Choose – Page 12

Faith That Fights for Life!

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Living the Life of Faith

in the Light

the Faith to Which We Are Called

And for Which We Are Created.

Isaiah 51:7

Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.

1 Timothy 6:12

Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Words of Grace For Today

To fight.

To fight usually involves things like fists, rifles, drones and bombs.

Or at least it usually involves scheming, manoeuvring, ruining the other, driving them out of here into exile, leaving them homeless and landless, or setting them up to die an early death.

To fight.

To fight the good fight of the faith to which we are called …

well that is an entirely different kind of fight.

It is a battle again evil.

It is a battle against evil first of all in ourselves, and then in those around us.

It is a battle that we can barely begin to fight … unless ….

Unless God brings us to be holy…

holy saints,

holy saints equipped to bring Grace to bear on condemnation, bold forgiveness to douse reproach and destorying, kindness to undo all violence, and truth to outshine all deceits.

This is the battle of the universe, of which God created us, for which God created us, not that we might die in the battle or bear the burden of the war, doch …

doch (rather) that we might be vessels carrying hearts transformed to know God’s presence with us, God’s righteousness permeating us, no matter what may come.

Shine, Jesus Shine.

Otherwise it is so dark in here!

Shine, with all the candle power the universe has ever known,

Shine in this darkness, and transform those who would destory and destroy us.

Shine, Jesus, Shine!

Sing, Children of God, Sing!

Let there be Light, and let there be jubilation, in every corner of creation, in every darkness of evil, and in every heart.

God’s Compassion

Sunday, February 6, 2022

To Whom Among the ‘lords’

God Will Extend Compassion

Is Not For Us to Say or Know.

Ours is, amid the darkness, to bask in

The Golden Light of Christ.

Micah 5:3

Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

Matthew 9:36

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Words of Grace For Today

The great masses of humanity have always lived subjected to those with power and the ability to lord it over them. There’s never been a shortage of those lining up to take on the place of power and privilege and comfort … and lording it over others to have all that.

Jesus, God’s story of God’s amazing unconditional love for all people -especially the poor and the outcasts – sees the crowds gathered to hear the Good News that he preaches, the healing that he administers and he knows their plight.

God has walked with God’s people in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes. God knows everything. God knows the plight of the great majority of humans who have ever lived. God knows the corruption of those who lord it over them. God has, seemingly, abandoned God’s people at many and various times to the clutches of those oppressing, persecuting, and driving masses into poverty. God has always walked, into those times of apparent abandonment, with God’s people. And God has walked God’s people out of those times as well.

God sends the Law, the Prophets, and the Good Shepherd to guide the people out of those times that are like hell. Today God continues to send God-made saints to walk with people in all circumstances, to help them reconnect with the promises of God and to live (even in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes) abundantly. So it is when we live aware that God walks with us.

There is nothing in life that is more blessed, more secure, and more rich than God’s presence and God’s promises that we, too, shall once again walk among God’s people, no longer shunned and falsely accused, but exonerated and honoured.

And those who lord it over others, driving them to poverty, into oppression, into persecution and out into exile homeless … those who lord it over others and live in comfort will face God’s judgment. Whether they too will receive God’s Grace is not for us to say. It is God’s will, which will be done. For now the ‘lords’ breathe only as a gift from God, giving them time for the amendment of life.

For the rest of us, God has compassion and demonstrates it day after day, in the simplest and most profound ways.

Thanks be to God.

Promises, Happiness and Things Hoped For

Saturday, February 5, 2022

God Does Not Promise

A Smooth, Paved Path

On Our Journey.

Only that God Walks with Us.

Psalm 33:12

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

Galatians 4:6-7

Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Words of Grace For Today

Promises.

Promises provide for a future.

Promises from God provide for a blessed future … and happiness.

God chooses us and we become children, heirs of a kingdom like no other. We are chosen, made holy and sent out into the world with the inheritance that all envy and few would if they understood it fully.

The inheritance we receive is to be servants. To serve God. To serve God’s creation and all of God’s creatures, all people.

No great glory in that. It is ascending to … well ascending to the lowest among the lowest on earth.

That is the heritage that the children of God inherit.

Welcome to the children of God, promised great blessings, and sent out to share the Good News that transforms lives and all creation … but

it does not give us power, wealth, renown, comfort, security, or … well almost anything else that we humans would list as what we desire to have in life … except we are guaranteed God’s unconditional love and the huge challenge of sharing it with everyone, even those who least deserve it (especially them.)

Promises.

Promises provide for a future.

Promises from God provide for a blessed future … and happiness.

What more can we hope for?

Let the Humble Hear and Be Glad!

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

A Beautiful Morning!?

A Bleepping Cold Morning?!?

A Wonderful Day!

Another Gift From God!

Psalm 34:2

My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Words of Grace For Today

We all seem to have something that we want to be proud of, that we want to be recognized and respected for. Some of us even have skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts that we could be very proud of and that other people could recognize as good contributions to God’s good creation …

except.

Except our skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts … in fact our everything about us … are gifts given to us by God.

Each day, even when the temperatures drop below -44⁰, we always have great cause to give God thanks, to rejoice in all that life is for us, and to pray …

to pray for what seems to be missing or lacking or challenging us beyond our imagination and our perceived abilities.

Often we might pray the wonderful quote from Mother Teresa: I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. … But

But it was never Mother Teresa who said it. It’s a false attribution. So

So are we going to pray it. Probably not.

God gives us the abilities to handle as much as we can, and the truth that all humble and honest people know is that life can quite often throw up in one’s path more for us to handle than be can deal with.

Exactly then we learn our limits and …

we learn that giving God thanks, rejoicing, and praying constantly ARE things we can always do.

Well, that rejoicing part maybe not, or at least not with any exuberance when we lose those we love or we lose more of life than we thought we ever could and still stay alive. There’s grief. It’s real. It excludes the ability to rejoice. Most grief has a half life, but it can just as easily rejuvenate itself into our lives with no warning. That’s grief.

Grief and all kinds of suffering keep us humble, and teach us to pray also in our most desperate times.

What humble people can do and do perhaps better than the proud, is listen … listen to God’s Word and promises, and trust them. As God frees us to hear we live renewed and we can be glad … no matter what life puts in our way forward in time.

Root … Taking Root

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Taking the Route

to the Root

of Life

and

Putting Down Roots

(Even in Winter)

Brings Us to the Light of the World,

Christ.

2 Kings 19:30

The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards.

Romans 11:16

If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

Words of Grace For Today

Taking root.

That’s the event that connects us to whom God created us to be.

Taking root.

That’s the event that revives us, renews us.

Taking root.

That’s the event that requires forgiveness,

offered to those who would destroy us, and

accepted for all the sin that we ourselves have actually done.

Taking root.

That’s the event in which God shows us again that we are holy because we are connected to all that is holy in God’s good creation.

Taking root.

That’s the event that leads to us bearing fruit, good fruit.

Sliding Off Into the Devil’s Doo-doo.

Monday, January 31, 2022

On the Bright side:

There’s no grass to mow

mosquitoes to suffer

or wasps to interrupt one’s being outside.

No Matter the Season

The Devil’s always got enough doo-doo waiting.

Jeremiah 3:22

Return, O faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness. ‘Here we come to you; for you are the Lord our God.

1 Peter 2:25

For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

The first kilometre out is a drive through the woods, which never gets plowed.

The tracks have, with the heavy snowfall onto which another foot is falling now, driven on many times over, have been packed down, while the snow across the rest of the trail remains relatively soft snow. Where the loose snow to be removed it would become obvious that the tracks are elevated above the rest of the trail … and when the temperatures rose to near and above freezing the tracks of hard packed snow turned to slippery snow or ice … and driving on the tracks became nearly impossible. The vehicle keeps slipping off into the foot to two feet deep snow that’s not been shovelled away, and beside the trail the snow has accumulated to 3 feet deep in places.

High on the tracks all is fine, but slipping down into the soft snow puts progress to a sudden halt.

Sheep go astray. Vehicles slide off the tracks. People slip on the Devil’s temptations into trouble, deep trouble, and life comes to a grinding halt … or not. Sometimes deep in the Devil’s temptations and trouble we keep living on blithely to the damage we do to ourselves and others around us, pleased as we are that even if we are caught in the Devil’s doo-doo, others are worse off than us (because we’ve put them there!)

God promises, I will heal your faithlessness.

God brings us back to the Good Shepherd and the guardian of our souls.

Thanks be to God.

Now what are we going to do with this renewed life? More wallowing in the Devil’s doo-doo, or work as the God-made saints God equips us to be?

It’s not easy doing God’s Will. It’s also not easy shovelling out a kilometre of tracks built up into hard packed snow ridges, crusty snow between and deep fluffy snow to each side. I trust that God will help immensely. It will take me about 2 months before I could possibly complete the task and by then God will have sent a bit of spring to melt away the snow … and the water will turn the tracks to mush. A whole other challenge made worse by the packed snow left on the trail.

It’s not easy doing what is right, but it is still right to do it. So off I go with a shovel as often and as long as my body will allow.

What are you going to do today with the life God renewed in you?

God’s Temple

Saturday, January 29, 2022

As Wonders Abound,

None Are More Wondrous

Than the Holy Temple,

The Holy Vessels

God Made Us To Be.

Ezekiel 37:23

They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

1 Corinthians 3:16

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Words of Grace For Today

There are innumerable examples of how we have perverted life into something that is a zero-sum game, and we’ve taken it for all we can, mostly from others, as if that were our right. Some have perverted the image they have of themselves into an image of a godlet, and excluded God from their lives (as if that were possible anyway.) Others have turned themselves to pursue [fill in any thing, or pleasure, or position, or wealth, or … ] as if attaining enough of it would fill their lives, and all sorts of perverse things happen to them and the people around them because of their pursuits.

God simply created us with freewill, and we make a mess of it, a terrible mess of it, we certainly do, we do.

God does not leave us there, in the damnable places and conditions we create for ourselves. God comes, as demonstrated in Jesus’ story, to cleanse us, and to restore us as God’s people … so that we once again can be people who fear and love God above all else. We see again that God is with us always, that God has poured God’s Spirit into us, made us vessels that hold the holy of holies, so that we can be and do God’s generous, unconditional, love and grace for all people.

You, and I, and each person, are/am/is a holy temple; and our treatment of ourselves and of others as holy is properly warranted.

God don’t make no junk.

God just makes all things blessed, and us, God made holy.

Get used to it.

Be it, with gratitude.

Correction or God’s Wrath!

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

When We Skew Our Perspective On God’s Creation,

Taking Correction is Welcomed

even if it chaffs.

…

God’s Wrath

though

takes all perspective and vision and life

away from us

in all time.

Jeremiah 10:24

Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure; not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing.

1 Thessalonians 5:9

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need no correction from God or anyone else for that matter. They are wrong, but there is little to be done for them. They sit in positions of power, like judges and bishops, archbishops can cardinals, who are pretty hard, if not impossible, to provide any correction to. They get away with bullying, abuses beyond imagination, and making light dark, sweet bitter, and life death. They have no fear … of anyone, especially not God.

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need every correction available from God or anyone else for that matter. They live humble lives, fearing and loving God, and loving other people, praying that God will have saved them (like that pastor about to retire who expressed his greatest concern to his colleagues over a game of cards and scotch – I was so young and did not understand then – ) ‘from having hurt anyone!’

God’s wrath directed at any part of creation, at any person or any people rips that part of creation with unimaginable agony out of creation. God’s wrath completely unmakes it/them, uncreates it/them, separates it/them from every having existed.

We pray we will never know God’s wrath!

God’s wrath is perhaps well directed towards those who will take no correction.

God promises are that God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this promise we live, in fear of God, overwhelmed with love for God and all God’s creation and all God’s people.

It’s a good life, though we know we always need correction, and pray that God’s correction will come in ways that will not destroy us, for we breathe, and work, and pray, and struggle, and love, and hope … as God-made saints and simultaneously as sinner still.

And we pray each day that we will, above all, not hurt anyone, and, knowing that we have and cannot help but still hurt others, we pray for forgiveness each morning, noon and night.

Night Vision Always

Monday, January 24, 2022

No Matter How Darkness Arrives

in Our Lives,

God Sees Clearly

and Guides Us to Live Well!

Psalm 139:11-12

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Luke 4:40

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

Words of Grace For Today

God knows we know what it is like

to have darkness overtake us,

and

to have the light disappear on us while we progress through our work that requires light to finish.

We are thankful that for God there is no darkness that is dark. For God the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

God does not need night vision googles to deal with what we experience as darkness, for even as the sun sets, and even as we succumb to illness God sees clearly what we need to be healthy. God sees perfectly, and

through the gifts of the Holy Spirit,

God gives us sight to see what is hidden by the darkness of sin and evil, and to be the ones who bring Christ’ balm to heal any who [are] sick with various kinds of diseases.

So we can rest assured, even as the darkness grows around us and envelops us, that God sees all that we need to live, and to live abundant lives.

Pray and Sing as Long as …

Sunday, January 23, 2022

no matter what path lays ahead

no matter what path is behind

…

We pray and we sing as long as …

Psalm 104:33

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

James 5:13

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.

Words of Grace For Today

Life is full of surprises.

Surprises that are good, and surprises that are bad.

Whatever life brings to us this day, we know that God claims us, forgives us, renews us, and sends us back into all that life is to be God-made saints, though we always remain sinners.

So we sing, and sing, and sing and dance giving God praise and thanks for all of life.

While we suffer, for there is no shortage of that in our lives as well, we pray, and pray, and pray to God, asking for deliverance, for forbearance, for endurance, and for hope … so that we can continue through the dark days as blessed God-made saints, to emerge into the light of life and joy and contentment … for all is from God,

so we sing and pray as long as we have being in this life,

and in the end we will return to God, still blessed as always, to live eternally with all the saints in light.

…

As for today … bring what may we are ready with our songs and our prayers … and the gifts God gives us to bring God’s Grace to bear on so many people’s lives.

It’s a wonderful life.