I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
Acts 1:6-8
So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’
Words of Grace For Today
Oh, what assurance it gives to us this day, to be able to look forward with full trust that God will deal with all our oppressors and the oppressors of all people in all time!
Yet, we want God to act on our timetable, Now, please!
Or at least we want to know the time when God will act, so that we can fully trust God’s deliverance from our enemies who seek our death!
God provides no such time.
God provides a Promise.
God promises that we will receive power from the Holy Spirit.
God promises that we will be God’s witnesses, here at home, in the neighbouring countryside and countries, and to the ends of the earth!
That will require everything we are and have and can be – which is only possible as the Holy Spirit makes us able.
So we pray, discipline ourselves, and see and speak with God each day.
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’
1 John 5:14
This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
Words of Grace For Today
The greatest danger in life is fear, which drives us to instinctive responses, and schemes to secure our own lives and our own futures.
Seeking such security is a futile effort, and it always will be.
Only God can provide us such security.
What we can do is give every once of energy and life we have received in providing life abundant for other people, all other people, not just our chosen few!
Trusting that God hears our pleas, God abides in us, and we abide in the shadow of the Almighty brings us to live with a boldness that is the beginning of worshipping God, serving God, and loving all other people as God loves us.
We know where our refuge and my fortress is; God is with us, no matter what.
We can face every danger, every evil, every challenge with grace-filled hearts, breath to spare, and grateful generosity. We can be generous with all God has entrusted to us, as God is generous with us.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Colossians 2:2-3
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Words of Grace For Today
Here we find God’s truth. God is all powerful and to be feared more than anyone or anything else!
Without that fear there is no path to find knowledge, wisdom, truth. Without fear of God all our efforts will be bent, perverted, and misguided. Without fear of God our paths begin on a foundation that will shift and disappear out from underneath us.
Fear will not do it alone. The pseudo Paul who wrote Colossians (a disciple of Paul most likely) got this right. We need our hearts and minds encouraged and built up, united in love. With fear of God but without the love of God (bringing us to love God, all people, and all creation) we walk a dismal path where understanding is only partial, and that part is treacherous. Love brings us to understand life as God intends us to live it. Love enables us to move beyond understanding to contributing to God’s work in this world among us here and now.
The fear and love of God brings us to trust God with everything we are and have and can do. We begin to get glimpses of God’s mystery revealed in Jesus, the Christ.
We begin to live a life guided by true wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit for us at our baptisms.
That life is not a life of comfort. It is not a life of ease. It is not a life of capitulation to evil, or evil forces, or evil in others directed at us, or even to evil in ourselves.
This life is a difficult, seemingly chaotic (though by the Spirit very ordered), seemingly risky path that winds hither and yon. This is a life that gets us in to trouble, good trouble, trouble for Christ, trouble for the children, for the outcasts, for the poor, and for the condemned.
This is life, wisely lived life, life abundant, life blessed, and the life that God intends for us.
What are you waiting for?
The Son of God to come and give you directions, to die for you, and to be risen back to life thus conquering death and all evil for us?
He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Words of Grace For Today
Lord have mercy on us!
The people, led by Joshua, move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. They are going to take it, occupy it, and claim it as their God given right. They have something of a claim to some of the land, for this is where Abraham and Sarah raised first Ishmael and then Isaac, and their grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and after them the great grandchildren including Joseph. The 2nd generation of those who ran from Pharaoh’s slavery to be delivered into the Wilderness are all there is left, for those that were delivered from Pharaoh’s chariots and army through the Red Sea, turned against God at Sinai, made a godlet, an idol of their own gold in the form of a calf, and worshipped it.
Now, the story is told that God has subdued the ancient gods, shattered the forces of old, driven out the enemy before them and called on them to ‘Destroy.’
For the Love of God, how can we mess up God’s story for us so badly.
And then Luke continues in the same vein, for it is not a seldom embraced idea that somehow ‘we’ are good or at least ‘chosen’ and ‘blessed by God’ and they (or all others) are bad and not chosen and not blessed, and here as it reads are destroyed.
First off we ought to notice with open minds that the ancient gods are not subdued. They and their supports in force have risen up in the form of ‘new age’ religions.
Second off we ought to notice that God has not driven off the enemy before us. The enemy is still here, doing great damage to so many people. Further, the greatest enemy is not those that work against us; it is ourselves working against God who give power to evil from others and from within ourselves. We end up worshipping that ‘golden calf’ of our own making from our own ‘gold’. We turn from God as fast and thoroughly as any of God’s people ever have!
Third off we ought to notice that humans have used God as an excuse to ‘destroy’ since the beginning of time. The story of Jesus, the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love does not include destroying our enemies. It teaches us that we, like God does for us and all people, are called to love, forgive, and hope that God can save our enemies, as God has saved us.
Lastly we ought to notice that God’s mercy, in so much of Jesus’ story this is made blatantly obvious, extends not to just a chosen few, not to just those who fear and trust God, but to all people, even our worst enemies! God’s mercy extends to all people, from generation to generation.
Those who God has saved, as we are, received abundant life. That is not a life of comfort and abundance. It is life lived, no matter our circumstances, blessed with God’s truth, with God’s Promise, and with the call to extend Grace and life abundant to as many people as we possibly can in our ‘3 score, ten’ that we breathe.
Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
Luke 17:21
Nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.
Words of Grace For Today
As the slings and arrows fly at us, we are desperate for God to save us, not only from the things piercing the air so near us, some not passing us by. We need to be saved from ourselves. One only needs to recognize how we have dealt with the beauty of creation around, in and among us to know that we really do screw things up good. Or bad as it were.
So we require God’s salvation, and we cry ‘Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love,’for it is not on our own merit that we can possibly hope God will redeem us. We need God’s grace provided to us; we are solely dependent on God’s steadfast love as the reason God would save us.
So God provides all we need.
Further we need not look. We need not seek somewhere else. For the kingdom of God is here among us!
Great that it is, a life dependent on God’s Grace, on God’s steadfast love only.
…
until we collectively and individually screw it up so royally again and the slings and arrows of others’ misplaced anger start piercing the air around and toward us.
So we cry to God to save us
…
again and again we repeat this, and God, for the sake only of God’s steadfast love, continues to save us.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
Luke 12:22-24
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!’
Words of Grace For Today
I am not sure about this:
You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
We humans have a way of ‘desiring’ so much more no matter how much we have.
Further the birds, bees, and beasts, and not to forget the fish, struggle under the effects of our ‘possessing the land’, ‘dominating it’, and destroying ecosystems that have taken millions of years to establish!
So?
The truth is God created the world quite capable of sustaining all the life created on it, satisfying the desire of every living thing. God promises to provide for the needs those desires are given to life of all kinds, in order that all life can continue on God’s good earth.
That includes our desires that God gave us so that we could continue to live among all the life on this planet.
How did we screw it up so badly!?!
Well, God loved us, wanted us to be able to love, which means we need to be able to choose to love or not, and …
Well so much of the time we humans have chosen, do choose, and forever will choose to do other than love! Youch, what a price!
We are destroying what provides us the ability to live on earth! It’ll take us maybe 100 or so, maybe only 25 or 5 years, to unmake the earth capable of sustaining life, something God created in 6 days, or millions of years measured in our time.
What power we have … to destroy!
And what power we have, as well, to love, when we so choose. Choosing to love is possible, for any one, for every one, of us … though only as God makes us able.
The beginning of God making us able is to promise that God values us greatly. Knowing that we can choose to act responsibly and responsively to that unconditional, life-giving and life-renewing love!
God willing and ‘the creek not rising’ (maybe it ought to be ‘the oceans not rising’) we may still live on planet earth in 1000 years and more!
God’s Word started this all. God’s Word sustains us all. Certainly God’s Word is able to bring us to that miracle of miracles.
So what are we going to do today, with God’s love?
Rise up, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you.
Luke 14:21
So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”
Words of Grace For Today
The travails of life are great, and there are plenty who contribute unjustly to ours and others’ travails. As we suffer and wonder where the next morning will take us, and what greater suffering will fall upon us.
How can it be that we would other than pray with all our heart, Rise up, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you.
It is not that God does not hear our pleas. God answers with something we may have forgotten to expect. God calls the most unfit to feast at the table with us … including our enemies.
We may wish those who cause us, many other people, and the children great suffering God’s judgment, so that the injustice will stop.
Doch God is not so to be distracted from reaching out to the most needy, our enemies among them, who need time … time to recognize Grace through people’s response to them … time to realize God has forgiven them, and offered them renewed life … and time for the amendment of life.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Acts 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
Words of Grace For Today
Sometimes, unfortunately not always, when a child is born the parents and others hold such hope for the child. They wish the best, the greatest, the most for this child. They hope this child will become an amazing human.
Sometimes this hope for the child becomes something more. It can become something ugly, destructive, and evil. It can become that the parent or others take the life of the child and try to force the child to become what they hope the child will become.
It can also become something beautiful, life-giving, and blessed. It can become that the community sees the individual, respects her/him, and gives everything they have to allow the child to grow into a full human, a sinner and a saint.
Being a parent is a great and marvellous honour and responsibility. Sometimes that responsibility creates so much fear a parent does not parent. Sometimes a parent completely ignores the responsibilities and the child suffers immeasurably.
Sometimes that responsibility is met with new found maturity, and both the parent and the child grow to know God’s blessings. The first of those blessings is the daily (re-) discovery that one cannot do it on one’s own. One needs family, church and community to help out. Even that is not enough, not ever and one learns to trust that God will walk with us parents, guiding us, forgiving us, loving us, and renewing us, so that we can be that example for our children.
Then, every so often a child is born, and the weight of all the hopes and dreams of a community, a people, a planet rest on that infant’s shoulders even before the child is able to talk. There is no lack of need for saviours for the people and for the planet. Today is no exception! History records many times a saviour was needed, and almost as many times that the people saw a saviour come their way, a few times it was a child. Very seldom the saviour actually was able to save the people.
Jesus arrives, the Isaiah passage is repeated this time apply to Jesus, and all the hopes and dreams land on the infant in the manger. This child does grow to be a saviour, one for all people of all time, and for all creation!
What we’ve made of Jesus is always an interesting reflection on the us. In Acts Luke reflects that Jesus came to bring peace. Except Jesus says ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew 10.34)
This leaves us with much to learn from Jesus’ story. We are never done learning from it. So we need to hear the familiar old, old story of Jesus and his love. When we think we are so familiar with the story, or parts of it, that is when we need to hear the story again and again, told simply, clearly, gracefully … so that we do not ‘self-correct’ the story we remember into something foreign to Jesus’ story.
I took you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.’
Romans 11:1
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
Words of Grace For Today
The history is that God chose the Israelites, only the Israelites. Everyone else was unchosen and unclean. This we humans do to make ourselves special: we claim that we are chosen and all others are not. This does not make us special. It makes us typically self-centric, arrogant, and judgmental.
When Paul was converted after Saul went blind on the road to Damascus, he studied for years, held himself in retreat from activity. He underwent a profound change, from an effective, eager, persistent pursuer and persecutor of Christians, to a leading proponent of Jesus’ Way of living, i.e. by Grace.
Paul did not restrict sharing the Good News, which he encountered as Jesus’ Way of being God’s people, with just the traditionally ‘chosen’, the Israelites. Paul went out to share the Good News with anyone and everyone who would listen and wanted to be baptized in this Way of living.
That brought the obvious question: were the Jews wrong to claim God had chosen them, or had God changed God’s mind and rejected those God had earlier ‘chosen’?
Paul’s answer is simple: No. God’ choosing people is expanded, not ended. The Jews are still chosen, as are all other people who Christ calls to follow his Way.
History repeats itself. Many times God’s people have declared that only they are God’s chosen. As many times God’s message comes to bear on the mess this exclusive claim creates: God’s chosen are chosen, DOCH God does not choose only some people. God chooses all people.
Our human way of living does not make sense of this very well, if at all.
It does not need to. God still chooses all people and offers them abundant life. Not life in abundance (of wealth, things, etc.), but life filled to overflowing with blessings and the ability to share those blessings with others, all others.
God gathers us from the ends of the earth, from all corners of creation, claims us as God’s servants, does not cast us off, and sends us out to share the Good News. (Like Paul.)
There shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light.
1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Words of Grace For Today
North and South of the 60th parallels the continuous day is well known in the summer, though it is matched by continuous night in the winter.
As fierce as the winter cold, wind, and dark can be, this is not the darkness that we need to take heed of and can well fear.
That darkness is the darkness that envelops our souls, convincing us that we are nothing, nothing at all and that we need to make our own way in the world, that we need to make something of ourselves, that we are alone, and that life must be gained at other’s expense.
This darkness is the Devil’s darkness.
This is the darkness that robs it’s victims and their victims of life abundant.
This is the darkness that convinces us that reality is not God’s creation, but some twist, some perversion, some Godless experience that we can make up as we wish or as we feel we must.
This is the darkness that teaches that there is no Truth, only relative experiences which give us at best subjective truths.
This darkness is like the wind that swept through my camp, shifting supports and tarps. The light of day shows that it is a wonder that it all did not come tumbling down in a pile of tarp and supports, rolled together like child’s playdo, taking me with it.
The light of day allows me to make repairs, and to be thankful that in the light of days past I put things together with extra support, and a 2nd layer of extra support, and a 3rd, not unlike the Trinity: One God, yet three persons, together working wonders for us, in us, and for all others.
In the light we can see and anticipate what might come upon us like thieves or wind in the dark of night, and we can prepare.
We can prepare our hearts, inviting God to dwell in us, resigning ourselves to our constant need for God’s Grace and Forgiveness, and practising God’s Grace and Forgiveness for all others.
Then we live each day, trusting that God walks with us no matter what comes our way, for we know, as Kathleen Thomerson wrote for us: We want to walk as children of the Light. We want to follow Jesus. God set the stars to give light to the world. The star of our lives is Jesus.
In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus.
