Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.’
2 Corinthians 10:18
For it is not those who commend themselves that are approved, but those whom the Lord commends.
Words of Grace For Today
Many strive to achieve for themselves great position of authority and power. For example one needs only look at all the bishops our church has had who seriously wanted to become bishops. They were disastrous for the church, each in their own special corrupt way.
The best bishops were those who did not want the work, nor the honour, nor the heartache of presiding over a church in decline.
The church remains in decline.
What does that say to us other than God has plans that are not those of the church which wants to grow … according to our measure of growth.
There is no shortage of people trying way too hard to make their plans into God’s plans for the church. All are dangerous and destructive.
What we need is leaders like Gideon, who though offered control and rule, chose instead that the people would be ruled by God.
To be ruled by God is something, not anything like being ruled by a code of what someone has determined is ‘for sure’ God’s will (though it looks like a terrible subset of faith, reduced so that that it is worthless.)
To be ruled by God is something, not anything like being ruled by a person who supposedly can speak God’s will. We’ve had no end of despots, also in the church.
To be ruled by God is something that will lead us in places we cannot anticipate, into adventures we cannot imagine, and to share life with people we had never known before as God’s people. It’s a wild ride.
Hang on tight
to the Holy Spirit’s fire and breath.
That’s all God gives us most of the time, everything else we see as solid is an illusion we create for our own sense of (false) security.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
Acts 15:11
On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.’
Words of Grace For Today
If we are honest with ourselves and each other, we know our participation in original sin.
It is the opposite of what we wish well for ourselves and others, that we would consider the goodness of life, and what we understand God intends for us.
We know that we deserve all judgments of God made against us, and all punishments and consequences we may encounter.
So it is of the greatest consequence that we know God promises to deal with us NOT according to what we deserve, not according to our iniquities. How wonderful it is that we understand, on the contrary, that we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as all people will be saved by grace.
Now that our salvation is secured, what can we do about all those iniquities that keep piling up? Can we stop increasing them? Unfortunately not, but we ought try with grace and gratitude with all our mind, body and strength.
We can offer grace to all other living people. We can breathe and love and hope.
Life is messy, and we can live with confidence and courage in the face of all kinds of evil knowing God has already dealt with it all. So onward, with what this day has to offer; countering all evil and sin as we can, and bringing God’s grace to bear on all that we can.
For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory.
Romans 10:12
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.
Words of Grace For Today
God knows everyone’s works and thoughts. No one slips under the radar of all knowing God. Everyone, no matter their nation or tongue, will come to know God’s glory, power, and God’s knowledge of their everything.
God’s full knowledge of Jesus’ followers also applies to everyone, no matter Jew or Greek (or in today’s word – white or coloured, rich or poor, powerful and connected or isolated and expendable). God knows everything about everyone, and Jesus’ followers come in all types, no bias.
All that can be terrible news for those who are guilty. … Well that is everyone.
That can be terrible news; that is the 2nd side to the sharp sword of the Gospel, the sword that cuts us free from our sins; and it cuts to the heart of the matter to show up our desperate need to God’s Grace.
Thankfully God is gracious with everyone, and generous with grace for everyone who calls on the Lord. Jesus answers everyone who calls.
Sometimes the answer is that Jesus will be with us as we continue to suffer what we want to be free of, the lies about us, the weight on our shoulders.
Other times the answer that Jesus gives us saves us from the evil that threatens our very lives.
No matter the answer Jesus gives us, whether we continue through the suffering or are freed, life abundant is nevertheless ours. We can Breathe.
We can give thanks.
Jesus is generous.
We can share the blessedness Christ’ gives us with all people (no matter the person or nation) and we can share generously.
He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
1 Timothy 6:7-8
For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.
Words of Grace For Today
One cannot be sure to leave anything of material worth to one’s children, but give them an education and no one can take that away from them.
Or so one thinks.
And similarly people strive to achieve – for themselves and their children … and their friends and their own – something that will be a legacy.
Legacies are remarkable … usually in how inconsequential they are.
Two things seem significant: The first one is that we recognize that we are born with nothing, we die with nothing, and nothing we can do will ever change that, for us or for anyone else.
The second one is that everything we have is a gift from God for which we can give God thanks and praise. Even the drive to work hard to accomplish and accumulate something that may be a security for us … that drive is God’s gift, and the result may or may not provide security.
We should not therefore cease to work to provide security for ourselves and our own, and our neighbours. ‘Winter’ is coming, and ‘wood‘ needs be collected to ‘keep the fires going’.
We can therefore remember to enjoy each person along the journey, and to provide as we can for those less fortunate than us … as God has provided for us, freely and graciously.
No matter the challenges, disappointments, and ever-present stinking ‘rot’ in situations and people, we are not driven to despair.
We give God thanks in all things. We wake rested, we work like dervishes noticing all of life around us, and we end the day with gratitude and contentment, for we have done as we could to respond to God’s gift of breath in this day.
Inevitable Grace; Like the Setting Sun, Always (even if we do not see it.)
100%
– Human Fatality Rate
– God’s Grace Coverage
– Percent of People to whom God Offers Grace
Proverbs 11:19
Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but whoever pursues evil will die.
Matthew 5:6
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Words of Grace For Today
Both these verses taken literally cannot be true.
For the first verse from Proverbs:
The mortality rate for all humans is 100%, also for people who live in righteousness.
Further, no one can live in righteousness, of their own doing. We all sin and cannot help but sin.
For the second from Matthew:
Any reasonable and sane appropriation of the history of humans will recognize that the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness continue, all through history, up to and including every today that comes our way, to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Righteousness from themselves is not possible, for we all sin, inevitably, and righteousness is not marked on a curve, it is an absolute. One sin and righteousness disappears from us.
Righteousness from others for those who thirst for righteousness is the same. Everyone else sins as well and righteousness disappears quicker than the rise of the sun at the summer solstice.
Righteousness as in justice based on truth is the same. Someone has to act with righteousness in order for justice based on truth to be possible, yet no one does 100% of the time, nor can anyone.
So what can these verses mean?
To begin we need remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love. We are reckoned to be righteous, not of our own doing, but because God replaces our pathetic sinful records with Jesus’ and God then reckons us to be righteous, again and again each day.
Proverbs:
To be righteous is to live reflecting that gift of righteousness as we can.
It is clear: righteousness is to be alive, as God created us to be. And to sin is to die, bit by bit (sometimes large bits) until, though we walk and talk, we are dead inside.
Matthew:
As we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we cannot earn righteousness or accomplish it on our own, yet as we humbly confess our sin and trust God’s forgiveness we receive our fill of blessings. Actually God pours so many blessings on us that our cups run over, spilling blessings in our wake as we make our way in the world.
There we go: hungry and thirsty, and simultaneously filled over the brim with blessings.
There we go: living as God forgives us and blesses us, yet simultaneously dying as we inevitably sin.
How to live? Blessed, we live at peace with ourselves before God, yet agitated and active in the world, working to bring justice to more and more people, and continually humbly confessing our sins and our total dependence on God’s Grace.
Therefore we recognize others’ sins as encompassed by God’s Grace and we deal with them with compassion and clarity and forgiveness … and hope.
We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.
Matthew 6:13
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
Words of Grace For Today
Like the meadow outside filled with more weeds than grass, and years of dead weeds and grasses rotting underfoot, we were once and still are filled with the dregs of sin, the work of evil in and through us, rotting at our core, infecting like a super-virus, all that we think, say and do.
Though the weeds and grass can be mowed short to inhibit the proliferation of mosquitoes, to which I am allergic after so many bites in the past months, it is not anything like a well groomed lawn. There are many visions of beautiful blue-grass image of smooth green mostly for viewing and showing off to one’s neighbours, which can be used for picnics and croquet or soccer and bocce ball. The work it takes to create and maintain such an unnatural thing is huge: mowing, fertilizing, watering, more mowing and thatching.
This is not unlike the visions the devil fills our hearts and minds with, that our hearts, minds, and strengths could be so perfectly groomed into artificial perfection by our great efforts of attending to our souls. The creating of such perfection is beyond us, though we do have the fertilizing part down pat. Falling so short of an unattainable perfection, the devil then plants in us innumerable rationalizations that we can still attain the unattainable, using all sorts of excuses as we try to attain perfection in vain, running roughshod over other people and creation without pause.
These temptations, to try to attain our own perfection and use that as an excuse to ruin creatures and creation, are not our first request of God. We start this petition with AND do not bring us to the time of trial … Yet we pray this fervently each day.
We know we are hopelessly outmatched by the Devil. Only God can save us.
Jesus’ story assures us, God does save us. We cannot and do not need to strive to be perfect. We can strive to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us.
We can recognize that all that crap in our lives can serve as fertilizer for the Word of God to grow in us. We can attend to mowing, trust God to bring the water, sunshine and warmth needed for life, and be at peace with what God makes us.
We are not perfect meadows or lawns. We are a mix of good grass and noxious weeds and thistles. There is plenty of old weeds rotting within us. We need not be concerned, for God accepts us as we are, replaces our records with Jesus’ record making us pure in each moment, and then the Holy Spirit sends us out to share this same story of salvation for all with all people.
Croquet on an imperfect lawn is more fun than on a perfect lawn, for the play of the mallet on the ball is not what brings success. Success is measured in the pure joy one shares with the time one spends with the other players and those who watch.
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.
Mark 16:15
And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.
Words of Grace For Today
…
Good God, is this it?
Awake again, dripping rain, cool, no mosquitoes.
I see the grass, the trees, and the lake.
God is here. I have seen him again and again in the most mundane and and the most spectacular.
Yet I know I am missing something. I missed so many clues along the way.
.
Each morning I remember that Jesus faced his betrayal, willingly suffering everything…
God knows exactly what this is like.
Jesus tried to show us it is not necessary that anyone else be scapegoated or sacrificed or Gaslit in order that we make our way through life.
We imitate Christ to make our way through life, striving to forgive the unforgivable.
.
Hoping that truth will be known.
Trusting God stands with us.
Leaning on the Holy Spirit.
Even as bit by bit our lives slip away into the hungry past as it gobbles up the present and our tomorrows.
Can we trust breath, ferocious wind, gentle silent breeze, spirit intangible
to guide our beating hearts, frantic minds, spasming muscles, and weary arthritic bones?
Truth, confessed, welcomes life and radiates it to others.
Let us strive for truth.
.
And sleep enough? Maybe?
Even as the dark of night retreats as light wriggles across the land and water
calling us to rise to a new day
.
But our minds slowly slip from us into the empty spaces between thoughts and visions
until in the bright baked light we scramble to catch up
with the obligations of life stacked up decades high
and search for
.
something out of the dim past … what is it … so fleeting. It is gone.
Oh, yes hope. It was hope.
.
Gone is hope?
..
Not at all!
…
The story that God gives us in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, so that we may know and believe God and understand that God is God, gives us all the purpose, love and hope we need.
….
Given that purpose, love and hope, we can go into all the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus’ story with our thoughts, words, and actions.
Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from deliverance: I bring near my deliverance, it is not far off, and my salvation will not tarry; I will put salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory.
Titus 2:11-12
For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
Words of Grace For Today
“Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.” – John Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020).
One of the many who took part in the freedom rides, integrated interstate bus trips (a right guaranteed by the Supreme Court), he was beaten many times, once nearly killing him.
Stubborn hearts of racists and police who were eager to willing illegally arrest black and whites travelling together brought hardship, bigotry and hatred to the fore many times over.
Stubborn hearts do the same still today, everywhere. Even here.
Last night three quads showed up, about an hour apart, the last at 2:30 am, helping them selves to the wood I’ve collect, cut and stacked to help minimize the dangers of the coming winter. All together they took about two day’s worth, simply to party away with a fire in front of them. Shame on them.
I startled the last with a flashlight from 10 feet away, since he seemed only focused on finding the wood to take. He sped off running over a pine tree, careening to turn around to leave up on two wheels and nearly running off the path into the trees.
Maybe that will put an end to the theft.
God deals with stubborn hearts all the time, theirs and all of ours. God comes close, well God is always close, but God goes out of God’s way to make apparent to us God’s presence with us.
God shows no partiality, all is just based on truth, in God’s judgments of us. And there will be judgment for each of us.
The trouble these thieves get up to is trouble, but hardly good trouble or necessary trouble.
It’s just evil trouble. The devil’s work.
The end of course, carried on far enough, will be that I do not have enough wood for winter; and their theft can cause my death.
Good trouble, necessary trouble, is the kind that puts a stop to this kind of petty criminality, and to the widespread biases in the justice system, from the RCMP bullying, harassment and violence, to the Courts that turn a blind eye to the truth of abuse done to men by women (and men.) That blind eye invites women to lie profusely to the Courts, and for RCMP to act far outside properly or fairly … and everyone gets away with it.
Except God does judge fairly, equitably.
Thanks be for Jesus, who gives us his record for our judgment, for otherwise we would all be wiped off the face of the earth all before breakfast at 6 am.
Because Jesus steps in for us, we not go through life, making our way with violence. Jesus makes our way for us. We need not go through life full of anger. Each will get their due justice delivered by God. We need not go through life ashamed of lies told about us, or false accusations, or even false convictions. These do not define us. Jesus defines us … as his followers.
With Jesus always with us, the Holy Spirit guiding us, and God’s love pouring over us each day, we can boldly take on the trouble, the good trouble, that God sends us into each day. We do not need be shy or self-righteous (as if trouble did not belong to us at all).
No, today we can courageously get ourselves into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble, trouble that will make a good difference possible for many other people.
You can spring your snowmobile from this point to the lake,
until God brings Spring
and then it’s a disaster to spring here.
Isaiah 43:13
I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?
2 Corinthians 5:10
For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.
Words of Grace For Today
How simple it seems: life here and now is a proving ground of who and whose we are. After death or maybe before, God judges us on the basis of what we have done, whether good or evil. No one can deliver themselves or others from God’s hand. God’s work (also of judging us) cannot be hindered by anyone … not even the Devil himself!
It all sounds pretty simple, and devilishly difficult. Proving oneself is an ever failing project. We go from one compromise of good to the next compromise of our souls, just to make it through any 60 minutes of any day. All of what we think, say or do is catalogued permanently without error or omission under our name in God’s never ending knowing and memory.
Who could face God thus? For every single last one of us will fail that judgment. We cannot make it through one hour, yet alone a day, or a year, or a lifetime.
There is a vain hope, held by so many people, that though they have done terribly all through their life, they have somehow managed to say or do something really good, and they hope that good thing or two or even a series of things can somehow outweigh the terrible, unending bad things they have done. The scales are not so weighted in our favour. God is just, basing all judgments on truth and whole truth only. Everyone of us fail, and fail miserably as the scale rapidly hits bottom on the evil side overwhelmed by the weight of our sins.
Given this inevitable negative judgment, some people give up hope, and either more fully participate in evil to get ahead, at least in this short life on earth, or they despair and fail to give a day’s thanks for everything they have, hiding from life as much as they can, with consuming, praying, doing small ‘good deeds’, or – and this applies to the most people, nearly everyone somehow at sometime – they compare themselves to others and delude themselves into thinking that the judgment scale of God is somehow marked on a curve of averages and not absolutes.
Out of this delusion arises the nowadays all too common assertion that truth is never absolute, but it is all relative. We just see things differently.
Well … we do see things differently. God does not. And created in God’s likeness we too can see God’s absolutes more than we care to admit, even to ourselves.
Plato’s Ideals are not a mere figment of one’s imagination. They are real, as real as the water we drink and food we eat to stay alive.
The only way our judgment day[s] – it is likely we face God’s judgment each day and just do not know it – before God goes anything other than real ugly for us, is that God anticipated how we would be, and provided a loving, self-sacrificial manner in which we could understand both God’s firm judgment based on the truth of who we are and what we’ve done, and God’s endless mercy and love, which gives us re-newed life as many times a day it is possible.
It seems that God gives re-newed life more times a day than we are capable of imagining, for we still breathe … and pray in thanks … and share what God entrusts to us. The renewal of life is that Jesus’ record, unblemished and pure, is swapped in for our terrible sinful records, and God judges us as unblemished and pure, pure of heart and able to see God once again in the ordinarily mundane things of life. Those things become sacred. All things become sacred. All people become sacred, for God uses it all, us all, to make good happen, such good that we are wholly incapable of doing on our own. The Holy Spirit infuses renewed life into us, and pulls miraculously good thoughts, words, and deeds out of us.
We actually follow Jesus.
We don’t just practice some random and useless piety, like not smoking in beer country (but beer is great at church potlucks), not drinking in tobacco country (but smoking is great after the services), or as in Minnesota, smoking, drinking and dancing are all to be avoided; but us medical missionary kids knew it was all bunk. We didn’t smoke because it was unhealthy and stunk. We didn’t drink because it messed with our brains and our brains were fine, thank you. We did dance, and occasionally it led to sex, which was just part of life, because children are wonderful gifts from God, so is sex, and so is dancing – we just did not advertise it in front of other ‘pious’ weak-faithed Christians. We did not take sex or children lightly. They were great gifts from God, not to be messed with lightly, but to be celebrated greatly. Again, we did not go out to have sex with a great number of people because we knew that sex was powerful and if you messed about with it, it messed about with your brain, and our brains were fine, thank you.
Somehow growing up in all that lutheranism of minnesota (it is the state religion, or was, after all) many had not faced the challenges of world views that did not include God, and not as a small matter, but aggressively, determinedly denied God because that faith threatened their old, old religion of worshipping ‘things’ that medicine men and women could (supposedly) control. Our faith offered something beyond piety, or setting ‘old’ ways aside. Our parents as medical missionaries came with science and medicine (products of Christianity’s care for the world and the vulnerable and sick – Jesus was after all a healer), both of which set things in order in this world and offered, as Jesus had, healing.
Instead of latching on to some senseless piety that overshadowed faith, we knew out of necessity the essentials of faith, and it certainly was not some useless piety, or false faith. Our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith.
Back home, our faith had to be genuine and authentic, fully dependent on the Spirit working through us, or we’d have been eaten alive by those who stood against this faith, those that held some false piety as being the core of faith, as if we could behave our way into God’s favour!
No one can hinder God’s work, not God’s work in us or this wonder-filled world.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,
Matthew 5:8
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Words of Grace For Today
Bribes are the way of the world.
Some are blatant, demanded, extracted. Others are offered, subtly, as perks for understood unnamed favours.
The Church is not exempt from this. The Courts are not exempt from this. No part of life seems to be exempt from this bartering of favours for favours. Ideals are set aside too easily as palms are greased and the recipients on both sides enjoy a bit more of life than they otherwise would have. As if life were a zero-sum game, where one needed to get what is there before someone else beat you to it.
Since the Church is not exempt, even the faithful, confessing a faith that is otherwise founded on the cross, behave as if salvation is one more thing to acquire for oneself, as if it were insurance for after death.
It is challenging not to fall in line, as permits to build are denied for no apparent reason, or provided to others even with faulty plans; as jobs come to others (not even qualified) who enjoy high standards of living, and others (more than fully qualified and capable) are left to seek labour outside their field of training; as invitations, social recognition, and being included are offered to the most asocial people, and others dedicated to the well being of all people are ignored, socially derided, and ghosted by nearly all.
God, though, is not a taker of bribes. Salvation is given to all as a free gift. Claiming to be able to earn it can revoke the gift from one’s life. There is no effort, or favour, that one can offer God that would be sufficient to bend God to do other than what is God’s will. Attempts to do so are sufficient to see God’s will exclude one from life.
God is not one among many gods. God is the One and only God, the God above all other gods we may try to create. God is powerful, and loving, gracious and generous with all people. We are to fear and love God …. This is the beginning of our response.
The Promise is made often in many ways. Those who do not trying to bribe or cheat or step on others to get ahead, in a word, those who remain pure, they will see God. Perhaps as Moses did, face to face, turning Moses ashen white from the encounter that few if any others have ever survived. More likely the pure of heart will see God in the everyday. For without a heart that is bent-in-on-itself, bribing, cheating, and trying in every way to ensure it’s survival before anything else – without this bent-in-on-itself, one’s heart remains open to see the wonders, the awesome wonders that God works each day for others … and for oneself.
Wonders of wonders, to see God each day many times over.
That generous gift from God cannot be matched by anything we might try to acquire for ourselves.
Our salvation assured (a gift from God) and seeing God each day, we pray: Give us today our daily bread. Then we work, sweat, and plan to ensure we and others have the basic requirements for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved.
One day at a time, life is full of wonders, and God is awesome!
