected, become ill, every ill, suffer and even die.

We may not be able to resist a temptation that rebounds on us, ruining everything about our lives, leaving us with nothing, living on the street, bereft of family, friends and hope.

We may be attacked by a person we trusted with our life, who betrays us, who spreads rumours about us in the church and our community, who lies before the Courts, who stops at nothing to run us out of this life. And the church, the community, and the Courts may not only receive the lies as if truth, but create more lies of their own in order to condemn us and bring us within a thin thread of disappearing into a grave. And the accumulated gaslighting and it’s profound costs may indeed bring us to an early grave.

Still God is our refuge, our rock and salvation. God saves us for God’s own kingdom. Timothy wrote ‘heavenly’ kingdom, but the heavenly and earthly kingdom of God is not two separate things. It is all the same.

Even today, God is with us, and the Kingdom of God is at hand!

For this Kingdom, God saves us, even if our devilish enemies steal everything from us, even the breath that we use to sing God’s praise.

For even in death, God’s glory is made known in the lives of all us God-made saints still sinners.

While we still have breath, let us not waste any opportunity we have to live as ‘little Christs’ for each other, for those in need, for the strangers we meet, and especially for our enemies.

We can live courageously, for God is our rock, our refuge, and our salvation! Nothing can separate us from the love of God that gives us life in Christ.