In the snow, in the wind, in the rain, under these skies …
Is God Coming
Down this Road
For me,
For us,
For all the young men
who die senseless deaths
at the hands of police?
Psalm 98:9
The Lord is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
Matthew 24:14
And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.
Words of Grace For Today
Protests and Police using tear gas killed one of my son’s long time friends.
It helps to read that the Lord is coming …
to judge the earth, to judge with righteousness (finally)
and equity.
George Floyd
did nothing to deserve to have a policeman kneel on his neck for 9 minutes while he struggled to breathe and stay alive, a struggle he lost.
.
This explodes into protest at this time because Covid 19 restrictions are not fair, not equitable. The poor are hit the hardest, many struggling anyway to find enough food each day, and now, if they go out for food, they face curfews, police harassment and arrest, incarceration and almost sure infection. Rich people are often not even inconvenienced, or bother to change the pattern of their lives.
This is not equitable.
Being poor is rarely the person’s fault. Being rich is rarely due to honest hard work.
Being black … being a young man …
none of this is a fault. Yet this brings fear that minority mothers teach their sons to be aware of, and to fear this irrational hatred, lest hatred of them would cost them their lives. Even then, too often, just breathing and being (themselves) alive, unjustly costs them their lives because someone with a police uniform and a heart full of hate takes it from them.
Where is equity in all this?
This is racism, misandry, and out of control hatred.
.
Protesting is the least one can do, to support those who live in fear everyday, for the hope that one day they might not have reason to live in daily fear for their lives.
I have a dream!
Do you!?!
What are we to say when protesting peacefully is responded to with police tear gassing the protesters, even when they claim they have not used tear gas. They use pepper bomblets, which even they designate as tear gas!
Tear gas.
And it kills, sometimes.
Yet the police still use it!
Then they refuse to allow those affected by their tear gas to retrieve a handbag to get their asthma puffer …
And another innocent protester dies at the hands of the police ….
.
Thank God, that God will come!
God will come to judge with equity!
Helps us.
Help us be as God created us to be, bearers and witnesses to the Peace that surpasses all understanding
tip of the hat to St. Patrick and his Breastplate Prayer (see below)
Mist and Mysteries
Caught in the Mists
of Mystery, Doubt, and Threats,
We Invoke
The Trinity, 3in1
As I arise from the healing mists of rest, to face the mountains, mysteries and doubts in the morning light and the Devil’s wiles, I pray:
by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit,
Lord, protect me from all dangers that would be my undoing.
As the saints before me faced these same battles, help me persevere giving God the Glory, even under threat of death.
Help me remember all that God has given us: the Goodness of Creation, the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles, and more to revive my weary spirit and sagging strength.
Jesus came to tell God’s story most plainly: God is always for us, claiming us, forgiving us at great cost, sending us out to share the story of Jesus’ Grace, God’s Love and the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing together people of all kinds.
Seeing the wonders of creation that the last centuries of progress have laid to waste, I still affirm: God wants this all to be GOOD again, including all that I do.
Yet, the Devil would have me filled with fear.
Name the fears of this day:
Fear of a virus called Covid 19.
Fear of being alone and forgotten.
Fear of deadly and destructive riots hijacked from peaceful protests against police abuses (as if God does not treasure young black and young First Nations’ men as much as us!)
Fear of police power and martial law abused.
Doch!
God, you have promised again and again I do not need to be afraid!
Christ sent the Holy Spirit, the mysterious, powerful fire of God, to envelop, motivate, and protect me:
up, down,
to the left, to the right,
in front of me, and behind me
(making sure I am not lazy in the calling Christ sends me to!)
As I arise from the healing mists of rest, to face the mountains, mysteries and doubts in the morning light and the Devil’s wiles, I pray:
by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit,
Lord, protect me from all dangers that would be my undoing.
Now as I raise my hands from the bed, make them work for Christ.
As I put my feet to the floor, make them move for Christ.
As I warm up my voice to speak, use my voice to proclaim the power of the Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, Holy Maker and Guide.
Amen
…
..
.
St Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer Information
These words came to us as part of a collection, published in 1903, of hymns found in two old manuscripts. With this hymn/prayer were these words: Saint Patrick sang this when an ambush was laid against his coming by Loegaire, that he might not go to Tara to sow the faith. And then it appeared before those lying in ambush that [Saint Patrick and his monks] were wild deer with a fawn following them. [‘Wild deer’ can also mean they were hidden in a thick mist, something well-known in Ireland.] see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick’s_Breastplate
St Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity.
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism.
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection met with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightening,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
.
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
.
I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
.
Christ with me,
Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
Matthew 7:7
‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
Words of Grace For Today
When instructing new skiers, it is important to teach them to fall first, then to ski. Falling is inevitable, especially as one learns, and for most skiers always. It is also important to teach them to focus on what they want to do, and where they want to go … not on what they do not want to do and where they do not want to go, like into a tree, other people, and obstructions of any kind.
God created us able to love, and therefore also able to choose (otherwise it is not love since an essential part of love is one’s choice to love). Choice means there is something other than love to choose, which is hate, which is sin and evil.
That is a simple explanation, though helpful when we get frustrated that evil persists all around us.
God wants us to remember and focus on choosing the Goodness of life that God makes possible for us in creation. To accomplish this God turns away from evildoers (that part of each of us, not a ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ who supposedly do no evil), so that our memory of evil is cut off from all the earth going forward.
That starts with forgiveness.
God forgives us so that we deal with our sins:make confession and restitution … and then move on, focusing on the Goodness of creation, instead of focusing on our sins. Likewise God makes us then able to forgive others, so that we and they can move to focus on Goodness, instead of their sin and the evil it reflects and creates in the world.
Jesus sends us out to tell Jesus’ story, of forgiveness bought and paid for at huge cost to God. That story focuses us on what is Good in creation, and helps us minimize evil’s role.
While evil is eradicated from memory (or a good start towards that is made) Jesus assures us that the Holy Spirit is with us. When we need, desire, or hope for something, Jesus encourages us to ask, seek, and knock; The Holy Spirit will help us receive all that is given to us, find all that God has made for us, and the doors that lead to an abundant life in God’s creation will open to us.
Ask, it will be given; seek, you will find; knock, the door will open: all this does not apply to asking for, seeking out, and knocking at the door of evil. Thank God. What a mess we would make of the world … of course we’ve done just that anyway.
God gives us blessed things overflowing, to help us choose to leave evil alone to die on the vine.
Like a virus that will not go away, we remain infected with the desire for other than love, i.e. evil; thankfully God continually transforms us into saints, so that we can also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, embrace the Goodness of creation.
Ask to see beauty where you are, you will see it.
Seek out the wonders of God’s creation, and you will find them.
Knock on the door behind which blessings overflow, and that door will open with an outpouring of blessings flooding your life.
Thanks be to God.
Take that Covid 19.
By being respectful and kind to others we can choose the goodness of life without this virus infecting us, and through us others.
Mayor Nenshi, of Calgary, said on CBC: Don’t act like someone who doesn’t want to get sick. Act like someone who already has the virus and doesn’t want to spread it.
Act like everyone you come into contact with is your favourite 90 year old grandmother.
Remember clean hands, clear heads, open hearts, stay safe, be kind always!
Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one.
Matthew 10:27
What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.
Words of Grace For Today
Whistle blowers are not generally well received or liked by others. People simply do not like to have their nefarious activities exposed to the light of the public’s scrutiny … and possibly to face criminal charges for crimes committed.
Investigative reporters put everything on the line to search out sources, for stories that people of power may not want to have published, and which usually some people of ordinary living desperately need to have published, so that things can be set right for them, at least somewhat.
We do not need to work investigating to get the story we live to tell. Jesus story is an old, old story. We can hear it in many different voices and settings.
The story has been told since the days of old.
Jesus tells us to tell the story again. And again.
And again!
We are God’s witnesses to other people that God sent Jesus to save us from our sins, to give us new life, and to show us we no longer need to scapegoat or gaslight others in order to gain peace for ourselves.
The Holy Spirit brings us peace. We reside in it, abide in it, and when we sojourn, it stays with us. It is as permanent with us as the cross on our foreheads at baptism that never goes away. Claimed as God’s children we need not fear anything.
Not a virus, not anything.
Which does not mean that we are stupid about protecting ourselves and others from the virus as so many people are, walking as close to others as is convenient, breathing on others without further thought, and loudly telling everyone that there is no virus here!
When we are not afraid, then we can be wise about protecting ourselves and those we live with from the virus. The recommended precautions are just a beginning. We are ever vigilant … and always we pray, God protect us, for you alone are God, the rock of our living, the rock of our salvation.
Hannah prayed and said, ‘My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.
1 Peter 1:8
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
Words of Grace For Today
It is sometimes much easier than at other times to give God praise. We stand in awe of Hannah, though, because her heart exalts in the Lord at a most unlikely time. Her victory is nothing small. It is what Jewish women (or so we are told by tradition, fuelled by the need to increase in number in a sparsely populated earth!) in her day saw as God blessing them, that is to have a child demonstrated God blessed them. To be barren was the opposite. Societal expectations aside, Hannah has prayed for a child, has given birth to one, a son, who they name Samuel. So far so good!
Before Hannah sings her praise of victory, she has prayed with such fervour that Eli thought she were drunk. Now! now she gives up this child, her only child to Eli that he may be raised as a Nazirite! Hannah sings to God of her victory as she loses what she has prayed for: her child.
I’ve had children and raised them as the at home dad, long before that was common at all. I cannot imagine giving up one of my children. I was forced to, due no fault of my own, but as part of being terribly gaslit. It was and still is one of the most painful losses I have ever suffered. Those responsible, who are mentally ill, I have forgiven. But others, people of position and power, authority and responsibility who do this repeatedly, routinely, as a matter of course, and then cover it up … these people I cannot forgive, and I have bound their sins – God must deal with them, judge them, expose their sins that they cover up so well, and then move on as if they have done nothing wrong. I have learned of a corruption that I never thought could exist except in history books. My response is to remember everything, and pray to God every day. Every day I practice who I am and whose I am, so that I neither forget the gaslighting nor God’s gifts of beauty, joy and love that remain in my life, despite the Gaslighters’ efforts to ruin everything in me and in my life. I give God praise each day, but not for the loss of my children, or the gaslighting that was done to accomplish it.
Hannah gives up her only child willingly! and then sings God’s praises! She does give up Samuel to live with Eli and to be raised to serve God. She trust her son to God’s care and service. Samuel will become more than he ever imagined.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves us to be more than we imagined we could ever be. Too often the Devil invites us to be more malicious and destructive than we ever imagined we could be.
We pray again today that no matter the stress of Covid 19 or anything else in our lives, we will respond to the Holy Spirit working in us, and not the Devil working against us all.
Balaam replied to the servants of Balak, ‘Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God, to do less or more.’
2 Corinthians 2:17
For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence.
Words of Grace For Today
Human history is fouled with people using God’s name as a commodity, peddling it for sale, no matter the consequences. Or using it as a hammer to shame, condemn and control others. Or as a means to power.
The world today is built on globalized capitalism. Poor people living in conditions no human should have to endure, put their labour (time and energy and life-force) into the hands of wealthy multinational corporations to produce goods that rich people like us buy at great prices (for us), with the corporations taking more money from our purchase by far than the labourers receive for making the goods.
Everything can be bought and sold for a price. Leonard Cohen wrote that the Holy-Dove is bought and sold again. And while his poetry-words seem to refer to the process of Peace being sold and bought and sacrificed and sold and bought again, it is an image that applies to all that is good in life. Capitalism brings [in-]stability, false security, and irreverent comfort to a few people, while the great majority are kept in poverty, so as to be available for cheap labour, and so as not to consume what the few consider their zero-summed resources that support their comfortable, privileged lives.
It is not hard to write, read, or talk about the injustices in the economic systems of any age. It is dangerous to actually live so as to bring about a bit more justice, a little less injustice in one’s short time on earth.
Balaam speaks clearly to Balak (through his servants): Balaam is not for sale. God’s Word is not for sale. Balaam will not go against God’s Word, no matter the price paid by Balak. Telling power that it is corrupt and one does not and will not participate in that corruption is a good way to meet one’s maker more quickly, with a shorter sojourn on this earth than God may have made available to one otherwise.
Pastor Brian Rude, in El Salvador, reported that they are able to secure food for a few days. You think that your life is complicated a bit by Covid 19 restrictions. There most of the people do not have a secure food supply. They have no food supply, or water supply, or health care at all. Each day they need to venture out to find food, in the city, in the countryside. Most often water and food is there to be found, maybe … maybe enough to not die of starvation or illness from malnutrition. With Covid 19 if you venture out to secure food and water the police arrest you and place you in a quarantined area, which is more a prison than anything else, and the disease and death rates are astronomical. It’s a death sentence, slowly implemented.
What are your Covid 19 restrictions like? How are you coping? Do you have water and food enough, and the ability to secure more when you need them? Do you have the ability to worship as you choose? Do you have people who value you, whom you value, with whom you can speak freely, even if you cannot gather with them, cannot exchange hugs and handshakes, and cannot participate in food preparation and meals together?
Count your daily blessings!
Every challenge that we face (the real ones) is better met when one comes to each day thankful. A grateful heart and mind function better.
And as you meet others who are struggling, remember that you can be in much worse circumstances. The change can come as quickly as a day or less.
So be kind. You may be dependent on others’ kindness much sooner than you ever thought possible.
If you are one who cannot be kind, rather you are compelled to compete for as much as you can get and always demand more than you already have… if you are a greedy, covetous, dangerous, cruel person … well pray that you learn sooner than later, and before it is too late … that we are all in this together.
We are in this Covid 19 pandemic together. We are sojourning on earth as God’s people together.
What you do does come right around to you.
If you think that life is all zero-summed, then eventually that is all you will encounter, after you have ruined so many people it is impossible to count how many. And whether you get ‘enough’ of everyone else’s ‘share’ of what is available in goods, there will be no goodness in life left for you.
If you are kind and sacrificially generous with all that God has given into your care as a steward, then life will continue to be a blessing, and even if/when you do not have enough, or the vagaries of life catch you and you meet your Maker earlier than needed to have been: well every minute of your life will be an ever increasing overflowing abundance of gratitude and generosity. That is what life is about, that is what makes life good and worthwhile. The amount of goods you have and consume is not the measure of your worth, nor of the goodness of your life. Giving (and forgiving) to those in need is the measure of our worth before God.
One who stands in God’s presence, who with sincerity speaks God’s Word for others, will know first how to humbling fear and love God before anything else.
Pray that you are that person who is grateful and generous, and not the person who is greedy and covetous.
Covid 19 makes our choices to be blessed to be a blessing, OR
The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.
Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Words of Grace For Today
Conformity to the world’s standards is required of anyone who wishes to prosper in the manners and methods of the world. Those standards change some from one millennium to the next, though their similarities are greater than their differences.
Human pride, greed, and coveting remain the same. The temptation to create or be one’s own God remains the same. The pursuits of this world work consistently on a zero sum game assumption. That is every generation assumes that there are going to be only so much whatever for everyone to enjoy, so the purpose of life becomes to ensure one gets more than others … by taking it from others.
God looks at us all (in each generation), to see if there are any of us who are wise. Is there anyone who understands the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, gracious generosity is the key to profound happiness, and giving, sacrificing, and sharing bring greater blessings than taking, competition, and hoarding for oneself.
A man insisted he be able to take all his wealth with him to heaven. He converted it all into gold and platinum. He was positive he’d won the competition that life is, he had more than anyone he knew. They buried him with enough gold and platinum to feed his whole country and all the neighbouring ones for a decade.
When he arrived St. Peter told him to leave the gold and platinum behind so he could be shown his room. He insisted he be able to bring it along. St. Peter laughed and let him pull the four carts that held just a small portion of it. Angels pushed the other 100 carts.
They stepped out onto the sidewalks made of platinum, and walked across the street of gold. Others stopped to gawk at the man hauling all those paving stones passed piles of it where the streets and sidewalks were being repaired.
The man insisted on pushing on, but as soon as he was out of sight of the others to save face, he asked St. Peter if he could leave it at the construction site they were passing. St. Pete nodded, ‘That’s why we took this longer route. Don’t worry though, everyone already knows about your paving stones. It’s time to learn somethings about God’s Kingdom. Are you ready to finally learn the basics?’
What paving stone foolishness do we each pursue daily?
But God is reflected even in the weeds of Creation
Psalms 5:4
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you.
Ephesians 6:18
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
Words of Grace For Today
God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
God is merciful and gracious.
God delights in forgiving and receiving home the sinner.
God delights not in wickedness. Evil does not travel to stay temporarily with God.
Evil, and we are that when we sin, tend to run from God. We do not travel to stay with God even temporarily. We want to hide from God’s view, God’s judgment, and our shame.
God though stays with us, no matter where we go. Evil does not stay with God, because God forgives it and transforms it, by the sacrifice of Jesus and through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Evil in God’s presence is transformed so that the evil is eradicated and God’s good creation abides with God.
That is really good news. It’s exactly as if God stayed with us when we venture out to places with people we are not supposed to be near, and we spread Covid 19 and are silent about where we’ve been so others are infect unawares, until there is another outbreak with no known source.
Except God’s presence eradicates the virus from us and from everyone else that would have been infected. And all is well, not because we’ve done the right things, but because God works for us in all things.
Except God does not eradicate Covid 19 or any other disease, contaminant, or destructive organisms that we can encounter in the world. God is with us, and suffers with us. God gives us eternal life starting the day we are baptized, but God does not make life free of danger for us.
God does send the Holy Spirit to guide us, inspire us, and to light a fire (under us, mostly).
Therefore each day we can pray as the Holy Spirit moves us, for all the other saints struggling, and all others, so that God will also transform their lives to be lives of purpose reflecting Christ’s sacrifice to bring life to so many.
(where the cows ate for years, when this was a barn yard.)
Forgiveness is not needed for perfectly good people (they don’t exist!)
Forgiveness is needed for the rest of us, every last one of us!
Psalms 130:4
But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.
Colossians 3:13
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Words of Grace For Today
Rulers and people seeking power have long since used condemnation and fear to control people, with marginal success to surprisingly good success.
God is different. God seeks our respect through forgiving us, being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
One may (incorrectly) think that God works more on the carrot approach, and less on the rod approach. God goes in a considerably different direction, in fact in the opposite direction from both carrot and rod. Instead of motivating us to do the thing that God wants us to do, with either a reward (the carrot) or with threat of punishment (the rod) what God does requires that we take a step back from ‘trying to motivate’ others to do what we want them to do, and realize God approaches ‘motivating us’ to do what God wants completely differently.
God realizes that the matter of getting us to do what we were created to do is not at all getting us to recognized what we must do, then to choose to do it, and to follow through when the going gets tough.
God shows us with Jesus’ story that no human is capable on our own of recognizing, choosing or following through with what is right.
The problem is that we cannot do what is right, well enough, to make it right. When we fear condemnation and shame for failing, we do even worse things, fooling ourselves into thinking the good is something it is not, just so we can do it, or that we’ve done a good thing, when we’ve at best messed around with good just a bit too much to leave it good.
We need a permanent fix, a re-creation, a new start, total redemption, and total freedom … again and again and again and ….
God does not trifle with us. God inspires us through the work of the Holy Spirit in us to accomplish pieces of goodness, in spite of ourselves. Thank God or everything would be ruined by us!
Covid 19 is just another challenge that forces us to pause. It is a tremendous opportunity to see what we really are like when we cannot cover ourselves with consuming, owning, travelling …. You name it, we’ve used it to run from the reality of our lives.
Now, with much of that taken from us, we’re left to deal with more of the actual reality of our lives … as God’s creatures.
We can now as much as ever revere God, for God forgives us and sets us free from our sins to move into each new moment of time as God’s forgiven saints.
God equips us by Jesus’ example to forgive … ourselves, and to forgive others, freely, unconditionally, and repeatedly.
Thanks be to God, there is so much to do, so much forgiveness to do, especially for ourselves, our enemies, and the stranger who seeks refuge among us.
That’s why being kind is the beginning of every good day. If one is kind, it’s easier to move to forgiveness from kindness than any other attitude when forgiveness is required (and it always is or will be shortly.)
This photo somehow ended up in a folder it had no business being in.
Why? Don’t know.
Like us, when we are lost, though God claims us, we need to be put back online where we belong.
Being on track doesn’t make us God’s children, being God’s children gets us back on track, sometimes.
Deuteronomy 11:26-28
Moses said, “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.”
Colossians 3:24-25
Since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality.
Words of Grace For Today
Blessing for obedience. Curse for disobedience. Payback for doing wrong. Serving in order to gain an inheritance.
All of this is religious language of coercion; a well organized chorus of controlling others.
It frames life as nothing more than doing what is right and being rewarded; or doing what is wrong and being punished. This is the thought of a two year old, dressed up to look like an adult’s thinking. It is the most common thought pattern applied in most every situation and from nearly all perspectives. It is still childish and falls short of the reality of life as God created us to live it. It is the perversion of the Devil that takes something profoundly good and turns it just a few degrees and lets it loose on us, until down the road we are light years away from the goal God has set for our life on earth: to give God glory in all we do, bringing abundant life to the poor, disadvantaged, and outcasts; and bringing a life of God’s meaning and worthy purpose to the wealthy, privileged and powerful.
Before we get too far along uncovering this devilish perversion of life’s meaning, let us affirm that there is a blessing and a curse in obedience or disobedience. Obeying God does bring blessings to others (rarely to ourselves), and disobeying brings curses to others ( most often to ourselves as well.)
The reality of God’s creation is that God rewards us with an inheritance as God’s own adopted children, and therefore we serve Christ. The direction of causation between our behaviour and God’s rewards correctly stated is simple. Because God acts, rewarding us with blessings, therefore we serve and obey.
The devilish perversion is to think and live as if we act either obeying and serving or disobeying then on the basis of our thoughts and actions God either rewards us with blessings or punishes us with curses.
It is a childish approach to life to think and live as if one’s actions determined God’s blessings and curses. On first blush we might well wish that our thoughts and actions had such influence on God’s response to us. An honest appraisal of human history and our own experiences lays bare the reality that we can never do enough things well enough to please God, or event o accomplish something profoundly good enough to actually FIX a problem the world faces. Every good thing we do is tainted by incompleteness and unintended disastrous consequences … and sinful motivations and results.
It does not matter how hard or diligently we try, or how much self -disciplined we apply to our attempts, one just has to read the honest words written by good thinkers to realize … every human attempt to FIX a problem is a failure. Self-discipline and self improvement is only a mad dash from one hot issue slightly tamed to the next hot issue, only to have a host of previously tames issues raise their hot little heads as major impediments to our living well.
The project of being good enough in life is a futile chasing of one’s tail to no good end, or worse to the destruction of one’s self and many others.
If our actions determined God’s response to us, there would be no hope for us at all! Thank God our actions do not determine God’s response to us!
An old pastor spoke up at a cigar smoke filled room with Scotch glasses set next to the second deck of cards: Looking back at my ministry I pray mostly that I have not harmed anyone.
Relatively young (in my 40’s) at the time I thought it was an odd prayer. Why not pray that the good one did would actually bear fruit in a cascading style through many generations?
Now I understand all too well. Life is really not about how much good we can accomplish, if one is (trying to be) a good and kind person. Doing Good is wholly dependent upon God working in and through us, so that we get good things done almost by accident (actually its by the Holy Spirit ‘accidentally’ getting good things out of us.) Not doing intentional harm to others is something that is much more in the realm of our possible control. The old pastor’s prayer though deals with the unintentional harm one can hardly avoid doing, and from which only God can save us and those whom we have offered ministry to and still harmed.
The true project of human life is simple: to Give God Glory, by
1. confessing one needs saving, cannot save oneself, and God has through Jesus’ sacrifice redeemed us and set us free to …
2. sacrifice what may be seen as ‘our‘ ‘rights’ and ‘possessions’, so that others will experience through us Christ’s redemption of them, and God’s love that holds the universe together.
The world thinks reality is: IF we x, THEN God y.
God’s reality is this:
BECAUSE God blesses us, THEREFORE we can offer ourselves as servants who joyfully obey God’s commandments, loving God with all our heart, mind and strength: particularly obeying Jesus’ command to love our neighbour as ourselves, and even our enemy.
There is great blessing in obeying God, it is that God gets more done through us for others. There is great curse in disobeying God, and it is that we have failed to recognize the blessing God has already given us.
The challenges of Covid 19 intensify the need for us to see reality clearly, to trust God’s Blessings, and to listen to creation groaning under and rebelling because of our disobedience to God’s commands to love and protect all of creation, as stewards which God has made us to be.
