I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Luke 9:62
Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
Words of Grace For Today
What roadblocks and earth-movers does the Devil and all his wiles, deceptions, and destruction threaten us with today?
Shall we be moved to join these forces pushing us and so many people up against the rock hard wall?
We pray to the Lord, as promised, may the Holy Spirit guides us, waling right beside us, left beside us, behind us, in front of us, under us and over us. Keep us surrounded so the earth-movers and rock hard places the Devil creates will not be able to distract us from the harvest work Jesus has sent us on all these years. Do not let the Devil’s power, which can eliminate planets and stars in a moment, detract from the greatest power of the Universe that guides us each moment, the power of self-sacrificial love graciously shared with all people.
Help us, to leave behind us the ground that we have gone over and prepared for the seed of God’s Kingdom. It is your soil, your harvest, and yours to bless or not as you choose, God.
Guide us, looking forward to the reward that is ours already and yet not yet.
Save us from drunken, stupid gatherings where not only is God denied but the reality of the Devil is ignored, as if Covid 19 does not kill people, innocent people of all ages, in all places.
Singing together we face the injustices of the people who serve the Devil, even as they pretend to call on Jesus’ name:
Set us free from this evil tyranny, set us free today. But your will be done Lord. All that we are and have is from you. We are your servants, from you we have our very breath.
Let no evil person, nor a devilish virus, take that from us!
God, remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.
2 Corinthians 8:9
For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
Words of Grace For Today
Remember, God, your congregation.
Jesus’ Riches lost, to make us Rich.
There is a congregation where the council has presented, and persisted in presenting, to the congregation a vote to call a candidate for ordination, even though he has not even attempted to start the process to be approved for ordination in our church.
It’s an invalid motion at an illegal meeting of the council, presented illegally to the congregation, named as that by the Bishop, i.e. it is against their constitution in both spirit and the letter.
I am quite sure that the council has committed a whole series of criminal acts, bringing criminal liability and civil liability on themselves, and profoundly so.
Remember, God, this congregation, Hope Lutheran, Edmonton which is yours from of long ago, and save these leaders, Catherine Moir and Richard Grynas among them, from their brash, bullying, sinful selves, and the members who must participate in an illegal process to voice their disagreement with the process, yet alone the lack of qualifications by the not-candidate.
There is a congregation, where the lay pastor cooperated with the RCMP who were coordinating a Gaslighting operation to bring false charges against me. The lay pastor, in a pastoral care session with me not only interrupted me while I was crying to accuse me of threatening her, she disclosed the information she gained in those pastoral care sessions to the RCMP and others, which was perverted to further Gaslight me.
This lay pastor went to the congregational council and used lies from the RCMP and others to convince the council to ban me from the congregation, something that is impossible in our church if people behave according to our theology of the Cross and Grace. This lay pastor then went on to bald-face lie under oath in Court against me.
The judged used this pastor’s lies as grounds to convict me, but the lies were not enough. The judge had to lie about the meaning of the restrictions I was under in order to say I had broken them.
Remember, God, this congregation, Lakeland Lutheran, Cold Lake, which is yours from of long ago, and save us all from the crimes that lay pastor, Anne Zimmerman (now miraculously specially ordained) and council have committed against so many good people.
While these people and many more commit crimes and unethical acts in the name of Jesus, Jesus did nothing like what these people do. While he had everything, except our salvation, he came and emptied himself of everything allowing equally malicious, confused and evil people to call for his crucifixion. Then, as now, the judge knew true innocence, and still for fear of the power of evil religious leaders, the judge perverts justice and allows people, who pretend to be God’s righteous people, to kill an innocent person.
On the cross Jesus hung, and cried to God, Father forgive them for they do not know what they do. Then in desperation he plead, Father why have you forsaken me? before he gave up his last.
With that Jesus paid the full price, not merely every thing he had, he gave up every bit of life he had in him. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich. That is Jesus gave up every thing, even his life, so that he could show us that God’s love provides everything for us including salvation, so that we can live in God’s grace and live abundantly, rich with all God’s blessings. There is nothing we can do to earn these riches and our salvation.
We can choose to walk away from those blessings, away from that salvation, away from that abundant life. We can do it in the smallest way, or in the most blatant and flashy way. Walk away is what we all do, and can do no other, each day. Then God exercises Grace again and re-invites us to the feast of life lived in Jesus name. Again and again.
What does God do when these congregation’s leaders and lay pastor/not-pastor turn deceit on others to bring them close to their deaths?
When does God no longer welcome these brash sinners, who even admit their sin, and in the same breath say they are forgiven, ridiculing God’s Grace as if it were a tool of theirs to wield according to their own will. Instead of confessing their own sins they make false accusations against innocent people to distract from their own terrible sins.
There are many horrendous sins one can read about in history, which one must believe the perpetrators will answer for as they stand in judgment before Jesus. As the chaff is burned out of them they will be entirely consumed into the void of the universe as they suffer that eternal fire.
Surely Jesus did not give up everything in order that people could, in his name, so cruelly deal deception, criminal lies, and destruction on other people, could he?
May Jesus correct all our ways that we will not be consumed by that eternal fire, but indeed act as his saints, confessing our unending sins and making restitution to any who we have sinned against, so that we may not be instruments so freely used by the Evil One to destroy God’s people.
Remember, God, each congregation, which is yours from of long ago, and save us all from the life destroying work of the Devil. Help us sing the Hallelujah Anyhow. Those we are poor, bankrupt according to the world’s standards as a result of the Devil’s work, as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, we live as the most richly blessed people, with clear consciences. We have much work yet to accomplish, God’s Grace to offer to so many people, and such Joy to share as matches nothing else in life!
May you, too, find the riches of Jesus’ sacrifice, pouring into your lives, and the strength to stand up against blatant evils, to demand others be held to account for the evil they perpetrate on so many people.
There is no photo of justice observed and righteousness done at all times.
It cannot exist, except by GRACE
Psalm 106:3
Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.
1 John 2:17
The world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.
Words of Grace For Today
The way the world teaches it’s children to live is not to observe justice and do righteousness – just do not get caught.
The desires that fuel that kind of thinking are endless, in number and because of our inability to satisfy them. Our living experience of them is that they continue, as sure as the rock under our feet as we stand on a high crested mountain west of Edmonton.
Yet from God’s perspective that rocky mountain is a fleeting feature of earth, along with us living on it, and the entire planet as it spins around the star we call our sun will soon pass into oblivion.
The question for us all is how do we live in this fleeting moment, that lasts generation upon generation for us.
Observing Justice and doing righteousness at all times.
First that is impossible, a dream for some, and for all of us mostly wishful thinking.
We are saved by Grace alone. None of us are able to do other than sin, and we wretched sinners can only hope that Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection will save us, for there is no other hope for us.
So as long as we live, if we can always observe justice and do righteousness at all times, then we will be happy.
Since we cannot do that, is it true that we will never be happy?
I’d hope not, but …
… now is the moment when one needs to have prayed and trusted God, and paid a little attention in Confirmation Class.
We can be happy, because even though we cannot observe justice nor be righteous all the time, Jesus steps in for us, sets his record in place of our own.
Not on our own, but transformed by the Grace of God into saints, we can be happy, not just merely happy, but the happiest that we can ever be.
Able to observe justice and do righteousness always, only because Jesus steps in for us, the guarantee that we will be counted to have done exactly that cannot be more sure.
Happy hardly begins to describe how grateful we can be, relieved that we need not count on our own abilities, and exhilarated that life for us is wonderfully blessed by God.
Happy are we who have God doing justice, and observing righteousness, for us, for our record.
No matter our sins, as we trust God, we can join the many people who for so long have learned even amidst great grief to Sing Hallelujah Anyhow.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
James 3:18
A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
Words of Grace For Today
Dandelions spring up everywhere, showing their pretty yellow faces. Their beauty is often appreciated by children who pick them as bouquets for their mothers or fathers. Their potential is realized by those who dare make wine of them.
Otherwise they are a foreign species with not enough natural deterrents, so that they overwhelm any piece of ground they grow in and they become an infestation that is difficult to remove without actions approaching ‘scorched earth’ results.
There is enough evil evident in the police. The real root is in the courts, which allow the tactics of the police to go unchecked. It is a pervasive hatred, a racism, a bigotry, a bias that can exist only as it is supported by the courts. The courts uphold this attitude in the practice of law and prosecution, which upholds this attitude in the police from top to bottom: it is an attitude of zero-sum thinking. If we are not holding the hoards in check they will take everything we have from us. It is the wealthy protecting themselves and the courts protecting the wealthy.
Against this powerful and destructive evil, God brings us, like dandelions, those that bear righteousness into this world where righteousness is so foreign an idea (except to be beaten down) yet alone a thing to comprehend, realize or nurture.
In the grass of God’s good creation, the dandelions of righteousness are not an invasive species out of their natural ecosystem.
God’s righteousness is the proper species of every part of creation, which always behaves in those areas where evil has flourished, as an invader, a conqueror, a re-claimer of life back to it’s creator.
We pray, may we choose today, no matter the challenges, risk or sure loss to ourselves, that we would be the agents, supporters, and advocates of God’s righteousness.
Covid 19 is real, really deadly to some, pervasively spread before the carrier is symptomatic; but Covid 19 is only a small attention-getter and warning, compared to God’s Word of righteousness that awaits us all. Be safe. Act wisely. Protect others,
from Covid 19 which can kill or maim the body, but even more so from the Evil that kills the soul, the light, the awareness of God’s Good Creation all around us, and therewith our hope of responding well to God’s awesome Grace.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Words of Grace For Today
People say that there is no reason to hope that … and then they go on to say what they have no hope for.
Everyday language would use the word ‘hope’ that way. But hope is really something much different.
It may help to put the word hope in a few wider contexts with comparisons to other words.
Pessimism is looking at all the evidence available and drawing a conclusion that gives the bad evidence more importance. So the glass is half empty and going down. The world is in the worst shape it’s ever been. Humans are the worst species and are quick capable of destroying the whole earth. That’s pessimism for you, always coming up with the trajectory straight into trouble and deeper.
Optimism is looking at all the evidence available and drawing a conclusion that gives the good evidence more importance. So the glass is half full and getting fuller. The world is in the best shape it’s ever been. Humans are the best species with the greatest chance of saving planet earth. That’s optimism for you, always coming up with the trajectory straight into a wonderful world and beyond.
Realism what people use to say their view of optimism and pessimism is right, not skewed like the other views.
Hope looks at all the evidence available, finds none that indicates God’s will is being done, and yet with no evidence to support this belief, lays everything on the line, trusting that God’s will is being done, God’s will is what we are supposed to be cooperating with, and in the end God will provide all that we need, even if that means all we get is a room prepared for us in the city of light, in life eternal.
Hope beyond hope is just hyperbole. Properly said one might mean: hope beyond all evidence, which is hope in it self anyway.
If we need to remember how great hope can be, remember Noah building the ark and ridiculed by all around … until the water starts pouring down, and keeps pouring down.
We may face challenges, on top of Covid 19, someone we most trusted has broken that trust by doing something blatantly illegal; of cancer has returned; or your lies in court have been noticed by the police; or your cheating on your taxes is being investigated, or (fill in your favourite sin) has been noticed by someone close to us and we have gravely disappointed them, or … the kids are just getting on your nerves too much … or the idiots are running their unlicensed motorcycles and quads all over the place, set off fireworks every night, and party until 3 and 4 in the morning so that it’s terrific when it storms at night to shut it down.
Pessimists would say: it’s just going to get worse.
Optimists would say: it’s just people blowing off steam. It will get better soon.
The person of Hope would say: God’s creation will withstand also these assaults on good sensibilities, and God provide all enough sleep, despite the neighbours late hours.
Perhaps Noah would like to take the fireworks, motorcycles and quads, and the party-ers on the ark for a little ride … somewhere far away. But that’s just hope beyond hope.
Perhaps God has other plans?
Perhaps there is hope yet, that some sense, respect and common decency will enter into these people’s lives …
or more likely I will gain an understanding of how helpful and beneficial all these late hour activities are for other people, so I will smile, instead of grimace, at their occurrences, waking me from my sleep.
There’s always hope.
Here’s hoping.
I Hope.
.
Faith is beyond hope. It is a gift of trusting when there is no reason to trust, or to hope.
Faith is a gift that the Holy Spirit continually renews in us, since we wear it thin so quickly.
Faith is the most powerful thing we will ever know in our lives.
Love comes in almost tied with Faith.
Some have said Love comes in first.
Regardless, there are these three: Faith, Hope and Love.
Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.
Colossians 1:12
Give thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
Words of Grace For Today
The Movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” portrays a hero who can with compassion, listening and friendship transform us from angry, cynical realists who doubt anyone is or can be really good, into kind, compassionate, loving spouses and fathers (or mothers, not to leave anyone out.)
The movie’s byline is We Could All Use a Little Kindness. Today’s polarized political worlds, the echo chamber of self absorbed opinions available on line, and the falsehoods presented as truths by those we previously would have respected, leave us needing kindness, compassion, and a renewed hope in humanity. We need a few new heroes to inspire us to be better people, especially with those people who are different than us.
We need a bit of truth to prevail, and decency: Hope Lutheran Edmonton’s council just voted and distributed material to the members: They know it is against their constitution, but they have, without proper process to leave the ELCIC voted to hold a mail-in vote to call a non-ELCIC pastor. It is blatant breach of trust.
The Bishop or the Bishop’s representation must be present at the meeting for it to be legal.
But if the council will vote to act against the constitution, and blatantly so, who can trust that any of the rest of the process will be anything close to fair or even decent.
That, and many stories like it, leave us knowing we need a LOT more kindness, compassion, and a renewed hope in humanity. We need a few new heroes to inspire us to be better people, especially with those people who are different than us. We need a few good people, a new kind of hero, to stand up to blatant evil and put it in it’s place.
There is nothing to support this hope, or to fill this need.
Instead we worship the Lord with gladness and come into his presence with singing. We give thanks to the Father, who has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
For no matter what or who assaults us in this life, we know who transforms us from wretched sinners into saints, who can only share God’s sacrificial Grace with all people, even those who exercise such blatant, and raw evil against the little ones of Christ.
We know that our very breath relies not on the goodness of other sinners. Neither does the terribleness of others’ sins take our breath, our spirit, our faith, our gratitude, our love for all people, nor our hope from us. For nothing can separate us from the love of God, and the love of God is what gives us life, no matter what else we face.
Thanks be to God.
Covid 19, you have got nothing on the sin and hurt that people are capable of causing others. We are thankful for all the people who are kinder, more compassionate, and more loving, having grown through the challenges of Covid 19.
Stay safe, for yourself, but even more so for those around you! We are in this together, this entire journey on the good creation earth.
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
Words of Grace For Today
We all have enemies. You may call them adversaries.
Maybe you’ve lived so as to win every conflicted encounter and you’ve left destroyed people in your wake as you’ve moved forward, progressing, you’ve called it, in you life … accumulating power, and/or wealth, and/or fame … and you’ve done this not so outrageously that people have stood against you with all their might, so that in your bubble of life you may not be aware of all your enemies. But you have earned your enemies by being against many people. Whether they count you as their enemy or themselves as your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived like that and accumulated great power, wealth and/or fame and many people would tear you apart if they could, because you have destroyed so many people along the way to your ‘top’, which is really the bottom of a pit of … what to call it other than evil. They know you are their enemy, and whether they are your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived just struggling to get by and you’ve not had the wherewithal to notice who stood against you or how. It was simply always something that took everything from you and gave so little back: an employer who took advantage of you and underpaid you for years, a colleague or boss up the ladder who took all the credit for your work and left you in the dregs, or ….
Maybe you did yourself in with self destructive choices. Or your ill-health took the focus of your life away. Or someone else, a friend or person of trust gaslit you until you thought you were the problem. Or maybe you just never had a chance to be anything the world values.
Maybe you’ve lived as I did, always taking it on the cheek, turning aside from destructive people and allowing them to have their way, just trying to ‘duck’ so as not to be caught so much by them.
Just maybe there are a few people, who like me, while ducking from the blasts of evil, we’ve done our best to provide for ourselves and our families AND we’ve sought to give as generously as possible our time, skills, compassion, kindness, wisdom, and/or resources to anyone who crossed our paths. We work to sow truth and peace wherever we are. Perhaps you started out as a pacifist, or ended up that way simply out of practice being at peace with all you were allowed to be or as God blesses you to be.
As sure as the rise of the sun is in the east, and the setting in the west, our enemies gaslighting us and their evil behaviours toward us, do not define us.
Their gaslighting, lies, and working in the shadows define them, each of them, no matter their position, power or wealth. They are defined as corrupt. They become a poison to the world around them. Things that could have been good decay from the inside. Their worlds rot like ant eaten tress under the pressure of the sins, and their turning from God to serve the Evil One. When the wind of even a small storm blows, they fall, shattering as they hit the ground. So much that could have been … is lost.
As the Psalmist writes: But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you.
Then comes what seems like the good part (though it is not)
Biblical Rache, revenge.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Revenge is hardly where I go with that at all. I do have to bind the sins of all those who contributed to the gaslighting, the lying, and the work in the shadows to do what cannot survive in the light of day. I’m not bothered to keep track of who did exactly what; God will deal with them. I will not prejudge them as ‘sheep to be slaughtered’ even if I am sure they have earned that. I will give them time for the amendment of their lives, time to set right what they have done.
Why not ask God to set them apart for the day of slaughter? Because we all rely solely on the Grace of God to breathe, live and hope. Maybe God will be gracious and forgive these people and doers of evil deeds. I cannot know. I move on, not forgetting, working to stop this kind of injustice, but re-engaging in God’s good creation that I still have time to enjoy.
So all that evil bears down on each day, not countered by a wish to do in one’s enemies, and still life is blessed. Even my life is blessed, relegated as the old hermit in the woods living on $40/month. My life is blessed, not because it is easy or comfortable or secure.
My life is blessed because it is as God chooses, and as I trust God makes it.
My life is beautiful, wonderful, and it is ‘cool!’
I encounter it in the oddest ways at the most unexpected times. God breaks in on my life, wonderfully so. So I wrote a few days ago as I settle in for the night:
It is cool.
It is cool, 7⁰C out, and 17⁰C in
It is cool, A fire laid for the morning.
It is cool, Hot water on demand and washcloths and towels aplenty to clean up well.
It is cool, How I’ve been able to clean up and distance long grass and buggies from here.
It is cool, How after pressing so hard for days my body just insists and gets a nap and takes 3 hours.
It is cool, The view as the sun has set. It is cool how the process and checklist for restarting worship in person are coming along.
It is cool, The fresh air here.
It is cool The connected-to-the-saints solitude here.
It is cool, To have hard physical work and challenging creative writing to do.
It is cool, The song birds and water fowl fill the air at times with music and noise.
It is cool, The technology that makes so much possible.
It is cool. The Peace that carries us in the face of enemies onslaughts.
It is cool. It is God, 3in1, all
Breaking always in
to our finite bubbles.
Cool.
May God break into your awareness this day and fill you with awe, wonder and peace, as you abide in God’s love.
We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Acts 12:7
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.
Words of Grace For Today
When Jesus forgives us it is amazing.
Perhaps, for us Christians who have lived in the promise of forgiveness it is not so spectacular, since it is an every day kind of thing.
For people, though, who have never realized this promise is for them, well how can we describe it?
If you have ever been in chains. If you’ve ever had your freedom taken from you. If you have, through no fault of your own, been thrown into jail … and someone came to release you, without notice … then perhaps you could understand this.
Or if you had a debt so great, there was no way you could pay it off in this lifetime, and you struggled to just meet the interest payments …
and someone unexpectedly paid off your debt, and put that much again in your account.
Or if you realized that your guilt load was so great that you simply could not make right with the many many people you’d left hurt and struggling in your wake …
and someone came and took that guilt, and gave you the ability to make things right for all the people you had hurt along the way…
Perhaps we can imagine what
freedom, being set free, actually means.
It is astounding, confusing, fear-making, exhilarating, anxiety ridden, and weightlessness in full gravity.
It is what Jesus does when he forgive us. He comes and says ‘do not be afraid,’ and we need not be afraid, such authority and calming compassion as he carries in his voice.
Then he sends us out into the harvest, to forgive others
so that they may live free.
Free to choose to allow God’s love to pour over their heart and mind, and transform their actions into moves of Grace, like an elegant swan, a confident dancer, a child filled with expectation and still calmly waiting …
In the snow, in the wind, in the rain, under these skies …
Is God Coming
Down this Road
For me,
For us,
For all the young men
who die senseless deaths
at the hands of police?
Psalm 98:9
The Lord is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
Matthew 24:14
And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.
Words of Grace For Today
Protests and Police using tear gas killed one of my son’s long time friends.
It helps to read that the Lord is coming …
to judge the earth, to judge with righteousness (finally)
and equity.
George Floyd
did nothing to deserve to have a policeman kneel on his neck for 9 minutes while he struggled to breathe and stay alive, a struggle he lost.
.
This explodes into protest at this time because Covid 19 restrictions are not fair, not equitable. The poor are hit the hardest, many struggling anyway to find enough food each day, and now, if they go out for food, they face curfews, police harassment and arrest, incarceration and almost sure infection. Rich people are often not even inconvenienced, or bother to change the pattern of their lives.
This is not equitable.
Being poor is rarely the person’s fault. Being rich is rarely due to honest hard work.
Being black … being a young man …
none of this is a fault. Yet this brings fear that minority mothers teach their sons to be aware of, and to fear this irrational hatred, lest hatred of them would cost them their lives. Even then, too often, just breathing and being (themselves) alive, unjustly costs them their lives because someone with a police uniform and a heart full of hate takes it from them.
Where is equity in all this?
This is racism, misandry, and out of control hatred.
.
Protesting is the least one can do, to support those who live in fear everyday, for the hope that one day they might not have reason to live in daily fear for their lives.
I have a dream!
Do you!?!
What are we to say when protesting peacefully is responded to with police tear gassing the protesters, even when they claim they have not used tear gas. They use pepper bomblets, which even they designate as tear gas!
Tear gas.
And it kills, sometimes.
Yet the police still use it!
Then they refuse to allow those affected by their tear gas to retrieve a handbag to get their asthma puffer …
And another innocent protester dies at the hands of the police ….
.
Thank God, that God will come!
God will come to judge with equity!
Helps us.
Help us be as God created us to be, bearers and witnesses to the Peace that surpasses all understanding
How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation.
Hebrews 12:28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe;
Words of Grace For Today
What shakes in your life?
When the wind blows and catches the solar panels on the roof this whole place rocks. The first time the 50 km winds did that, with 90 km winds in the forecast, I climbed out into the blowing snow and ice cold biting wind. I looked at what was shaking me in my boots.
It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening. Solid anyway I thought. Then I retraced the steps I had taken to face the solar panels into the winter sun that barely peeked above the treetops for a few minutes. I remembered how I had anchored everything solidly … and I remembered how the cold and the onset of dark had rushed me. While the front side was anchored solidly to the frame that held all the solar panels to the rooftop, and that was only probably solid enough to stand up to a 100 km wind, I had just left the back side resting on that frame of piping.
So was! The panels all together stood nearly vertically six feet above the roof and five feet wide. That’s a lot of sail force on that frame holding the panels.
It had inherent limits being on the roof anchored to the piping that held everything in place, AND the back side (in the direction the most powerful winds could hit – since there were trees disrupting the wind in the other direction) was just sitting there!
I was lucky it had not just up’ed and walked off the roof top smashing, twisting and ruining everything in its path!
So was!
I had found an abandoned 1″ thick rope a few months earlier. Not friendly to hands, it seemed tough enough, at least it looked tough. I grabbed it and let go of it right away. Then I put on my gloves first and grabbed it, ran out into sharp cold, and ran that rope from the top of the solar panel frame to the one tree that stood close on the side where the wind was blowing from. The next day I anchored it around both sides of the top of the panel and back to the tree. Done.
.
It still shook when the winds kicked up. I no longer was alarmed. Maybe I should have been? The whole set up is different now, but the rope is back in place, and when it shakes, I go right back to what I am doing.
Trust.
in an old rope.
in a tree, which is still alive, unlike it’s neighbours.
in my ingenuity … well not really. I’m just too tired to think how to make it better and then get out and make it so. Soon, one of these days. Maybe when the rain stops.
.
God’s Kingdom is not shaken. It does the shaking throughout the whole universe. Wisdom begins with fear of the Lord, and needs love of the Lord (based on the Lord’s love of us) to grow.
All around, even as Covid 19 shakes us, or it should, God’s wonders are worth being awestruck by. The rope may last another day or so, or a year. But God’s unshakability lasts forever. From generation to generation God rules the universe.
For this we can stand in awe and give God praise and thanks.
There is no wind, or virus, or evil that comes against us that God is not more powerful than.
Covid 19 has shown we can meet the emissions targets set by the U.N. Maybe, just maybe, we will learn to keep it up even as the economies restart, and hopefully grow.
Then the winds may not continue to become more and more ferocious. And we can stand in thankful awe of God’s power, instead of in awful fear of what we’ve brought the environment to do to try to be rid of our destructive ways.
We can
trust
.
God
..
above all else
…
and count our blessings … they never stop. God is not shaken as more and more blessings pour over us, for us to share with others.
