And No One Is Falsely Accused, Not People, Not God,
but it is not so beyond this small refuge.
Ezekiel 33:17
Your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just’, when it is their own way that is not just.
Ephesians 5:10
Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
A common illness among humans is to know full well something is wrong, but somehow be unable to identify oneself as the source. Instead we blame others, believing the fault cannot possibly be ourselves. Innocent people are blamed. It may be simple scapegoating. The blamed person never even knows they are blamed. Seems innocent way to deflect responsibility for one’s sins.
Until it is not so simple, for one has been doing this for so long one does not know when one is blaming others for one’s own sins, and when others actually are the wrongdoers, and one carries on, driving people out of town with their reputations ruined, taking people to court, fully perjurying oneself, and sending innocent people to jail. These things just get out of hand.
Lawyers, Prosecutors, Clerks and Judges see this so often and care not one wit, simply carrying, knowing full well innocent people are accused and then convicted, and very not innocent people blatantly lie under oath in court. The courts care not one bit because they, too, add their lies on top of the perjury provided, in order to convict innocent, unfavoured people, and giving guilty, favoured people the privilege of destroying other people, as the courts themselves participate. There must be some kind of reward for the courts, prosecutors, lawyers, rcmp, and the actually guilty people who perjure themselves. It’s the reward all bullies enjoy as they beat up others who certainly do not deserve to be beaten.
It is an easy step to blaming God for one’s own sins, claiming God is unjust, when the guilty and unjust player is oneself.
Against this there is little defence.
There is only the comfort in knowing that saints of all generations have suffered the same kind of injustice, and even Jesus himself was falsely accused and convicted, and killed in a most torturous way, by crucifixion. The comfort comes in knowing that one is not the only person so unjustly dealt with, and that through the generations, God has always accompanied those falsely accused and convicted, and killed.
While we live, we pray, God save us from such injustice, from such blind and sick people.
While we live, we pray, God helps us each day to find what pleases you, and to think, speak, and do as you would have us.
You, who have made me see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.
John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Words of Grace For Today
For generations people have gathered at the smaller lakes surrounding the larger Cold Lake. Cold Lake’s 210 square miles of water surface stretches for 21 km and it’s 142 meters depth keep it cold even in the hot short summers. While it has a great variety of fish, it’s catch and release today. Back as long as memory serves (some days that’s just hours) people of the area have gravitated to the many smaller lakes that dot the bush around Cold Lake. They warm up in the summer making swimming a real possibility (sort of) and freeze over sooner in the winter making ice fishing possible much earlier. Their smaller size also means that storms year around and the cold winds of winter are less drastic. Sometimes that’s a real factor when out fishing. And it makes for a better camping experience when camping, which usually means June through August, and maybe also September and May, for most people. Only the hardiest camp earlier in March and April and later in October and November. Only the real desperate homeless or the most die-hard campers stay at all in or through the winter.
The problem with the campers through the generations is that, while camping in a number of areas is by reservation and with payment only, there are plenty of ‘free’ places to camp, some even legally. That ‘free’ cost has meant that a number of people, incapable of caring for the land or water or other people have gravitated to these ‘free’ sites. During Covid restrictions they were abused as places to gather huge numbers of people to party, drink, eat, and drug up with no measures for anyone’s safety. Long before Covid the ‘bush party’ attitude descended on a number of these sites as well. Annual ‘Grad Parties’, organized by parents and grandparents descend on these sites, bringing hundreds of young people to drink, drug, and music their sanity into oblivion, as if that were the best life had to offer them. While a 14 day limit exists, there are many who claim the ‘right’ to camp for months on end. Among the many who have shown up and still do camp more discreetly are known drug dealers. The traffic in to their campsites to share a drink and buy supplies is constant. Now it’s into the third and fourth generations of people who show up, demanding that they have a heritage right to party away, without any limit, their brains, bodies and souls. To hell with the land, the trees, the animals, the water, or other people. Their claim extends to the surrounding privately owned land as well. They bring the loudest ‘toys’ to rip up the ground, traverse the private lands, belching noise and fumes as much as possible, exercising their ‘rights’ and demonstrating the value of their lives.
The land, the water, the animals, the trees, the sane people ask: where is peace to be found? Those with enough money find a quieter lake, buy property, and secure their piece of paradise with their money and ability to pay taxes, build cabins, and fence out intruders. Those without any money or choice to live elsewhere wonder aloud: how long oh Lord, how long, before peace is possible, not only when the bitter cold keeps the most dangerous of animals away?!
Would it not be nice to know that blatant disregard for life is only present here? It is everywhere. It is obvious here because there are fewer things that provide ‘cover’ for the abuses of life.
Yet, when the abuse subsides for a few hours, a day, or a week, even though nature may storm away, biting bitterly cold or thrashing wildly with ferocious winds, the beauty of God’s creation not visibly overwhelmed by human domination renews one’s spirit.
The unrelenting human need to draw out energy from the ground is all around: with bitumen drilled for, extracted, processed and shipped out. Though in the woods one can ignore it for the most part. Knowing eyes and ears discern the mark oil extraction has made everywhere.
So we pray: “Lord, when will peace come to this land, and to it’s people?”
Even if we are not afraid, how long before the nights are not broken by loud ‘music’ or exhaust pipes untamed? How long before drugs, alcohol, ‘music’, and sex are not constant escapes for so many people who might otherwise have lived productive lives? How long before … before your blessings flow to these people so far lost from life as you created us to live it?
How long, Lord, before, You, who have made me see many troubles and calamities, revive me again?
How long before your peace is apparent each day?
Or is it enough that it is only occasionally to be found here?
There’s lots of weeds in life to be caught by, and lots of opportunity to share the sunset, and everything else in life with those in need.
Psalm 19:8
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.
Luke 3:10-11
The crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’
Words of Grace For Today
We are born with pretty much empty minds, which get filled with all we take in.
So we ask many people: how do we live well?
That is part of being human.
God does not leave us without any guidance. Sometimes that guidance is abused by others to steal life from us and many other people. Sometimes that guidance is misunderstood and following it gets us further from a good life than we were earlier. Mostly God’s precepts teach us how to live well, bring joy to our hearts, and clarity to our eyes and minds.
Still we must often ask: Lord what then must we do?
The beginning of enjoying a good life is to learn to share everything and whatever little one has, trusting that others will share with you when you are in need.
Life rarely works out that way, but being those who gladly, generously, and readily give to others in need starts by making one’s own life closer to what God intended, and it provides to others so that they can live. It’s hard to live well if you cannot even live.
And that’s the point. There’s always enough for everyone to live well, as long as those with more than enough are more than ready to share.
Which we humans rarely are.
So God keeps reminding us, that’s the purpose of life.
Today’s just another opportunity to learn how good it is to live in God’s purpose for life.
O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Matthew 21:15-16
But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’
Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
Words of Grace For Today
Thieves struck.
Simple deception taking things that can be fenced for money for drugs, and
I am left without essential tools and money that I am so short of: my life is not threatened, but bankruptcy moves closer and closer, which may lead to my death, if it is not brought on sooner by other dark powers.
More, I am betrayed yet again.
When Jesus does the amazing things of healing people of all kinds of illnesses, or bringing people together to share, trusting each other, the leaders know that Jesus is undermining the very reality that their power over the people thrives on and requires: fear. Fear of each other. Fear of those in power. Fear of those who speak the truth. Fear of anything and everything. Fear fuels greed. Greed makes people predictable and easily manipulated.
When Jesus does these amazing things, the children (and with this term is meant also the simple people in the temple) sing out his praise, honouring him as the descendant of David that he is. Jesus has calmed their fears so that they can see clearly the world they live in.
They see Jesus and know him to be the Son of David, the one promised and hoped for for generations.
They see the leaders in the temple, and know the corruption that guides their leading the people, not in the people’s best interest, but to the leaders’ advantages.
They see the poverty they are caught in, the forces that keep them down, and the promise that they will have life abundant even today. They have begun to realize the blessings of life are not given nor taken by possessing power, riches, and reputation.
Looking at the world around them, they see the wonders that God has created and rightly ask how it is that God cares a wit at all about humans, so small we are in the universe. They see clearly that though humans are so small in the universe, though they are so small in their own world, God cares most about them, and showers blessings on them each day, blessings that others toss aside as if they were mere trifles.
Today, the summer solstice, a 50th birthday, a day of light, and the shortest night of the year … even today the children (the simple, honest people blessed by God even if poverty holds them the rest of their lives,myself among them) are able to sing God’s praise with clarity. It is that clarity and truth that threatens corrupt powers, falsely gained riches, and those who parade themselves as leaders. The Light of Christ always shines. Today it shines intensely on the darkness of those who steal by deception, who take from others to feed their addictions and amass their wealth, who claim to lead the people from positions of honour.
Today all glory is God’s as Christ’s Light shines revealing all the dark of human hearts and deeds and the brightness of God’s blessings.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and for evermore.
2 Thessalonians 3:3
But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.
Words of Grace For Today
Yesterday the rains fell, the winds blew, and I slept, fitfully with wild dreams in tune with the ruckus outside.
I woke to see leaves against the back window of the camper. Winter tarps strung on frames quickly assembles as the cold set in, gave out around the camp. Tarps danced with anger in the wind.
I wandered out in rubber boots and my bathrobe to survey the damage. The top rain tarps were whipped back exposing the insulating tarps. The protection for firewood was mostly gone, and I freed the tarps the rest of the way to keep it from ripping itself any more. The tree, well … a tree was blown over onto the back of the camper. Thus the leaves at the window were that tree’s, yesterday a good 6 feet away, today up close and pressing on the glass.
I had hauled in wood the day before yesterday. The ‘ropes’ were still in the truck. I positioned the truck to pull a rope, wrapped around another tree (low for better leverage and less risk of pulling that tree over on to the camper) and on to the tree kissing the camper as high as I could reach (for better leverage on that wayward wood.) With a tug in low 4×4 the tree came upright, and then settled against another tree back towards the ‘pulley’ tree. I reattached the rope straight from truck to fallen tree, and backed up (praying the tree would not find it’s way back on to the camper just 6 feet away). It followed the rope and settled nicely in front of the truck (also a concern that I may not be far enough back and the tree would more than kiss the truck!)
A Kiss, Thankfully, Just a Kiss.
So it was: my morning. A day with plans to endure the rains. I’ve survived a flood, watching waters rise to within a metre of destroying a house that I build with my own hands, crossing up over the river valley to the plain away from town. Then travelling (instead of 3 km to town) back and around and over the dam up river (the only road still in tact over the river) 17 km to get to town, and hearing the rain each night, each day, and the reports that the dam was softened and shifting.
Real dread fills my bones still when heavy rains persist day after day.
This tree, this rain, did little damage that cannot be repaired. The tarps and their supports needed to be better designed and built before another winter. Now it will be done a bit sooner in the summer. A good thing at that.
So it is that I can heartily echo these readings:
The Lord will keep our going out and our coming in from this time on and for evermore and the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.
It’s just another normal spring day (normal given climate change.) What will I do with it? What will you do with it?
God certainly does not collect, cut, stack and stoke the firewood.
God does provide trees that die to become firewood.
Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.
Philippians 1:6
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
I decided one day that I would let God do everything.
I stayed in bed and waited for the fire to be stoked, breakfast to be served, and my writing to be done.
My back got sore, I got real cold after the fire went out, I got hungry for no breakfast showed up, and when I looked later I was hours behind on my writing schedule.
God, I decided, does not do everything. It wasn’t personal or anything. God did not just ignore me. God was speaking real loudly at me. I was not listening.
Paul writes to the , the Philippians, who had embraced him early in his ministry, funded him well, and always continued to support him in every way possible as he got into more and more trouble – because he kept preaching a radical Good News, Jesus loves you! When he does, we get to listen in on some of the most profound truths about the Gospel. Paul is less guarded, less polemic, writing to people less inclined to mis-hear or mis-take his words.
Jesus started a good work in the Philippians, in Lydia and her household. Paul assures them that Christ will bring this work to completion. Not they themselves. Christ.
The Psalmist writes what many have come to know is true: we can work all we like and as hard as we like, but if God is not working in us, for us, and through us, our labours are all in vain.
So God does lots.
God does everything.
That does not preclude our having to work hard. It means that as we work hard we need to give God thanks and remember that only God working in us makes it possible for us to do the work we do.
This morning, I got up and made a fire, a blessed fire that boiled water for coffee and washing.
This morning, I gathered more wood for the fire, and will stack most of it in preparation for the winter cold when I will burn lots of wood to stay alive and a bit more to be comfortable.
This morning, I came in and got breakfast ready, which is really not much work at all. It’s just pulling things out of the drying rack, out of cupboard and out of the fridge, and pouring boiling water on the coffee in the french press.
(I’m not french in anyway. It’s made by Ikea probably not in Sweden. And I use it to make coffee. So it’s a coffee press to me. The French can keep the guillotine and lots of other things, too. It’s just this is a coffee press every morning. It makes coffee from somewhere in the world and mixed and roasted and ground and canned. Not french at all. Of course we could say it’s a God press, because everything is from God. But then nothing would have any distinction. So everything is from God, breakfast, coffee, fire, boiling water. But it’s a coffee press to me.)
I’m working at my writing, bit by bit, though I’m still behind schedule, or maybe I gave up on the schedule.
Still, God is at work in all this or this means nothing, to me or to anyone else.
This day God made full of surprises and work and delights and daily bread and forgiveness and … lots more, and I’m still waiting for Christ to complete the work begun in me at baptism, though I’m doing everything I can to get on with that work, and get out of the way of God working hard through me.
One hopes one would be thought of as kindly as Paul did of the Philippians, and not the Corinthians, though I gotta say, sometimes I’m probably more cantankerous than even that lot. God has lots of work left to get done in me.
As for today, the tasks at hand are more than enough to fill the day. It is a small delight to get a few of them accomplished, even if the bigger tasks never quite seem to come to completion. That’s life. I guess when the work is done, it’ll only be so for me because I’m dead. Then the incomplete tasks will be someone else’s.
As for today, it’s time to take delight in God’s gifts, starting with time, breath, and energy to work.
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Ephesians 4:26-27
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.
Words of Grace For Today
Anger is many things. Actually we use the word anger to mean many different things often not realizing that we are talking about different things. It makes conversations about anger difficult.
Anger can mean 1) the emotion we have when we are hurt by another person. It is not properly anger, but the precursor to anger. We may or may not know by whom, or what it is that hurts. It’s just the hurt is known (or thought to be known) to be caused by another person. Our emotion is the hurt of being done poorly to by another person. This is purely an emotion. It cannot be avoided. If we deny the emotion it will grow on it’s own. We can (sometimes) pause our further response, let the emotion settle (sometimes counting to 90 works, by which time the emotion will subside – if it does not re-fire from a repeat of a hurt, or some replaying of the hurt as if it were real again). When the emotion has settle we are able to rationally choose how to respond to the hurtful event.
If course we can feed the hurt and it will grow into anger proper:
Anger can mean 2) the emotion we allow hurt to develop into when we do not let it settle. This happens in increments. A slight intensification is that we identify who did us the hurt and we focus our hurt back on them as resentment which loops back on us as more hurt, until the hurt is so great it is anger. We are mad or angry at another person.
Anger can mean 3) the emotion of being angry at a person to being obsessed or overwhelmed with the hurt that this particular person has done us. We want to strike back, not that we will or have, but that we want to ‘get even’ as if that would sooth our own hurt. It will not. But that is the illogic of being hurt and letting it grow to overwhelm us so that it ‘needs’ resolution.
Finally anger can mean 4) an emotion that is past anger, more correctly referred to as rage. We become consumed by the irrational need to ‘get even.’ This feeds on itself until we somehow find a release. Out of rage come acts of revenge. Rage is beyond thinking about ‘getting even’ or even thinking. It is the motivation for irrational acts that will damage the other. The problem is all too often we misidentify the person who hurt us in the first place, and secondly no act of revenge can ever relieve our pain. It can only lead to a false sense of self-righteousness about planning and maybe carrying out an unjustifiable act of hurting another person.
This act of revenge can be limited to words, spoken or written, or it can involve physical acts of violence against the other person.
If we allow hurt to grow into anger and anger to intensify, and then to overwhelm us as rage there is little that can be done to stop it. Best is to stop it while we can. It’s not likely we can stop it later on from growing into acts of revenge. We ought not let the sun set on our hurt-anger. It only takes 90 seconds to let that emotion to dissipate.
Out anger, when acted out in acts of revenge start the hurt-angry cycle for others, often not even the person(s) who hurt us in the first place.
Being hurt is not avoidable, but the rest really is.
Words to the wise: Learn to speak soft words to oneself when one is hurt, so that the hurt is taken in stride. Learn to speak soft words to others so that their hurt (whether it really is caused by us or not) does not grow into anger towards us.
Life is full of hurt.
Life has more than it’s fair share of anger coming and going for all of us.
Life can be miserable if we seek revenge as a way to resolve our hurt that has festered into rage.
Rage never brings peace. It creates more hurt in us and in others.
We can choose to wait 90 seconds and then rationally respond to hurt. Best to stop hurt before it grows into anger.
Simple wisdom.
Hard to live.
Every day is an opportunity to practice choosing how we respond until it becomes second nature to let hurt dissipate. That’s the beginning of finding peace with a world that does not seem to want us to know peace
The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts.
James 2:1
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?
Words of Grace For Today
While the rich continue to exert a ghastly disproportionate carbon footprint on the environment that everyone needs to sustain life …
While nepotism is exercised openly and in secret the world around usually as a means to ‘buy’ other people’s support and favour …
While last year’s extreme weather events become more normal this year (for every year of the previous decade it seems, and cumulatively so that this year’s normal is really extreme!) resulting in drought, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, drechos, wildfires, ice storms, heat domes, and all kinds of rare weather events that challenge our way of living …
While so many people seek to be exalted in so many different ways, always at the cost of someone else’s basic living …
While today is a gift of 24 hours …
How do we choose to live?
We can jump right out there and compete with everyone in our way while we struggle to get all we want out of life (whatever that may be, and often we have no clue about what we are striving so hard for … even when we name it with words like money, honour, stability, security …).
Or
We can disengage and justify ourselves as living outside the way the world works, self-righteously declaring that we are and/or have it better than everyone else.
OR
We can listen to the Holy Spirit guiding us towards the Truth about us, life, and all creation. Often we say that people cannot bear all the Truth all at once, so we receive glimpses of it through our lives. That may be. Yet Truth is not that hard to come by and not that hard to grasp, if one is willing to face the implications. The implications are drastic to us who have ‘made our way up in the world.’ The Truth reveals that what we think we have accomplished is actually useless and futile. The Truth has less drastic implications for those who subsist. For them it offers what they have never had possible through their own efforts, life abundant. None of us can achieve it through our efforts, it’s that the poor have less opportunity to delude themselves into thinking they have or can achieve it.
The Truth is God created us, filled us with free will to choose to love, and when we choose to not love all of creation, God comes to forgive us, redeem us, renew us, and restore our freedom to choose to love … or to not love. God gives us a free gift, again and again, abundant life, filled with all the love and all the security that is possible on this good earth.
So how do we want to proceed through these next 24 hours?
Life abundant, or futile scrambling and struggling?
Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save.’
John 12:26
Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
Words of Grace For Today
You have done all this evil!
That is usually preceded by a long list of horrendous things we have done, some are well known and many we have hidden so others would not find out about them, but then someone did. Everything eventually sees the light of day!
You have done all this evil!
That is usually followed by a stiff condemnation and a listing of the ways we will be punished, which hardly ever is exactly proportional to the horrendous things we have done. We would like to say that crime and evil do not pay, but they do. We would like to believe that innocent people are not punished for things they did not do, but there is more evil done punishing innocent people than the evil that innocent people are punished for. It’s just how we ‘get it out of our system’. We humans are always up for a good scapegoating to relieve the pent up pressure on our own guilty consciences. Girard had that right!
You have done all this evil!
Then Samuel plays out for the people God’s grace. There is no punishment list.
There is in the prior verses much more: Samuel, old in age, has come before ‘all of Israel’ and asked them to judge him if he is guilty of any offence, and they have declared that he is not guilty of anything.
Samuel goes on to recount their history, from their cries in Egypt that God answers by sending Moses and Aaron to bring them to the Promised Land, to their wayward worship of and serving other gods, Baal and Astartes, God’s punishments as foreign powers conquered them, and then their request for a king to lead them against their enemies. This is counted by all as a sin, one terrible sin on top of all the others.
Still Samuel tells them that all can be well: if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.
It’s not a simple day of reckoning for Samuel. The people are still called to account, so Samuel demonstrates God’s power: Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord, that he may send thunder and rain; and you shall know and see that the wickedness that you have done in the sight of the Lord is great in demanding a king for yourselves.’ So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.
The people, rightly notice God’s power and wrath against them and pray for their lives, not to God, but they ask Samuel to pray for them: All the people said to Samuel, ‘Pray to the Lord your God for your servants, so that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.’
This is where the verse above fits. Samuel begins by telling them not to be afraid. He just struck the fear of God into their hearts and now he tells them not to be afraid. They should serve their God alone, and all will be well, if they and their king serve God alone. Samuel tells them God has an interest in them, so God will not too quickly kill off the sinful people for all their sins, the last being asking for a king to lead them against their enemies.
For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.
To their request that Samuel pray for them, Samuel puts it simply:
Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.
And what is that instruction, as if the passages have not been spilling it out in abundance: Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.
And it they do not, well then there will be, as they feared, the punishment that they already deserve: But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.
So is God merciful?
Is Samuel right to strike the fear of God into their hearts with rain and thunder on their wheat crops?
…
The whole scenario plays out that we can avoid God’s wrath by serving God alone. Yet like the Israelis we turn from God in so many ways each day.
God does honour those who serve him.
Thankfully God is merciful to all people who ever lived and will ever live, for we have all at some time in some way turned from serving God alone. Scapegoating innocent people to relieve the conflict in our lives we have created is just one of the ongoing, horrendous sins that is our turning from our God, who has sent us the Spirit of truth, to guide us in all truth.
Ah, but we choose to hide our evil deeds, and our hearts from the truth, for we think we cannot bear the punishment that will follow.
Thankfully God is merciful to all.
Now for today: how can we choose to serve God alone! Well then … on with it!
The VIN of the Lost/Stolen/Misplaced and Unlicensed Motor Home
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
Romans 8:23-24
Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?
Words of Grace For Today
There is every cause to groan at the developments of the previous days …
besides the reasons of every day: death is a’coming as our bodies give up life; we may be adopted and redeemed, but our bodies still have so many demands and limits and … well life, as one gets older and older, does not seem to get better, in fact, quite the opposite. Our bodies are not the only things that wear out. Machines that we rely on do as well. While our bodies are covered under the provincial health care plan, and we may have supplementary insurance, our machines cost lots of money to have someone qualified fix them.
So our machines get cobbled back together again and again, and pretty soon it’s a marvel that they work at all.
Our bodies get health care, such as it is, if a doctor will even care at all about you. All of that costs lots of money that comes out of our pockets as taxes, supposedly more if we have and make more money, though it seems not to work out that way. Even with the best health care, though, our bodies still slowly and sometimes quite quickly decay as if pulled back to be dust.
We can rejoice that with all this decay, God is our strength and portion forever, and that even our bodies will be adopted fully and redeemed fully and renewed, better than in our first life. We wait. We wait for God to keep the promise that our bodies will be redeemed and renewed. There is no proof available that this redemption and renewal will happen. So much of what we observe and experience points in exactly the opposite direction. So we are given hope. Hope alone. Hope in what is not obvious or not seen or sometimes apparently simply not possible.
Hope is hope when it anticipates what is not seen or proven or provable.
God gives us plenty, even when in the previous days someone parks a 40 foot old motor home in my yard from across our campers where I live. This motor home has no license plate, is a mess inside as much as is obvious through the door’s window. It has all the signs of being stolen and dumped here, out of sight and in my way. The yard is used as a dumping ground.
Now that stupidity is a cause for so much groaning. When will it stop!
God gives us hope that even things like this will be resolved, since redeemed is a bit much to hope for.
