Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Luke 11:2
He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Words of Grace For Today
The Lord’s Prayer is known by countless people, said countless times, and desperately counted on more than a few times:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
For when God’s kingdom comes, then those that have done [fill in the injustice, the lies, the gaslighting, the horrendous abominations] to us and all other people will be brought to stop. Perhaps they will be brought to an end, though God’s preference is that they will be converted to serve God alone.
When God’s kingdom comes, then Nations shall come to God’s light, and kings to the brightness of Christ’s dawn,
and all people will give God thanks for the breath they have, for the water they have, for the food they eat, for the shelter (maybe even homes) they have, for the meaningful labour they have, and for the opportunity they have to love and be loved.
For now … the injustice continues, the lies live on, the gaslighting has not stopped, the horrendous abominations are repeated …
Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
James 3:13
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
Words of Grace For Today
After we recognize our own hopeless sinfulness, which God redeems at great cost, forgiving us and renewing life in us, and that we need God’s forgiveness constantly, for we simply cannot stop sinning, then the question is how are we going to live?
The measure we humans have held up returns us right back into works righteousness, as if God suddenly has made us able not to sin, so that we must preform or lose God’s favour and blessings. These two passages certainly could be interpreted that way … making it easy for us to dismiss them.
There is more to it than that.
Once sanctified (made saints by God), though we continue to sin, God pulls out of us great works that further God’s will and work on earth among humans and for creation. Most simply put, God’s willa and work is that God’s Grace is demonstrated to more and more people, and more and more people embrace the cross as God’s demonstration of God’s love for all people; forgiveness, redemption and new life is for everyone. We can live to cooperate with God’s will, or we can constantly choose to defy God’s will and live as if God does not exist, has not created us, does not forgive, redeem and renew us, and as if we can go it alone.
We can go it alone … right to our own damnation, choosing to separate ourselves from God. God still comes to us, forgives us, redeems us, renews us … except at some point God allows us to have our way … and the hell we have created for ourselves is the hell we live forever. At what point this happens is not anything we can know. But that it happens we can know: we can choose to deny God’s good work in us.
How else can we live? There are options that God makes possible for us. Wisdom is one of them.
We can pray: Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
We can live each day so that our God-given wisdom and understanding is evident in our works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
These passages then speak to how we can pursue wisdom in our daily lives, not to our own benefit, but to the benefit of everyone around us. They speak of our penultimate striving that God make possible for us.
As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, so the Lord alone guided him.
Philippians 4:7
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
The challenges we face everyday are not inconsequential.
On our own the Devil always gets us and has his way with us.
God does not abandon us.
Like an eagle providing care for it’s young, God looks after us. Like a loving parent God guides us all our days.
We need not panic, or lose heart, for the peace of God surpasses all understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and guides us to be saints, the people of Christ’s light, Christ’s Grace, God’s love for all we encounter.
God’s peace is everything we need for this day, for each day … one day at a time.
It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
Luke 15:5
When he has found [the lost sheep], he lays [the reckless, cantankerous, wandering-into-danger sheep] on his shoulders and rejoices.
Words of Grace For Today
Today so many people make up their religion from what they find available around them, as if it were all on a smorgasbord, all-you-can-eat for one small price.
They pick a little of this, and little of that, pile into their lives and try to make it through the day. Their smorgasbord is not certified or health inspected, nor governed by any safety measures. It contains delicious looking poisons, some that work fast, some that work slow, some that only work as death approaches from some other cause.
I met an older man when I was on 4 different medications and a regular injections just to make it through the day. He told me his story when he saw me take one pill. Years before he had a small health problem, went to the doctor and was prescribed a powerful medicine to deal with the issue. Then after months he developed a more serious issue, went to the same doctor and again received a script for medication to deal with that issue. In a few months he had three other rather debilitating issues including that he could not sleep through the night. More medications and a referral to a sleep clinic and thousands of dollars later he went to sleep with a breathing machine on his face. The first mask had eaten into his nose creating a sore that just would not heal, so he had to pay hundreds of dollars to get a different larger mask that covered most of his face. The sore took months to heal and left a noticeable scar.
One day, four years after his first minor issue, he got up and went out to repair a fence. It was rather simple manual work. Before this all started he did this kind of thing easily. Now he could barely gather the tools and supplies together. He made two slow trips to get the tools and supplies to the fence where it needed repairing. He spent hours to get the simple repair done that should have taken less than a half hour. Finally toward supper he came back into the yard, completely exhausted. He left his things for the next day to be put away and shed his jacket and boots as he came in and barely made it to his bed to lay down.
The next morning he woke up famished. His last meal was the morning the day before. He had not used his sleeping machine, he’d forgotten to take his medications. He felt better. He realized that while taking his medications and using the sleeping machine he felt ten times worse then he had with the first minor issue he went to the doctor to have dealt with years earlier. He stopped taking all the medications and using the sleeping machine.
Each day he felt noticeably better. A week later he went out to repair another area of the fence and it took him a half hour. Then he went online to the Mayo Clinic website and read about his first symptom, the medications he added each few months and their side effects. He realized that the first symptom could be dealt with by a change in diet and more exercise on a very regular basis. All the other symptoms were known side effects for the medications, each as they were added, at least for the first 4 drugs. Then it became clear to him he’d been on such a soup of drugs his body was completely incapable of dealing with all the powerful effects and side effects and it had started to slowly shut down.
His last comment finally caught my attention: he’d talked to a number of men who’d suffered the same thing. It was as if doctors were trying to incapacitate men with medications.
It took me a few months to realize the same thing had been done to me. I stopped taking all but the one medication I’d been on for decades that I needed for my GERDS. Life returned to normal and I started to realize I was also being abused and gaslit by my now ex.
As in the days of old, God gathered in this wandering sheep, carried me back to the flock, and saved my life, literally and figuratively. For this I give God thanks each day, and pray for those that tried to do me in, and still try to this day. May God gather them into the flock, as in the days of old.
Faith and one’s faith community is not a smorgasbord, any more than medications are a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. Traditions develop and continue because they provide a healthy manner of living. Humans continually mess up the traditions, and the traditions, at least my Lutheran Christian tradition, is well prepared to face such challenges and call us back to rely on …
to rely on God alone, and God’s Grace for us as the only thing that saves us. We need one thing, something like I needed only one medication. We require God’s Grace. Everything else only appears to provide us life abundant. In fact the ‘side effects’ of most religious self-made conglomerations is that one finds oneself out in the wilderness, defenceless as the wolves come closer and closer.
Thanks be to God, for God’s Grace, made known to us through Jesus’s old, old story.
As of old, God walks with us, and rejoices when we return to the flock after we inevitably stray into danger that could do us in. Our enemies, and God’s enemies, may want us dead and work hard to accomplish that, doch God works wonders to save us, and there is joy for us, because of God’s Grace, all the days of our lives.
He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant.’
Luke 19:5
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’
Words of Grace For Today
When a king comes to town for a visit, unannounced (because there is no internet, or post, or telephone – either our past or our future) then we may want the king to stay with us, maybe.
First it would be life-death important to know how the king is disposed to us! If the king has come to find traitors and suspects us, will see what is not a betrayal, but something that the king will use as an excuse to vent his anger at being betrayed … well then obviously we might not want the king to come stay with us.
If the king, despite our ‘indiscretions’, is forgiving, and is favourably disposed to us, then it would be a great honour to have the kind stay with us.
Thus Abraham’s invitation seems understandable, “Come stay with us, if we have found favour with you.”
It’s a bit more complicated, since Abraham is sitting in a nomad’s tent, where the law of the desert, seldom ignored, is that out in the barren, isolated hard lands anyone seeking refuge from the heat and sands will be welcomed in, and welcomed in will be protected from all danger, even from one’s own desire for revenge if this is one’s enemy. As enemies go the desert is a greater enemy. Thus when three strangers stand in front of Abraham, who has made untold enemies in his journey up and down the golden tradeways from Ur to Egypt, Abraham may not know if they are enemies or not. He may be letting an enemy in three parts enter his tents, trusting the rule of hospitality will keep him safe, and will not put him in the middle of a fight these men have with others, others who may or may not honour the law of hospitality.
Perhaps Abraham hedges his bets, so to speak, and offers hospitality, if he has found favour with these three men.
Another piece of the complications is that this is not a known king, or just any passer-by either. This is three men. Not just men. Whether Abraham knows it or not the narrator tells us that this is the Lord, this is God. Three men are God. So not so simple, whether Abraham is in the know or not.
Perhaps Abraham really hedges all his bets, so to speak, and offers God hospitality, but only if he has found favour with God. What a way to find out where one sits with God! What a risk! What a wager Abraham makes, for if he has found favour with God and these three demonstrate to him he has, and others hear of it, Abraham’s reputation will increase immensely!
Pause a bit to notice in all these considerations I have led us to pass up one obvious thing: if these three strangers need hospitality, then they ought to be the one’s asking Abraham, ‘If we have found favour with you, sir, may we stop and rest within your hospitality.’
Stories about God’s interactions with us are always something different than we should expect.
Jesus’ story is one such unexpected development after another, always with a twist or seventy, to keep us on our toes about what we think Jesus is about and what God is trying to demonstrate to us with Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension.
Good people, travelling about as Jesus did, teaching in the synagogues and to the people (if the traveller teachers were honourable people) did not mix with dishonourable people. They avoided ‘unclean’ people because it made them unclean and therefore unable to enter the synagogue until they had completed the purification ritual that lasted days.
Reminds us of obligatory self-quarantine requirements of travellers and those with close contacts with people diagnosed with Covid-19!
Zacchaeus was anything but honourable. He collected taxes for Rome, able to exact from whomever whatever he wished in order to collect his allotment. He got to keep any extra he collected. Tax collectors were wealthy and hated; the preyed upon those from whom they could take the most with the least ability to protect themselves. They hardly collected from the influential and really wealthy people who could exact their own revenge against any tax collector taking anything but a token tax from them. Tax collectors were hated, really hated and really feared. One did not want to end up on the wrong side of a tax collector who could ruin you financially, or if you resisted, could have you jailed for debts.
Jesus interaction with Zacchaeus is exemplary of what Jesus demonstrates to us. Jesus does not stand at all on norms or expectations. Jesus stomps all over them, not to stomp on them but to point to something that norms and expectations violate: God’s unconditional love for everyone.
Again the invite is backwards, given by the one who ought to be the invitee. It would be Zacchaeus’ honour to host Jesus. Zacchaeus is more than curious about Jesus. He works to overcome his own shortcomings and short stature (real and figuratively) to get a view of Jesus. Zacchaeus should be inviting Jesus to stay with him, begging for the honour of Jesus’ presence in his ill-gotten and supplied home. – If you have not caught this in reading the Zacchaeus story, we are all equated to Zacchaeus; we should all be desperate to invite Jesus into our lives, and all we do is try to overcome our shortcomings and lack of standing in the Kingdom of God in order to get at least a glance of God’s own Son, Jesus. As if that is enough, or as if we actually could every overcome our shortcomings, our sins.
Instead Jesus is the one who sees Zacchaeus (us), and Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home (our lives). When Jesus arrives Zacchaeus is converted from a lost soul to one of Jesus’ followers. Zacchaeus moves from Jesus’ presence back into his own life … in order to make things right that he has made so wrong.
Jesus arrives in our lives (well we notice Jesus’ presence as an arrival even though he’s been there since before we were conceived – God is always with us!) and our first steps are to put things as right as we can in our lives, for those we have done harm to. Like Zacchaeus our putting things right for others is a good step toward doing ourselves something good too, not in order to gain something, but in response to being given everything, namely we have been given God’s favour.
Jesus will seem to arrive again and again in our lives. Today what are we going to put right in response to God’s greatest blessing, namely that God walks with us through everything, that Jesus has made his home in our lives, forgiving us our sins in order that we might forgiven all other people and make things as right as we can.
Lord, if we … no, that’s not how it goes for us that trust God walks with us. We say instead: ‘Lord, since we have found favour with you, and you abide with us, what can we do for you this day?!’
May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!
Ephesians 2:17
So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
Words of Grace For Today
Peace is not the absence of conflict, nor the absence of violence even. Peace can coexist with both of these, though it works to pull us from violence to negotiation with each other, and from conflict with each other to harmony with (not each other) … with God’s Will for us.
CBC gave air time to a woman looking to organize mass fasting to call attention to domestic violence. She wanted those fasting to explain why they were hungry, and how terrible it is, now with Covid 19 restrictions, for women to be caught at home with their abusers. She wanted men to find a better model of what men can be. She wanted to call attention to the many, many women who are killed as a result of abuse.
All sort of good and well, as far as it goes. She seems to want, as many do, for us all to forget that ten times, got that, TEN TIMES! as many men die from violence as do women. Her project is a common one voiced today: women need to be protected from evil men. There are no good men, just evil men.
If similar things were said about women, their would be an uproar of denunciation of the misogyny. But no one even mentions that this woman’s statements devalue men, categorizing us all as abusers and as evil men who need to rethink who we are in order to become something better. No one voices the realization that this is misandry (the hatred of and devaluing of men.)
Make no mistake: some men kill women. AND some women kill men. Some use force, some use manipulation.
As if to make it sound like women are under greater threat, among other misandrist statements, it is said men are afraid a woman will laugh at him; women are afraid a man will kill her. The reality is when a woman laughs at a man, she devalues him, announces it for many to see, and taking his respect from him leaves him easy prey for both men and women bullies and abusers to kill him, if not directly with force then with psychological manipulation until there is nothing left of his life, not at all, not at all. The truth is men are as afraid of women killing him (often using men to accomplish the deed) as a women are afraid that men will kill them.
Abuse is abuse. Gender is not really a factor. Stereotypes are a serious problem because the mask the real issues with false issues.
That’s what is so terribly wrong with this woman’s campaign to get people to fast; it assumes all men kill women, and forgets that lots of women kill men, and regardless of who does the killing and how, many more men (ten times as many as women), our brothers, fathers, uncles, sons, and grandfathers, are dying, murdered by others.
Peace is not to point fingers and eradicate the falsely identified murder or the murderers. Peace is much more profound. Peace, real peace, requires that we acknowledge true reality. Real peace is to first realize that a part of each of us contributes to the conditions and circumstances we all live under in our society. Peace is second to forgive ourselves and accept others’ forgiveness of us, and to accept God’s forgiveness (actually that has to come first before other forgiveness is possible.) Third, peace is to forgive others so that there is no more finger pointing or calling out for others to change. The change has to be made within each of us first, and we have to point to the other as already forgiven … so that they may choose to change. Fourth, peace asks of each of us that we be profoundly thankful that forgiveness is possible, that God starts us off down that path, again and again each day.
If we are going to fast (and some like me cannot fast without putting ourselves at great physical risk of needing hospitalization to recover or we die) then it is to fast quietly, for this is what we need most: an inward healing of our relationship with God, God’s creation and God’s creatures, especially other people.
If we are going to put on a campaign to raise awareness of injustice, and in particular avoidable murder, then we cannot tie that message to misogyny or misandry. That only exacerbates the underlying lies we tell ourselves about the polarized genders, which drives us further and further from any possible reduction of avoidable murder. It in fact raises the conflict to higher levels, which in turn gives rise to more pain, which gives rise to more violence (physical and psychological) and that leads to more destruction of people, including physical and psychological deaths.
We need models for real peace. God sent us Jesus to live that model for us. There are a great number of saints who have provided models as well. We need to remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love, and of the saints that teach us faith and real peace, giving us real hope. Remember the good examples (they were human so they were not perfect) of Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Bonhoeffer, and many others. Above all begin each day remembering Jesus and his love, and all God does for us. From gratitude for all God’s blessing we can find our way to peace, even amidst conflict and violence and injustices all around us.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us: Selah That your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations Let the peoples praise you, O God.
John 1:16
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
Words of Grace For Today
In a warmer climate than mine, a group of friends ventured out from their hotel to go sight seeing. They were on a Spring Break tour, something usually reserved for college students. These were people in a collective mid-life crisis, as it were, seeking some evidence they mattered in life still, even though the vigour of their youth had disappeared, for some decades ago, for others only years ago.
When one man described them as a diverse collection of ‘old farts’ he was pretty spot on, if you allow that some 40 year-olds enter this category way too early in life. They included a sampling of a number of races and genders. They were not as a group too pale.
When a tourist hawker saw them he approached as a few others had, and offered to ferry them as a group in a pontoon boat around the outlying islands. The idea took off like wildfire. It was a lazy way to do nothing while being able to convince themselves they were doing something very adventuresome. They set a time to meet again at the pontoon boat’s dock, going in various directions to collect supplies for the day, food, water, alcohol (mostly rum), and some sun umbrellas.
It was a motley crew that set loose from the dock on what appeared to be a more motley collection of flotation things (some barrels) under wood planks with more than a few gas cans, two outboard motors, and the requisite rudder. There were half enough chairs for the crises-escaping group. One man, George, who was kind of a leader more than a participant, offered (wisely it turned out) to stay behind as ‘a safety reporting person’ he said. ‘Call me if you run into trouble,’ he called out, as if the groups was not in trouble already the minute they left together on this trip.
Two hours later George received a call, recognized the voice, ‘We’re sinking near the reef behin ….’ then the connection went dead. True to his promise he remarkably quickly found a ‘rescue service’, gave them the exact account with times and word-for-word the call. They recognized where the pontoon had most likely gone down and headed out in three larger boats. ‘We need two for the people and one to hold the other two against the current,’ they explained and added that it would be thousands of dollars per hour for each boat.
Out near the reef, the mostly sober pontoon ‘owner’ (actually an assembler of junk into something that might just float) had succumbed to the cries of the surely not sober passengers yelling that they wanted to see the reef. ‘Closer! Closer!’ With no notice the calm waters whirled into a ‘rip tide’ effect right under their pontoon, one stream going out, the other 2 feet away going in toward the reef. It whipped the poor ‘boat’ around and around until it came apart like matchsticks falling out of their box, spilling the people into the water. Luckily as quick as the rip started it ended, and they found themselves in the water pretty much as a group. The stragglers soon enough found their way to the group, everyone hanging on to flotsam or treading water nearby. Considering their state of sobriety the group did well for the first while … until the first circling fin was spotted.
More than one panicked, thrashing about trying to get out of the water. The one fin was joined by others. The more thrashing, the closer they came. One person panicked entirely and set out for the spot on the reef that stood out of the water. Grant, a millionaire developer, almost made it before a slight current caught him and whipped him against a sharp rock. Blood coloured the water for a bare minute before fin after fin swung in and back out as he disappeared beneath the surface.
Finally one sane head among the whole group caught their horrified attention in the moment they all went silent watching Grant’s disappearance. ‘Quiet! Listen! Calm Down! The more you thrash about and make noise the more they will come after us. We have to trust that George will be here soon enough to save us! If we do not trust a rescue is on it’s way, calm down and do what we can together, none of us will survive this! So Stay CALM!’
His advice took hold. The group gathered themselves together with pieces of flotsam deepest in the water making a ring around them. Just minutes later, though it felt to the group like hours, the ‘rescue service’ arrived, tethered two boats to the third so the two could approach the group. Out came the high power rifles and more than one fin trailed away with a dark streak behind it, others collecting around the streak until all the fins were out of sight.
One by one the crises-escapees were pulled from the real crisis they had driven themselves to seek out. One by one they came to their thankful senses about how fortunate they were as on the return trip the ‘rescue service’ exclaimed that this was the first time they had ever found a live person to rescue. The predators usually cleaned up the tourists’ messes long before they could arrive.
There was no hesitation at paying the exorbitant rescue fee. More than one person rescued was ready to offer them everything. One old hippy offered the remainder of her days on earth. Such it is when people are rescued from real danger that they create for themselves.
We all ought to know this from our own experiences before God.
From God’s fullness we have all received, grace upon grace and we ought to be ready to offer God all we have including all our remaining days.
Each one of our remaining days begins with an appropriate prayer of thanks: May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us: Selah May God’s way of grace upon grace may be made known upon earth, and God’s saving power among all nations! Let the peoples praise you, O God!
God sends ‘Georges’ and ‘rescue services’ of many kinds to save us again and again and again from our foolish sins. God often uses us, all we have and all the days we have left on earth, to rescue others. We become God’s ‘Georges’ and ‘rescue services’, more commonly referred to as saints.
There is much for us to do as God-made saints. If we do not start today, when then are we going to start!?!
… – – – … Cold Hard Reality … – – – … Our Own Sin … – – – … The Start of God’s Work for Us …. ..
Friday, February 12, 2021
The Sun Rises And Spreads Cold Cold Cold Light
God using the sun to draw smoke shadows on curves of snow
Proverbs 3:7
Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
Galatians 6:4
All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride.
Words of Grace For Today
We become accustomed to life, unjustly lived, civilization’s thin veneer holding back barbarism, barely while so many wealthy, privileged, and powerful people utilize outrageous barbarism to hold on to what they value, i.e. their positions, corrupt as they are.
We become accustomed to life and are widely disturbed, our individual and collective mental health plummets, because a pandemic disrupts our customary living …
and we are left to face what truly lies beneath, behind, and beyond our ‘civilized’ habits. It is not pretty. It scares us. It drives us mad.
This is a small piece of the cost of living as if we could rise above fear of God. This is a small piece of the cost of pretending that we need not resist evil at every turn, lest we be dragged into the sea of it’s chaos, into it’s power to uncreate creation, dissolve all time, and possess life itself even as it all crumbles into non-existence.
Being wise in one’s own eyes is like the fool Trump, declaring himself to be so intelligent, even as he spouts idiocies that are easily proven to be false. Remember when he recommended that people drink bleach to eradicate Covid 19 from their systems. Bleach of course is a caustic poison easily eradicating life from anyone who drinks it!
Our own, your own, idiocies may not be so obvious to us, to you, though they probably are to others!
Daily we immerse ourselves in the old, old story of Jesus and his love; which starts with our past and continuing sins confessed and graciously forgiven by God.
We immerse ourselves in this story, not forgetting the beginning (our wretched inevitable sin) so that we do not forget how much we need to be saved from our sins, how much God does to save us, and how terrible our deserved damnation would be if God were not so undeservedly gracious with us. We do not forget our ongoing inevitable sins so that we do not rise to false pride.
Instead we readily accept the reality and confess our sins, knowing in that confession we also accept God’s forgiveness, which forgiveness enables us to also be God-made saints, simultaneously as we remain sinners. God has God’s way with us, and we love it!
We know our own works are pitiful. Our neighbours may look to be so as well. On our own nothing we do amounts to anything (valued by God’s criteria and measure). Aided, guided, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, God accomplishes great things through us. God saves others by giving them abundant life through our work.
Our pride in our work, and in our neighbours’ work, amounts only to pride in what God does through us. Though we last no longer than smoke we remain courageously, creatively humble as God uses us to paint Grace on this world. Meeting the new demands of Covid 19 pandemic and it’s dangers and restrictions is a mere trifle, measured by God’s criteria. It is another opportunity to see, receive, and share God’s unending blessings.
In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?
2 Timothy 1:14
Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
Words of Grace For Today
A great uncle of mine, Sven, arrived in the new land (at least so goes the legend), as many Swedish, German, Norwegian, Scottish, Ukrainian, and many others (from even more nations in later decades) also arrived in the new land to be given a quarter section to homestead. Arriving in early summer the first task was to make a temporary ‘home’. There were no RV’s, mobile homes, RTM’s or Atco Units. He felled a number of think pine trees with an axe and piled the pine boughs on an A-frame of pine poles to keep most of the rain out. The bugs could not be helped. He went hunting for meat. Then he cleared a small patch of land and planted a crop that might just produce potatoes, peas, beans and carrots before freeze up. He went hunting for meat. Then he dug out a hole and piled up the dirt around it as walls, covered it with pine poles at a sharp pitch, and wove pine boughs in four layers to hold out the rain and snow. He went hunting for meat. He put in the wood stove he had saved for, stacked up a great pile of firewood, and built a simple bed, chair and table. That would have to do to get him through the coming winter. He went hunting for meat. The bear skins from the bears he shot would be his blanket in the coldest of the coming cold nights.
Each night he gave God thanks for this opportunity to start a new life in a new land. Each morning he prayed for strength to work hard through the day, to prepare for the coming months. The -45⁰ nights that first winter nearly did him in. When thieves stole a tenth of his firewood that made him worry about the safety of everything and his survival. Still he gave God thanks, for he prayed with the Psalmist: In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?
Each year he cleared more land for the garden and for crops. In his third year, now with a simple log cabin and a shingled plank roof, his lovely wife, Brigitte, joined him from Sweden, children followed and he added each year to the cabin, a room, another room, a porch, an entrance with a better door.
When thieves struck again, raiding his garden and grain store and stealing half his wood, he was distressed. He prayed that night again in thanks, the next morning for strength. He knew he was tasked with guarding the good treasure entrusted to him, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in him. The treasure was not the firewood. It was not the crops. It was not even the land that supported his and Brigitte’s life together with their daughter and two sons. Sven and Brigitte prayed and in thanks and for strength, so that they would guard their faith, for that was the treasure that God had given them. With faith they could meet every challenge calmly and creatively, figuring out what to do each day to ensure their survival and more, that they would live well.
Covid 19 is not easy, comfortable, or predictable. Many of our habits for surviving are not possible. Other habits for surviving are required of us. Some are dictated, many others are left for us to figure out. God provides, and we, assured of the gift of faith, pray morning and night, with thanks and for strength to meet the challenges of each day.
We trust God to provide us the ability and opportunities to work diligently so that more and more people will have what is needed to live, and to live abundantly. It’s not predictable or comfortable or easy. Still we have everything we need to make each day better for everyone: it starts with faith and creativity. It concludes each day, as night enfolds us in the dark and bitter cold, with thanks.
How else can we live, but to follow the examples of our faithful ancestors following Jesus?
What is Your Dream wish for these polar-deep-freeze days
for it to be summer when a tent is sufficient for surviving a night camping?
Isaiah 65:1
I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’, to a nation that did not call on my name.
Luke 14:23
Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”
Words of Grace For Today
There is a name … a name which can free any person from every ill and misfortune, from one’s own real guilt and shame, and from the power of Evil. This name some people seek, for they know the universe needs deliverance and us all with it.
Others, actually most of us, try to deceive ourselves into thinking that life is just fine, that we can get by as things are, that we can meet the challenges of life on our own.
Truth is we simply cannot, and history is full of examples of people trying and failing spectacularly. Most people’s stories remain untold, though they would provide the same spectacle. Truth is we need a miracle to save us.
In the deep polar cold of these days the miracle would be …
Well, what would it be for you?
For me it would be for the truth to be known of these past fifteen years, for my reputation to be restored, and for the real culprits who knowingly created false police reports, false charges and false convictions to be exposed; for good order to be restored.
It is a bit too much to hope for, yet still is not real true hope is for those things that are too much to hope for?
Forgiveness does not have a different hope, neither does scripture allow that God does either. God does not wish good order to be restored by eliminating people who perpetrate such evils. God, rather, wishes that those people be transformed from agents of the Devil to God-made-saints even as they simultaneously remain sinners each day.
This is the feast that people on the roads and in the lanes are compelled to come and enjoy. That’s quite the paradox: God must compel us to come to a feast that we will more fully enjoy than we can imagine. At God’s feast we receive not just food and drink for our bodies, nor just for our minds, nor just for our souls. We receive food and drink for all that and all that for our neighbours, including even our enemies; for God wishes for them to feast along with us at God’s table of Grace.
All through history, all through each of our lives, God calls to us: Here I am, here I am! God calls to us even when we have not listened, do not listen and may choose forever not to listen. God is faithful especially when we are not. That’s the feast of Grace God puts on each day for us and for all people.
In the cold, God does not merely want known the truth of these last fifteen years. God wants known by all people the truth of all the years since the beginning of time to the end of time: God created and holds the universe together, each string, wave and particle, and each life with Grace. God wants us all to know that is the miracle, also today in the deep-freeze of -40⁰C or F.
To all those from the past fifteen years, from all the years since forever and until forever, who have create lies, deception, injustice and chaos, God continues to call: if you do not share the blessings I poured over you this day, when will you?
Each evening time is one day shorter for each of us, then each morning we are blessed with a new day. Each day as it passes is again one day less for us and each day again is another new day to know God’s Grace and to respond to God’s calling our names: Here I am. Send me. Use me to bring true justice, Grace and real hope to all people.
