With
the sun just up, I trust, since the clouds are thick and low, but it
is not dark as night anymore, when the waning crescent moon supplied
a bit of light to step by to dump the ashes from the night’s fire
as the early morning fire is stoked and left to burn hot,
With
the sun just up, the logs have been hauled for fuel to heat with, and
the Eucharist celebrated with thankful prayers for family, all.
As
breakfast, a required meal of fibre and fruit to keep my body from
rejecting most foods with spasms and great pain, is prepared, cereal
in the bowl, coffee measured into a small glass, the french press
ready, and then pre-heated and filled with water boiled on the wood
burning in the fire in the stove … and
then the milk cold from the natural fridge is poured on the cool berries from nature’s fridge, the liquid milk freezes into crystals on the cold, cold berries decorating them with the snow white of frozen milk.
Add the hot coffee to milk, Kafe au lait, and the breakfast is balanced into good measures of blessing
to
open this portion of the morning, with the routine well accomplished
and work well planned.
First
task of everyday, exercise, then Eucharist, then breakfast and
something creative.
.
cereal under Berries under Frosty Milk, before Coffee Golden
cereal
under Berries under Frosty Milk, before Coffee Golden
Today
Berries Under Milk, Quiet
as
only the fire sparks and moans as logs become heat and clear smoke
burned so hot!
Live
well. Tell the truth only. Trust God’s protection and blessing.
Receive
everything with Grace, Forgive all who can be, work diligently for
justice for all, and hope for things unseen and for which there is no
evidence it will be provided. For this is life, as God created us to
live it, filled with Love, pure and simple, even for one’s enemies.
Brought
me to the road towards the East and the rising sun.
Golden
light and a sound alerted me to a photo about to be.
Can you
see the sound?
Can you
tell what is different in each photo? (ignore that the position of
the camera moves slightly so that the view shifts, the edges are
different.)
What is a wonderful Saturday morning, -2⁰ with clear sky and waning gibbous moon, a touch of frost and a good warm fire keeping ‘home’ warm, and the water for coffee boiling,
if not a perfect opportunity to play and make a small riddle-puzzle, seek-and-find photo series?
As
the cool days of fall darken earlier and earlier, and the dark of
night stays with us longer and longer …
Dark comes early, closer to South
Dark comes early, closer to South
Leaves fall all
Leaves
fall all
The
wood pile is just high enough,
The
food sufficient for the coming days,
The
water enough and replenish-able,
And
the air is fresh,
My
clothing rather well prepared for the coming months,
The
shelter from the weather to come is mostly prepared,
My
labour is directed, consumedly so, towards writing what must be
written.
My
love grows and wanes, I am loved well and always.
And
God holds me safe.
What
more can one ask for from life, from God, from all that might be?
All that might be.
All
that might be.
How
many humans have had so much less, so much less, so much less.
So much less.
So
much less.
The
beauty of the world is at my fingertips, literally, as a cell phone
camera captures what can be seen and hoped for?
Cell camera photos: harvest moon, over three harvesters
Cell camera photos: harvest moon, over three harvesters
Wahrheit
Was
sonst?
God’s blessings
For
what more would anyone wish from life?
More
than the time each morning to celebrate that Christ is with us, in
body and blood?
More
than the ability to see beauty and share it with others?
Sharing beauty
Sharing
beauty
More
than the ability to know truth, without doubt, or hesitation?
More
than to live well?
Live Well
Live
Well
Legend:
73804
mitkommen! – from the movie Remembrance, Tomasc calls out to Hannah
to come with him, he dressed as a German soldier initiating their
escape, as he carries a canister of photos of the Nazi concentration
camp.
We
pray that we may Guard the treasure of
faith entrusted to us, relying
on the Holy Spirit in all things!
This is life (challenges and
tragedy): I’d like to tell you it’ll be ok, I cannot honestly do
that: 100% death rate
You
probably have heard it said, “Do not take life too seriously. You
will never get out of it alive.”
I’d
like to tell you that the death rate for humans is less than 100%,
but that’d be dishonest.
It is the pain of death that rips our hearts and dreams right out of
us. It is the basic, most profound fear of each human. It drives us
to succeed, even by evil scheming, which
leads to eternal failure.
Success:
The
OT commonly claims that God blesses the faithful with material
successes. There is no end of advice on how
to be successful.
One
of my favourites is “Life is 10% what
happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Charles
R. Swindoll
Reba
McEntire gives us: “To succeed in
life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny
bone.”
Pele,
the soccer star, offered all together:
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning,
studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing….”
Winston
Churchill pointed out that it’s always a process:“Success
is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue
that counts.”
John
Barrow said, “Music is 10%
exhilaration and 90% utter disappointment.” Many
great musicians
will confirm this, and it seems success is like that as well: Despite
all our efforts to succeed most of our
efforts end in utter disappointment and only
the cream of the crop rise to the top. Or
as the lessons for today tell us, those who pursue evil schemes seem
to succeed in life’s pursuits, and
God does not bless the faithful with success.
Success is like photos, too often it looks too good to be really true.
Life’s challenges, tragedies,
defeats – We’d like to say that they are not what they are, but
they are what they are.
With the
looming end of life at our own deaths, and the slim chance of
success, even when we follow the best advice, it would be great if
the church offered some kind of helpful advice to succeed in the face
of life’s tragedies, challenges and defeats. Too often it does, and
most often it is a false teacher who provides something other than
the sound teaching of the Gospel.
Spouse develops dementia
When a
spouse develops dementia, and lives on but does not even know their
loved ones, we’d like to say that it will be OK, but it is not OK.
It’s a loss for which hardly anything can prepare us.
Addicted
When a
family member or friend becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol, we’d
like to tell you that they need to go to AA or NA and you to Al-anon
and everything will be OK. It is so important to go to AA, NA or
Al-anon, but that’s only a small step. For the addict the rest of
life is one drink or fix away from the same devastating decline
towards death. Those close to the addict are invisibly drawn down the
same road as they fight to make the world right again. But attempting
that impossible task robs us of all the goodness of life. Al-anon
only helps us see the invisible road to disaster, even as we remain
one misstep from jumping or rolling right down that path again.
Child dies
When
perhaps the worst tragedy hits and a child dies: We cannot tell you
that it was God’s will, and that everything will be OK. We can tell
you that most people agree that parents are not supposed to have to
bury their children. It’s a loss and tragedy that is beyond
comparison.
Habakkuk pending defeat to Babylon
There is
much more to say in the face of every challenge or tragedy, so do not
despair.
Yet
this is what especially the OT
lesson for today tells us. There will be destruction, violence,
strife, contention and justice that is perverted, and it will seem as
if God has deserted us. Besides
the breakdown of their nation’s integrity, the
prophet’s people faced inevitable defeat
by their powerful neighbours, Babylon and
Egypt. The Promised Land will be lost. They
will go into exile as slaves.
Worst of all,
their identity as God’s people in the Promised Land will disappear,
if it has not already.
The Prophet’s Complaint and Plea,
Posture (Standing, Waiting)
So
the prophet cries and pleads with God, how long must they wait for
God to save them from themselves and their
neighbours?! The prophet does not lie down
in resignation. Instead the prophet stands in wait for God’s
answer.
God’s Answer: a Vision, a Promise
And God
answers with a vision in which all is put right. It may seem to take
too long, but in God’s time all will be done right!
The Prophets always look up!
That’s quite the promise. That promise is repeated in Paul’s letter to the Galatians where it was instrumental in Martin Luther’s break through to understand that we are saved by Grace alone! Can we live abundantly in that promise, when we face challenges, losses and unimaginable tragedies, when we see creation rebelling against our abuses and we know success is rare and death is sure?
The best of creation is polluted. When will we learn!
That’s much harder than following all that advice on how to be successful. We might well cry to God, “Help! Give us faith!”
Gospel prelude to today’s lesson:
Forgive
In
the verses leading up to today’s Gospel Jesus has told the
disciples that they must forgive, and forgive and forgive without
end. The disciples see that as too hard.
They do not know how to succeed at this. So the disciples’ plead
with Jesus: “Increase our faith!”
In
answer Jesus tells them the smallest amount of faith is more than
sufficient. We know from Paul’s letters, especially Galatians,
reflecting Habakkuk’s words,
that faith is not up to us. It is a free gift that
God gives to us undeserving sinners. That
faith given
to us by Grace transforms everything in our
lives. We become
God’s children who act out that same Grace for everyone around us.
Turning Point: Christ abolishes death!
We
read in the Letter to Timothy how profound this transformation is:
“This grace was given to us in Christ
Jesus…, who abolished death
and brought life
and immortality
to light through the gospel.”
This
is the power of God! In Christ Jesus death
is abolished. Our core identity becomes not how we live, not what we
do, not who we live with, nor even
for whom we live out our lives. Our core identity is established
again as it was at creation: we are God’s people by Grace alone. It
is what God does to us, not what we do, that gives
us our identity.
We can
trust the promise that, even though we be overrun by a foreign power,
the Promised Land be taken from us, and we are scattered across the
face of the earth, we remain God’s people.
Terry Waite
Terry
Waite, as an envoy for the Church of England, negotiated the release
of a number of hostages in the Middle East. Then during one
negotiation, he was kidnapped and held from 1987 to 1991. For
most of those five years he was isolated and blindfolded. It would
have been so easy to lose himself, his identity, his sanity. A key
component to his survival was daily Holy Communion. By himself, by
memory, he went through the service using the old words from the
English Book of Common prayer, even when he had no bread or water for
the elements. This Word of God reminded Terry who he was and it
reminded Terry who God was. It pulled him into communion with the
faithful of every time and place – day … by day … by day: he
was the one for whom Christ died, so that he might be forgiven and
live abundantly, even in captivity.
Forgiving
Even a
tiny bit of the faith, that Grace alone saves us, is enough for us to
extend that same forgiveness to everyone around us.
Facing Real Life, even Defeat, as God’s
Children
With
even the smallest spark of that faith in us, death does not
have the final say in our lives. The treasure of
this grace-given-faith through
the generations overcomes
every challenge, tragedy and defeat. When
a spouse develops dementia, when a loved one becomes an addict, even
when a child dies, then we can trust that God carries us
onward in the world God made and said “It is Good!”
Everything taken: we remain God’s Children
Everything
can be taken from us. Like Paul, we can be imprisoned and even worse:
our reputations can be ruined, our church can be taken from us, our
livelihoods and ability to work can be taken from us, our freedom can
be taken from us. Still we will remain God’s children, for God
alone has made us God’s children. Nothing can take that from us.
Billboard of faith
Like a
billboard the Holy Spirit has engraved the Gospel of Jesus on our
foreheads with a cross, poured it into our hearts as love, and
kneaded it like leaven into our minds and actions, so that a runner,
or a fellow disciple in deep grief or having forgotten
Grace-given-Faith, will easily be able to see the treasure of
Christ’s Grace in our lives.
Knowing
that Christ has defeated death and is raising us to new life, at the
end of each day, whether it was challenging or not, we will not
have chased after trite nor revered successes.
The End of our day, and all is well. We’ve lived as God’s children.
The Habit of Costly Faith Courageously Shared
Instead, having treasured Grace and forgiveness as a habit so that it comes easily to us, we will say: “We, faithful servants of Christ, have done only what we ought to have done! Though it cost us, like William Tyndale who was martyred in 1536 for translating the Bible into English, with the courage of the Holy Spirit we share with others the Grace that saves us.” …. [breathe!]
Life is
10% what happens to us, and 90% how wereact …
[breathe!] Yet it is 100%
what God does for us that counts!
sacrificing
to the cold the colours left when photosynthesis cannot any more
as they
shed summer and fall pushing the liquids of life back into the ground
protecting themselves
from the
expansion of freezing that would tear out their hearts.
In the
still air as the light of warmth reaches through the tops to the
yellow carpet below
the trees cry ice drops,
melting from the freezing night’s moisture collected on leaves not yet having succumbed like their fallen comrades
to the wretched destruction of passing time,
or
to the blessed transition from green biting-bug-and pollen-filled hot days transitioning to the cool respite of fall.
.
Colour drips Drops of Time
Drip,
drop, drip … it is time
time to
prepare
time to
celebrate what was
time to
prepare for what will come
time to haul wood, trees murdered for a bit of white bark or taken as the victim’s of drug-hyped-senslessness and bravado that a madman with an axe can fell living trees just for the show of it, for the false exuberance of finally being able to master something, since he could not master himself.
The Cost for Truth has been everything for me, except a sleeping bag, a tent, my clothes and a bicycle.
The
Cost for Truth has been everything for me, except a sleeping bag, a
tent, my clothes and a bicycle.
The Reward
But
the reward for truth is a clear eye and a clear conscience.”
Clear eyes enable one to see the beauty of life.
Clear
eyes enable one to see the beauty of life.
The True Work of Justice
“It
is as important to exonerate an innocent person as to convict a
guilty person.”
Clearly Fog Challenges Clarity
Clearly Fog Challenges Clarity
I have a clear eye and clear conscience.
So many who’ve had the chance have not paid any price for truth. It is a party where they imbibe the intoxicating evil of false power based on the Devil’s seductions, drunk so deeply in order to ignore the truth.
I do not see good people working for justice to exonerate the innocent, myself included. Like hundreds of thousands others, I see good people become evil, working to convict the innocent like me, a kind, generous, man of great integrity, an excellent stay at home father.
The long view allows one to see the the rocks and sticks, and the wonderful light.
The
long view allows one to see the the rocks and sticks, and the
wonderful light.
It’s colour that plays with the light.
It’s
colour that plays with the light.
Rest in the solitude and calm is possible as God blesses those persecuted without just cause.
Rest
in the solitude and calm is possible as God blesses those persecuted
without just cause.
But woe to those who unjustly persecute the innocent. For God judges without rules of evidence or games of cover-ups possible. God judges the reality of one’s life and actions. There is no hiding possible for evil. There is no negotiating for something other than actual reality, for that is what God sees and judges. Entrance to blessing never comes with Spin or Cover-up, or declaring something to be other than it is.
In this
life, our challenge is to not become like the persecutors, not to
become vengeful and vindictive … but to remain, trusting God’s
promises and quiet blessings each day, … to remain fully alive with
grace.
As for me and my non-existent household, unjustly taken from me thrice, I and the Holy Spirit, we choose to live only by Grace.
The
trees have joined the low bushes in nodding to the coming time, fall
will be here in a few days, and the leaves need to protect the forest
floor from the nice ice that will carpet the bugs in their beds and
mice in their burrows. May the freeze be deep and hard enough to
clear out the ferocious biting pine beetles. I thought they were but
a nuisance, not knowing what this ugly bug was, until someone told me
their name, and then one had the audacity to land on my face and bite
my hand when I brushed it off. Not just one, but a mini chainsaw
effect.
.
Just a few leaves scatter about
.
The cool near the water turns a few not so hardy first
.
The roads, as they are, open the cool air to reach low, the open meadow allows the young trees to turn first.
.
As the grip tightens along the road the lines of colour serve as guides to the exit.
.
The leaves begin to carpet the ‘roads’
.
Fall has it’s grip down low and up high in the woods.
.
Cool Night
The
cooler nights have meant for better sleeping and clear air waking.
The most dangerous animals are less frequent in these parts, though a
few do venture out to wade as their dogs swim in the lake’s frigid
waters, not quite so in the shallows of the sandy shorelines.
Their
noisy absence leaves more peace for the four-legged animals to
venture near, and deer, bear and squirrels, owls, loons and geese
abound. Not that I have the equipment to catch photos of any.
.
empty spaces
.
Solitude Light
Which
gives way for quiet solitude in the evenings as the last bit of light
fades through dusk to dark, leave the last fade a line of western
slivered light reflected in the lake’s undulating surface between
the reeds.
The Last Light as Night overtakes Dusk
The sliver of solitude so difficult to find, more so to fully enjoy.
Have the
seasons shifted earlier, like puberty, with the age of maturity now
put off into the 30’s if not 60’s or not at all?
It’s
not Fall for another 10 days, and the leaves turned first at the
beginning of the month.
Do we
need to know, or would it just be nice, comforting? Like finding that
trail marker after three hours of hiking not seeing anything, walking
for hours on what appears to be a mere animal trail up the side of
the mountain, with just the right angle to keep it not too steep.
The woods’ floor covered without a hint of a trail.
Days
like that march into months and years of any normal life, if one
cares to actually ask something serious about knowing yourself. Which
way ought one turn, this way towards quick success at projects
completely owned by a multi-national company driven to earn profits
for the shareholders on the backs and lives of the employees, sharing
the ‘wealth’ along the way with enough employees for people to
convince themselves the project may even be valuable?
Or does one stay true to one’s well known self and work for peanuts, sometimes cashews, or even weak crackers, like for a parrot, except one gets to speak one’s mind intelligently, clearly, with deeply rooted integrity? The price is one may never be listened to, and one easily goes hungry, dropping off everyone’s radar into obscure poverty in old age. But one’s path will always be interesting, or better described, one’s path will always be enthralling, for the matter of each day is not just to plod on with some promised reward, but the project is to have a project worth the life one gives to it. By definition that must be fully engaging.
Can one
find that path?
Colourful
Challenging
Or, in
truth, can one stand to continually struggle to avoid this path? This
is what we all were created to be and do. To settle for other is to
run out of sync with life, like a two propeller airplane setting up
vibrations that can rip the whole plane, the whole plain life, apart.
Even far short of that total disaster there is the profound dis-ease
of living with the noise and vibrations of a life lived out of sync
with creation.
Once one
learns to live in sync, like a pilot that finally learns without
thinking to set the props in sync, that ease and sense of oneness
compared to the jarring throbs of being out of sync remind one that
when God finished each day of creation God said, “It is good!”
As the loons haunt the dim dawn light with their forlorn wails as if begging for something close to truth to be recognized in the coming light, the not quite still lake undulates softly the moon caught in it’s liquid mostly-water.
There are many powerful and privileged people of luxury far beyond necessity or souls’ enjoyment who fear the light, not of a simple day’s dawn, but the Light that dawns as the Truth is revealed.
There are more people who look to this dawn of brilliant Truth with expectation of exoneration and finally, finally real justice through which real mercy is possible.
The waters reflect the small light that persists despite the Darkness
As so many have confessed through generation upon generation, if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
It certainly cannot be that God plays games with us like those in power, teasing us and tempting us just to catch us off guard. No, if who we trust to be God is God, creator all powerful and merciful, loving, forgiving and gracious, yearning to delight in our existence, our joys and even our sorrows that make up an abundant life, then certainly God plays no games with us concerning the Truth of who we are and what we have actually done; whether we acknowledge the Truth or we hide from it.
The Truth.
Often
it is so much simpler than we want to acknowledge, when we want to
deceive ourselves. Like the water we too often want for wind to blow
the clear reflection of what we have done, so that no evidence of the
truth is discernible.
But the light will shine, and I for one, I, Tim Lofstrom, like I, Daniel Blake, eagerly wait the Light that will shine on the Truth. For I will be exonerated and those who have fabricated lies about me, bullied me, threatened my life, and sat in false judgment of me will be put to shame.
That which in them thrives on the darkness and falsehoods of their doings will be put to an end, as consumed by the fire of God’s judgment. Then our victory will be double, for not only will we be free, all of us falsely judged and destroyed by lies, but those who unjustly ruin and destroy us will be set free from the darkness that grips their whole unnatural being. Though little of them, who have given themselves to the Evil One, may survive as the kernels are separated from the chaff, still together we will bask in the Light, the Truth and the Grace which God delights in giving to us. Our collective shame will be ended.
For
this day we wait, as we wait for the rising of the sun to replace the
crescent moon which leaves darkness’ canopy pressing down on our
hearts, our hopes, and our joys.
The Light catches all that would hide in chaos and makes it clear
In today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 13:10-17, Jesus reaches out and sets a woman free from 18 years of being held hostage to an ailment, an illness. She is set free and can walk upright, humbly unimpeded by a body oppressed by dis-ease in God’s creation.
The woman and the people are over-joyed. She is free!
But
the temple priests have no joy because they are threatened. They have
not provided this freedom and therefore they are not celebrated. They
and the people now clearly know that the priests live in darkness and
the light has just burst the seams of reality in ‘their’ temple.
They use the law as a hammer against the Light, to no avail. The law, given to guide the people in freedom, is corrupted in their hands to become the hammer that strikes down faith, joy, and hope in all the people. They would treat animals better than the people needing God’s Grace. They try to maintain an order that provides them false power and oppresses people into the mud of life. But the Light shines brightly.
The
people rejoice in the healing of the woman.
The
priests, they who would claim dark power over others, are put to
shame. Their grip is loosened, if just for a few hours, days or
weeks. Not only is this woman free, but all the people bask in the
Light, sharing in this woman’s joy.
Who
are you today?
Are you the woman, who after 18 years of suffering illness that consumes the essence of life right out of you, and yet leaves you a shell of a human still looking down at the daisies, wishing for freedom even if that freedom arrives on the other side of the grave?
Are you the people, who after generations of suffering the oppression of those who rule in darkness over them, are overjoyed that the Light has arrived for this woman, for they are caught also in its Light? Their oppressors are put to shame.
Are you the priest, the oppressors, who live in darkness, who are skilled at turning truths in to dark falsehoods? Are you one who plays with truth as an axeman cutting trees, with falsehoods chipping life out of your victims, over whom you claim power? Are you put to shame by the coming of the Light and Truth? Have you put yourself outside the delight of God, to whom the coming of the Light not only means shame but loss of most of who you have made yourself to be, against the yearnings of your creator?
Are you the hands of Christ, who understand that the perversions of the Law, perversions of God’s Grace even, can be healed with a word, a redeeming touch, with sacred oil, water and bread? Are you the one who God uses as a conduit, and instrument to set people free? Are you one, like so many in the great cloud of witnesses we inherit, who sacrifices the abundance of your life that others may simply live, knowing that God’s Light shines brightly even in our darknesses?
One
thing is certain: God’s Light will shine brightly! Not according to
our plans, but as God chooses.
As Isaiah. prophet of Exile awaited, survived and returned from, wrote of our simple ways and God’s mysteries of Grace:
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 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. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Isaiah 58:9b-14
The Light brings Truth in Full Depth of Colour
As the loons haunt the dim dawn light with their forlorn wails as if begging for something close to truth to be recognized in the coming light, the not quite still lake undulated softly the moon caught by it’s liquid mostly-water.
There
are many powerful and privileged people of luxury far beyond
necessity or souls’ enjoyment who fear the light, not of a simple
day’s dawn, but the light that dawns as the truth is revealed.
There are more people who look to this dawn of brilliant Truth with expectation of exoneration and finally, finally real justice through which real mercy is possible.
When the Light comes we will have a double victory: for ourselves and for you, our oppressors.
The sermon is interspersed with snippets of music.
Jeremiah 23:23-29 Hebrews 11:29–12:2 Luke 12:49-56
Jesus says
We Cannot Interpret the Present
How
is it that Jesus says we do not know how to interpret the present
time?
We
can forecast the weather so we know it will rain before the
clouds appear on the horizon, and we know days before the wind
starts it’ll be scorching hot or freezing cold. Can we really not
interpret the present time?
Look, Jesus
the Bringer of Peace?
We’ve
looked to the stars, to see the number of descendants God promised
Abraham and Sarah. We’ve looked to Jesus on the cross and heard
that as we confess our sins and forgive others their sins Jesus
forgives us. We’ve listened and heard that Jesus blesses
peacemakers.
We
have sung of Jesus bringing Peace Like a River, with it’s catchy
melody.
Peace Like a River
God Does Not Come In Monochrome
Creation in Colour
Jesus
Brings Conflict, Fire, The Hammer of God
Yet
the lessons for today say, “Think again!” Jesus came not to bring
peace, but instead division. Jesus came to bring God’s Word of
fire. God’s word is a hammer that strikes the solid rock
foundations of our lives and shatters them.
God’s
Creation is no Monophony
God’s
Word is so much more like Beethoven’s 5th. It comes down
like a hammer in our hearts, pounding out any notion that what is to
come might be whimsical or easy. God sends Jesus, the Word made
flesh; and God means business.
Beethoven’s
5th opening ‘hammers’ and a phrases following
God Does
Not Come In Monotone
God Comes to Us and Means Business
Music Broad
Enough to Communicate God’s Reality
Music
moves our hearts stimulating in the same moment Joy, Grief and Hope
in us. How better to make sense of the harsh reality of these
lessons. Music, with the touch that harmonizes the spheres of the
universe, heals us and sets us right with God’s people and
creation: we thrive with music in our hearts. Like everything there
is of course Music that serves to break down creation, as at Jericho,
but we will leave that behind. But should we?
God’s
Creation is no Monodrama
Conflict In
and Between Us
Jesus
says he comes not to bring peace, but division and conflict. God
means business, sending Jesus, who is as powerful as the Word that
created the universe, which separated the Light from the Darkness.
We
must respond. If we respond with faith, our lives are forever
changed. If we respond with disbelief, then our lives take another
path. Even with faith created in us we still remain sinners who do
not believe. Jesus brings conflict within each of us. Since Luke’s
time the Gospel has divided also families. Often in history if one
believed, one would be persecuted and killed. Those of us who believe
end up in conflict with those who do not.
God Does
have a Monopoly on Loving Us ALL
Belief was
expensive. Faith still is as Jesus’ Love Catches Us.
Belief
was expensive among Luke’s readers. When Jesus creates faith in us
it still is.
Most
music we know is not about our lives. We just get caught up in the
rhythm and dance our hearts out. ABBA’s Ma Ma Mia is such a piece.
Then Jesus comes, catches us, and suddenly we are not merely dancing
to the music. The music is our lives. We are caught by Love, Jesus’
love, and getting away is impossible … even though we know there
are consequences for letting this love reach us … yet again.
Ma Ma Mia
God Did Not
Create Us as Mono-mimetic
We are in the Picture, We are God’s Picture.
God Yearns
that We Remember God’s Name
God
yearns for us, just as God yearned for the false prophets to give up
on spreading their own dreams and deceptions as if they were God’s
Word. God yearns because these false dreams and deceptions capture
our hearts and minds and cause us to forget God’s name. What a
terrible thing to suffer. To forget God’s name. To not even know
one’s own creator, redeemer, and guide to an abundant life.
It
is like going to a classical concert without knowing what is on the
program and after a warm up to Mozart, being agitated, gurgitated and
served up on a platter of confusion by Hindemith’s [/Bartók’s]
atonal music.
Hindemith or
Bartók
God is more
than Polyphiloprogenitive, God is Poly-All
Sometimes the Universe seems a few degrees or more off kilter
God fills
the universe
Can
we find God in that music? According to Jeremiah God is not
far off, nor only near. God fills the entire universe; and yet we
forget God’s name because we listen to tempting, false words.
Then
God sends someone to remind us that without God Our Blue Eyes are
Crying in the Rain, and we know that we’ve deserted love and left
our hearts as empty as a Monday Morning Church.
Blue Eyes
Crying in the Rain OR Monday Morning Church
God’s
People are Polychromatic, Polyphonic, Polyrhythmic, Poly- of ALL
Kinds
Someone comes and reminds us: God is for us!
The
Faithful Cloud
Yet
God has not deserted us. We have a great cloud of witnesses
that tell us otherwise: From the Red Sea, to Jericho, to Rahab,
Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and to the prophets
God has made great things happen. But not all God’s people were
brought success or honour.
Many
of God’s faithful die after they suffer shame, having lived
destitute, persecuted and tormented, wandering homeless the deserts
and mountains, living in caves and holes in the ground.
Doch,
God provides for them all a better end, to live with us, in faith.
This
great cloud of witnesses to God’s Word, accompanies us each day, as
we persevere in the race put before us. Ours is not a race of our
choosing. God puts this race before us, and race we must.
God’s
People are Poly-therapeutic
The Faithful Cloud Reflected Down to Earth
Story:
Movie The Last Face: Living the life God gives us: for others
In
the movie The
Last Face, two doctors work
in Liberia and Sierra
Leone’s conflicts. Wren
is an idealist, fundraiser
and
organizer. Migel is an
orphan, a
realist, working on the front lines.
Caught
on the front lines with him, Wren falls in love with Migel and it
changes them forever, as love is wont to do. Then she has to choose
which one of six people will be given the last of their blood supply.
The other five will die. When they have to leave all six of them to
die as the conflict arrives the next day at their makeshift hospital,
Wren loses her nerve. It is impossible to make any difference. She
questions why they are there anyway. Why do these people have to live
like this!
Migel
lives beyond hopelessness to fully trusting not that he can make the
whole situation change, but that he can in one area if only
temporarily, one day at a time, one patient at a time, do what he is
able as a doctor.
Wren
protests the senselessness of helping people who will die just days
later in the conflict anyway. He responds: these people are given
this life to live. Yes, I can leave, fly out to a city with safety
and hot showers and a good bed. They cannot. I cannot change the life
they are given, but I can give them what I have to give.
God’s
People are Poly-Resilient
Sometimes
the race that God puts us into is so profoundly hopeless that we get
caught up in the blues, depression, or even life-threatening
hopelessness. For we see the circle of life that does not change for
the better for so many of God’s own people.
Even
then we know that if we put our blues to song, and we sing them out,
they become our prayers, and by grace they lose their grip on us.
Song Sung Blue
God’s
Race for Us is not Monotonous
The View to the Boat, the Church
Challenges:
the race
As
we struggle to meet the challenges of each day God’s powerful Word
accompanies us, not to make it easy for us, but to buck us up to do
the hard work in the race put before us.
Movie The
Forgiven
Remembered
in so many ways, including in the movie Forgiven, Bishop Desmond Tutu
struggled against so many detractors who threatened to sink the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission because it would expose the atrocities
they had contributed to. Tutu meets these challenges, not easily but
with Grace, determination, joy, love, condemnation and hope.
People
had killed people. People revenged the killings. People revenged the
killings revenging killings. And on it would continue, if kept in
secret, forever. But brought out into the open it gave people the
opportunity to forgive!
Forgiveness
is God’s Music
With
forgiveness, which made S.A.’s future as a united country possible,
we experience the long lead up to Beethoven’s 9th
Symphony’s resolution in the Ode to Joy Chorus, ringing across the
stars and back into the depths of our hearts. Here we experience the
power of Grace, of Love, of Joy, mixed with struggle, loss, and grief
until it comes out in us as Hope.
Beethoven’s 9th lead up to Ode to
Joy
God Created
the Universe from Chaos, Making Harmonies: from Galaxies to Atoms,
from the Circle of Life to Emotions and Beauty.
God Offers
us Polyphonic Lives in Harmony with God’s Universe
The Trees and the Light
How to
interpret the present time?
How
can we possibly interpret the present time? Only when we realize that
God is here for us, can we see clearly that just as the south wind
brings scorching heat and the north wind brings bleeping freezing
Cold, so God brings rainbows of challenges each and every day in the
race set before us just so that we can practice meeting everyone with
Forgiveness and Grace.
Then
we can move from Misery to Happiness, giving God thanks for
everything with the music that brings us into harmony with God’s
Good Creation. So we sing: “Now Thank we all our God, with hearts
and hands and voices”
Now Thank we all our God, with hearts and hands
and voices!
