Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.
Matthew 3:2
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Words of Grace For Today
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Repent is to turn around, to proceed in the other direction, in the other manner, to proceed with the Grace of God instead of pounding one’s head against the wall of the Devil’s empty promises in vain trying to make something of life, something that cannot be made … it can only be received …
And God offers it freely.
Beethoven would be 250 years old this year. Overcoming all temptations to decay into decomposition humour, he still connects people with their own powerful and profound emotions and with through these emotions to other people. His 5th and 9th symphonies pound down in all the force of life in bar after bar of melody circling to a full climactic ending, that is both a relief to reach and leaves one wanting more. His pastorale melodies encircle the fog of the early morning’s kiss on the lake and bespeak the yearning that connects us all in the hope of being loved and being able to love purely, simply, profoundly. ZDF provides a tour of the world to places and people touched to the core by Beethoven’s music; Bonn, Osaka, Medellín, Ruhrgebiet, Brisbane, Rsumeb (Namibia), Queensland, Chennai (India.)
Music like Beethoven’s reaches deep into us, moves us, heals us, connects us to other people, creates empathy in us for others, and miraculously sets the world right … if for only a short moment.
This is one way in which the Kingdom of God has come near. It is one way in which God reaches into our hearts and calls us to repent, and moves us to proceed in a manner more fitting the wonders that God created us to be and to know in this tragic and beautiful existence we all know.
Where there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land (which is everywhere in every generation) let music probe deep into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we may repent and proceed in a new (ancient) direction of walking humbly with our God, sharing the Good News (the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love), and always working for justice for all people.
For this Christ came. This we prepare to celebrate, quietly, at our core, with the midnight darkness of our lives sparkling as our candles of remembering, thanks, celebration, and hope, held by people of all sizes, colours, creeds, and experiences pierce through the darkness.
Light one, two, three, [four] candles to wait for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….
With your strong arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Selah
Colossians 1:26-27
The mystery [of God’s Word] has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah, God’s mighty arm working for us and the power of mysteries revealed to us chosen few …
These are clear evidence that even as God works the wonders of Grace through so many people, through so many generations, we humans still want to step up to control God, and claim God’s power for ourselves, and use it against our enemies.
Thankfully this is not, of course, not the only message that is contained in scripture, or there would be no Good News, no Word of God, and no Hope to share with the world.
There are occasions when God’s people record that God’s might has saved them from violent destruction by violent enemies. God lead Moses and the descendants of Jacob and Joseph with him by a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire at night. They escaped through the Reed Sea, on dry land made possible by the wind blowing the waters back. When the Egyptian army pursuing them tried to follow the waters flooded back in, like a tide returning. The army was stopped. The people were free … to wander in the wilderness for 40 years!
God’s mighty arm parted the waters. Yes. Or God guided Moses to use a natural if rare phenomenon of the tide going out, combined with strong winds that laid bare a path across the Reed Sea where a natural ‘bridge’ lay beneath a shallow of water. The out going tide laid the land bare for only a short time before the returning tide driven by the same wind, or perhaps a shift of wind, flooded back over the ‘bridge’ with a great wall of water. Mighty arm of God, was it? Yes, of course … maybe.
Then remember that God does not delight in the death of evil doers, of the enemies of God’s people, but rather in their conversion and being saved.
As for the mystery of God revealed to a select few … this is the cry of a great many through history, who have used this ‘secret wisdom’ to elevate themselves to power over others. Sometimes it’s a small following. Sometimes it’s a great hoard that are subdued. Always the ‘secret’ is false.
God’s mysteries are, as Paul stated so well, that all people, Gentiles included, are saved by God’s Grace and Grace alone; not by the thoughts, words and deeds of any person. No person can be good enough to earn salvation for themselves or for others. We all sin, and sin good and well, enough to separate ourselves from God. The ‘mystery’ that Paul discovered and proclaimed (so it would not remain a mystery) is simple: Jesus came to save all people, because God so chooses out of love to do so!
God chooses. We are forgiven, healed, renewed, and equipped to be God’s Grace for others.
There really is no real mystery to it. But in a world filled with humans, all who want to sinfully claim God’s power for themselves and use it to gain advantage over others, this continually is ‘discovered’ again, as if it were a mystery to all. This is profound and repeated Semmelweis Reflex, ‘the propensity to reject new ideas if they challenge established ones — no matter how compelling the evidence is for the new ideas.’ (See the CBC Ideas radio article on hand washing and Dr. Semmelweis.)
This is not rejecting a new idea, it is rejecting an ancient idea, that rises as if new, which challenges the other ancient idea: that we must save ourselves by working our way to God through [fill in all the beliefs, words, ideas, deeds that have been claimed can save us.] These ‘special’ beliefs-deeds’ are almost always named as a control over people, sometimes with good intentions, often not. Even so they are always wrong headed and destructive as they lead people over the cliff of trying to save themselves, all in vain, as they forego life abundant freely offered by God.
Our work then is to continually renew God’s Word of Grace, for ourselves and for others; to tell the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love, evident since the beginning of time, most clearly told in Jesus life, ministry, healing and saving, and in his death and resurrection.
We give God thanks, that God’s ‘strong’ arm, is filled with Grace, and has saved us from ourselves, again and again and again, since the beginning of time, and will until the end of time.
The covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand.
Luke 1:68-69
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David.
Words of Grace For Today
A mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David
So often we wish for power and might, with God’s backing, that we can direct at our enemies in order to make our lives better. God promises a saviour.
David, King David, ruled Israel by most historical accounts successfully, conquering the neighbouring enemies, solidifying power in his hands, securing a place for his people among the many.
As generations passed, and Israel was weakened by corruption and their neighbours grew powerful, Israel’s independence was crushed again and again. Sometimes it’s civilization, culture, and religion were left in shambles. Sometimes they were all subsumed into a foreign rule, to various degrees benevolent or cruel as opportunity and whim arose for that power and it’s agents.
Israel, as we humans are wont, equated their world power or lack thereof with God’s blessings. God promised a saviour. So the people hope for a powerful ruler of Israel, God’s appointed and anointed, to conquer the foreign powers, to run them out, to rule over them in their lands, to expand Israel’s territory to ensure their domination of the future. This was the image they carried of King David, so a saviour from David’s house was this kind of a saviour.
God’s blessings are, fortunately for the majority of humans who are alive and who have ever lived, not equated with world power, wealth, or privilege. God sends Jesus to demonstrate this very clearly: God’s power is that of sacrificial love, of forgiveness and grace, and of justice and mercy. More clearly stated God’s justice is always based on truth and on God’s steadfast mercy. Thankfully, or we’d all be doomed to eternal damnation.
Jesus comes to teach, heal, forgive, save, renew, and equip us to be God’s grace for others.
God has promised with God’s own mouth and have this day fulfilled with God’s own hand. The Lord God of Israel has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
This Advent we prepare again to give witness, among all the things that detract us from God’s Word in Jesus, the Saviour, to God’s power, the power of sacrificial love.
The trappings of Christmas are not all available to us, so what will we use to give the world this clear witness during the coming 12 days of Christmas?
My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
2 Corinthians 9:10
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
Words of Grace For Today
As the vaccine is promised ...
Like in every generation before we yearn and hope, sometimes beyond hope. Yet sometimes in despair we give up that last strand of hope …
In the dark of the night, when monsters rear their ugly head occupying all the challenges of our days which we thought we could deal with well enough and those monsters eat at the foundation of the order of our lives amid the chaos …
There is always the darkness, the evil that threatens us.
Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises to judge all with real justice and grace, out of which will come righteousness for all … whether we experience this righteousness or not God’s promises are the only promises that are sure!
God promises to walk with us, giving seeds that we can sow and harvests abundant that we can gather in, increasing in and around us God’s righteousness – for Christ is come.
God’s Son came, and will come again, to make clear God’s will towards us, namely that God loves us and judges us with mercy and truth. Jesus will judge all for everything they have done.
How can righteousness come out of the evil of all humans, which is so destructive, pervasive and enduring? Jesus offers us his record, pure and sinless, and on that record we are judged. Our records, our sins, the evil we have done to others, and the destruction we have wrought on creation … all this is erased as if it never occurred in all of time at all. So we emerge, all of us, righteous.
We do not get to wait for Christ’s judgment until after we die. Christ judges every day, every hour. Christ renews us as righteous every moment. We still remain sinners, yet always are we fully God-made saints.
So we yearn …
We yearn for judgment …
We yearn deep in our bones for judgment, so that we are made righteous, and those that do us evil will be rescued from their sins and we with them.
Advent is the time we relearn to trust God’s promises, and we live this abundant life waiting, alert, holding to the Promise that draws us onward, and draws from us righteousness we did not know we were capable of.
We are the harvest. We are the labourers in the harvest. The harvest is ready, each day. The harvest is so abundant it cannot be stored in all the earth or even the universe. Such is God’s promise to walk with us and bring us to live life abundantly!
No Covid 19 pandemic can rob us of this abundant life. Not even when our usual Christmas habits are not possible this year while we remain safe for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for all our neighbours.
Life is still abundant. Perhaps just because we must rethink what is essentially Christmas, our celebrations in the future will regain a significance we have not previously known.
Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises and delivers life over abundant for all!
Let us make it so for all people, also this Christmas!
There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might.
1 John 4:14
The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.
Words of Grace For Today
As the second wave of Covid 19 continues to explode around us with infections, hospitalizations and deaths that overwhelm us …
And finally restrictions are in place that might ‘bend the skyrocketing’ numbers …
Christmas will not be like many before.
There is none like God … the prayer of faith saves the sick, sins are forgiven …
So we trust God, pray fervently and rely on our sins being forgiven by forgiving others
AND
we learn from wisdom available by God’s grace to us all. For example:
On The Dose, a CBC radio program, available in numerous ways including on demand, this past week host Dr. Brian Goldman interviewed psychology professor Steve Joordens who gave advice and guides on how to stay mentally and emotionally healthy through the holidays and beyond. The advice is badly needed by many as resilience to the effects of isolation is plummeting in a free fall as fast as the Covid 19 numbers are skyrocketing.
I had to step away for part of it, such are the demands of my living situation as I balance delicately hour by hour between destruction by ice or by fire, but these are the notes from my daily journal, expanded to make sense to any reader:
1. Plan for next year’s Christmas.
This year do what is necessary to make the holidays (and every day) safe, very safe, as safe as can be, for yourself, for your loved ones, and for all those you all encounter! Many things will not be possible. Be creative this year. Plan next year to do the things you cannot do this year.
This is not like war. We know an end is in sight and recovery to a somewhat familiar normal will come, so we can plan for it. We can make our new normal even better by planning for what is precious!
2. Make intentional social interactions.
We all need to interact with others. Don’t do what is not safe, very safe. Error on the side of safety, for now. That does not mean we cannot have many social interactions. Make your virtual connections real. Listen, share, laugh, cry, ‘be there’ for the intense moments and for the mundane. Reach out to people who may not have someone. Develop ‘pen pals’ or rather phone-pals or zoom-pals.
We are in the same storm, but in different boats. So respect that we all have to cope, each in our own ways. The basics are the same: we need to stay afloat amidst the chaos.
3. Counter Anxiety with Enjoyment.
Cortisol flows when we are anxious and moves us into fight/flight/flee mode in which we do not reason, we just act to save ourselves; or so the instinct works or rather does not work well when fight/flight/flee responses can do nothing to save us, let alone help us.
Endorphins counter the effect of cortisol, so do things and help others do things that bring enjoyment. Climb El Capitan, well … maybe just get a good dose of exercise as you are able. Music moves us to remember good times, brings us to laugh, and dance. Give the gift of music to yourself, and to others. Give music to bring back memories of times before Covid 19.
3. Be a model for children.
Children experience the world through us parents and adults. Do your own work to build up resilience so that you are not anxious around children. They will learn with you to be resilient in the face of extreme challenges. They will learn how to set anxiety aside.
Be a model for other people, too. Adults learn from other adults. We never quite stop learning from others if we stay healthy!
The real dark side that is becoming more and more apparent while everyone is under the stress of Covid 19 restrictions and infections and long term illness and deaths is … is depression, which unchecked is leading to suicides.
Be aware of this and notice your anxiety before it overwhelms you. Be resilient for others. Reach out to others. If you or someone else is at risk of harming themselves, there is help. Reach out. The resources are on the web in many places including www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx , scroll down to GET HELP.
4. Learn to relax at will.
You cannot be relaxed and anxious at the same time. Get online guides to practice how to relax. Practice until you can relax without the guides.
Then notice when you are starting to become anxious, and relax instead.
Use this to prepare for sleep as well.
5. Embrace winter.
Get out. It’s safer outside as far as Covid 19 goes. Be safe in the cold, dress for it. Get vitamin D by taking a walk on a sunny afternoon.
6. Bring wood from the first dry stack. (Oops, sorry that’s just the reminder for me to get wood to stay alive through last night’s -26⁰ C dip into hard freeze.)
Everyone has things that need be done to get through the winter and each month, besides dealing with Covid 19. Ensure you and others are doing those things, too. Work (not to an extreme) helps maintain resilience.
We trust God, pray fervently and rely on our sins being forgiven as we forgive others their sins, and we learn from wisdom available by God’s grace to us all.
Be safe, be wise, do not be anxious or let your hearts be troubled: instead find ways to enjoy life and share it with others, and relax into the comfort of God’s arms. God walks with us each day, each hour. God carries us when we falter.
Christ calls us to be God’s arms for one another; carry one another with respect and love.
…
[Thanks to The Dose, though I paraphrased considerably and creatively.]
.
Light one, two, (three), (four) candles to watch for the Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….
[Light One Candle to Watch for Messiah, words by Wayne L. Wold]
My enemies wonder in malice when I will die, and [when] my name [will] perish.
James 5:15
The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.
Words of Grace For Today
If one has led an honourable life, then enemies are in no short supply, for there is no shortage of humans who hate goodness in others and who seek its destruction, hoping for a good person to die.
Perhaps it is that in comparison they come up so short, or perhaps it is that goodness and honesty get in the way of their evil schemes to secure more and more for themselves on the backs of other people.
Whatever the reason, many enemies gather about, fearful for the truth I sustain, and can disclose; they wonder when I will die, how long can I possibly last, bombarded with Gaslighting and false convictions and evil rulings and financial ruin.
They have had power over so many, and for years it took more than I had available to see their evil effect on me as a statement not about myself, but about them. It is odd and familiar that evil focused on a good person drives that person to wonder what he or she has done wrong to deserve such abuse. Now, by Grace alone, for years I have realized the true statement made by their attacks on me.
I am still the same person I was before, the same good person, the same forgiven sinner, the same God-made saint … and more so, for all the trappings of life that I used to presume were mine to enjoy have been stolen from me. What is left are the essentials of life. I work hard to ensure I have some of them. Others are a given still, and I am grateful for them. Others I am fully dependent on the generosity of others. Hard work, God given, and people shared: these make up the contributions to the essentials for life.
Eternal life, though, is long since secured as only it can be: by Grace alone.
Covid 19 is a real threat. But hardly as great a threat as evil scheming people, dead set on bringing destruction, ruin and early death to all that is mine. Yet not Covid 19, not evil scheming people, nor anything else can separate me (or you) from God’s love and promise of eternal life given and sealed in baptism.
Advent is the time of precious blue hope, time to prepare for Christ, time to see Christmas celebrations anew: God’s Grace in action … for all people.
In the Darkness there is Christ’ never failing Light.
Light one, two, (three), (four) candles to watch for the Messiah ….
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Words of Grace For Today
The Word became flesh and lived among us.
It is quite the image. God creates with a word: Let there be ….
That Word is a reality that creates out of void reality, out of chaos order, out of nothing breath and life.
Then that Word becomes flesh, becomes a human, born as any other with no shortcuts like becoming a fully formed human ready to preach hell fire and brimstone, or heal all that ails creation in an instant, or overthrow corrupt and cruel rulers and religious leaders, replacing them with righteous people.
No, the Word becomes flesh, grows in Mary’s womb like every other baby, and is born into poverty in an animal barn, like most of humanity (except maybe the animal barn. Perhaps more humans have been born in a dwelling of some sort than in an animal barn. Though generations ago we were all born in less comfortable circumstances than an animal barn.) Then this infant must be nursed, protected (on the run for this life as a refugee into Egypt), and study and learn about life as a human. There is no knowledge dump into the Word-become-flesh’s brain or consciousness.
The one difference that sets this human, Jesus, from the rest of humanity (besides that he is the Word, God, who created the universe) is that he is without sin. The accurate description is full of grace and truth. God’s identifiable qualities in this human are primarily grace and truth.
It would be easier in life if more people could be even somewhat full of grace and truth. I suppose it would be easier if the first person for each of us were the one with whom that started to be so!
I have a long list of people I wish that were true, starting with judges, RCMP, church people, and supposedly ‘honourable’ people. I suppose we all have such lists or so.
Hanging on to them is impossible, if one really wants to live. That is where GRACE comes in to play, with each of us in the first person. Grace is not only smooth and marvellous movement, like in a dance. It is the dance we do that carries us through each day as we encounter sin and evil, some of it so destructive that it is hard to contemplate. Best not to, but to continue to bless everyone, and those that are out to destroy us, with the blessing of the czar: may God bless the czar, and from us keep him very far!
Grace and Truth.
These are what we celebrate is born in poverty in an animal barn; now creation can see God’s Grace and Truth in the life of a human.
God’s works are full of mystery and wonder. This Christmas, with Covid 19, we can take Advent to prepare our hearts as we must rethink what Christmas really is all about, since lots of the trappings we’ve leaned on in the past are not possible.
What is essential for Christmas? That we wait, alert, preparing to meet again the Word, the Word that created the universe, the Word that lived among us, the Word the so loved the world that God came as one of us to save us all.
Christ is come – generations ago,
Christ is here – through every generation as the Holy Spirit, God walking with us,
Christ will come again – for every generation, to bring the perfection of ‘heaven’ to earth.
How are you going to celebrate the mass of Christ? The Christmas, which took over the pagan rights of light in the darkness, a yule log lit, of evergreen trees decorated with symbols of life and lit with candles, and the tradition of St. Nicholas, the Saint of Giving?
May it be more blessed this year. Thanks to Covid 19 challenging us to re-evaluate our lives and return to the roots of our celebrations.
This year more than ever we need a purposeful Advent to prepare … for something different and hopefully better.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near.
2 Peter 3:13
But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
Words of Grace For Today
They said go west young man.
So I went …
…
north instead.
And
Decades later I’m still going, and waiting,
for a home with the righteous.
If only I could find one of them,
Everyone here is a sinner,
Then I hear the trumpet blow
and see the Lord is coming
bringing
a new heaven and earth and a new home for all these wretched sinners made saints by Grace
Saint Nicholas Day, Remembering the Bringer of Gifts
Like Tracks in the Snow Disappearing Toward the Light,
The Signs and Wonders of God’s Work for Us All
Are All Around Us.
Daniel 4:2
The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.
1 John 1:2
This life [the word of life that Jesus brings to us] was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.
Words of Grace For Today
Signs and wonders … the word of life revealed, eternal life even today for us.
These are everywhere to be encountered, seen, heard, touched, inwardly experienced.
The sun rises in the cold morning, light spreading and pushing back the darkness until a clear burst of light is visible through the trees near the horizon. The Light of the world is here, as a blessed sign that God is with us.
The periodic drone of fisher’s ice augers rumbles like bumble bees across the snow covered lake and through the trees. There are fish in this lake, stocked as it is, which provide food for many, except in the shoulder seasons when the ice forms or melts and is not safe enough to support a fisher. When the water is open boats bring fishers to all corners and bays of this lake. Then the ice is solid, on foot, by quad and side-by-side and snowmobile, or by truck, fishers spread across the lake to harvest for their families sustenance, signs of God’s blessings unceasingly flowing for us all.
After more than seven years with various people seeking my destruction, death and/or exile based on lies and greed, and a mental illness perverted view of life, fuelled by misandry and hate-based, perverted faith, I wake each morning, here, alive, accepting my life as blessed, though I am financially so far in debt I will likely never emerge, though my reputation among corrupt people of power will likely never be restored, though I work desperately hard to survive the challenges of living rough: cold requires lots of work but it is constant and properly conquered with care; moisture, heat, and bugs are the most difficult, fickle, and most dangerous. Each day I still breath is a gift from God, a sign of the wonders God works sustaining my life though it is under constant attack by so many, and so powerful.
This is eternal life, for today. (Yes, eternal life has already begun. We do not wait until after death!) For the Word of life, Jesus Christ, has come, is here, and will return.
Advent, these precious few days of blue hope, suspending us in waiting, holding us alert in watching, guiding us with Light into the darkness of winter … Advent is filled with signs and wonders of God working for us. We only need take a breath, pause, reflect, … and notice all that God does for us each day.
This day there are millions of people who through terrible injustice and cruelty do not have clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter. Many, many people will die this day across the face of the earth … and it need not be so.
So many more millions have those basics of life, but lack the other two that keep us give us resilience to face the challenges and evil that would rob us of our hearts, minds and strength: meaningful labour and love (both being able to love others and to be loved by others).
Facing Covid 19 and our feeble efforts to slow it’s progress through the populations, if we do not have an ever-renewing reserve of resilience, we can lose our hearts, minds and strength to face each day. We can instead forego all precautions and put others at great risk, we can gather as if we thought that would help (participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream), or we can join the insane protests with no masks or physical distance (also participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream).
What will we do this day, if seemingly small, to reach out with the Word of life, to all? What will we do reaching out to others, for therein we build our own resilience?
The Word of Life works signs and wonders for us all.
Stay alert, lest we do not notice, or hear, or see Christ in our midst, calling us to be Christ’s signs and wonders for us all.
May the Lord give you increase, both you and your children.
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Words of Grace For Today
The future that we anticipate
Colours our todays.
Trusting
that God may choose to give us and our descendants increase, and that God is merciful to we who fear God, not only today, but from generation to generation
gives us a future of greater and greater blessings and mercy from God’s hand,
which colours our todays
with all the colours of the rainbow and more!
Such is the beauty of life as God’s children.
Breathe in the blessings. Share the blessings, which never cease to overflow our lives.
Face Covid 19 with courage, extreme caution, and compassion for all other people.
God is with us and our descendants from all our yesterdays to all our tomorrows in all our todays.
