Because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me, and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:9-10
For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Words of Grace For Today
Because we do something, therefore God does something good for us.
This is the half faith understanding of God.
It is good to humble ourselves before God. It is good to be penitent before God. Nothing we do, though, can effect how God exercises Grace for us. That is something God does even though we clearly do not deserve anything good from God.
In fact we deserve nothing but condemnation.
God graciously gives us life abundant, adopts us as children, promises us life eternal, and walks with us each day.
Everything that we are is by the Grace of God.
Knowing we are all God’s Grace can make us to be, inspires us to be more than we otherwise could be.
Life is wonderful, by Grace, even though we may think the Devil is running our lives to ground.
So we work hard, very hard at being the best people we can be, by living God’s Grace for others.
Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’
John 1:45-46
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’
Words of Grace For Today
To find something precious is a wonderful thing.
To find someone whom you’ve waited a long time to find is a life changing marvellous thing.
To find the one promised to bring God’s Promises to fruition for all people since times of old is fabulous, and even out of this world.
Knowing whom one is looking for is a place to start, so that when it comes time that one may meander down the right back alley and find this precious, this long awaited, or this Saviour of creation one would even know what one has found.
It’s like panning for gold. It sure helps to know what gold looks like before one spends a few years panning through tons of rock and sand looking for paydirt.
It is best, when one is looking for something precious, someone long awaited, or for the Saviour of the universe, that one start when one is young, for learning what these things are requires a young person’s fortitude, strength and quickness. It’s awkward in old age, when arthritis sets in and everything hurts when one moves, to have to run quickly through the gamut of possibilities in order to know what is precious, awaited or able to save creation.
After one, in one’s youth, has diligently sought for what is precious, whom is to be long awaited, or who can actually save creation, it is in one’s old age, when most of life is already spent, that one realizes the simplest and most common things are precious, like smiles and kindness. It is then that one realizes that the long awaited person is one that has always been there with you, and waiting is not what counts, nor in the finding, but rather it is in sharing kindness with that one becomes the one who is precious.
In one’s old age it is then that one realizes that the one who has saved creation, for it has already been accomplished, could not ever be found. For this one has walked with you from the earliest days of your youth through each day even into one’s old age when time moves so fast and things take so long to accomplish.
The Saviour of the Universe is the Creator of the Universe, is God’s own Son, Jesus. We need never say, ‘Come and See,’ for God is already here to be seen, known and heard.
Open your eyes and God can be seen. Open your ears and God can be heard. Open your heart and you will know God has been and ever will be with you.
No one is alone, not even with Covid 19 self isolation, for God is with us.
Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.
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
Love God’s Law and you will have peace, for nothing will make you stumble, and let Christ’s words dwell in you, teach and admonish each other all wisdom, and with grateful hearts sing to God!
All this is providing care for ourselves, though none of it earns us God’s favour or Grace. God promises us God’s favour, righteousness in God’s eyes, even though we certainly do not deserve it. What God gives us we do not and cannot earn. It is all free gift!
Then we get to respond. That’s our time for loving God’s Law, and letting Christ’s word dwell in our daily lives, as we teach and admonish one another (note that it’s mutual, not an authoritarian telling others what is right or wrong – that kind of judgment is God’s and God’s alone.) The great thing we get to do (actually one of so many great things we get to do) is to sing.
Covid 19 is transmitted by micro-droplets of breath, and singing produces lots of them and spreads them great distances, much greater than 2 metres! So we do not get to sing in large groups. Not until the pandemic is finished.
Just because stupid people say they are not worried about Covid 19, or they are going to live, or they are done with it, does not mean Covid 19 is done with us. Singing in groups for now is just stupid. As is coming close to strangers when it is not at all necessary. Or shaking hands with strangers. Or not wearing masks and face shields (oh, that’s right, hardly anyone wears a face shield!) Or not leaving in ‘isolation’ purchases for 3 days before handling them, and refrigerated or especially frozen items should be washed with a strong bleach solution. (Cold and frozen temperatures preserve the virus, and waiting three days for something in the freezer does no good for letting the virus die of its own accord. Warm up that frozen or refrigerated item and bingo bango splat – any virus on it comes back to life to infect you.
All the precautions that we can take are good. Learn a few more each week and add them to your fall repertoire, before the 2nd wave hits us harder than the 1st!
It’s a long haul discipline, not a short sprint. So take care of you and yours. Make new connections (physically distant.) And sing. Go into the bathroom, turn on the ventilation fan and sing your heart out! Go outside on a windy day or a great distance (at least 10 metres) from others and sing your heart out. Who cares what people think! We all know we need to sing with grateful hearts every day.
Teach, learn and admonish one another to take new precautions and keep the old ones. Practice them more diligently. Voluntarily shrink the size of you ‘cohort’, which means start keeping 2 metres apart from people who used to be in your cohort, wear masks and wear them correctly! (how many people do I see wearing them not over their nose, not even over their mouth! or handling them as if they could never be full of the virus!) even at home except with the smallest number of people possible (your children and spouse, for example,) and buy a face shield and start using it, use hand sanitizer right away after every time you touch anything that could be contaminated, and frequently all through the day, at every transition. You know the drill. Practice it without one leak in the guard between you and Covid 19.
Be smart. Be wise. Be patient. Be kind. And this thanksgiving and every one from now on you will still be able to celebrate with the ones you love, knowing you did not kill someone else with your reckless or just sloppy Covid 19 prevention practices. Covid 19 prevention practices are part of God’s Law: Do not Kill.
Rather be at peace, knowing you have done everything possible and wise to keep you and others safe.
Ah Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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
God is with us.
For some those words are the most comforting, promise-filled, powerful words that can be spoken, written or read. They name God’s choice to accompany one through all that life presents to us, both good and bad, marvellous and destructive, and hope-giving and despair oppressing.
For others these words can be the greatest cause of fear, dread, and angst. For they have chosen again and again to act selfishly, relentlessly destroying others for their own advantage, and trying to hide the truth from all. God still knows what they have done. To know that God not only knows, but God also accompanies one through life and the hell one creates for others, is to hear that God is not just aware of what one has done and still does, but God is profoundly affected by it as well. God’s wrath will rise up against one, in the end if not before.
God’s wrath is to be dreaded greatly!
For God has created the universe with God’s own power, with a word and an outstretched hand. Nothing is too hard for God. Destroying a person who has given themselves over to evil every day of their lives and only tries to hide this from others and themselves, and even from God … this kind of destruction is child’s play for God.
God is also so powerful as to send us to share God’s Grace with others, and to be ready to baptize them into the Way of Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. We know that Jesus has commanded us what is profoundly easy to repeat, and on our own impossible to obey: to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength; to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love even our enemies.
This is only possible since God is with us always, that we can love unconditionally as God first loves us.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.
Ephesians 5:15
Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.
Words of Grace For Today
Psalm 111:10 (and twice in Proverbs, once in Ecclesiasticus) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Be careful, live as wise people.
Wisdom requires fear.
Why fear God?
God made the world, the universe, and all that is in it, and all that live in it.
Fear is the appropriate attitude to take to the one who creates such a marvellous and ferocious and beautiful and destructive universe.
Watch a star through its life,ending in a supernova explosion*! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made?
Watch one’s child be born! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made and given one responsibility for?
Fear is a great motivator. It’s kept us alive as a species as long as we’ve existed. It’s given despots power since before history was written. It’s kept marriages together and blown them apart. It’s kept vulnerable persons alive and sane, and driven the strongest people insane.
By itself it helps move us to survive, but it does not move us to live fully.
Martin Luther begins each explanation in his Small Catechism with “We are to fear and love God so that ….”
Knowingly participating in God’s Kingdom requires fear and love of God.
Love of God, as our response to God’s unconditional love of us, when combined with fear of God, keeps us mindful of our place in the universe and before God, and mindful of the wonders and blessings God provides for us each day, undeserving though we all are!
Together, fear and love, bring us to seek goodness for everyone, to right injustices, and to sacrifice that others may know the good blessings God provides for all people to share.
That is the beginning of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that the Creator of all intended us to live with each day, even as we live with challenges insurmountable, like Covid-19, and the really dangerous rampant denial that Covid 19 is here and does seemingly randomly kill.
When the core runs out of hydrogen, these stars fuse helium into carbon just like the sun. However, after the helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the core has turned to iron, it can burn no longer. The star collapses by its own gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. In less than a second, the iron core, which is about the size of Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6 miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core, thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes (supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space. The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole depending upon the mass of the original star.
Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.
Matthew 15:24-8
He answered [the disciples], ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But [the Canaanite woman] came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.
Words of Grace For Today
There are many sayings that poignantly highlight some aspect of human existence. One is ‘no on gets out of life alive.’ Another ‘the fatality rate for humans is 100%.’ Another, ‘In the end what do they call the man who accumulates the most [fill in ‘power’, ‘money’, ‘status’, or anything else humans compete for]? … dead.’
Knowing we will die is part of knowing who we are … and what we are not. We are not immortal, nor godlets. God gazing on us directly is a most terrifying experience (or so we are told, never having experienced it myself.) As one approaches the end of life, it is a simple step, one that every instinct drives us to avoid until it is unavoidable. Then it becomes an inevitable, immediate, one way event, with no mulligans.
One can waste all of life fretting about one’s inevitable death. Or one can learn to immerse oneself in the present, find great joy in the abundant blessings God fills and overfills our lives with, and we can smile. Our smiles are not mere lips turned up at the corners, nor even a twinkle of life in our eyes. Our smiles at the great abundance and wonders of the universe and our lives in it, stretch from our mouths, far past our eyes, deep into our minds and to the foundation of our souls.
Those smiles help us imitate the Canaanite woman, who knows enough: 1) Jesus can heal her daughter, 2) she can beg to Jesus, 3) she will persist no matter the insults thrown at her. She trusts that God wants to heal her daughter, and Jesus is the One who God sends to heal all who he encounters.
Being insulted always matters, it just does not matter even one iota in the context of saving her daughter. She’ll take whatever scraps of Grace Jesus has for a non-Jew, for a Canaanite, for a woman. Even a scrap is enough to save her daughter.
No matter who we are, even a scrap of Grace is more than we need for life to be wondrously filled with breathe, love and hope.
No matter who we are, Jesus has time for us.
That ought to put a smile into us who know Jesus is our judge, or it will scare the living daylights right out of us, if we do not trust Jesus’ to provide us wretched sinners Grace.
We pray, with simultaneous smiles and terror for we are saint/sinners always, that Jesus will show us the way as we follow him, and that Jesus will turn away for we would like to smile without the terror ripping our hearts out of us.
Always in terror and in our joyous smiles, God is with us. The Spirit guides us. And Jesus reaches out, and asks us to lend him our thoughts, our voices, and our hands, that we can be Jesus’ presence for others.
I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Hebrews 13:9
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.
Words of Grace For Today
Regulations about food. Abstinence from tobacco, or from alcohol, or from dancing, or from Jazz, or from [fill in the piety thing to forego].
These are all ways to try to gain God’s approval.
Foregoing these or anything else, or obligatorily keeping some ritual or habit, are all futile efforts. Nothing we do or do not do can gain us God’s favour. Our place in God’s creation is far lower than that we have such capacity.
More significantly it is superfluous. God already has given us God’s favour. Still we get carried away by all kinds of strange (and yet devilishly familiar) false teachings about our place in God’s creation, as if we were as powerful as God, or more so, even able to be godlets ourselves.
It is the truth that many regulated behaviours have been scientifically good for us at the time and therefore healthy for us to observe. Not all are beneficial. Dancing is actually an activity that if one continues to practice into one’s old age it can help keep one’s mind clear, and one’s body able longer than if one had not. Still many call for avoiding dancing, because it leads to sex, which leads to children. The greater truth is that sex leads to children, which leads to dancing joyously. Whether sex is healthy depends not on dancing, but on one’s choice of partner and how one relates to him/her; which dancing has little to do with.
To remind us how we were and are so sinful and evil that God chose to flood out all life except a sample of each kind along with Noah and his family, and how gracious God is in re-establishing a covenant (an unusual unilateral covenant) with us, beginning with a promise not to flood all life away again.
So that we not forget, which we do so easily as we try to re-invent our relationship with God and creation … So that we do not forget God places a rainbow in the sky.
Light intersects the moisture of rain in the sky, and the prism effect of the moisture paints a bow of all colours across the sky. God continually works to show us how gracious God is.
Instead of abstaining or partaking or striving to achieve God’s favour, God invites us to immerse ourselves in God’s Grace which fills us and overflows all around us.
Grace! Grace is God’s free gift of liking us, of loving us unconditionally (despite the truth that we deserve condemnation), of forgiving us and giving us new chances. Second chances are far too few for God’s attitude towards us. God gives us new chances at life each minute, in each decision.
Grace!
Bask in Grace. It’s like dancing only wondrously better for strengthening one’s heart, soul and mind at all ages.
You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you. See, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before!
Hebrews 6:18
Through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us.
Words of Grace For Today
The cool of fall has arrived, so that sitting in front of a fire is not merely an evening pleasure for campers, but a necessity for keeping oneself warm.
The fire that God sends the condemned to is no such fire. It is like a raging wildfire that consumes everything in its path. Our human efforts to know the future, in order that we can have the advantage over others are legendary … and futile. Our efforts to destroy others in order to get ahead are also legendary. Destruction we succeed at quite well. Getting ahead is a real failure as well, not that we have not often thought we’ve won and made great headway forward. It is that we make headway toward the Devil and our own condemnation, not that we make headway toward God’s will and design for us, namely that we live sacrificial lives in order that others may live abundantly.
The challenges that the Devil places in our paths seem without end. They obscure our vision of God’s will, our ability to thrive as we give life to others, and our discerning the value of truth in the face of lies that seem to flourish better than Canadian thistle or leafy spurge.
Into a world filled with these challenges we awake each day. God knows this well, for God is with us, Jesus’ name is Emmanuel (God with us). God created us with a spirit to discern Good from Evil, and God knows we so often choose Evil, for others and for ourselves.
So God makes promises for us to know and trust. Land flowing with milk and honey. Descendents greater than the stars in the skies. A Saviour for all people of every age that we can live freed from our bondage to sin, so that we can imitate the Christ in our daily lives, forgiving others their sins.
God guarantees these promises by the greatest authority of all, God’s own.
In this we can live, trusting our very lives to God’s promises and God’s living Word.
Not the end, like an arcade game, tilted, cheated.
God gives us all another chance to make it right, now.
Ezekiel 20:44
You shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or corrupt deeds, Ohouse of Israel, says the Lord God.
Luke 6:35
Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Words of Grace For Today
In a country, powerful and wealthy, rich in precious resources, a country known for it’s open spaces and opportunities … for those who had the power and wealth (at the expense of everyone else) … In this marvellous country those with power and wealth constructed history from fiction, leaving truth behind, leaving all human rights aside, as they dealt with those not of their kind.
Inexplicable deaths, inexplicable disappearances, people suddenly relocating far afield, and never anyone of the wealthy and powerful were held to account for how they killed, forced disappearances, and terrorized people until they, if they were quick enough, moved as far away as possible.
Police and Courts enabled this with arrests and convictions of innocent people for things that never happened. More often though it was the blind eye they turned to the deaths, disappearances and carloads of people moving away under cover of night, leaving their property and wealth to be assumed by the already powerful and wealthy.
With cries for justice for their own kind, raped, murdered, disappeared (horrendous as these atrocities are) the powerful and wealthy ignore that more than four times as many people not of their kind die of violence, physical and psychological leading to suicides unspeakable in number. Even more are maimed, disappeared, or forced to flea for their lives.
Leaders, from among those who used to rule, not so justly either, rise up. With protests for justice, peaceful in organization and perverted by agents of the wealthy and powerful into riots, these new leaders manage (despite the violence wrought amongst them by their enemies) peacefully gain the power, though they do not have the wealth. Two leaders among the new take primary positions.
Unlike the leaders of previous times, recent and far past, they follow Madiba and Tutu’s lead. Instead of assuming the same injustices against others and for themselves, they offer something new, forgiveness. Forgiveness for all the previous leaders of the once powerful and wealthy. To receive forgiveness and amnesty a person only needs to appear in public and tell the truth of what they have done, the whole truth.
In the new powerful previous leaders from among the women are welcome, even encouraged to work to build a just and fair country, so that regardless of gender or previous position, one is valued for what one can offer for the new country.
The new leaders have taken to heart, head and hands Jesus’ command to love even one’s enemies. They have understood well that we shall know that ‘I am’ is the Lord, when God deal with all people for God’s name’s sake, not according to our evil ways or corrupt deeds.
This country is our country, your country, the country of the present as it moves into some time of the future. This country is God’s Kingdom, here on earth.
Let all with ears, hear; with minds, listen; with hearts, wisely understand; with blessings, forgive. For God will come to judge … and shock us all with Grace … even today.
The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.
Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Of what is life?
Food and drink?
OR
Peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and joy?
The basic requirements for minimum and full human life are:
clean air to breath
clean water to drink
nourishing food to eat
adequate clothing to wear
adequate shelter to protect one from the elements
meaningful labour so that one contributes and receives sufficient reward for one’s labour
love: most significantly that one is loved unconditionally, and that one can love others unconditionally.
Food and Drink are requirements, as we all know. One can last 3 or so days without water, and up to a few weeks without food. Not well, and not many times over. One should have water and food multiple times each day to stay healthy.
Yet we can too easily get our priorities all wrong.
We can loose balance, perspective, focus, and gratitude. There are many ways to say this, and it happens to us in as many ways. When we live with food and drink as the focus of our lives, to the detriment of labour and love, then we live off balance, out of kilter, or, as it’s said in so many ways, ‘messed up.’
It is exceedingly difficult to achieve peace, quietness and trust, righteousness or joy. Truthfully one cannot achieve them at all. We receive them as gifts from God.
It is hard to imagine that we would over focus, live out of kilter, living for peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and/or joy. Yet this also is possible. We humans have great ingenuity when it comes to ‘messing up’ life.
These gifts from God are not for us to achieve. Rather they are for us to share, and in sharing God fills us to overflowing with them.
While Covid-19 restrictions, and even the lifting of restrictions and a return to more ‘normal’ can tax us, at times beyond our limits, the stress of these times do not change who we are. The stress just makes very clear to ourselves and to others what kind of people we really are.
We are children of God and wretched sinners, simultaneously. We need to be loved, unconditionally. And to love unconditionally. Yet we ‘mess it all up’ terribly.
Thank God, we are forgiven, and given re-newed life each day, each hour, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us, despite our wretchedness.
It is beginning to feel much like fall as I write this. Cool air blows, tree tops sway, leaves rustle and fly, rain spits and drips. Everything inside is set to retain warmth and let in what light there is. In this day whatever it is like where you are may God’s blessings be obvious and not forgotten by our living off balance.
May we be caught tipped by the weight of blessing raining down on us, refreshing us, giving us the most precious things to experience and share.
