Choose – Page 41

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 4

Friday, December 4, 2020

The morning moon

about to set.

As we, quite late in the winter,

prepare for another day

of work to survive,

and rest to celebrate God’s endless blessings.

Psalm 127:2

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Matthew 6:8

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Words of Grace For Today

From our ancestors’ instincts to rise up early and go late to rest in order to be ready to catch the prey and ensure one did not become prey, we still have an instinctual drive to ‘give it our all’ and then some, to ensure our survival.

Examples abound of humans who have worked and worked and worked themselves ‘to the bone’ at the cost of any real life. The majority of humans who have ever lived were oppressed and enslaved in poverty by the rich and the powerful; they have ‘given their all’ out of necessity to provide the mere basics of life for those for whom they are responsible.

Many others through history and especially today, as the gap between rich and poor grows ever greater, and still the ‘middle class’ is larger than ever in all of history, throw themselves into perpetual work at the expense of living life, all in order to have just one more comfort, one more luxury, to possess one more thing, to pay for just one more purchase that fails to fulfill it’s promise to give life meaning.

A third category of people are those who are rich, and give everything they are and have in order to protect and grow their wealth, as if it could ever provide them life or any real security.

This second and third group are those to whom this passage is addressed.

God did not create us to continually work. God created us to work hard, and then to rest. God created us to wake each day and work hard, but then to relax and enjoy the company of other people, and to sleep content with the blessings provided to us. God created us to work hard for six days, and to rest on the seventh.

All the sciences about humans confirm sleep, companionship, and regular rest are requirements for a human to maintain long-term health. It is no surprise at all that religious wisdom is confirmed by scientific research.

The first group is addressed less by this passage than by God’s repeated promises to bring judgment and justice to earth, for all people, living and dead. To them, to us, to all people, Matthew addresses Jesus’ words about how to pray, not heaping up empty phrases, but asking for what one needs. God listens. God walks with us. God promises justice for all in the end. And God knows already what we each need … and God ensures we receive it. We need God’s blessings, no matter our circumstance. The danger to life is not the lack of necessities or the inevitable arrival of death. The real danger to live is the corruption of our hearts, minds and strength by the work of the Devil.

Pray constantly that God would deliver us from this, and that God would bless the czar (all who exercise corrupt power) and keep him from us, very far.

As we wait, prepare, and remain alert, we pray with thanks for all God gives us, every blessing. We can work hard and rest easy. Covid 19 restrictions, infections, long-haul symptoms, and even death cannot separate us from God’s unconditional love, nor our ability to exercise that unconditional love for all whom God created.

Facing Covic 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 3

Thursday, December 3, 2020

We focus on what we do not have,

which makes us think we need to strive to be better, more, something else.

God focuses us on what we have

to share.

Deuteronomy 16:17

All shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

2 Corinthians 8:12

For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have.

Words of Grace For Today

The world, with simplistic lessons, teaches us that IF we want to survive or IF we want to maintain our standard of living or IF we want to protect our riches, power or fame … or IF we want in any way to guarantee our own lives to be as we want them,

THEN we must take care of ourselves, hang on to whatever we have or can get by any means, and protect ourselves from others who will always try to get (by whatever means) from us what we have.

This is not how God created us to live. It is not how humans survive. It is not how civilizations provide protection from barbarism. This is how the devil works to steal life from us. This is what kills humans. This is how the thin veneer of civilized society is shredded by barbarism from within.

God created us in God’s likeness, not just our faces, or bodies, or anything else external about us. God created us like God, in that we live well when we graciously and generously share all we have with everyone we can.

Giving, not taking, is how we live abundantly. It is how we live as Christ’s voice, hands, and feet on this earth. It is how we live blessed.

Eventually 100% of us humans die. It’s not a matter of if, but of when, and how. Death is not the goal of life, nor (since God promises us eternal life through Jesus Christ’ record in place of ours on our judgment day) is it the end or terminus of life.

God gives us our lives, so that we can imitate Christ: giving to all, all we have to give; seeking justice for all, until we have nothing more with which to seek; loving unconditionally all, until we have nothing left, no breathe of life, with which to love.

Whether giving leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether pressing for justice leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether forgiving our enemies and loving everyone unconditionally leaves us more vulnerable to death – all this is simply not significant, ultimately. Our actions of giving, seeking justice, and loving unconditionally are exactly what God has done for us, given us, blessed us with.

Giving is not an exercise in trying to not hit a tree as we ski down the hills of life. Focusing on the trees we are surely going to crash into one or more. Giving is not an exercise measured by what we cannot give or do not want to give up. Giving is an exercise measured by what God has given us … until we have given away every last drop of life, breathe, hope, and love that God has given us.

While we may think, having learned the simplistic lessons of life from the world around us, that it is foolish to give everything away, to seek true justice at all costs, and to love (especially our enemies) unconditionally though it robs us of hope, this is simply, truthfully all wrong. God did not create humans to live in a zero-summed life. Much of creation around us appears to be zero-summed, that is there is a limit to the resources available and we must strive to get our portion … or more!

Doch, God created humans to live as the loaf of bread, and jar of oil, which Elijah shared with the widow and her son: they never diminished but were continually restored to fullness, in order to provide sustenance for all three people, saving their lives through the famine.

God’s blessing pour over us all our lives, overfilling us and everything around us … if we would only see God’s blessings.

Our measure of giving then is not to miss the trees, and try (in vain) to ensure our survival. Our measure of giving is God’s prodigal blessings that never end.

God walks with us, even when we suffer greatly, no matter what we do not have, no matter what injustices are aimed at us, no matter what hate is focused on us.

Giving from a never failing supply of goodness, love and blessings is a great way to live.

Advent is our time to take time to reflect on God’s blessings and promises that we have forgotten or become blind to. Wake up, Be alert. Wait for Christ. Rest assured. Do not be afraid or troubled. Christ is already here, and will come again. Christmas celebrations can wait, until Christmas. We have more than enough to do, to give, to seek, to love, while we wait.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 1

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Living as Guests

in God’s good Creation,

We are all aliens,

We are all inheritors of God’s blessings.

Genesis 26:3

Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

1 Peter 1:17

If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.

Words of Grace For Today

Are we aliens, guests on earth, in exile?

So many people on earth today are not able to live in their home land. So many people are exiled by violence or political differences with those that rule with cruelty at home.

They are aliens, in exile, yet we recognize they belong on earth, or at least we sort of recognize them as residents of earth.

In all our lives there are times, like Advent, that are not times for themselves, but times of waiting or of transition, when we anticipate with great expectations that things will be different, better. We anticipate that we will eventually no longer just be aliens, but that this will be our land, our home land, our place and time that God promises us and all people will recognize that it is ours, by God’s Grace alone.

Covid 19 is in a second wave, much worse than the first, still ineptly dealt with by so many governments, like at home in Alberta where the government, ideologically, holds that the economy is more important than the individual lives of the residents in this province. Restrictions are finally set in place weeks too late and multitudes of degrees too slack. Trying to protect the economy the government sacrifices health care for almost everyone, making room for Covid cases in the hospitals. The government sacrifices lives of people who die from the infection. The government sacrifices the long term health of so many people who suffer debilitating organ damage though they survive the virus’s first attack.

The government does this because it’s political base is not in the cities, which are harder hit than the rural areas where it’s support is strongest.

The government does this because it’s political base is the business owners, not the workers. The government does this because it does not value essential workers like doctors and health care workers (who they have fought against to drastically cut their compensation over the last few years.) The government does this because it supports big business and oil industry. The small people, the scientific evidence, the best real path forward is not important. Instead of the best path forward, science and prevention and providing health care for everyone does not matter. What matters is the political moves that can be made in the confusion of Covid 19. Well, we got what the majority chose: a government that is unto itself and lies to maintain it’s power. We’ve got what we deserve.

Thankfully God does not leave it there.

God walks with us, in a foreign land, and in our home land. We are God’s people, all of us God’s creatures.

We may be in exile at home with a government that does not have our interests, yet alone survival, in mind. God will soon enough deliver us. We can wait, patiently, and prepare ourselves to receive God’s Son, as he was born millennia ago, and as he comes each day, and to await for his return.

We can wait to celebrate Christmas until Christmas proper. We can take to heart Advent as the time of waiting in wonder that it is.

Blue with hope, that’s the children of God …

for now, for these four weeks.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 30

Monday, November 30, 2020

As the sun rises

some trees stand between us and the light.

What will darken our view of God’s light?

Zechariah 2:12

The Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.

Romans 8:33

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

Words of Grace For Today

Our Apostle’s Confession of Faith reads as the word concluding the second article about our faith in Jesus, Son of God, “from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

It is common to imagine God’s judgment as a terrible day. Jesus, sitting at God’s right hand, judging all people, living and dead, may seem a bit less daunting to those who have received faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. For Jesus came to preach and teach, comfort and heal, and bring truth and salvation to all who believe in him.

That judgment may seem a long way off, sometime in the distant future, in some distant millennium when the earth comes to an end, perhaps when the sun collapses into itself and the explodes into a supernova consuming everything in the solar system.

As we enter Advent, with integrity as faithful Christians, waiting, preparing ourselves, waiting, yearning (as opposed to starting the Christmas celebrations already – early), we take time in this reflective, sombre, anticipatory and hope-filled time to notice how God already walks with us each day, how Jesus is present in all creation, and how the Holy Spirit guides and empowers us to be God’s children each day in new and surprising ways.

We notice also that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves right before God. God justifies us, and God alone. There is also no human (or devil’s being) who can bring a valid charge against us, God’s chosen, elect, forgiven, justified, and sanctified children.

Oh, the world and many people in it will try, driven by the Devil’s evil ways, to charge God’s people. Corrupt courts will even try, convict and imprison innocent people, all in an attempt to exercise their corruption of power, as if it were absolute or final.

These corrupt people can only place themselves under God’s judgment, even in these days. They can do all sorts of damage to our lives on this earth, harm greatly a great number of people, especially the most vulnerable including children, and make many people’s lives miserable in many ways. They can attack the integrity of society, even the integrity of God’s earth. They cannot actually harm us before God. They cannot separate us from God’s love and blessings. They cannot do anything that God does not allow them to do, all in order that we humans are capable of loving one another.

(For love requires that it is chosen by the one who loves, which requires free choice. Therefore there must be something besides love that we can choose, which requires in turn that hate, sin and all sorts of evil be on the menu for us to choose from … and to suffer as we and others choose other than to love as God loves us, unconditionally.)

We can, in these blue days of Advent, know that God walks with us, and is for us in all ways; God justifies us! Nothing can separate us from God’s love; not Covid 19, injustice of any kind, or lack of the necessities of life.

Because God justifies us, we can be the people who reach out to administer to those in need, to heal the sick, and to share the power of the Holy Spirit with all people.

That power is not the power of force or might; it is as Jesus lived for us, the power of self-sacrificing love.

That brings us to each day, no matter how dark or bleak, sure that our future is in God’s gracious hands, driven to be God’s Grace for all we encounter.

What a wondrous future!

What a life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 28

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Does Our World Seem Off Kilter?

Especially Then

God Walks with Us

and Comforts Us

with Truth

Isaiah 66:13

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

John 14:18-19

‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

Words of Grace For Today

When we are born, we are helpless infants. We require that someone provide care for us. A mother or replacement nursemaid can nurse us and give us nourishment. Today we have formula that can replace a mother’s milk, or some of it. Immunity cannot be received from formula.

A mother breast feeding a child is called nursing the child, or comforting the child. As demanding as breast feeding at all hours is, as a child grows fathers and mothers spend a good portion of their days providing for the child, well into adolescence so that they survive. Much of this care is comforting a child and good fathers are sometimes better at this than mothers, even good mothers. Fathers, even poor fathers are better at providing comfort than mothers who are a narcissists or a personality disordered persons.

Comfort is good, Fathers can be good, Mothers can be good. And all but the mentally ill can, but do not necessarily, provide comfort.

In our baptisms God adopts us as children. Jesus adopted the disciples as they joined his motley crew that travelled, taught, and healed the crowds of people. When Jesus is about to leave them, after being resurrected from the dead, he promises that he is not abandoning them.

More than enough people are totally messed up due to abandonment issues. Jesus does not do this to the disciples, nor to us. Jesus must leave, but he lives and he lives in and among us, God’s children. Jesus also promises to return.

We still wait, expectantly, for his return.

Advent is a special time when we should practice waiting for the Christ to return as we celebrate his upcoming birth. We jump right into pre-celebrating Christ’s birth and the hoopla of Christmas, all so that we can avoid remembering we still wait for Jesus to return!

We are an impatient people. We suffer greatly because of it. We forego the healing practice of waiting, waiting, and more waiting … with grateful hearts. We wait for Jesus to return, for Christmas to come. We do not claim we ‘possess’ Jesus; like ‘I’ve got Jesus in my heart’ or anywhere else. Jesus has got us, thank God; or there would be no way through even a day of the evil that people make for each other on earth.

Waiting, we remember how Jesus is with us, how Jesus has always got us, and has always gotten us.

That’s the comfort of God. The comfort of God is that God-Jesus-Holy Spirit is with us always, guiding, teaching, leading, healing us.

Parents can comfort us so much, even long after we’ve grown to be adults. As any parent of adult children can tell you, the parenting job does not get easier with time as the children age, rather it gets more complicated, more significant, and it requires wisdom.

Thankfully, with the fear and love of God as our beginning each day, we receive wisdom, slowly and sometimes we think insufficiently for the challenges. Yet God uses us to deliver God’s comfort, to our children, and to all of God’s children.

Comfort, comfort, comfort … we share as we have received: God is with us, Jesus has not abandoned us. Together we CAN wait, also for Christmas.

Perhaps the separation and challenges Covid 19 forces on us will teach us to wait, with patience … and to provide each other the comfort that surpasses all other: God’s comfort for God’s children.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 27

Friday, November 27, 2020

Dead Tree Stick Out

Life Always Come to an End

For Each and All of Us

And if We Think We Can Survive on Our Own

… that’s a fool’s thing

Psalm 38:10

My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.

James 1:3

You know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Words of Grace For Today

You have heard it said that whatever challenges do not kill you make you stronger.

You have heard it said that testing one’s faith produces endurance.

The first is phooey.

Covid 19 often does not kill the person infected, but there are a number of ‘long haulers’, the people who do not die, and they do not recover. Instead they suffer pain, fatigue and organ complications without end.

Covid 19 is not the only challenge that may not kill you fast, but it will almost make you wish it had.

Testing one’s faith is different. God gives us faith as a gift, and it grows as we face the challenges that life throws at us.

It is different when the challenges of life, more than Covid 19, bring our heart to throb, our strength fails, and the light of our eyes slip away from us.

It’s the beginning of the end of life, threatening our breath, our time, and our hope.

In this time of huge challenge, as life slips on a slippery banana peel on the edge of our graves, we discover exactly what our lives are made of, what our hope provides, and what our faith sustains.

If we think we can somehow go it alone, when our last foot flies into the air and our other foot only has a small grip on that slippery banana peel, it will be quite the surprise …

as God stands, firm on the ground, and catches us, so that our days do not come to a crashing halt.

It is hard to be humble when everything is going so well we can pretend we accomplish life on our own. It is easy to be humble when we can barely breathe, our arms and legs fail to move as we ask they would, and our eyes no longer distinguish between light and dark, colours and black, blessing and curse, and we experience how clearly it is that only by God’s Grace do we live, breath, move and see.

God’s presence with us in the best of times and the worst of times leaves us so humble that there is nothing else in us, but the breath we use to give God thanks. It is good to be so humbled as to give God praise for creating us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 26

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Sometimes it’s the imperfections

that make life worth giving thanks for,

for therein we notice God’s Grace

1 Chronicles 29:13

Now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name.

Ephesians 5:18-20

Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Now.

Whenever now is, where ever now is, it is always the time to give God thanks for everything in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Amidst the second wave gone bezerk in Alberta with new cases doubling in a week, contact tracing broken down, parties continuing, hospitals overwhelmed with Covid 19 cases shutting out other health care needs, and Covidiots running loose everywhere in town …

It is time to give God thanks for everything:

For every thing one has, or has at one’s disposal.

For every gift, skill, and talent one has.

For every minute of life one has.

For the air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love one has (maybe such as it is, or even some of the requirements of life may be missing).

For every challenge one faces, making the day’s efforts worthwhile.

For every thing of beauty one can see in creation, for this is God’s hand writ large for all to see.

And most of all, for forgiveness, adoption, redemption, and being transformed into saints even as we remain sinners, for this is life the way God created us to live it!

For every opportunity we have to extend God’s Grace to others with forgiveness and inspiration.

Now.

If not now, when?

For one cannot know how many more years, days, minutes one has of this life built on Grace.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 25

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

The Riches of the Universe

God’s Gift is Beauty

Amos 6:6

Complacent self-indulgence will be punished, those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

1 Timothy 6:17-19

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Words of Grace For Today

To take hold of the life that is really life!

That is a proper ambition and motivation for any sentient being.

The Biblical stories and writings record so much about how humans have done wonderful and terrible things with the comforts of wealth.

We could learn much, for in today’s world more people enjoy more comforts than ever before in the history of humans, perhaps more than all humans collectively before. Yet there are also more humans today than ever before who do not have secure access (if access at all) to the basics necessities for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, secure shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved unconditionally.

Worse is that there are among us a select few, getting smaller and richer each year, who have more wealth than most of us could imagine.

The worst is that the gap between the few wealthy and the majority who do not have the basics is growing each year as well. The systems that are in place, the social contract that keeps barbarism at bay (or not in so many places around this globe today) or the barbarism that has replaced a social contract, and all the institutions that support either the social contract or barbarism, and even our individual attitudes and actions all feed that ever increasing gap. Shame on us all!

The biblical accounts and other accounts of the past make it no secret that this destructive inequity has been a plague among humans since the earliest days. Our striving to survive the hunt, whether hunting for food, or being hunted for food, translates in to us striving to survive by ‘hunting’ others in order to try to secure our future.

We simply cannot secure our futures. Every effort to do so is evil, and it destroys those striving to secure the impossible and those who pay the price for it to appear as if the future were secure.

Joseph is ruined. This Joseph is not just the foreigner put in charge of Potipher’s household, only to be imprisoned on false charges by Potipher’s wife, who then interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and is elevated to be in charge of everything of Pharaoh’s, the whole of Egypt. This Joseph then is a refuge for his family, including his brothers who jealously sold him into slavery. These families are the Hebrews who multiply and, feared by future Pharaoh’s are enslaved and put to hard labour. These slaves are Moses’ people, a Hebrew not-orphan, who is raised in Pharaoh’s home as his own son, who commits murder in response to the abuse by the guards of his own people, who flees to the wilderness. This Moses returns to bring Joseph’s descendants out of Egypt, into the Promised Land via the wilderness.

This Joseph is also every blessed country, community, and gathering of God’s people, which has been laid in ruins, while the rich and the collaborators have indulged themselves in luxury. These are the people who eat, drink, and are drunkedly merry, while God’s people are enslaved, oppressed, and disappeared. This Joseph is also the present day USA, polarized by millions who think Trump speaks anything like truth, which chews up and spits out the democratic social contract in ruins. This Joseph laid in ruins is also our own Alberta, where church leaders, community members, and witnesses are gathered to lie in court, and where the courts add to the lies to convict and condemn honest and innocent people, where children are taught that truth is expendable if money is to be gained or courts lied to. In today’s ‘Me-too’ nightmare men are targeted for ruin more easily than woman, but all false convictions and rulings against anyone contribute to the ruin of Joseph.

What are honest people to do?

We grieve the ruin of Joseph.

We do good, are rich in good works, generous, and ready to share what great or little we have been entrusted with.

First and last, and always, though, we remember: God’s Grace saves us anew each day. God calls us to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to the poor, outcast, strangers, and homeless.

God also chooses to save those who lay Joseph in ruins by Grace. God calls us also to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to those who try to secure their future with riches.

We, by Grace, help all people take hold of the life that is really life.

(Yes, by Grace we help even the Covidiots, who threaten our lives with their stupidity and recklessness, take hold of life that is really life.)

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 24

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

The Light

The Light that Guides Us on Our Way

The Light that Gives Life!

To All.

Psalm 98:3

He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.

Mark 4:21

He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?

Words of Grace For Today

God’s victory!

The imagination runs wild, how the celebration would fill the universe, and our lives from bottom to top.

God’s victory … doesn’t look quite like we imagine. It’s the look of a double victory: first that justice is done, and truth wins out! Our enemies no longer can do us harm.

The second part of the double victory is that our enemies are forgiven, redeemed, and set free to reflect God’s Grace to all people.

This is the Light of Christ.

We do not put a lamp under a bushel, especially not in the dark evenings and mornings of winter as we approach Advent.

Neither is God going to put the Light of Christ, nor the fragile vessels that reflect it to the world, under a bushel, especially not in the dark days of … winter, or politicians who want to Gaslight the whole world by not acting responsibly in the face of Covid 19, or people drowning in other’s lies.

Christ’s Light is good, always, but especially in the dark days like today.

Pray.

Pray that God’s double victory comes soon to our enemies, for the light of life is almost extinguished in the dark of winter.

Pray.

Pray that God places the Light of Christ high over us, that all may see God’s justice, truth, and unconditional love.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 22

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Given this Beauty,

To Make Our Own God Above All Others

To Accept the Mystery of God’s Work In All People, In All Religions,

Including that People Worship Differently, Apparently Different Gods,

…

For which do you think God created the universe?

Isaiah 43:11

I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no saviour.

Ephesians 4:5-6

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Words of Grace For Today

Who are we, if we are true to the confession of our faith, to be the ones to denigrate God’s work in other people, even when that work shows itself as faith different from ours.

Who are we to determine who God is?

We are totally incapable of such a determination!

Wars based on differences of religion are foolish. In truth they are always about other things, using religion as a motivator to bring people to fight and justify their evil actions as right.

The same is true for countless conflicts between peoples, down to battles between spouses and between siblings.

God is God.

We hold that we are saved from our sins by Grace alone, clearly shown to us through the life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

Our faith, faithfully lived, provides for a wonderful life, for us and for all who embrace this faith. Many who say they embrace this faith, actually misuse it, instead of living it faithfully. They misuse it for their own means to cruel ends. Such is the history of humans since they imagined that God existed.

Our faith provides that God also forgives those who misuse faith. Our faith provides us the courage to confess we all misuse faith. Such is the history of humans since we imagined that God existed.

Our Lord, One Lord, Three-In-One, provides for life abundant … not in material excesses, but in blessings in all circumstances. So we hold on faithfully to the gifts of the One Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and the one hope of our calling: one God, who is above all and through all and in all.

That makes for a marvellous life.

Our faith gives us the strength and resilience to face whatever evil comes our way, whatever challenges come our way, whatever abuse of faith is exercised around us or through us.

Covid 19 is only one of many challenges we face, always God walking with us.