Or is it hope based on God’s gifts, that winter will be blessed in all ways?
Or is it just what would be?
…
It is certainly God’s gifts, God’s presence, our help and shield.
Psalm 33:20
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield.
Romans 8:24
For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?
Words of Grace For Today
What do you hope for?
I hope for justice based on truth, which will require that those who lied and gaslit me and their lies come into the light; meaning either their sins be confessed or their sins be exposed, from my ex, to the girls in and out of court, the lay pastor Anne, the church council, the wealthy people who control the church, the RCMP including Murphy, Ward, Jones and Jensen, the lawyers and prosecutors and especially the judges that lied about the testimony provided, the evidence presented, and all the evidence they refused to hear, all to make irrational rulings, convictions and denials on appeals.
This has not been seen, or even a speck of light shone on this corruption and barbarism hiding in plain site as a perversion of a system of law, as justice in Alberta, and as the Grace that the church is supposed to exercise for all people.
That is my hope.
That is my first hope among many things I hope for. The others are mostly for myself and my families: health, security, meaningful work and future dreams that provide purpose for today. Yet everything else pales in comparison to my primary hope for the great, good, and gracious impact this coming to light would make for so many people.
It is still waited for, for apparently only God will make it right, only God as my help and my shield will bring this evil mess to light. As long as the guilty perpetrators still breathe God provides them time for the amendment of life. That would be a victory for God in so many ways. It would be a step toward health for so many people in the family, the community, the church, the courts, and in the province … and far beyond.
So we wait for God to act.
…
What do you hope for?
What do you hope for that is unseen?
Will it bring life, health, and grace to bear on many, many people. Or will it simply set a small thing (maybe a huge thing) right in your own life … in your body, mind, or spirit?
Still it is what you hope for … and wait for God to bring to be.
Hope is exactly what God gives to us when God saves us sinners, redeems us, renews life in us, and sends us out into God’s good creation among God’s people to be instruments of God’s grace for all. Hope gives us the heart and mind and soul to see beyond the material things, beyond the human things, and beyond the evil that permeates and perverts life so thoroughly. Hope is the vision of seeing God in all things, in all times, in all places, and in all ways.
God created and is present with us always, promised so in our baptisms. Hope is God’s gift to us, by which we see God present.
Thus we fear
…
and love God
…
and trust God
…
to bring all sin to light, and to perfect all life in us as the saints God makes us to be.
Where will you see God today? For what will you wait for, trusting God’s promises? What will you hope for, so that you can live as God’s Grace for all people this day?
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Luke 4:22
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’
Words of Grace For Today
Is this not George’s son?
Is this not Katie’s daughter?
Is this not your Granddaughter?
Just ordinary people George, Katie, and you, right!? So …
So how can any real person so ordinary give rise (or rather birth) to a young person so spectacular as God’s chosen servant, one to bring justice to the nations, one who can speak so well that all are amazed at this person’s gracious words.
Wow, how can it be? First that there is such a person who can change the course of history, and second that this peculiar person, this spectacular person, comes from an ordinary family?
Which is that the best things about life, and the best possibilities in history, grow from a healthy family. Or at least we hope they do.
…
But …
in reality the best things (or people) in life grow from families that are … well … the most screwed up and dysfunctional families ever. And then in reality sometimes the best things (and people) in life grow from the healthiest families ever … and all the kinds of families between the worst and the best.
Thank God, then, that we get to celebrate all that God gives us … including a chosen person who brings justice to all the nations, and more importantly, that God gives us the gifts and people who love us so much that all the world seems right … and is just right.
Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
Luke 18:7
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
Words of Grace For Today
Words of hope fill scriptures: God will come to the aid of those downtrodden, those driven into poverty, those dealt injustice and abuse, and those ostracized with lies and gaslighting.
These are not events that happen elsewhere or at other times. These evil things done to good people take place in this place and time. Corrupt individuals (some known as the wealthiest community leaders) are recruited by corrupt police to file false reports about situations they create in order to lie and denigrate good people. Corrupt police lie about what they have reported to them in order to make good people look guilty. Corrupt pastors cooperate in creating false reports about honest, innocent and good people in order to gain favour with corrupt church and community leaders. Corrupt lawyers pretend to defend the innocent, though they do just enough to make it look like a plausible defence while leaving room for false convictions of their innocent clients, from whom they take tens of thousands of dollars in fees – all to ‘throw them under the bus’, the financial ruin part and parcel of the means used to ruin innocent, honest people.
Even though the evidence does not make out the charges, corrupt judges abound in the courts, and testimony that exonerates the accused is removed from the transcripts (as judges are allowed to edit the court transcripts), and even then testimony is falsified in their judgments at crucial points in order to make convictions possible.
In a word, barbarism rules! Here and now barbarism rules!
Because the courts command armed police and sheriffs and the entire penal system, which is staffed for the most part by bullies and more than a few totally corrupt guards and staff, most people either are naively and intentionally unaware of the injustices done to so many innocent people. Or people who are fully aware of the injustice, keep quiet so as not to attract attention to themselves, hoping not to be the next victim of the barbarism.
…
God’s chosen people have no such choice.
And God does not abandon God’s chosen people. God comes to our rescue soon and very soon. God brings us out of the land of this barbarism and establishes justice here and now for all people, by the work of God’s chosen, the many good, honest, and outspoken people who dedicate their lives to bringing justice and truth to bear on this barbarism that corrupts not just individuals, but the very foundation of civilization.
Soon and very soon.
Yes, soon and very soon, those who are so corrupt, who habitually undermine true justice, our enemies will be exposed and removed, so that God’s will may be done among us, through us.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
1 Corinthians 11:11-12
Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.
Words of Grace For Today
Humans are not totally depraved. We are capable of doing good things, and even loving truly. That requires that God gave us freedom to choose to love … which means we also can choose to do evil things and even things that destroy love with hate. We like to think well of ourselves, that we most often choose to do good, to love truly all that God has given us. Most of us think better of ourselves than is the reality. Part of thinking better of ourselves is that we all look at each situation and try to not find blame with ourselves, but with others. We most easily choose a stranger or someone who is different than us to blame for terrible things we cannot find the cause of, so that we are not blamed for them.
All of us do this blaming. Through all human history because men and woman are identifiably different from each other, the other gender has always been a too common ‘other’ to blame for our own shortcomings. It is so common yet we want to avoid acknowledging it that we have names for it that mislead us from seeing what we are doing to each other. We call it the ‘battle of the sexes’ or the ‘age old competition between men and women.’ It is in fact our sin of blaming others for our own sin at work.
This is not how God created us to be. God created us to live at peace with each other, with equal respect for each other, and with appreciation for each others gifts given by God as gifts for all to benefit from. God intended us also in couples to live in love with each other.
To live, loving others, to live in love with one other person, and to be at peace with one’s own sin, is the most rewarding, purpose giving manner to live; it is how God created us, male and female, to live with each other.
It is the perverted and truly depraved who believe and live as if ‘others’ are all terrible and they and those like them are without fault. It is a terrible thing when men abuse women and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity. It is no fix for this, as is too often done today, when women rise up to abuse men and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity.
It is the mentally ill who blame others, to the extreme, for all their own sins to avoid all culpability, no matter how clear it is that they themselves are truly at fault.
God created people to be able to love.
To sustain the species, as with many other species, God created us male and female. This is a blessing. This does not mean that every man was created to procreated with a woman in love with her so that the children would grow up in a family built on love, or that every woman was created to procreate with a man in love with him so that the children would grow up in a family built on love.
By design, when the population flourishes and procreation is not in the best interests of the species or the planet, some men were created to love only other men, some women to love only women, and many more men and women were created to love either the opposite or the same gender. When the pressures of overpopulation increase, and the luxuries of civilization increase, human history shows that those who choose the same gender as their partners increases … by design, so that the population may decrease. Somehow, so eager to blame others who are different, and so eager to be able to condemn others who are different from us (or so much the same as us, filled with shame condemning them instead of ourselves,) we fail to appreciate that God provides ways for us to love and live fully and for the population to decrease to where the planet can survive us humans.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God created us in God’s image, capable of love. It is in loving that life has meaning. It is in loving others that we are made able to give all that we are so that others can live, and live abundantly. It is in loving that we can share God’s greatest blessing: to love unconditionally.
You shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel: I am the Lord; I sanctify you.
1 Peter 1:15
As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct.
Words of Grace For Today
Profane and holy, these two ways of thinking, talking, acting describe our lives.
Sigi grew up in a ‘normal’ farm family on the prairies, within view of the grand Rockies. Watching her family work to raise crops and cattle each year she was no stranger to the cost of illnesses, and the benefits of health. She was a bright young girl, brighter than most around her. She saw the discord in her parents’ lives between what they said they believed in and worked at and how they lived their lives. As a young teen, as teenagers are wont to, she resolved to not make the mistakes that her parents made.
Beginning with her own health she believed firmly as her parents did that her body was a gift from God, and also since her baptism, a visible presence of God’s Grace for all to encounter, and for her to benefit from by giving abundant life to others. Her parents said they believed their lives were gifts from God, including their bodies, and then they ate foods that were not healthy. The allowed their bodies to become fat and out of shape, even though they worked hard and were strong, they were not fit. In time the illnesses they allowed into their bodies would show themselves.
At first, when Sigi resolved to keep her body fit, she loudly critiqued her parents, shaming them as best she could. She developed habits that she knew were healthy. Sigi ate only food she knew was healthy for her, only the foods that she needed to be and stay healthy. She exercised everyday and through the week had a routine of various exercises that kept her whole body fit. It was a painful year that her parents endured while she ingrained her habits into her life. She allowed her critique to spread to others in the family, and then to others in the community.
When her father had his first heart attack, she was brought up short. She stopped critiquing her parents, and others. She was bright enough to realize that her critique on her father was a contribution, even if small, to his stress and therefore to his heart attack. She started to realize that being healthy was more than just being physically healthy. So she began a life-long struggle to find, develop, and maintain a healthy mind and a healthy soul.
Six decades later, in her early 70’s Sigi was still struggling with this same struggle. She had seen her father survive 4 heart attacks, many years of good return on the farm, and the two decades of large swings from profitable to huge losses. In the deep trough of the third great loss her father suffered his last heart attack. The farm was repossessed. Her mother moved to town to a small apartment she rented. Her mother’s dementia advanced suddenly in that small apartment and she died within the year.
By then Sigi was married, had a career as a psychologist, had her own three children, and had suffered their teenage years as her parents had suffered hers.
Sigi still struggled to find health in her own thinking, in the deepest corners of her mind, in the darkest valleys of her soul. Her habits were all healthy. She was still physically fit, though her body ached from arthritis, occasionally so bad she could barely move. She attended church. She meditated daily. She prayed for her family, for her church, community, country, and the whole world. She prayed for people around the world. She donated a tithe to her church, and gave even more to aide for people in terrible catastrophes around the world. She practised good, sustainable, and environmentally friendly ways of being on earth: She drove a small, economical car, installed good insulation on her small home along with a solar panel array that provided most of her electricity needs, and composted and reused most of her waste. She had bicycled most everywhere until her arthritis hampered that, and still during the summer she managed to do most of her grocery shopping using her bicycle, now a bike with an electric assist motor to help her up the small hills and rises between home and the store.
When her husband, Vern, had died of a massive stroke when he was only 58, something in Sigi just broke down, and left her unable to find any peace or purpose or health or hope.
Then so many years later, as if by a miracle everything changed again for her (like it had when she was just a teenager realizing that her parents said they believed one thing and lived completely differently). She was listening to a sermon, a simple sermon, not even a very good sermon, she heard words that she’d heard many times before: that Jesus saved us by Grace alone, not by our merits. It hit her like thunder breaking through an invisible lightening bolt and exploding in her like fireworks.
She had worked all her life to be healthy, to honour God with her body, mind, and soul, as she was a visible being of God’s presence on earth for her and others. What she had struggled against all this time was that she just could not make herself completely healthy, not healthy enough; not in her body, not in her mind, and certainly not in her soul. Her failures were as visible as her successes to anyone who knew her well could tell you. Her demands to be healthy had ruined relationship after romantic relationship before she met Vern, and many friendships as well throughout her life.
She realized that she could no more earn God’s blessings by trying to be completely holy, any more than her father could stop his heart attacks, her mother her dementia, Vern his stroke … and on went the list of other’s illnesses, reminding her of her own illnesses and the suffering she had caused so many people with her ‘holier than thou’ attitude.
Sigi regained a sense of purpose in life through more than a year of searching to understand this revelation, that she was saved by grace alone though she did not and could not deserve it, and that she was to be that same grace for others.
She realized that only by Grace could she ever reflect the holiness that God wished for her, only by Grace could she turn to God who was always with her, as the holy companion God promised to be.
She realized that her efforts to be completely holy were as all human efforts done as one’s own, as profane as anything she’d ever witnessed in her life.
Only by allowing God to make her holy, though she deserved it not one bit, could she be holy at all, and only then could her life be a visible witness to God’s holy presence with all people. It was all by Grace, that wonderful thing that God was for all people: giving freely without cost, given with ease to make one at ease, moving one through time with the beauty of a dancer, of a butterfly appearing from nowhere, moving through the heart wrenching challenges and losses of life as if pulled onward towards the goodness of life for others.
Sigi lived her final 2 decades, trusting that Grace was for her and for other people. She moved gently, kindly, sharing God’s unconditional love with all. She still struggled to be healthy in body, mind, and soul, but her struggle was not on her own. She allowed herself to fail, forgiving herself as God had already. She even enjoyed ice cream for the first time in her life, without a guilty conscience, trusting that this enjoyment was also part of a good abundant life. Profane she realized was unavoidable, though one ought not jump into it headfirst if one didn’t have to! Holy she humbly realized in new ways each day was all gift, a blessed gift of God’s Grace, a gift God offered to each sinful person.
Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
Words of Grace For Today
The time is coming, or it has arrived already, when society will fail, because “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Of course this was said by Socrates who lived from 470 to 399 BC, more than just a few generations ago … and it has been true in many generations (among the privileged of the world) ever since.
The time is coming ….
In every generation about many and various failings of humans it is repeatedly said (as if it were said for the first time) For the time is coming when people will [and then fill in the sinful thing of humans since the beginning of time.]
Some people of all generations have always refused to put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and have turned away from listening to the truth and wandered away to myths.
The truth has always been knowable if one would humbly listen to God’s Word, provided to us in many and various ways, and most clearly in the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
The danger in life is that one not only refuses to acknowledge that disaster has been part of human history since forever, but one builds up habits of denying reality (when reality is something one does not want to deal with.) The danger of this refusal is that one chooses to remain ignorant about what history can teach us, and ignorant one acts stupidly and often dangerously for oneself and those effected by one’s actions (which can be those distant in place and in time!) The danger of denying reality when one does not want to deal with it is that one ‘allows the lion’ to consume one’s family and oneself, and more significantly, one loses the ability to see God’s reality: that God created everything and everyone, oneself included. With that one loses the ability to know anything real of God, and anything real about oneself. One is truly lost in the clutches of the Devil’s hell on earth.
One is then not only a danger to oneself, but to everyone!
So we pray: Do not take the word of truth utterly out of our mouths, for our hope is in your Word. Save us from seeking comfort for our itchy ears in myths and falsehoods. According to your promises to us, guide us and use us as vessels of your truth and grace which brings life to all people.
But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.
Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Words of Grace For Today
As we do repeatedly when threats arise against us, the people following Moses into Freedom, led by God no less, repeatedly complain that it would have been better if they had not up’d and left their ‘safe’ slavery in Egypt to follow Moses into the Wilderness, just to die.
This time Pharaoh’s army has caught up to them as the have crossed the Red Sea. They exit the path through the water to stand on the opposite shore, the ‘gateway’ into the wilderness. At the same time the horses and chariots and men of Pharaoh’s army, spears and swords ever ready, enter the same path through the waters.
Moses promises them that they should hold fast. They will never again see these soldiers, these Egyptians ever again. God has delivered them and it is not for nothing.
God is gracious and faithful. The people then watch as Moses takes his staff and the waters, which were pulled back to create their path to freedom, are let free to fall back in their course. The horses, chariots, and men are swamped and drowned in the returning waters. They will never be seen again by anyone.
God keeps God’s promises.
Later they people will run out of water. They will complain and say that it would have been better to live full lives in slavery rather than die of thirst. God remains always gracious and faithful. Moses will strike a rock with his staff and water will flow from it, the people will drink their fill, and they will move further into the wilderness.
Then they will run out of food. They will complain and say that it would have been better to live full lives in slavery rather than die of thirst. God remains always gracious and faithful. Quail rain from the sky at night for them to eat meat. In the morning the dew will leave a thin layer of bread, enough for one day (or two if the next day is the Sabbath.)
Then, while Moses is up Mount Sinai, they will run out of patience. They will turn to Aaron, give him all their gold and the will worship the calf made from it. God has provided for them in every way, and God will not leave the people to die in the wilderness that day. God remains gracious and faith even when the people are not. Moses smashes the tablets that the ten commandments are written into. The golden calf is melted away. Moses will go up the mountain to get a second copy of the ten commandments. (It will take a bit more than a good photocopier or printer-scanner to produce them, inscribed in stone as they are.) When Moses will come back down, the people now will return to worship God, who is gracious. As a consequence not one of the people alive that day at Mt. Sinai will cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Their descendants will, but not them.
God is gracious and faithful and just.
So God is with us as we repeatedly complain and turn from worshipping God.
Freed from slavery to sin, we too often face challenges and think that we ought to return to be slaves of sin. God has other plans. Jesus continually forgives and renews us sinners so that we can also at the same time be God’s faithful people, the saints who share God’s grace with all people. We are the people who share the whole story of Jesus and his love, the old, old story. We are the people who do this only because God graciously makes us able, because God first loves us so that we can love all other people. Even our enemies who catch up to us just as we set foot in the freedom of the wilderness. It does not require much since we will never see them again;
God is faithful and gracious and just.
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
See now, I am for you; I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown.
Acts 17:28
We too are God’s offspring.
Matthew 20:1
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard
Words of Grace For Today
I always enjoy the biblical humour: the good news Ezekiel shares is that God is for the people, and they are compared to the dirt of the earth that is tilled and sown in order that something good will grow from it.
The people are, in this metaphor, nothing, just dirt to be trod upon … until God chooses to use them, to turn them over with the plow, to put something good into them that will grow, taking nutrients from their useless dirt, in order to produce food that will sustain others in life. And yet they, though useful to God’s project of providing food for others, and though God is with them, … they remain still dirt.
God turns to them, and they are tilled and sown.
So it is with us.
The dirt of the earth are we, and yet God uses us, tills us with the plow turning us over into something that lays bare the darkness of us, and then God puts good seeds in us, they grow, and food is produce for others, and we remain only dirt, the dirt of the earth. In this metaphor if we become or are and remain the salt of the earth, nothing will grow in us, and others will have no food. Best we are simply dirt, so that others may live.
This we are, the dirt of the earth. Still God claims us as offspring, as God’s own children. Is it really a jump to a completely different metaphor. Yes, but no not really.
God’s children are only something special and good for the rest of creation because God makes it so. God’s children are saints … only because God makes us saints. We remain stains on the face of creation, sinful stains, even as God makes us saints.
The real story is that out of such dirt and such stains God demonstrates everything about God’s love for us: God makes saints out of stains, out of sinners, out of dirty old dirt. That is God’s miraculous work, that God can make saints out of us.
It may seem humorous to be compared to dirt as Ezekiel pronounces God’s blessing of turning toward us, humorous for the unexpected impossible comparison … but then that is what God does all the time. God surprises us with the unexpected.
God blesses us and claims us as God’s own children … though we certainly do not deserve it.
Now what are we going to do with this unexpected blessing, this daily unexpected, life-giving, astounding blessing!? What else other than to share it with as many people, especially those the world would call unfit, unacceptable, incapable of being a blessing for anyone.
God calls for workers, to care for the vineyard, to bring in the harvest, and make the wine. That’s us, dirt, children, and workers.
In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
Acts 17:28
[God made then so that ]… they … search for God … though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For “In God we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are God’s offspring.”
Words of Grace For Today
Even the writer of the Acts came to know the truth, that God created us all and we thus search for God in our own ways.
Even so God needs not to be searched for, for God is not far from any one of us. For we in God we live and move and have our being; we are God’s offspring.
While the life of every living thing and breath is in God’s hands, that certainly does not mean that God protects our lives from destruction by those that would do us harm. Indeed we suffer great destruction from the evil one and from those that would advance themselves at other’s cost.
Our consolation is that God is never far from any of us. No matter how terrible it gets at the hands of our enemies we need not search for God, God is with us. No matter how difficult it becomes as resources, circumstances, friends, church, family, and even hope abandon us and we feel we are left isolated to die on our own in the wilderness, God walks with us. God provides everything to us that we need to live abundantly. This is not that we will have an abundance of anything in life, except that we will live with God’s abundant Grace, Mercy, and Blessings.
It can always get worse.
It never gets bad at all, since God is with us.
It is most terrible for those who work unjustly to do us harm, for they disconnect themselves from God, even as God is so near to them. By their own doing they walk alone in their self-made hell and terror.
For us every day is a day of peace, with ourselves, with God’s creation, and with God.
When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
1 John 3:17
How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Words of Grace For Today
Today’s world is in upheaval again and for sure still: Covid 19 has taken it’s toll on the world economy and specific countries’ economies, including ours.
Prices for food are up markedly. Prices for fuel are up markedly. Lumber prices are doubled and doubled and tripled again. Prices for goods, if you can find them, are up markedly. Saved money (not able to be out spending it) is burning holes in people’s pockets (not mine) so that demand is up, supply has been cut and the result is shortages and leaps in prices. Thems with lots of money can get what they want while the rest of us get less of what we need.
We do not remember being slaves.
We are still slaves …
slaves to global economies that drive us to behave in markedly unwell ways, unwell for ourselves and to the great detriment of so many other people alive on earth …
so much so that we must ask along with the writer of 1 John, How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? For we have, collectively well forgotten the Lord who would bring us up out of the house of slavery.
The measure of our forgetfulness is easy to see: how many poor among us live without even the basics of life to survive, yet alone flourish?
How we have forgotten the Lord,
for among us
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without clean water
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without nourishing food
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without sufficient clothing
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without housing or shelter
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without meaningful labour
so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without being able to love or be loved.
We have the means to provide for everyone in Canada, and for everyone in the whole world, but instead we have forgotten the Lord and we luxuriate in
an overabundance of clean water
good (and not so healthy but sweet and salty snack and luxury) food
huge multiple houses for only a few people (houses that could provide homes for ten times the people).
Our meaningless labours are left to others to sweat out their life long
and
love is made impossible by our demands on people, families, and even children who are not ‘our kind’.
We pray:
Lord help us to remember.
Lord help us to remember
the freedom you offer us each day, the slavery that encases us and makes us blind and deaf to other’s real needs, the gifts you have given us that we have not earned or deserved, our ability to and joy in sharing your gifts with those who need them most.
Free us from our blind prejudices and hate-based, made-up ‘faith’.
Free us from our gluttonous abuse of the earth’s resources that others’ need to survive.
Free us from our unfounded self-righteousness by which we condemn others.
Free us to live by giving life to others.
Lord help us to remember.
Lord help us to remember
You and Your works for us.
Lord help us to remember
Your bounty of gifts given to us as your provision for us as stewards, stewards charged with sharing them all with those most in need.
