Category: Choose

To Die, To Live … To Live Free

Monday, September 20, 2021

After the Autumn of Our Lives

(at whatever age this occurs for us)

When We No Longer Live for Ourselves,

We are Free to Live and Love for Christ!

Psalm 118:17

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Words of Grace For Today

Audrey had always had to fight to get anything. At home it was her two older brothers who made sure she had as little as they could arrange, including by stealing things from her and plain taking from her what they wanted, which was anything she showed that she treasured. She looked out for number one, and only number one. By the time high school came around she’d perfected her methods of manipulating, lying, and cheating for whatever she wanted. She had excellent grades, some of them she had even sort of earned. Most of them where given to her by teachers who were afraid of what she would report them for. She’d already laid waste to one teacher’s career and personal life with rumours of sexually abusing her.

When it came to dating she made sure she dated the boys she wanted to, and most of them were hardly aware of the trouble she’d gone to. University was a fools game for her, passing with grades she hardly earned, ruining any instructor who gave her anything less than a B+. Then she met Jacques, and for a few minutes one might have thought her ways would change. She even went to seminary to fit in with his family of pastors, a powerhouse in the church for generations. Jacques finished his degrees a year before she was done, and she could not be bothered to stay in seminary another year. Every one was too kind, naive to how the world worked. The most she got from any of them was fear or out right condemnation for her way of making it through at everyone else’s cost.

Through all her middle age adulthood she continued, as a respected (and feared) member of Jacques’s powerful family. Jacques’s kindness helped to cover up her rather crude and cruel ways of getting what she wanted. Anyone who knew her well, knew she would readily say she was ‘going to hell’ for this or that latest caper she’d pulled off at someone else’s expense. No one disagreed with her; that would be to put oneself in her sights and she never missed. The thing she never seemed to understand was that people were also sure that God had no room for Audrey, at least there was no evidence of it in her life.

In her late adult years she came down with cancer. She fought hard to survive. Most people thought she’d finally gotten what she deserved and could not cheat her way out of. When she lived a few wise, kind and gracious people said that God had given her another chance at life. They meant that God had given her a chance to see how to life life with grace, kindness and unconditional love. Most people who did not know of Audrey’s dark side sympathized with her; here was a cancer survivor after all. Audrey had, it seemed a new lease on life. The kind, gracious and faithful people saw she really did have a chance of learning something new for her: how to be honest and kind.

When a posting came vacant and the congregation could not get a pastor (since they ran through them like horsemen with swords), she volunteered. The bishop, having no other options to offer the troubled and destructive congregation, appointed her as lay pastor. People marvelled at the mysterious ways that God works, Audrey serving as a pastor in a congregation. There could hardly be someone with a life time more antithetical to Christ’s work. Still it was impossible to say anything about Audrey’s past; sympathy ran too wide for her. The congregation fell in love with Audrey, she knew exactly how to win their loyalty. It was the dirty work of destroying men that she jumped into with gusto, and soon the matriarch had what she’d thought she’d wanted for decades: a congregation run by women.

Those that looked on from the outside marvelled at how successful Audrey was as a pastor. Those who knew how she operated, those who knew her before and people that just met her, saw that her ways had a new face, but her heart was all about destroying other people in order to get her way.

Then Jacques came down if a terrible, painful, and incurable disease. Kind, gracious, faithful people saw that God offered Audrey great hardship, and also yet another chance to rest in God’s grace.

This surrender, of one’s own enjoyment of life, in order to give other’s life (the opposite of how Audrey had lived) is what Paul describes in today’s verse: It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

There is no other more poignant manner to describe this than to realize one faces death, head on. And one survives, but one’s life is not one’s own anymore. One’s own life, in large strokes and in the finest details, has become God’s life given to one to live as Christ calls us to live:

filled with truth, kindness, grace and unconditional, self-sacrificing love.

This life then is not our story, it is not that we live to be our own story. Instead we live to tell (with everything in our lives – thoughts, words, and deeds) of God’s great deeds, to tell Jesus’ story, and to tell the stories of the saints who have gone before us … so that the next generations will learn the stories, and learn to live them, and live them well.

There is in this new life lived as not one’s own, the greatest freedom and peace … as God intended us to live.

Shine, Baby Shine!

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Sunrise

Promises

…

Numbers 6:25

The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.

John 20:21

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’

Words of Grace For Today

Waking to -2⁰, the first freeze of the autumn, was anticipated eagerly … until it followed a day of chilly, blustery wind and rain that tore at everything with a dogged vengeance soaking even the best protections against such moisture.

It’s great to freeze. Part of the great of it is, is that wet disappears as water freezes into snow and ice and frost, all which can be removed with either effort or with preparation to avoid their accumulation where they are not wanted, like covers at night keeping frost off the solar panels.

This morning, the Aaronic blessing that: God will make God’s face shine on me, is more than welcome. It is desperately needed. Bring on the sun. Give me a few more days to get the insulated tarps in place, the ropes to hold them, the tape to seal them, so that (after the yearly repairs are completed) that monster in the insulated tarp shelter can be fed once again all the wood it wants, just as long as it produces HEAT, DRY HEAT!

In the chill of this morning, I am reminded, as seems needed so nearly every morning, that the challenges and pains of each morning are signs of being alive in the world that requires labour of me in order that I survive – all part of engaging as a creature in God’s good creation – and …

that the challenges and pains of each morning are not to be given too much due, for the reality is that this IS God’s good creation, that God walks with me, and that this is a holy hermitage, made so by God’s choice to put me here to see it as the place of beauty, wonder, and majesty that it is (all clear indications that God is here in each moment and through each change of season)

and thus

that the challenges and pains of each morning, in the context of God’s many blessings, are also signs of God’s peace, and Christ’s call; that Christ has sent me also here, circuitous and curious as the weaving way has been to arrive, and knowing this is only another (one of many) blessed waypoint on the path home.

May the Lord bless us and keep us; the Lord make God’s face to shine upon us, and be gracious to us; the Lord lift up God’s countenance upon us, and give us peace.

May the shine of the Son and the sun reach our hearts this day, that we may be saints through whom the light of Christ reaches many, many people, bringing God’s unconditional love, amazing grace and unparalleled peace.

Ferocious Winds Or God’s Blessings

Friday, September 17, 2021

The Night Before

The Storm

…

Provides Promises of Blessings

To Come

Psalm 103:22

Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Luke 13:29

Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Cold autumn rains fell, ferocious through the night, and then steady with only a light wind pushing them across the horizon. Still the winds, with wet furry, had torn apart Tina’s camp.

It took the morning to patch up most of the damage, and set her mind busy with plans, imagined and then reworked and reworked, to brunt the blast of damaging winds. Ideal would be a solid wall, though that was not possible. Perhaps some kind of wall made of the available recycled items collected in the past summer from garbage which she was allowed to pick and choose from.

There was no protection possible from the ferocious winds of false rumours that people used as excuses to ignore, deprive, and outright attack her. There was no wall to be built. Only God’s grace kept her safe, protected, alive, and filled with awe and hope.

There are works of humans that are impressive in their majesty, though where humans excel is in their ability to destroy each other. Arnold had tapped into this method of getting ahead when he was still young, informing on his family to the secret police. It had brought him apparent success even as he watched his family disintegrate before his teenage eyes. He’d gone on to become a multimillionaire on the backs of many people. Tina was only one of many left in his wake of destruction. The police had used this corrupt power to bring false charges against Tina. The courts had used this power of destruction to falsely convicting her. It seemed as if there would be no end. But their destructive power, if not already, soon will come full circle to rest in their lives again and again, leaving them each and all desperate for relief, for rescue, and for salvation. Only God knows if they will be brought to an end by their own destruction, or whether God will redeem them and claim them as saints. So it is will all who use the destructive power at which humans excel so well to construct their lives of deceit and greed.

God’s kingdom is constructed differently, without the need for walls to protect oneself from the ugly blasts of destructive deceptions and schemes to gain advantage at other’s cost. God’s kingdom is built on God’s works of mercy, steadfast love, and wonder. There are no words, actions, or direct assaults which can diminish God’s works. God’s mercy is forever, God’s steadfast love is unfailing, and God’s wonders are unassailable and omnipresent.

Here people from all lands, east, west, north, and south gather together to feast under God’s protection that cannot be compromised. Together they give testimonies, true and wondrous, of God’s great works through which God has blessed all people.

Cold autumn rains fell, ferocious through the night, and then steady with only a light wind pushing them across the horizon. Nothing in God’s kingdom was changed one iota, and Tina feasted in solitude with the hermit saints of all times, with the people of the earth from all places and all times. As God blessed Tina, and all the saints of all time, together with Tina they all blessed God with thanks.

For all that is, comes from God, and all is well, all is well, all manner of things are well.

It’s All for the Birds (and Us)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Creation and All In It

Is God’s Gifts

For Us All!

Psalm 36:7

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Matthew 6:26

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Words of Grace For Today

Take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, giving great respite from the bugs, the heat, and the huge influx of 2-legged animals in the wilderness (only some who are dangerous or greatly destructive to the land, scarring it with tire ruts, garbage strewn about, feces and toilet paper in the woods, and all sorts of materials half burned in the fire circles that sterilize the soil beneath and pollute the air above) …

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, we breathe easier.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, great flocks of geese of 100s and 1000s, make a distant chorus, moving in V’s for days to traverse 1000s of miles from the waters of the north to the temperate winters in the south.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, birds of prey, great hawks, owls, and bald eagles screech high as they circle for hours seeking their prey. Song birds like my neighbours the robins spend all hours out in the meadow hunting worms and bugs for food.

Whether autumn sets firmly in on the land or not, in all seasons and times, one has to wonder about these words of Jesus. For as God provides for the birds without their sowing or reaping into barns, first: their lives seem to be wholly directed toward finding food and avoiding being food; second: there are and were also in Jesus day so many people who neither sow nor reap and they worry most about what they will eat and what they will wear, for their choices are so many it is only as ignorant shame that they indulge such luxury as most of the world suffers without enough food, clothing, shelter … and now fresh water and clean air, yet alone meaningful work and people to love and be loved by.

The point is clear from Jesus’ words: our attention and concern should be less on all the required labour needed to survive (or luxuriate in over abundance.) Our attention and concern is better spent on understanding the mystery, freedom and peace that is available to us when we, our lives long, learn to seek refuge, meaning, and purpose in God’s steadfast love. For there, comforted, protected, and challenged, we can see life with clarity.

What we see with clarity is that our lives were designed by God and given to each of us by God in order that we can extend God’s steadfast love to others.

We simply cannot do that if our primary concern is providing for ourselves, for then we turn inward and bend reality from God’s great creation to our own insatiable appetites. We become instead of caretakers of creation, destroyers of creation. We become incapable of seeing others as Christ sees them: broken people in need of God’s love.

God help us when we make that turn away from God’s steadfast love as our only sure refuge.

Thank God, God always calls us, welcomes us, and renews us so that we can return to God (… home in God’s kingdom to be the ones who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people) so that we can take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation. … home in God’s kingdom we are the saints who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people.

Mercy, Mercy! How Can We Be Bored?

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

The Tree

The Same Tree

The Same Old Tree

How Can Beauty

Or

Being Merciful

Ever Be Boring?

Psalm 41:2

The Lord protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. The Lord does not give them up to the will of their enemies.

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday’s headline was “Trouble in the Prairies as surgeries postponed in Alberta, Saskatchewan due to COVID’s hospital burden.”

For weeks now the reports are that the large majority of those people burdening the hospitals with their Covid crises are those that have chosen not to be vaccinated. Meanwhile there are protests against vaccine passports required in order to gain access to events that are perhaps safe, but not if unvaccinated people attend. They put both themselves and others at great risk of being infected, the transmission rates go up (or rather wild) as vaccinated people also spread the virus, and the hospitals are overburdened. The results are catastrophic for so many people. Those with Covid in hospital suffer and die or more likely suffer for years from long Covid (further burdening the health care system). The overburdened hospitals push ‘elective’ surgeries off to an unknown future time, and those they do not result in immediate death, many postponements do contribute to more severe suffering and then earlier death.

The real tragedy is that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated, they are (because of those over 12 who choose not to be vaccinated) infected in greater numbers, and their suffering and death – and the fear of suffering and death – increase dramatically, a fear shared by their families and friends.

One has to ask why we do not gather those who choose to go un-vaccinated, line them up, and shoot them …

the first thought is with lead,

but mercy would dictate that we use needles and vaccinations,

and then many of us realize that we ought only shoot them

…

with a camera, post their photos on the internet, and let the chips fall as they may.

And

there ought to be a Canada-wide mandate that Covid vaccination passports must be established by all provinces and territories, and those without passports or exemptions due to health be barred from gatherings or services or business that they could not access during the height of Covid 19 lockdowns.

We probably will do nothing like that, for the political fallout would be great, where as the political fallout for doing nothing (and refusing to accept scientific guidance) seems to be less (and in some parties it seems to win political support – for fools are in no shortage.)

In these Covid times, we do not need a personal enemy to have our lives put at great risk. The Covidiots are doing that with great efficacy to us all.

So we trust that God protects us and keeps us alive. We know that God does not give us up to the will of our enemies, therefore we are called happy in the land.

No matter the Covid fools that endanger us all. No matter the personal enemies that attack us based on lies told about us to cover the liars’ own terrible sins. No matter the real likelihood that, even vaccinated we will be infected and suffer long Covid in some form or another. No matter how poor health care becomes because the system is overburdened by Covidiots’ and their victims, both intentional and unintentional. No matter the real fear we suffer that our children will contract Covid and suffer or die.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God walks with us.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God is always merciful with us, and God enables and motivates us to be merciful to all other people.

We have many challenging days ahead (only some of it is responding to Covidiots) never leaving us an excuse to be at all bored. Thanks be to God!

Lord, Save Us From Aerosols & Idiots

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Forests Start With Seedlings

Each Spring Growing New Leaves.

So We Start as Children,

And Protect and Nurture Children,

Or

We Have No Future.

Psalm 10:14

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief, that you may take it into your hands; the helpless commit themselves to you; you have been the helper of the orphan.

Mark 9:22

It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.

Words of Grace For Today

When I hear this ‘cast him into the fire and into the water [that place where uncreation bubbles up to border on and at times consume creation], to destroy him’ I think of the guy yesterday who jumped in front of me. The corner of No Frills where the milk coolers are was congested with at least 6 different people. So I stood a good 2 metres short of the pack, waiting patiently for them to move on. A few were visiting so it took a while. That’s when the guy came up from behind me and wedged his way less than a foot from me past me and another customer waiting to get at the cooler. The guy was an obese bear of a middle aged man. He quickly worked his way to the coolers, but then dwaddled getting his milk jug as if they had been moved since the last time, as if he could not find the right shelf of 2% which is always all the shelves behind door 2. Then he peered into the coolers dwiddling in the corner a few extra minutes before finally leaving.

I paused a bit, not too long, considering the other customers waiting politely behind me. When I stepped into the corner to door 1 to get skim milk it was clear the jerk had dwiddled to leave the air filled with flatus expelled through the anus, an aerosol that could be full of Covid virus.

The news is all full of Covid 19 fourth wave in Canada, fuelled by the Delta variant and 39 times more infecting the unvaccinated, though vulnerable (otherwise health compromised – read old or ill or young) vaccinated are still among those in hospital, ICU, and the morgue.

This jerk’s antics are a clear demonstration how aerosols hang in the air, filled with Covid virus, waiting to be breathed in, and how impossible it is to avoid doing so, except by staying in total seclusion … without milk.

The passage from Mark is not about this at all, of course. Covid 19 did not exist when Mark wrote his account of Jesus’ ministry. This passage is about the ‘demon’ who inhabits a young boy, which casts him into fire and water to destroy him.

Taken with the Psalm one could point to our work done to help alleviate the trouble and grief of the helpless and of the orphan. This is the work of the saints. Our courts commit themselves to taking the ‘best interests of the children’ as the first priority in family court … though they certainly do not! Quite the opposite. The courts commonly sacrifice children to be raised by the most dangerous of possible parents (most favoured are birth mothers, no matter the indications that the birth mother is a clear and present danger to the children!) Apparently the courts want more clients (criminals) in the next generations, which is the result of these dangerous parents’ parenting.

So with our prayers and our work as God’s voice, hands, and feet we say, “have pity on us and help us” You are the one who can take our trouble and grief into your hands. Do so now, for among the most vulnerable are the children (who cannot be vaccinated yet at all!)

Our future is at risk. There are so many idiots, jerks, antiscience idiots, anti-vac idiots and covidiots abundant enough to put us all at risk, to put the vulnerable at risk, to put our children and our future at risk.

You, Oh Lord, are the only one who can take our trouble and our grief into your hands, and heal us of these idiots and their destruction of life and future.

Run or Fight … … Or Be At Home?

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Even as the Evenings

Turn Blood Red into the Dark,

God With Us is a promise of an evening of great delight!

All is Well, All is Well , All Manner of things are Well.

Isaiah 52:12

For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard.

John 14:3

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many reasons to run.

There are many reasons to run away.

There are many reasons to run for one’s life …

and to run fast, as fast as one can run.

When God promises to be with us, the reasons to run do not disappear, though we can be a whole lot less stressed, and have a whole lot less panic in us that rises into our throats, which panic leaves us only a choice to fight, flee, or freeze.

Instead when God promises to be with us, when God promises to be our rearguard, we can think clearly, without haste, for we can trust that God leads us in paths of righteousness.

When everything goes belly up, when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, we can trust that God has our backs. More than that we can be assured that when it seems that God leaves us, in fact God prepares a place for us, a place to call home, where God’s plan for us is always sure, even when we lose track of how God is with us.

Home, with God at our side, before us, behind us, promising to walk every step with us. Home, where our hearts are loved unconditionally by God.

Then, we can be at home where God brings us. No one can chase us away, and our enemies will be dealt with by God. We walk calmly through every hour, knowing that justice will be done by God. No lies, no deceit, no gaslighting, no false reports, no false arrests, no false testimony, no false convictions, no cover up. God sees everything, knows everything. For God a lie is seen and always remains a lie. For God the truth is always known and it always remains the truth.

Home, safe in God’s hands. Home where truth and beauty bring breath and life no matter the challenge. Home. Home in the wondrous creation God created for us to enjoy. Home safe and sound. Home where no one can chase us away and no evil can rule over us. Home.

It does not get better.

Through the Night of Sin and Evil …

Monday, September 6, 2021

The Only Way to Face the Reality of Sin

Ours, Our Ancestors’, and Our Enemies’

Is to Trust the Light of the World

To Guide Us To Share God’s Grace

With All People

Psalm 106:6

Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.

Titus 2:14

He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shame in admitting one’s own sins, and the sins of one’s ancestors.

To face reality, especially the dark reality of one’s own sins is not easy or common or even possible …

unless first one know that God has, even before time, known we and our ancestors would sin, and God has not ever abandoned us to our sin. God has planned even before time how God would respond to our sins by redeeming us with God’s own son’s life as the model of how to live: sacrificing in order to unconditionally love those least deserving of love, in order that they will know God’s generous and gracious forgiveness.

So we have the story of Jesus, living as one of us, giving his life to teach, heal and guide and in the end to offer himself to be crucified, so that we would see that we need not sacrifice people, we need not scapegoat people, we need not work (futilely and destructively) to free ourselves; God has done all that is required.

We have the story of Jesus’ love for all people, especially the outcasts, the ill and ‘ill-fated’, those forced into and captive to poverty, the corrupt, the arrogant, and even the unjust.

We receive renewed life so that we can be the instruments of Jesus love for those in our time and place.

Thanks be to God, for though we are wretched sinners all, we are God-made saints, called to bring God’s justice and grace to bear on the world we live in.

Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Look Up

and Rejoice

For God Is Ready

to Bless Us Each Day

With Simple Wisdom

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Philippians 1:9-10a

This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.

Words of Grace For Today

Each day we make choices of how to proceed through our day.

Sometimes our choices are simple: Do I kill the ant crawling on the window? Yes. Do I kill the wasp buzzing around my head? No. Do I share food with the young camper who, for some reason, camps for months and has no way to provide for himself, except an relative who shows up occasionally (or not) with supports of various kinds? Yes. Do I mow the grass to keep the mosquitoes down? Yes.

Sometimes our choices are more complicated: Do I help the yelling young parent with a screaming child running around the grocery store? Maybe yes. That can be a situation where a moment’s intervention can break the stress for both parent and child and allow them both to proceed in a better space. But maybe no. Intervening in a family situation may be taken the wrong way and all the pent up anger can be focused on the person who intervenes, either immediately or at some later date. Do I sign a mortgage to buy property even though I know my job is not secure for the length of the mortgage? Maybe yes, since my family needs a home. Maybe no, because we may have a home for only a year or so before we lose it and then we will have even less resources for a home. Given that pressure do I take the management job offered with another company that pays much better, but has a reputation for skirting the law and abusing it’s employees? I need the money, but do I want to become one who abuses employees?

Sometimes our choices appear to be simple but they turn out to have consequences that we did not see, either good or bad. What are we to do?

Paul, writing one of his most loving and affectionate letters (to the church in Philippi) prays for them: This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.

We would wish this for ourselves, and for other people.

This wisdom is a God given gift. It is not handed out in a day, but grows over a lifetime of living wisely, and that life begins with the fear of the Lord, As the psalmist wrote in many and various ways: Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Help us God, we pray each day, to fear and love you that we may be blessed with the wisdom which guides us to choose the best for all people in each of our choices we make.

Truth and Grace, Or Terror

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

You can lie all you want.

You can blame everyone else for your sins.

You can say it’s winter

or that there is no wasp nest in the trees

But

That will come back to sting you soon enough!

God’s Grace and Truth Always Win Out In the End!

Psalm 69:14

Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.

John 16:23

On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Words of Grace For Today

Arnold sat with his head in his hands, wondering how it had come to such an impossible state. Determined to make everything out of his life that he could, he had lied, cheated, manipulated people, used people and always kept people at a distance, so they could not see what he was really like.

He’d driven his first wife to kill herself, making sure that she made all the right decisions, and if she made a wrong decision, he stepped in to make sure she changed her mind, until she made the right decision at the right time (when two life insurance policies overlapped by two weeks) to kill herself. That made things difficult taking care of the children, and he scrambled to make things work at his wife’s store, at work, and getting someone to take care of things at home. The payoff was worth it though as the community chipped in with money, lots of money, and great sympathy and support, never suspecting that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

When the insurance companies paid out he was a millionaire. Within a year he was out of debt with mortgages paid off, business debts paid completely, and he was clearing $30k a month after all expenses. Life was great, except the volunteers for the children decided to stop helping out. He’d come home after the kids were in bed, a long hard process for the volunteers, and once too often while the volunteer was still there, woken the kids and let them run free in the house and outside.

Newly arrived in town and unaware of the previous volunteers’ work and troubles, Tina volunteered to help with the kids. He eagerly accepted her help, and started the process of winning her away from her husband. It worked and within a few months she was living with him, taking care of the children, and helping out in so many ways. Her help at home and soon at the store meant he could focus on making money at the store. When she changed her life insurance policy to name him as the beneficiary, he seized the opportunity he’d been preparing for; he drove her to kill herself. Except she did not die. It was nothing but trouble after that. A second suicide attempt was almost always successful, but no matter what he did he could not get her to try again.

So he’d set her up for criminal charges, lied to the community, the church and the police. He coerced his kids to lie as well, making Tina out to be a sexual predator, even though he was the one sleeping with the kids and having sex with them. He lied in court, the lawyers lied, even Tina’s lawyers helped set her up to be convicted. When that was not enough to be able to convict Tina, the judges lied about what was in the court record in order to convict her. She went to jail for months. She came out and was homeless. Still she just would not move away or die.

Now her sentence was completed and people were asking what really happened. If the truth came to light, Arnold could go to jail for years, lose the store, the home, and the kids. He would be homeless. All the sympathy the community and church had given him through the years would be replaced with anger at him for his lying to them. He’d be ostracized and ruined. There would be no recovery. His friends and sex partners would desert him. He would be alone.

How had it come to this?

Arnold kept blaming others, looking for someone else, someone new to blame, anyone to blame. Deep down he knew he’d been lying to himself all his life and now people were going to find out.

Tina, homeless, captive in poverty she’d never get out of, living alone, but blessed in so many ways prayed in Jesus name Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Save me from the lies of my enemies, (for there were so many supposedly respectable people including the pastor and church leaders who had lied for and along with Arnold), let the beauty of life be visible and available to me everyday.

Tina trusted Jesus’ words: Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. It was clear God was providing an abundant life for Tina.

Arnold still thought he could make his own life, and in so believing he cut himself off from God’s blessings. No matter how much money he had, he would always suffer the terror jags that completely disabled him for minutes to hours. He would always dread being found out. The only thing that could set him free was the truth, but he had run from the truth his whole life. He was still running as hard as he could. The only thing that could turn him around was God’s grace, and Arnold insisted on making his own way, with his own money, and with his lies.

…

We pray: God help us know your truth and grace, that we too may pray in your name to be delivered from our enemies, that we not sink in the mire of deceit and greed, and that we can be your beloved people sharing your grace with all people.