This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.
Romans 12:12
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Words of Grace For Today
There are lots of complaints floating about, people tired of Covid19 restrictions, and generally people stressed out about life’s little challenges.
Those of us who know who we are (God’s people saved even though we are miserable sinners) know that our cries are heard by God and that God saves us – and there is in all things great cause to trust God’s promises, to remain firm in hope (and resilience), to not be overwhelmed by suffering, and to persevere in prayer.
It is a life of gratitude no matter what comes our way.
It’s so much better than a life of bitching, complaining and draining goodwill from the people around us.
So why do we continually chose to complain about other people and their stupidities?
God helps us remember that we too can be the ones doing stupid things, and are each new day.
Which keeps God active saving us from ourselves,
For which we can, instead of complaining, be ultimately grateful.
What a life, filled with opportunities to be saved and to be grateful!
See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of adversity.
Luke 6:22-23
Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
Words of Grace For Today
This life may be terrible and even horrendous, but it will be all right in heaven, so this is all right, too, right?
What doesn’t kill you, makes you strong, right?
Too often these rather stupid simplifications of valid ideas are used as excuses to allow psychological or physical violence and abuse to continue. The truth is there are scars from many things that do not make one stronger.
Perhaps the worse use of these is to justify that some people can enjoy great wealth, privilege, and comfort, while others struggle to stay alive, and others die very ignoble deaths, all in order to make the ‘chosen’ few able to be wealthy, privileged, and comfortable.
God did not make creation for us to live in a while and then escape from it’s injustices to heaven. God made all of creation, saw the accomplished work of creating, and said, “It is Good!”
Life for all people is designed to be GOOD!
GOOD does not mean without pain or suffering evil, for then there is also no possibility to love and experience joy. Pain and suffering – and – love and joy are part and parcel of the kind of life God created us for.
We live and love and experience joy. Some day the people we love will suffer and die. We will then also suffer and experience pain.
And it is all Good.
It is true that those who enjoy wealth, privilege, and comforts now at the expense of others being able to live abundant lives will, for eternity, suffer their choices to be blind and deaf to what they do to others.
It is also true that those who suffer and know only pain, will for eternity be released from that horrible kind of experience and they will know joy forever.
Our lives here and now are not to simply accept all suffering and pain as necessary. It is to work as hard as we can to mitigate and minimize all pain and suffering, to provide an abundant life for everyone!
That’s a life full and long of hard, dedicated work of love, not the sentimental kind of love, the real kind of love that puts one into action and pulls one to sacrifice so that others can live well.
What makes us strong, truly strong, is to know that even as we suffer and are in pain God walks with us, still creating, still seeing all that God does through us, and God says, “It is Good.”
Therefore we know that already today all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
The Promise of a New Day Coming in the Light of the Morning, and
Clear Water of the Summer, (both months if we’re lucky :-)?
Genesis 9:9-10-11
As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
Colossians 1:21-2
You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.
Words of Grace For Today
God’s great works are really two-fold. First God sets things right between us and God. Second God promises that the future is in God’s hands and God will not destroy us … at least not by flood waters.
If you have ever been in a flood, or threatened for months by continually rising waters cutting you off from the rest of the world, then you will know the fear that is inherent in even coming close to being in a flood. That fear does not go away with the receding waters. It remains, always. There are many other disasters that have the similar effect on our ability to live fear-free.
Fear paralyzes us, reduces us to instinctual beings without the ability to reason or think: we fight, freeze, or flee.
Living in constant fear, or in fear that recurs without warming constantly throughout our days, diminishes life, sometimes to a small sliver of life. Fear robs us of abundant life. Fear robs those around us of abundant life … as they deal with our fears.
The complete lack of fear, on the other hand, leaves us unmotivated to work hard, as if life will just unfold for us. The difference is the quantity and quality of fear. The first stymies us and reduces us. The second reminds us of reality and invigorates us. Where the first kind of fear leaves off and the other begins is not a constant. It varies according to our resilience.
There is one ‘disaster’ that all of us face, which nothing can take away from us: we will all die. This fear is a constant in all of us.
Knowing that God sets things right between us and God, and trusting the promises that God is with us and will not destroy us, gives us a resilience that is out-of-this-world solid … and living with which enables us to enjoy life abundant … through even the toughest times, including through Covid 19.
Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
Romans 8:37
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Words of Grace For Today
The evening dark had settled firm. My parka, long underwear under insulated work bib-overalls, cover mittens over the warmly insulated gloves and an insulate hat, scarf, hood and a prayer kept the -15⁰C and a west wind from biting. A recent storm blanketed everything with white, and high speed traffic through the day cleared tracks, though at intersections the snow was packed.
I exited town on a road that turned gravel for about a mile. Heavy trucks regularly travelled here. The week before I had found a rather smooth track just outside the regular traffic lines. The bicycle carried a heavy load of groceries from the food bank, loaded on the rear panniers and above the rack in a ‘milk crate.’
This week even with the headlight on brightly illuminating the roadway, there was not much to be seen but dark here and light there. It was rough bouncing the bike and my back with more than a little discomfort. I tried the lighter track inside the really rough tire tracks. It’s rough and slow going pushing through the snow and slush. I turn to the outside, and there turn the wheel to head straight down the road. The wheel turns easily to the left, the bike keeps going to the right far out of balance with not even a split second warning dumping me, right butt cheek to the ice, bike and groceries on top me, and my right elbow catching the weight of my upper body.
Stunned …
Stunned I slowly pulled my self out from under the bike as a vehicle went by without pause. I could move. Nothing seemed broken or damaged beyond use. I knew the shock would wear off and that might be different in a moment. I inspected the rear wheel. It was still good. The shape of the pannier had protected it from damage.
It took minutes, long minutes down on the roadway of black ice before I could get upright. More minutes before I could pull the bicycle upright and reset everything in the rear ‘milk crate’ carrier.
I did not dare ride on that ice again that night. I walked the mile until the pavement started again, and further until the traffic had cleared it down to the black pavement. Still when I peddled again, 22 km left to get home, I stayed clear of the dark black pavement-maybe-ice.
Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way.
I guess God did not delight in my way?
Though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
Or maybe God had me by the hand and I did not fall headfirst, knocked unconcious.
It did take weeks for the deep buttocks bruise to not hurt and the purple-yellow-green to fade more to normal pale pink-white
…
In life, if we live it to the fullest and do not hide from life, there are many times we will stumble and fall, be bruised, and require time to heal.
God promises always to be with us so that
in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Life is not safe. No one gets out of it alive.
Life is not to be lived hiding from danger. God calls us to engage, to face danger, to provide for those God loves, which means all people, including ourselves. Even if that means biking 55 km or more in the cold to get food to return in the dark on questionable roads against the wind making it a 4 hour return trip instead of the usual 2 plus hours.
If we fall …
Well, let’s be honest: WHEN we fall, God is there to protect us, to help us get back up, to heal, and if it is our day to die, to receive us into heaven where we need not fall again.
Life is an adventure (all too full of enemies that would do us in) that, for God’s beloved people, always ends well.
No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practises divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
Ephesians 5:9-11
For the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
Words of Grace For Today
For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
Good old judgment of others who practice different beliefs, followed by exiling them.
The quality that is unacceptable of the practices that are of darkness and such abhorrent practices is that they seek to claim control of what cannot be controlled.
While these practices named in Deuteronomy are unacceptable and abhorrent practices, because they deny that we are dependent on God alone for everything, we ‘good’ Christians in the church have all sorts of practices by which we try to control what cannot be controlled, and thus to control other people with rewards for compliance and punishments for non-compliance with our ill-informed claims of what is ‘right’ and ‘good’.
Should we exile all the people from the church who practice the dark arts of controlling what cannot be controlled, that is: trying to control God’s will for creation and us people in it? Were we to do that I’m quite sure that there would only be left one person, the one devilish person who evaded being exiled by others by being the exiler of all others.
In other words: we all deserve condemnation.
Thanks be to God that God is gracious.
God is gracious to all people, even those who practice abhorrent dark practices.
Our response, so much healthier for all, is to be grateful, rather than judgmental.
Yet we so often choose to ‘get rid of the trouble makers’. Thus our churches are not filled with sinners. Instead they are mostly empty, and those that come are mostly judgmental sinners.
For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover them with favour as with a shield.
Acts 13:52
The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Covid 19 presses challenges on us all, unequally.
The homeless and outcasts in Canada are recognized as deserving homes and inclusion, so thankfully an effort is made to provide for them. They receive safe places to live and eat if for no other reason because not to do so would lead to an outbreak among them that could not be contained and would spread to us all. At least this care is provided in the cities … well sort of … in some cities.
Immigrants who live multi-generationally with many people to a housing unit, many people to a bedroom, are now and again provided separate housing in hotels for those who must self isolate or quarantine themselves … again for our protection.
Pastors gather to discuss their ministries … and it becomes mostly a ‘bitch’ session, complaints of how difficult life is for them and their families, though most retain full pay and adequate work, and none lack for the necessities of life, even in Covid 19 times. Humour creeps into the conversation lessening the dark tone of complaints. Yet where is their overwhelming sense of gratitude? How does one inspire people to remember how blessed they are?
How often Scriptures record gratitude and thankfulness as the most appropriate and life giving response to all of life, all that appears to be good and all that appears to be bad.
For God covers the righteous with favour as with a shield, and in the face of great threat to their lives for being Christian still the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
How then will we live this day?
Full of complaints, self-righteously expecting more from life?
Or
Filled with joy and gratitude, no matter the challenges that come our way?
With joy they celebrated the festival of unleavened bread for seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel.
Luke 10:20
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Words of Grace For Today
There is great reason to be joyful when those who rule over you turn their hearts to you and aid you in your nearly impossible, but necessary work, whether that work is to provide a house for the Lord where people can gather (after Covid 19) or to provide a home for a new family (like a refugee family or a new couple) without a home or to provide a home for a homeless person.
The disciples nearly impossible work is to cast out demons, to renew the ill people’s spirits, to give life. As they work the ‘spirits submit to them’ and they are able to give life to many people. We are to follow suit today, bringing renewed life, full life, abundant life to as many people as we can.
So the people of Israel celebrated the festival of unleavened bread (the Passover?) for seven days.
We have great reasons to celebrate our festivals as well. Usually we merely take a break, a pause, and focus on our own enjoyment, or gathering our families – or we used to before Covid 19.
All this, Jesus reminds the disciples and us, is barely cause to celebrate.
At first glance we do have to shake our heads, trying to clear them of some unknown cobwebs as we try to make sense of Jesus’ words. Certainly bringing life to others is THE reason to celebrate. Or is it that the disciples and we celebrate not bringing life to others, but rather the power they and we are able to exercise in order to accomplish our tasks?
That power is not ours. We have no right to claim it, nor to celebrate as if it were ours. That power remains God’s and God’s alone. We exercise it for others, doch it is God would exercises it for us for them.
God exercises that power, like many other life-giving powers at work in the world around us, along with our efforts, because God has written our names in heaven as God’s holy workers.
Therefore our celebrations are most life-giving for us, when we celebrate not that we ‘have’ power or can ‘exercise’ power. Our celebrations are most life-giving for us and all people when we celebrate what God has done for us miserable beggars and sinners: God has written our names in heaven, claiming us a God’s holy people.
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God.
Matthew 6:21
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Words of Grace For Today
I never understood young men who spent so much time working on their old trucks or muscle cars, fixing, tweaking, and adding 8 track tapes and speakers to them. (That dates me if nothing else does!)
I had to get old to read that whatever one spends a great deal of effort and time at, one falls in love with. So those young men, who invested so much time in their vehicles, fell in love with them, which brought them to spend even more time with them, until they did things that were not reasonable or logical or purposeful. They were continuing beyond all that into the realm of love.
Who would of thunk?
Thus it is that we humans assign value to things in our lives, which in and of themselves have no more than utilitarian value, if that, simply because we invest time working on them.
I can only imagine that someone who spends a lot of time accumulating wealth, power, or fame ‘falls in love’ with that as well.
What we treasure, owns our hearts, and brings us to do things that are not reasonable or logical or purposeful.
So it is in God’s creation. We humans, like the rest of the universe, operate on the principals of love.
This is God’s love permeating through the entire universe.
There is no power equal to the power of love, to heal, to give life, to give hope, to sustain life.
Once God has spoken God’s love to us and we have heard it once or twice we come to know and trust that power belongs to God, the real power that holds the universe together and gives us our very life and breath.
We can also, by investing our time and effort into things and projects and ideas that do not give life to us and others, ‘fall in love’ with evil and destructive forces that rob us and the world around us of life.
God intends, though, that we invest our lives (every bit of time and energy we have) into providing God’s care and unconditional love to other people. Thus we ‘fall in love’ with God’s creation and God’s people.
Then our hearts are found invested in the treasure that God created for us to live for: people, and people of all kinds.
When we live for other people, life never gets dull or boring, and we remain ‘in love’ with God and God’s creation, no matter how old we get. No matter how old or tired, or ill, we remain fully alive and in love.
Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.
2 Corinthians 4:16
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
Words of Grace For Today
What used to take little effort and next to no time or thought, now takes great effort and forging onward through pain, dealing with lack of clear sight, and being exhausted way too soon each day.
Fear makes it worse.
There is almost no resolution.
‘If you have your health that is everything.’
It’s a nice sentiment, though the truth is more clearly ‘if you do not have your health, then nothing else can compensate for that. Life is a finite experience, and without health (as old age takes if from us piece by piece) that finite experience becomes smaller and shorter and smaller and shorter and then will soon end.
Our real comfort is that God does not ‘unbless’ us as we get old and ill.
Even as our bodies and minds seem to waste away, God renews our faith and trust, and thus we are able to continue on, blessing others with all we have left in life, of life itself.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Luke 6:28
Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Words of Grace For Today
If life is a zero-sum ‘game’, then the goal is to get ahead by whatever means, destroying as many enemies and people who get in your way.
With the earth overburdened with nearly 9 billion people, we are pressing the limits of what the earth can sustain, with our ‘great’ life style, comforts, and luxuries. It is the generations old solution to compete for the ‘limited resources’, and to ‘take no prisoners’ along the way.
We humans thus reduce life to a zero-sum ‘game’, a project of limited resources which each person or family or nation needs to seek to gain for themselves before others do, or to take them from others if they have the resource you want.
It is hard to imagine in this zero sum ‘game’ that anyone will stop to bear the sins of the many and make intercession for the transgressors, or bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.
Since God did not create life to be a zero sum ‘game’, rather that life is abundant for all if all share what is available, it is obvious that we will bless those who curse us, and pray for our abusers and the transgressors.
Life is a project of being grateful.
God has provided plenty … for everyone,
including blessings.
Life is not sustained by things, consumables, resources, comforts, or possessing more than others, or enjoying luxuries.
Life is sustained in being God’s blessings for others.
That changes the colour of life from a zero sum ‘game’ to a ‘game’ of giving to others what they need in order to have an abundant life (which is not the same as a life of comfort or luxury).
We get to celebrate all God’s blessings for all people, even those who curse us for not playing their ‘game’.
