For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high.
1 Peter 5:5
In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. All of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’
Words of Grace For Today
It is true that God gives grace to the humble, and I am very sure and proud that I can say that God gives grace to the proud.
The Lord of hosts certainly has a day (or eternity one would hope!) against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high. Just so God has a day against every kind of sin, and no one lives without each hour committing a sin that God has a ‘day’ (an eternity) against.
There is order.
There is order that God created in the universe.
There is order that God created in the universe for us to discover, understand, and use … or rather to learn to live in harmony with. As much as we learn to live in harmony with the order God created life is healthier for us and those around us.
I am not so sure that accepting the authority of the elders is exactly the order that God created, for wisdom does not always come with age or authority assumed and exercised, nor does wisdom come with the freshness of youth. Wisdom is a gift that God sprinkles freely and randomly … and somehow some people seem to come up short, and not just short but kind of a vacuum of wisdom, no matter their age or intelligence.
Respecting each other, now that is a must for health.
Elders respecting youth, youth respecting elders. Men respecting women and women respecting men. Respect among and between all races, genders, faiths, and levels of wisdom even; this is how we live in harmony with the diverse universe God created. Respecting an idiot does not mean obeying an idiot. It is to respect that even the greatest, most powerful, most stupid idiot is still one of God’s creatures, and as long as these idiots breathe God is giving them time for the amendment of life, and we can learn to do so as well, and work to contain the effects of their idiocies on the rest of humanity.
God has a day against …
God has a day against all idiocies and sins, against all lies and false witnesses, and against all corrupt judgments and delusions of power. We need not make that day come sooner, nor stop praying that God’s day will come very soon.
Those with any wisdom want God’s day against their own sin to come soon, very soon, for their day before God is determined already as Jesus’ record will be used in place of our own … we will continue to be God’s saints, free then of sin, free to exercise God’s Grace that is so abundantly poured over us, like a fresh white blanket of snow pours over the darkness of the night.
Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams? But my people have forgotten me, they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway.
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
Words of Grace For Today
The snow today, which has collected as glaciers for hundreds of years, now does melt away, faster and faster. We, with our carbon footprint so huge, have discombobulated nature’s way. The mountain waters do run dry where they have not in memory done so before.
Just as we have messed with nature’s balances, so we have imbalanced our own lives, living as slaves of delusions, voluntarily enslaving ourselves to wealth, power, status, and the illusion that we are better than others whom we ruin on our way through life.
There is another way to live.
As God loves Jesus, so Jesus loves us. When we humbly accept that there is nothing else so important in life as being loved by God, and returning that love (by sharing God’s love with all other people) then we live as we are created to live and we contribute to the balance of nature. We do not just lower our carbon footprint. We drastically change how we live and what we expect from life in order to drastically lower our carbon footprint, and we reach as many people as we can to inspire them to do the same.
Maybe some people think that all those who enslave themselves to wealth, power, status and delusions will respond to messages of the impending doom we are creating for ourselves. It rarely works, for their closed looped thought processes cannot calculate how to serve their chosen masters and respond to the impending doom for us all. Instead they ramp up their delusions to accumulate more wealth, power, status, and their favourite delusion in order to convince themselves that the impending doom will not impact them. It will, but deluded they believe it will not, just as Covidiots and Covid deniers and antivaxxers who lay dying of Covid still refuse to believe they have Covid or that they can be dying. They die a painful death, and an avoidable death, leaving so many Covidiots and Covid deniers and antivaxxers ready to carry on in their footsteps.
This is not a good life, and certainly not a good death.
Knowing God loves us, knowing that God knows us completely and blesses us by walking with us, and knowing the Holy Spirit makes us able to love others and walk with them through life’s challenges, rewards, and losses … knowing God’s love gives us hope. And hope gives us life renewed each morning.
For this we can give God endless thanks and praise … and we can be filled with joy, no matter what our enemies do to us. It does not get better.
Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Luke 15:21
Then the son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
Words of Grace For Today
Getting it right before God.
Oh, how we have tried through the generations.
We’ve tried sacrificing our own children, but more often someone else’s.
We’ve tried sacrificing our own goats and lambs, but more often someone else’s.
We’ve tried sacrificing our own cattle, but more often someone else’s.
We’ve tried sacrificing our own birds, but more often someone else’s.
We’ve tried sacrificing ourselves, like the so called prodigal son, who really is only prodigal in his waste of life’s limited resources. This son comes and confesses his sins to his father, hoping to get work as a servant or slave, for then at least he will eat well enough to survive. His ‘prodigal’ waste has left him so broke and dishonoured that he cannot even get work that pays enough to provide himself food, even when he feeds other people’s pigs food that is more than he has to eat.
And it’s all wrong, oh we get it wrong.
God uses Abraham to declare that NO God does not want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, not at all.
God uses someone anonymous in history to teach us that God does not want blood sacrifices (or maybe we just got lazy, for this sacrifice is messy and quite wasteful.)
God uses Jesus to teach us that we should not sacrifice other’s well being to make up for out own sins, in other words we should not scapegoat others in order to relieve the stress and conflict in our own lives.
Jesus uses the prodigal son and so many other parables and characters to teach us that we first can hear God’s promises to forgive us and restore us as living saints doing God’s grace for all people, and then we can confess our sins, expecting not to be made slaves or servants. Doch God rather restores us to live as God’s own children.
This God promises us, and tries to teaches us, and forgives us, and tries to restore us to full life … and still we try to make it through life like the prodigiously wasteful son, burning through the limited resources of life available to us and when things go wrong we still scapegoat others, destroy others, and try to make others pay for our own failings.
Well, some or maybe most of us that is. Some of us are blessed to have figured out how not to scapegoat others, or maybe we never learned.
The rest … ah what misery they create for others and themselves!
God have mercy on us, and keep these people far, far, far from us again this day.
God have mercy.
God have mercy on us, and teach these people soon of your promises, forgiveness, and Grace.
Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
John 12:46
I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.
Words of Grace For Today
Jill sat in her well cushioned rocking chair between the light lunch she’d shared with friends and the book club meeting she would join by zoom. She marvelled at how things had developed in the last two years, so devastating with Jack’s diabetes sending him to his Covid and pain wracked death as he drowned in his own fluids for hours, his son, Bill, suffering a heart attack months after a light Covid cough and fever, her daughter’s eldest daughter taking a severe of Covid just not quite needing to go to hospital but it never really went away as she fought to wake up each day and move even to wash and dress herself and then needing to lie down even before half the morning was by, and all her older friends and Jill herself isolated and cut off from each other … and
then …
How most of them had discovered Zoom on their computers and talked with each other at least once a day, checking in to make sure everyone was alright, helping shop for each other, and getting help when someone needed their drive shovelled or in the summer their grass cut.
And …
all the things they learned to do by Zoom, like the book club, and even a bridge club, playing computer bridge together
and the visits with the great grandchildren that seemed to be the highlight of every day for the kids and for the kid in her.
Looking out the window Jill realized that the closed in feeling over her heart and mind that morning reflected the low and dark overcast sky as if threatening rain or snow as the thermometer outside her window showed it hovered barely above freezing.
She tried to think of things that had made her life and the ever more limited horizons of her world more joyful, or enjoyable, or at least tolerable.
The darkness seemed to press in on her as she read the verse from Isaiah: Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself. Wouldn’t that be a radical change, she thought.
When she was a young person in the 50’s, they didn’t even have a television. The rich people sometimes had one, and all her friends considered themselves lucky if they had a good radio and a record player at home.
Now … well now with computers and the internet and email and Zoom … it was just a wildly different world. Still her dark days seemed to be longer and and more frequent than ever before in her life. There were always challenges in her life, and more than a few dark weeks and even years, but lately with Jack gone, the moon was hard to find and the sun barely shone at all.
As she read the passage from Luke she saw a glimmer of hope, of light maybe returning to her life somehow as Jesus said: I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.
She had always been faithful, honest and kind, and until Jack died she’d counted on the light of Christ to guide her and light her way. Now though ….
Then she remembered her friend Tina, and what Arnold had done to her, gaslighting her, trying to get her to kill herself and almost succeeding (like he had with his first wife), and the web of lies Arnold and the police and even the pastor at church had spread about Tina. She remembered how Tina found joy and light and Christ present even as she lived homeless in the woods by a lake. If she had ever heard of a brass verdict, Tina certainly would never wish that for anyone. She’d have said those kind of verdicts were God’s and God’s alone. Even so God’s judgment would be harsher than a brass verdict that ended in death, it’d last for eternity. On the other hand God always gave people time for the amendment of life. Jill knew Tina was right about all that.
It was time to start her computer to join the book club Zoom, today about a court mystery, a murder mystery, and her heart lightened when she decided she was going to share Tina’s story, and try to share Tina’s joy, light, and Christ’ gracious presence with the others in the club. That would be the best answer to the injustice and the ugly resolution the book provided, a resolution that was as terrible as the injustice that it pretended to ‘solve.’
She sat waiting for the introductory matters to be covered off and then as the moderator started them off she jumped in and said she had a real life story to share, one that helped her understand not only this book’s comments about how the courts were so unjust, but also a better solution to injustice and how one could find the best of life no matter what came one’s way, betrayal by loved ones, injustice from courts, or the destruction of lives by Covid. She thanked Tina silently for what Jill called God’s Golden Verdict of Grace for all the world’s evil.
After the coming winter, I will see another Spring
with all it’s sunsets
God’s Promises Are Sure!
After the coming winter, I will see another Spring
as surely as the sun rises!
Psalm 34:4
I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
2 Corinthians 1:20
For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.
Words of Grace For Today
At 3:32 I wake and go out to stoke the fire. As the smoke clears from the shelter, I walk outside in the moonlight and the stars bright. A wondrous nightscape, an early morning, blows across this vision to the universe though there is nary a breeze or rustle as silent smoke paints a dark swath across the grass and tarp covering the stacked wood, all piled in order by diameter, scraggly pieces piled high by the door to be burned before hard cold gripes the meadow, tosses it out of the land of living things, and buries it from sight under frozen white water. For now in these mild autumn days and nights the deer feast on the lush grass growing from the old barnyard waste broken down by natures’ recycler into nutrients galore, and I smile and labour away gathering, cutting, stacking, and splitting wood, or rest my back strained and spasming in the chill.
All that in one moment’s view into the night’s semidarkness, before I return to the fiery monster devouring wood and belching smoke into the night air high and away, closing the ash door that once opened livens the monster, the shelter door that has let in fresh air, and the smoke vent that has expelled smoke to rise with the chimney pointed at the stars.
This will be my twice nightly routine for the next 4 to 6 months, rising to stoke the monster in order that the warmth it creates will save me from freezing. I give God thanks whether or not there is a spectacular view to the universe outside as I wait for the smoke to clear, the inevitable smoke that spews out of the monster into the shelter when the door is opened to feed it more wood, for this monster and the routine of feeding it is easier to deal with than bugs and mosquitoes and wasps, and the cold keeps the dangerous animals away, especially the most dangerous, unpredictable two-legged kind.
For I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
And I know that I am delivered into the freedom of living as a God-made saint not on my own merit but by Grace, most generously and freely poured out on us all. In this I know, as all the saints know, that in Christ Jesus every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.
This ‘Amen’ is as Martin Luther taught us, our saying to God and each other, ‘this is most certainly true!’
What visions of majesty and goodness God gives to us, so that we may know the promises given to us through Jesus the Christ are already true: God blesses me, God blesses all the saints, with beauty and the presence of God.
Even in the dark of night that could bring fears to be monsters that eat at one’s soul.
Even in the solitude that could be loneliness which opens the door to the Devil’s temptations.
Even in the poverty that is the result of others’ lies, that could lead to starvation.
Even in the homelessness, a result of other’s lies leading to poverty, that could lead to my freezing to death.
For God has provided all I need so that my enemies cannot kill me; God has provided even a fiery monster that consumes wood, so that I am not cold, even in the coldest night of winter.
Justly so, I say with all the saints: thanks and glory be to God!
What about you? What are you doing this winter in the middle of the spectacular nights?
You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.
1 Corinthians 10:31
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.
Words of Grace For Today
I had guests for breakfast today, well actually before breakfast and … well they would have made a good lunch or 20 as venison, not so sure about breakfast.
They came, four of them did, a yearling playfully jumping about it’s doe, another doe, and a two prong buck. They came the did, to graze, to eat, and to enjoy the grass on the meadow. The grass used to be a barnyard so the ground is soft and spongy with old hay and manure deep below. The grass grows different, which means it must be a favourite for the deer come visiting quite often, and to visit now at this time of year, during hunting season when the wood smoke fills the air and there is every sign that a human is about, must mean the prefer this grass over other.
This is the land that the Lord has guided me to, as a refuge. I eat well enough here, and many animals do as well. A rabbit is often seen hopping about. Coyotes visit in the night. Bear come snooping around too often. Mice run in the grass and a bald eagle, a brown eagle, and an owl hunt here. The other day a moose and calf came tumbling through the underbrush as they are wont to do, making a great racket. I won’t mention the ants and wasps and flies and mosquitoes in such great numbers but there are dragon flies that hunt them, the robins that eat the worms, and the bats that come feasting on the plenty.
Then there are the Hornets and F-18s, and helicopters and troop transports, that fill the sky with their presents, which is more a deafening sound barrier broken (on departure) or afterburner (burning off and wasting fuel on approach) and thought stopping punch to the brain through the ears.
Canada really does need to upgrade to stealth fighter, stealth in sound, and maybe in the meantime (25 years or so it seems) conserve fuel by not burning it off on approach … for practice and climate change friendly habits, eh?
While the world busily turns about around me, with oil workers roaring their Ram diesels out of the stop sign, or the trucks pound the pavement steadily for hours each morning and evening as the workers in the oil installations around the corner northward progress like army ants to their allotted jobs, and the quiet neighbourhood cross-overs and SUVs head out to work in town, the drunks show up to drink, the addicts to buy and take a hit, and the randy show up for a shag in the bush, and the partiers show up in droves to break Covid restrictions and have a good old fashion bush drinking, drugs, loud noise they call music, and sex party (and then fill the ICUs in two weeks time) …
my work is all blessed by God’s walking with me. The relative quiet of the chainsaw, the gathering, cutting, splitting, and stacking of wood, the maintenance of the stove and chimney, the building in preparation for the cold of winter, the cooking of meals, the canoeing on the quiet lake, the walks in the woods fill my days after they start with celebrating the Eucharist, remembering how Jesus was betrayed, falsely accused, killed, and buried … and how God resurrected Jesus to give us Jesus’ story of how God forgives and loves and gives life abundant to us all … so that we can share it with others!
With this beginning every day is a blessing, a gift to enjoy.
Hard work or pleasant walks or quiet canoeing or writing or taking photos … all my time is blessed and a witness to all of God’s great glory, known to us all in God’s Grace … that gives us all we need starting with each breath.
Atem tief. Gottes Barmherzigkeit durchdringt tief in und aus allem.
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Philippians 4:19
My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
Jane moved her old, really old, 5th wheel 40’ camper into the random camping area after Thanksgiving. It would be cold and the old camper was well equipped with a wood stove, at least until it froze hard and stayed there, well below freezing even during the day. That would make the water system to risky to use, which in turn would make life that much more complicated.
By then her ‘job’ for Arnold would be done, keeping a camera on the entrance to monitor ever coming and going, especially Tina’s. It was not really that difficult a job and Jane’s cover story was simple. She claimed she was homeless. (Tina actually was so she would relate to that.) Jane said she would stay just two weeks, since that was the legal limit, but it’d be easy to stay longer if Arnold wanted her to. Jane’s story was that she had lost everything in the oil bust and needed a place to stay.
Tina was not taken in. First because Jane claimed to lose everything in the oil bust of 2016, and the oil bust was in 2014. Second because if Jane really were homeless since 2016 that was 5 years living somewhere else just fine. So why appear right after the summer crowd stopped camping? Third Jane parked her camper where everyone coming in would see it, and where she’d be able (with the security cameras Arnold gave her) to see everyone coming in and going out. There were way better places to camp for so many reasons. The only reason to camp where Jane did was if someone wanted to camp with lots of other people in multiple units. But Jane was all alone.
Sometimes Arnold’s plans to make Tina’s life difficult were too transparent, and not all that effective. The real challenge was all the lies Arnold came up with. There was no way to prepare for those. Still Tina knew that goodness flowed in so many ways in her life and through her to other people. God had provided, through other people mostly, all that Tina needed (though Tina worked as hard as she could to provide security for herself through each challenging season. For the upcoming winter that meant gathering, cutting and splitting enough wood to ensure she stayed warm. That was hard work, and yet it was work that could be done. The other season’s challenges could not be met with more hard work. They were, thus, much more difficult to prepare for and to get through safely.)
More than once Tina had felt that even so close to a lake, and with rain pouring down on her, she lived in a parched place. God’s provisions helped those feelings pass quickly. Instead Tina watched as the blessing from God continued to pour over her and surprise her in new ways. She knew that God had made her bones, her heart, and her faith strong, strong enough to meet all that challenges that living homeless placed on her.
She gave God thanks, and prayed that God would help Arnold face his own demons instead of falsely blaming others for his own sin.
As the sun rose on the fifth morning since Jane’s arrival, Tina saw another blessing pour into the woods where she stayed. Out gathering wood she came across two huge wasp nests, and both were empty. She had made the correct decision to stay out of the woods while the wasps were so bothersome and so many. Where she found them gave her plans on how to minimize the wasps in the area next spring and summer if they became such a problem again. The forecasted cold La Nina winter promised to eliminate pests like pine beetles and wasps … and require more wood to stay warm.
The balmy days of autumn made for perfect weather for gathering wood. A blessing on top of a blessing from God who never failed to provide, as a good spring continues to provide water more than sufficient in quantity and purity.
But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Galatians 3:28
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
Often said of Covid-19 pandemic is that we are all in the same boat on this one. Everyone needs to get vaccinated in order for any of us to be safe. That means everyone in the world.
We are not in the same boat, though. We are all dumped out onto the ocean, that is true. The problem is some of us are in private luxury yachts burning diesel to manoeuvre with chefs preparing 3 meals a day with coffee, snacks, and an open bar tea at all hours, others are in luxury sail boats eating gourmet foods, some of us are in smaller boats on survival rations handed out by our governments, and many, many people are hanging on flotsam praying for their very lives.
Naomi is an elderly widow in a foreign country whose two sons have also died. She is leaving to find her way back to her homeland, in hopes of living out her remaining years there. Ruth, one of her widowed daughters-in-law will not abandon her even though Naomi directs the two daughters-in-law to return to their mothers to seek new husbands there.
Ruth promises, even in this hopeless, bleak culmination of time and events, to stay with Naomi, to adopt her homeland, her people, and her God. There is not much hope in any of that, now is there. Not at that time when women had no standing or property or ability to be gainfully employed (with notable exceptions). So Ruth accompanies Naomi and together the two make history, enough that the Bible contains the Book of Ruth.
What would the world look like if we were not so able to abandon all those people hanging on to flotsam in the pandemic of Covid-19?
What would it take for us truly to be united as one kind of people, on privilege of people, on status and wealth of people?
God would have to come and forgive us all our sins, making us equally acceptable before God, based solely on God’s Grace. Then God would have to send us forgiven people out into this wonderful and terribly broken and overcrowded creation to extend that same equal and unconditional forgiveness and love to each other. We would finally be united as beggar-sinners, blessed by God’s own generosity towards us all.
And this God demonstrated with Jesus’ story is exactly what God did do for us all.
So we are united as one under Christ, without distinction, without class or privilege or wealth differences. When it counts we are all in the same boat … with Christ making our way across the dead sea of our sins and past evils that still hold us in bondage.
When it counts we are all in the same boat … the trouble is we continue to sin, and cannot stop ourselves, so that some are climbing out of our shared boat with Jesus into their private luxury yachts, others are tossing people out of Jesus’ boat into the open ocean to die, and yet others are jumping ‘free’ because they cannot stand the thought that they are at best beggars for God’s mercies.
When it counts those of us who are saved by Christ and follow Christ … we are all in the same boat … and we work hard as we are, knowing we are God-made saints, and simultaneously still sinners, yet inspired by the Holy Spirit to be God’s love and grace for those around us.
We certainly are in the same boat and the rations are not fancy. The seating is crowded. Yet we are still afloat … by Grace alone.
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
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
The prodigal son claims his inheritance from his living father and his father gives it to him. The poor son uses his great wealth, well squanders his inheritance, and ends up broke … broker than broke and does not even have food enough to survive and so eats the food of the pigs … until he realizes that his father’s servants eat and survive better than he does in his terrible state of being the wasteful idiot that he has been.
The final scene says it all, the prodigal son approaches his father’s home. Actually prodigal means extravagantly generous, which the father is, and the son is certainly not. The son is extraordinarily wasteful, selfish, and … and … well the son is so much like all of us.
The father is the one who is prodigal.
So the final scene of the story says it all. The idiot son approaches his father and the prodigal father comes rushing out to greet his wayward son and …
The rest we all know: the father not only receives the son into his home, he reinstates him as his son.
Jesus tells us this story (and it is recorded for us to know so many generations later) so that we can understand and anticipate that this is how God is towards us, all of us who are so wastefully wayward children (blowing our inheritance again and again on selfish living). God not only will welcome us home when we ask to serve in order to survive, God reinstates us as God’s own children.
Then God sends us out into our lives to be the agents of God’s prodigal welcome for all the other sorry, idiot, wasteful and wayward children of God (people just like us.)
It’s not about money or a comfortable life. It’s about love, gracious mercy, and blessed justice determined by God to give us all life abundant.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
1 Peter 2:23
When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
Words of Grace For Today
The urge for all humans is to respond to attacks with attacks of ones own, but with a greater intensity.
This leads to wars on a personal scale in marriages, among family and friends, within communities, countries and between countries. It leads us into the worst that humans can bring to bear on one another, so horrible much of it is unspeakable.
What am I to do about the RCMP Jones who fabricated evidence and coordinated others to bring false reports, who did this just because she could, even though I was innocent and bewildered at why or how anyone would do such a thing?
What am I to do about my ex who created so many lies about our life together that life became unbearable, and no matter what I tried or sacrificed or gave her she only created more worse lies about me and our life together, and then created more and more lies for the courts, lies that I could not even imagine where they came from? Or the children who came to court to lie as well, trying to get me falsely convicted? Or the prosecutors who gleefully took the cases, presented the lies to teh courts and created more and more lies on their own for the courts to hear? Or the lawyers who were supposed to be my lawyers or work to inform me of the court processes, and simply did none of that, instead tried to make my testimony totally useless in court?
What am I to do with the judges themselves, who received these lies eagerly, and made ruling after ruling to enable a false conviction, and when all the evidence was in they still had to lie about the evidence in order to falsely convict me, and especially those who did it so cruelly, naming my kindness as something that had created fear, as if my kindness could at all create fear!? Or the judges who removed sections of testimony and then played games and made up more lies to ensure I spent $1ks with no hope of hearing the audio of the section that was removed from the transcripts?! And on and on go the inexplicably dishonest and cruel things that people with authority did in order to convict me and send me to jail for crimes that I did not commit, which left the children suffering cruel borderline personality disordered ‘parenting’!
What am I to do with the pastor, bishop, doctors, office managers, church council people, community leaders and many others who joined in the creating of lies about me, so that I am cut off from my church, cannot receive medical care even as my health requires more and more medical intervention, am not safe in the community as on many occasions people put my life at risk, some violently, some with reckless breaching of Health Orders, and some with threats to my person, well being, and survival?
My list is not complete even at that, and there is more and more that time reveals to me that I did not know of, and so much more that I will never know about, yet billions of people today and through history have stories that are so much worse!
What are we to do with such terrible evil directed at us, often (as is my case) with no rationale reason that it the evil be directed at us?! There is plenty of random, senseless destruction of life, but this is focused and directed evil against us, though there is no reason for us being chosen, except some insane perversion of reality. What are we, the victims of this destruction and evil to do? What are the rest of you people, who are not the victims of such senseless, useless, and avoidable evil, supposed to do?
What are we to do when it is impossible to judge 100% correctly who is doing what to bring about such atrocities against innocent people?
Jesus says forgive as we are forgiven. This brings us freedom from being victims to being blessed by God!
What if the sins are not even acknowledged by more than a handful of people, and otherwise the evil is continued by the same people, choosing new victims as the violence and destruction mounts and becomes systemic?
I have forgiven those who suffer mental illness, my ex, and the children effected by her.
I cannot forgive the others, especially those with authority and position, who are responsible to ensure this kind of injustice does not happen. I also cannot respond with increased vengeance or violence and destruction. I will not allow myself to become like them.
I have bound their sins, and made it known so that they have opportunity to amend their lives, and God can celebrate a victory first that their destructive evil is acknowledged and stopped, and God can celebrate a second victory, that they have received freedom from the Great Deceiver’s grip and begun to life a life of service to Jesus the Christ.
Binding sins is not to be judge over others. Binding sins is not to condemn others. Binding sins leaves the judging and the punishments or mercies to be in God’s hands. It makes known what has been done, even when it cannot always be known completely who has contributed knowingly or unwittingly participated.
Binding sins does bring the victim freedom from being a victim, and allows one to stand blessed each day.
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and Jesus (reported also in 1 Peter), do not even respond with a declaration of the evil done and the binding of sins. They suffer in silence the violence done to them. This may seem to some to be the better response. I cannot agree. One needs identify evil and hope that the perpetrators will amend their lives, or at least, as a ‘civilized’ society we will collectively recognize the evils done against so many innocent people.
One cannot live well and seek revenge, though.
Lies are lies forever, always without end.
Truth is truth, always and forever.
God’s Grace gives us boldness to be those who forgive and who bind sins. Without it we would be left breathless. With it we are given breath each day by the Holy Spirit.
