Events – Page 28

Facing Covid 19: Daily Devotions – May 22

Friday, May 22, 2020

Trees and Grass are Green

Fog is grey.

People come in Genders.

Colour or Gender

do not

Determine Sinfulness

nor

Criminality.

Goodness is Fully Dependent on God’s Grace!

Jeremiah 31:20

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child I delight in? As often as I speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore I am deeply moved for him; I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord.

Luke 15:20

So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

Words of Grace For Today

Ephraim is in trouble often with God, for God speaks often against him.

The selfish son is in trouble, deeply with his father, for he’s taken his inheritance before his father is even close to the end of his life. Then he’s squandered the entire inheritance.

That sounds like it’s not far from our own stories, each of ours. We take what we can claim as ours and run, and get into trouble, with our fathers, with God, – with our mothers, siblings, extended families, the community we live in, the church … and with God all over again. There are a great number of variations to the story, and every single one of us can be described by one variation or another.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is – well first a few thoughts about God as father. The image of God as father in itself is a very healthy image, one to embrace with profound joy. There’s nothing quite like the goodness of a father directed at us, loving, forgiving, accepting and inspiring us to live even better than we thought we could.

The damage done by the image of God as father is not in the image itself. It is in the abuse of positions of power occupied by men for centuries. Every good thing can be perverted. This is no exception.

The problem comes when we toss the baby out with the dirty bath water.

The abuse needs to be identified, clearly named and condemned … and ended.

The problem comes when we stupidly think that the abuse of the image of God as father is somehow made better when we replace it with abuse of the image of God as mother.

The problems multiply astronomically when we think that naming men as the problem, while ignoring the same kind of abuse, perversions, and destruction is perpetrated by women. The flavours, smells, and theme of the abuse and perversions can sometimes be collated to the gender of the abuser, but it’s just superficial.

Point blank: men abuse women. AND women abuse men. AND men abuse men. AND women abuse women. AND … God knows this all. So should everyone of us.

AND all of it is evil, and needs to be stopped. ALL abuse when it runs without restraint ends up killing it’s victims (and often the perpetrators, too.) A person is just as dead if they are murdered by physical violence as when they are driven to despair with no escape except suicide.

ME-TOO is all wrong, in that it only deals with one flavour of abuse, and ignores the rest. It is perhaps more destructive in that it sets so many people up to think that abuse is dealt with … so that the rest of it can continue unabated, the victims abandoned, the deaths unnoticed and uncounted.

The bishop last year said that we (this synod) are just starting to recognize and work on the issues of women being treated equally.

I spoke up, as I was able: some of us have been working on that for more than three decades, with everything we are, as men making sure the women in our lives get every opportunity possible and a fair deal (as much as possible.) It’s taken great sacrifice, and we’ve been sidelined often as irrelevant, our contributions raising children with great skill, grace and success belittled, and our words of giving attention to all issues of abuse ridiculed.

The challenge now is to acknowledge all kinds of abuse, by men and women, of men and women. To look at the root of it all: the need to scapegoat others as a means to advancing ourselves in life.

Back to the passages that speak profoundly of God’s unconditional acceptance of sinful sons. The translation to God’s unconditional acceptance of daughters needs be imagined, added to these stories. The stories though are powerful.

Who is your God? Not the God you say you believe in, but the God that your thoughts, words and actions belie you trust and believe in! Who is the God you live your life in response to?

Is your life a reflection of God, the universally, unconditionally accepting and forgiving father who, of a wayward son, says “I will surely have mercy on him!”

Does your life reflect the God who is portrayed in Jesus’ story as the prodigal father, who seeing his self-destructive, wasteful, wanton son approach, “filled with compassion runs and put his arms around him and kisses him?”

How marvellous it is to read these passages and know that God welcomes us, even when we have rebelled and wasted our lives and those around us!

The challenge is now:

Are we ready to be that welcoming father for all those people who have walked away from Grace and Goodness, and now desperately need a morsel of what we have in order to survive? Can we imagine being that overjoyed in welcoming back our wayward sons, daughters, parents, extended family, community members, church members, others known and strangers, even refugees and immigrants … and even those of other faiths or of no faith at all?

As we are able to do that, en-mass, then abuse, perversions and destruction of people will finally be dealt with in a manner so that they can be ended.

And all of us will be able to joyously embrace images of God as father, as mother, as Jesus the man, and as the Holy Spirit, wind, breath, and fire – lighting one under us to get on with the work of God’s Kingdom here and now.

Ah, what makes that all possible is that our God is a God of compassion and mercy, who rushes to greet us when we return to him!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 17

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Lost in the Ice

or Set in the Comfortable and Familiar

The Challenge to be

Who we are is Constant

1 Kings 8:58

Incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances, which he commanded our ancestors.

Colossians 2:6-7

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many things to do to discipline oneself to live well.

The challenges are never ending, sometimes overwhelming, other times simple. Life without challenges is not life. The questions constantly before us are:

A. Who are we?

B. Whose are we?

Every other question is subsumed into these, and the answers we give to every other question with our living (thinking, dreaming, planning, organizing, talking, writing, and doing – or not) are also the answer to these two questions.

Once we realize and confess that we are

A. wretched sinners saved by Grace alone (not by anything we do/not do/are/aren’t), transformed continually to be Saints, and

B. God’s people by baptism into Christ,

Then we have our work cut out for us to live out the promise God creates us to be for other people: That we will bear God’s Grace and the Good News of Jesus’ saving us all, also them.

So we continue to live our lives rooted and built up in Christ, as we are established in faith.

We incline our hearts to God walking in Christ’s Way, keeping his commandments to love our neighbour and ourselves and our enemies as he has loved us.

And, as the saints in light who have gone before us have taught us, we live with overflowing gratitude.

Covid 19 has put somethings in perspective, slowed us down, kept us home, given us time to see ourselves and our families up close for hours on end, or to submerse ourselves in solitude (for those of us who live alone.)

The challenges are still great, and they tax us in new ways, and they give us new opportunities to discover who we are, and whose we are.

For this we give thanks!

Makes the Light of Christ

Visible

We Reflect God’s Perfection Imperfectly

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 12

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Forever More …

Our paths are diverse

Let them not be perverse.

1 Kings 3:4 & 9

God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ And Solomon said, ‘Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’

Philippians 1:9-10

This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.

Words of Grace For Today

“… So that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.” Well, sinners all, that is impossible … except that Jesus’ record will be used in place of ours.

That redemption of our sinful lives is not dependent upon us, not in anyway. That’s God’s choice, God’s gift, God’s promise to us, each of us.

Now to live boldly, to God’s glory, with courage, as we are able.

Able to have God’s love overflow more and more into us and out of us to others.

So that the ability to discern good and evil, full knowledge and insight help us determine what is best everyday, no matter our circumstance.

We may not have Solomon’s responsibilities, to govern God’s people as ruler, leader and king. Each of us does impact the lives of those around us. We each ‘lead’ and ‘govern’ greatly how others encounter the world and God … either as curse, harsh, short and brutish OR as blessing, redeemed, eternal and joyful.

So we pray: give us, God, your love overflowing that from your Grace and Mercy our knowledge and wisdom may govern our lives and contribute to the lives of those around us.

As we face Covid 19, and every challenge of our lives, let us find wisdom beyond our years.

Let us help others facing loneliness, depression, oppression, scapegoating and gaslighting find your Light shining also for them through us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 10

Sunday, May 10, 2020

See the Beauty, See the Wonder

1 Samuel 10:7

Now when these signs meet you, do whatever you see fit to do, for God is with you.

2 Timothy 2:7

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.

Words of Grace For Today

Happy Mother’s Day, to the mothers in my life (and in yours.)

How can we meet the expectations that we and others have for how we honour our mothers on this day … when we cannot go see them, give them flowers, ….

There are telephones, and the internet, thankfully.

How can we hug the precious mother who gave us life?

and hopefully astounding love?

In these times this is not possible, or legal, or even advisable … since even if we are asymptomatic we could be contagious and hugging our mothers could share more than we wanted to. We could share that nasty virus that is likely much more dangerous for our mother than for us.

So let words and gestures abound.

Let humour abound.

Let our imaginations abound.

Like the care facility that made a mock up of Tim’s to allow the residents a bit of normalcy: an opportunity to place and receive an order for coffee and Timbits.

Or the children who showed up outside their grandmother’s care-home window, called her to tell her to look out the window, and they danced in a ring, well a sort-of-ring, that turned out to be the shape of a heart! before they rolled all over the ground before standing up in a line to take their bows.

Whatever is required, when we live immersed in God’s Word day in and day out, no matter the challenge that we face, God will be with us as we find our way forward.

Courage, Faith, Love and Hope, all this God provides aplenty for us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 6

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Caught in Darkness?

The Light will Shine

And be reflected by all water and life in Creation

Isaiah 42:16

I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Words of Grace For Today

Darkness. Total, deep, profound darkness of the soul. No light at the end of the tunnel.

When we find ourselves there, to put it into cosmic terms, in a black hole that pulls everything around it into nothingness …

When we find ourselves there it seems that everything is lost, not only things that build a sense of continuity and security (like jobs, homes, family, church, and even the tool that enables one to create – a camera, a pencil, a computer, a canvas), not just life and all good life at that for us and for creation, but meaning, history, presence and future ….

When time and hope are lost into the void and emptiness that is left to us, then only memory of, or re-spoken promises made in the past, or that little light at the end of the vortex can save us from going totally bonkers.

Covid 19’s threat (the lock-down, our isolations, our ‘staying the blazes home’, our financial concerns, the risk to our and our loved ones’ health and lives), for most of us does not approach the vortex of a black hole where no light exists. For some of us it does.

Whether its a total black out, or a brown out, or we have already gone a bit bonkers so that it all looks like dark colours everywhere …

However this affects us,

We yearn for Light, if yearning is still possible.

God promises to turn darkness into light, rough places into level ground. The dawn from on high breaks in on us in darkness, in the shadow of death, and guides us in the way of peace.

That’s the promise that we can remember … if we can remember.

That’s the promise that we can re-speak for others … when they cannot remember, we can, and we can still speak.

That’s the promise that we need to re-speak, to proclaim with all the vivid colours of the rainbow splashing about …

because even if we do not notice them, there is someone onto whom those colours (carrying Light) will splash.

And they will be saved from the vortex of absolute darkness, by our generous, reckless, prodigal re-speaking a promise that created, redeemed, and guides this whole universe of creation to be able to seek peace.

Peace is not something we attain and hold on to.

Peace is a manner of being in this universe, when participated in brings us to reflect God’s intent for us, but which is lost as quickly as a candle is snuffed out by even a gentle breeze.

Peace be with you, also this day, whatever this day is for you.

Splash and be splashed by the Light and Colours of the rainbow, God’s rainbow of promise, faith, hope, love, grace, and life – abundant life.

We may be off kilter a bit

Doch God’s Light Shines

in full colour for even us!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 2

Saturday, May 2, 2020

Out of Darkness

Jesus saves us

so that we can contribute to the Kingdom

sacrificing ourselves that others may live abundantly.

Psalms 51:13

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Colossians 1:3.13

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son

Words of Grace For Today

Rescued from the darkness

It was cold and dark. Dangerously dark, though not even winter cold, yet. Spending the night in the woods miles from anywhere was not the plan.

It was just a hike on a trail being developed, this portion already well planned, if not clearly marked. We arrived climbing up the side of the huge rock to our right, on to the second level of that rock as it overlooked a small lake below. The trail seemed to peter out across the gentle downward slope of the rock face toward the lake and further to the right around that side of the lake.

But then there was just a sheer drop of a few metres into the lake, or the effectively solid wall of trees to the right barring any progress on that side of the lake. There were no signs of a trail around the left side of the lake either and other large rocks jutted out over the lake around that side.

The danger from the dark was not that it was pitch black. It was already dusk and we had miles to go. I was experienced outdoors, but the three with me were not and two were young children. Dark, the real dark that was coming, meant stumbling lost all night, or bedding down in the wet and cold. It had just started to rain as I searched for the trail forward from that rock we ended up on.

Finally I came up with a plan. I’d walk back two miles to where the trail took a turn and was well marked. With flashlight in hand I would retrace our steps.

Huffing, tired, and being spit on from above, cold, I trudged back step by step through the miles, and then returned. Nothing. The obvious trail had no other possible turns as it joined a creek that ran into the lake we had stopped at. As the hard face of that huge rock came up to shoulder height I saw to the left the creek water through the underbrush. It was maybe, yes, it was sort of a path, and then there on the tree on the left side of the trail was a trail-marker arrow. A turn back to the left and quickly down, with a quick switchback to the right and one arrived at a bridge of two logs over the creek.

I lifted my feet as my spirits were lifted. We were not lost. I found the others on the rock overlooking the lake, huddled together for warmth under a rain poncho to keep themselves dry.

We worked our way, sometimes with flashlights down over the creek and up high on the huge rocks along the lake and back down near the wet outflow on the far side of that lake, and onward over roots, and around huge 5 foot diameter trees, through the rain forest, back to the vehicle we’d parked near northwest edge of the small town we called home.

A hot shower, prayers of thanks.

We were rescued, once again, from the darkness by the Grace of God.

It is as easy to lose ourselves in the forest of challenges presented to us, now also because of Covid 19. It is easy to miss an obvious turn because we’ve lost ourselves in the darkness of despair or exhaustion or laziness or disorientation.

Always, God sends us others, or sometimes a clear plan, to help us find our way forward, so that we are there for others as well tomorrow.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 1

Friday, May 1, 2020

never got any good result.

Looking at things from God’s perspective always does

net us truth.

Numbers 11:23

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’

Matthew 6:28-29.31

And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”

Words of Grace For Today

Part of the human condition, built in for survival, is that we can worry, or anticipate with concern, dangers that we may face. And we can do this in such an engaging way that we do something about the danger.

In the summer, there is little pressing reason to make warm clothes. When the bitter winds blow the light blizzardy snow over the thick lake ice set by weeks of -35⁰ and colder temperatures, then the need for warm clothes is clear!

Worry, or being able to anticipate with fully engaging concern, helps us get on with the hard work in the warm weather of making warm clothes for our family for the winter. And for those who cannot make clothes for themselves.

Jump ahead a few eons, and we just need to have a job that pays well enough so that we can go to the store where warm clothes are offered for sale, because someone else has made them, someone else transported them, and someone else has put them in the store for sale.

Now our worry or anticipatory concern drives us to have a job that pays enough so that we can afford warm clothes. Note that our ‘worry’ drive becomes more and more disconnected from our real needs as we face real dangers in the cold winters.

So why does Jesus teach that we should not worry. God clothes the birds of the air and flowers in the field with great beauty. God will also clothe us. Will God? Can we just quit our jobs and go to the store and get the clothes we need for the winter come October? Simply put no.

God provides. God provides everything we need. God provides the drive to be concerned before a danger presents itself. God also provides enough rational capabilities for us to sort out how our drives are disconnected from our real needs and real dangers.

But we are lazy. Part of the human condition so that we do not waste limited energy on useless activities. Thinking clearly is hard work. We like to not think about what is going to happen and just let our God given ‘instinctual’ drives run us. We like to give in to the easy temptations the Devil offers, and instead of using our instinctual drives according to some clearly thought out value system, an ethic, we just let it all happen to us and we take no responsibility. Meanwhile the Devil builds up a perverted rationalization in our minds as to how and why we do what we do. Easy sins are easy to rationalize.

And all hell breaks loose in our lives, because the disconnect between our drive, the dangers we face, and the anticipatory concern to address the dangers are so distantly disconnected that our ‘worry’ now drives us to do all sorts of foolish things, things that rob us and others of life.

We develop, instead of utilitarian answers to our needs for life, an adornment on top of our needs that encroaches on the utilitarian value of the things that meet our needs … and it spirals out of control until, instead of utilitarian things, we acquire pure aesthetics that do not meet our need at all. Our real needs are not met. Our ‘worry’ spirals up, we acquire more things that also do not meet the real needs we have. More and more until we cannot even see the real needs as they are covered by ‘fictionalized needs’ that must be met.

We worry ourselves sick about ‘meeting’ these ‘needs’.

These are the worries that Jesus advises we leave behind, and trust that God will clothe us, as God does the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.

God will clothe us by reconnecting our real anticipatory concerns, and drive thereof, to meet our real needs.

Throw into that mix, since we’ve escaped into aesthetics instead of utilitarian things, that we actually do need to create, enjoy, and admire beauty, both naturally occurring and human created. The first reflects God’s Spirit showing itself for us to marvel at. The later reflects the human spirit, given to us by God, that can overcome otherwise insurmountable dangers and challenges.

Simply put, art and beauty (not necessarily the same, but they can overlap) direct our minds and spirits to connect with people out of the past. Connected to the past we can see the present more clearly, more profoundly. And then we are equipped to ‘see’ the future as it is. It is in God’s hands. We can approach each day with hope.

God’s work will come about. We need not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” Instead we can lighten our minds to see the real challenges and expend our energies to meet them. Sometimes that will mean working hard to provide food, drink, or clothing.

Always that will mean giving God thanks for all that is possible each day.

The worry that Jesus directs us away from is the destructive, downward-spiralling negative thought patterns aimed at things we really can do nothing about, or things around which we’d be better off if we actually did what we can to mitigate the challenges ahead.

Regardless, God will do as God promises. We are God’s, God is with us.

Covid 19: there are many things we can do. Hand washing and physical distancing and Staying the Blazes home and thinking clearly how we acquire things, or touch things that could have the virus on them, and self-isolating and quarantining if we show even small symptoms … these are only some of the basic and smart things we can do to mitigate the risk to ourselves and everyone around us. We can also help others do these things. Sometimes we need to figure out how to inspire others to do these things.

Then our lives are all about caring for ourselves and others, physically (to social distance ourselves from the fridge, but climb those stairs 10 to 100 times a day), spiritually (setting a specific time to read, pray, and sing each day), and mentally (get a few old fashion games going – even if that is like chess over the phone, or four-way board game, all by telephone – it goes slow, but then we’ve got time, right! OK, parents with children maybe not a second, but get the children playing with friends over the phone. Let them be creative, constructive, and helpful to others.)

And get on the phone: make a call list of people who could use a good word, and call them once a week or so. Model it for children. Do it for your elders. Take care of the vulnerable.

We can STOP worrying, by getting on with what we actually can do.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – April 28

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

*The Goal of life is not to see who can get to the sunrise first,*

nor to the sunset of life with the most power or possessions

but to see if you can bring to Grace all the people God places in your path.

1 Chronicles 22:19

Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Go and build the sanctuary of the Lord God so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord.’

1 Corinthians 9:24

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.

Words of Grace For Today

Goals, competitions, setting one’s mind … these all are very human endeavours, good endeavours, too.

They cannot net us real security, real love, real faith, real hope, or real life, no matter how hard we try.

These are gifts from God, already at our baptisms. Seeking them is to first deny that God has given them to us. We get to rest assured that these are already ours. We need not set our minds and hearts on seeking and finding the Lord our God. God has found us. That game never was one we could succeed at anyway.

So why all the images in these scripture passages?

Is there something about goals, competitions, setting one’ heart and mind to doing something that is part of our life as God-made saints?

Naturally. All humans have some degree of drive. God designed us so. Exercising this drive is a large part of a full life, life lived as God created and redeemed us to live.

These drives cannot win God’s favour. We already have it, along with salvation, joy, and the fullness of life that goes along with being claimed by God.

These drives cannot win us joy. God has completed our joy with Christ’s resurrection.

These drives cannot win us security, faith, or hope, nor love. All these God has already lavishly poured over us, so that we can share them with others.

These drives move us there, to share all that God has given us with others.

There most certainly is a race, and it is good for the heart to participate in it every day. The race is to see who can give away the greatest percentage to the benefit of the most people. The best we can do is come in tied for second place, along with all the other God-made saints. Jesus has first place wrapped up.

So, if you can at all, get in on that race, at least take a daily walk in that direction. It is very counter intuitive to what the Devil plants in our hearts and minds as the way to success. It fits with the best of creation made by God.

Be the best you can. There are lots of people needing what we have to share during this pandemic, and it’s not the virus!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – April 27

Monday, April 27, 2020

God’s Light Reflects

Into Every nook and cranny of creation (and our lives.)

Genesis 3:8

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Romans 8:15

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’

Words of Grace For Today

Fear and anxiety are our greatest enemies, the factors in our lives that most thoroughly bring us to our destruction, to do inane things, and to fight for the worst causes.

Anxiety not only destroys the person it controls, devouring our souls from the inside out, it’s effects destroy people around the anxious one. Anxiety breeds anxiety. It is more contagious than the fastest spreading virus.

Anxiety does not require anything in reality to be compromised or threatened, but it’s effects compromise and threaten all reality.

Adam and Eve walk in the Garden of Eden. God created Paradise for them, and gave them freedom to choose to obey, to not touch the tree in the centre of the garden and live full of joy from base to peak, or to disobey and be exiled out of the garden to face death in the dark valleys of despair.

Ah, arch-typically, Adam and Eve succumb to curiosity and the desire to know more than God and to be ‘gods’ themselves. As we all would, and do, again and again in our lives.

After we have turned from God, then fear sets in. That’s real and appropriate. The huge problem arises when they/we try to deny we’ve done against God. That’s when anxiety sets in and controls us. We begin to believe that if we lie even more and more, somehow God will not notice. If we can fool ourselves into believing we have not turned away from obeying God, and somehow if we believe it then it becomes true and God will be fooled as well. Not at all.

God has mercy.

God’s mercy is ours to claim, imbibe, and live out of. OR we can choose to ignore all God does for us, redeeming us, claiming us as God’s own children. We can continue in our anxiousness to choose to fool ourselves. Doch God is not fooled and

God still has mercy.

God redeems us at a great cost, to frees us from slavery to sin.

Yet we can still anxiously choose to live in that slavery, to try to fool ourselves and hope to fool God, though we know there is no fooling God, not ever.

So we cry Abba, save us. This cry is ours constantly to cry out with all desperation. For we need God’s mercy and protection, or we end up living anxiously as if we were separated from God.

God is merciful, God is trustworthy. God claims us and never lets go. God is with us

even now, in our anxiety wrapped in Covid 19.

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.