Choose – Page 48

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 10

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Wondrously, Creation Dances

Genesis 9:13

I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Hebrews 13:9

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.

Words of Grace For Today

Regulations about food. Abstinence from tobacco, or from alcohol, or from dancing, or from Jazz, or from [fill in the piety thing to forego].

These are all ways to try to gain God’s approval.

Foregoing these or anything else, or obligatorily keeping some ritual or habit, are all futile efforts. Nothing we do or do not do can gain us God’s favour. Our place in God’s creation is far lower than that we have such capacity.

More significantly it is superfluous. God already has given us God’s favour. Still we get carried away by all kinds of strange (and yet devilishly familiar) false teachings about our place in God’s creation, as if we were as powerful as God, or more so, even able to be godlets ourselves.

It is the truth that many regulated behaviours have been scientifically good for us at the time and therefore healthy for us to observe. Not all are beneficial. Dancing is actually an activity that if one continues to practice into one’s old age it can help keep one’s mind clear, and one’s body able longer than if one had not. Still many call for avoiding dancing, because it leads to sex, which leads to children. The greater truth is that sex leads to children, which leads to dancing joyously. Whether sex is healthy depends not on dancing, but on one’s choice of partner and how one relates to him/her; which dancing has little to do with.

To remind us how we were and are so sinful and evil that God chose to flood out all life except a sample of each kind along with Noah and his family, and how gracious God is in re-establishing a covenant (an unusual unilateral covenant) with us, beginning with a promise not to flood all life away again.

So that we not forget, which we do so easily as we try to re-invent our relationship with God and creation … So that we do not forget God places a rainbow in the sky.

Light intersects the moisture of rain in the sky, and the prism effect of the moisture paints a bow of all colours across the sky. God continually works to show us how gracious God is.

Instead of abstaining or partaking or striving to achieve God’s favour, God invites us to immerse ourselves in God’s Grace which fills us and overflows all around us.

Grace! Grace is God’s free gift of liking us, of loving us unconditionally (despite the truth that we deserve condemnation), of forgiving us and giving us new chances. Second chances are far too few for God’s attitude towards us. God gives us new chances at life each minute, in each decision.

Grace!

Bask in Grace. It’s like dancing only wondrously better for strengthening one’s heart, soul and mind at all ages.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 09

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

In the Dark

The Light,

God’s Promise Guides Us

Isaiah 47:13-14

You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you. See, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before!

Hebrews 6:18

Through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us.

Words of Grace For Today

The cool of fall has arrived, so that sitting in front of a fire is not merely an evening pleasure for campers, but a necessity for keeping oneself warm.

The fire that God sends the condemned to is no such fire. It is like a raging wildfire that consumes everything in its path. Our human efforts to know the future, in order that we can have the advantage over others are legendary … and futile. Our efforts to destroy others in order to get ahead are also legendary. Destruction we succeed at quite well. Getting ahead is a real failure as well, not that we have not often thought we’ve won and made great headway forward. It is that we make headway toward the Devil and our own condemnation, not that we make headway toward God’s will and design for us, namely that we live sacrificial lives in order that others may live abundantly.

The challenges that the Devil places in our paths seem without end. They obscure our vision of God’s will, our ability to thrive as we give life to others, and our discerning the value of truth in the face of lies that seem to flourish better than Canadian thistle or leafy spurge.

Into a world filled with these challenges we awake each day. God knows this well, for God is with us, Jesus’ name is Emmanuel (God with us). God created us with a spirit to discern Good from Evil, and God knows we so often choose Evil, for others and for ourselves.

So God makes promises for us to know and trust. Land flowing with milk and honey. Descendents greater than the stars in the skies. A Saviour for all people of every age that we can live freed from our bondage to sin, so that we can imitate the Christ in our daily lives, forgiving others their sins.

God guarantees these promises by the greatest authority of all, God’s own.

In this we can live, trusting our very lives to God’s promises and God’s living Word.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 8

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Tilted Log,

Tilted Water,

Tilted World.

Not the end, like an arcade game, tilted, cheated.

God gives us all another chance to make it right, now.

Ezekiel 20:44

You shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or corrupt deeds, O house of Israel, says the Lord God.

Luke 6:35

Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Words of Grace For Today

In a country, powerful and wealthy, rich in precious resources, a country known for it’s open spaces and opportunities … for those who had the power and wealth (at the expense of everyone else) … In this marvellous country those with power and wealth constructed history from fiction, leaving truth behind, leaving all human rights aside, as they dealt with those not of their kind.

Inexplicable deaths, inexplicable disappearances, people suddenly relocating far afield, and never anyone of the wealthy and powerful were held to account for how they killed, forced disappearances, and terrorized people until they, if they were quick enough, moved as far away as possible.

Police and Courts enabled this with arrests and convictions of innocent people for things that never happened. More often though it was the blind eye they turned to the deaths, disappearances and carloads of people moving away under cover of night, leaving their property and wealth to be assumed by the already powerful and wealthy.

With cries for justice for their own kind, raped, murdered, disappeared (horrendous as these atrocities are) the powerful and wealthy ignore that more than four times as many people not of their kind die of violence, physical and psychological leading to suicides unspeakable in number. Even more are maimed, disappeared, or forced to flea for their lives.

Leaders, from among those who used to rule, not so justly either, rise up. With protests for justice, peaceful in organization and perverted by agents of the wealthy and powerful into riots, these new leaders manage (despite the violence wrought amongst them by their enemies) peacefully gain the power, though they do not have the wealth. Two leaders among the new take primary positions.

Unlike the leaders of previous times, recent and far past, they follow Madiba and Tutu’s lead. Instead of assuming the same injustices against others and for themselves, they offer something new, forgiveness. Forgiveness for all the previous leaders of the once powerful and wealthy. To receive forgiveness and amnesty a person only needs to appear in public and tell the truth of what they have done, the whole truth.

In the new powerful previous leaders from among the women are welcome, even encouraged to work to build a just and fair country, so that regardless of gender or previous position, one is valued for what one can offer for the new country.

The new leaders have taken to heart, head and hands Jesus’ command to love even one’s enemies. They have understood well that we shall know that ‘I am’ is the Lord, when God deal with all people for God’s name’s sake, not according to our evil ways or corrupt deeds.

This country is our country, your country, the country of the present as it moves into some time of the future. This country is God’s Kingdom, here on earth.

Let all with ears, hear; with minds, listen; with hearts, wisely understand; with blessings, forgive. For God will come to judge … and shock us all with Grace … even today.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 7

Monday, September 7, 2020

Tire and Robin

I’m tire-d

But by Grace Alone I see God all around.

Sing for Joy, even if you are tired!

Jeremiah 32:19

Great in counsel and mighty in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways of mortals, rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.

1 Timothy 4:10

To this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe.

Words of Grace For Today

I’m tired. Tired of being Gaslit, by people I do not know, people I’ve known intimately, people who claimed to have loved me, people who I’ve loved, people who’ve corrupted their authority to protect and serve, people who are supposed to be religious leaders, people entrusted to exercise the law to provide justice based on truth.

I’m tired. I’m tired because it’s a whole lot of work to stay alive each day, and I’m getting old, worn and weary.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of people (without masks or shields or any protection for them or me, or without any brains about how Covid 19 kills old people and young people as well) trying to push me (yes literally push me) aside to walk past me while I’m shopping. Or people breathing at me from a foot or two telling me it’s ok that ‘I’m so close’ to them when they walked right up behind me and I have to turn around because a lift blocks the aisle ahead.

I’m tired of people lying, begin stupid, and trying to kill me, intentionally or stupidly out of ignorance.

I’m tired of people lying to steal everything I have and then trying to steal even more than the courts have lied to give to them from money that is really not mine to access, or that they really should not have access to either.

I’m tired.

Perhaps you are tired, too, of things similar, or of different Evil worked against you and people you know and care about.

Or perhaps you are not tired at all, since you have everything that you need for life, and your energetic work is about accumulating more wealth and privilege at others’ expense, so that you can get ahead in life.

For us all we read today: [God knows all and rules everywhere, and judges everyone,] rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.

Yes, we can say. May it be so.

Finally Justice based on real truth for everyone! Especially those who’ve dealt with me as if I were a completely different person than I am. Justice. Let it be done, and soon!!

So we can wish. Unless we look at the sins we’ve committed to separate us from God – which are NOT what people Gaslight me or you perhaps, saying I have done. Sins that allow words that are unkind to be spoken, selfish acts to be done, and selfless acts to be undone.

Then we may be more humble, resting in God’s Grace given to us, trusting God’s wisdom not to be so simplistically applied to all, but with Grace first.

Still for those who corrupt justice, who seek to destroy others for no good reason other than the joy of the destruction, can we not hope that God’s Justice may reflect what they have done already?

So we pray: God save us, save us all from Evil. Help us each day to toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people.

I’m tired of it all, Doch God help me rest in you, in your justice and grace.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 6

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Bark attack.

Attacked by Humans.

Evil’s Bite is worse than it’s Bite.

Psalm 121:7

The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.

Revelation 2:8-9

[To the corrupt leaders:]I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

Words of Grace For Today

Real people are vessels of real evil.

Of that there is no doubt.

People who are rich, are afflicted and actually poor in truth, poor in spirit, poor in life. They claim to be God’s people, and serve only Satan.

From these people, the Evil they work with lies (pretending to be good), and the Evil One they serve … from all these God promises to protect us, to protect our lives.

This protection is not that we are separated so far from Evil and people that work it that we never suffer Evil’s destruction. God’s promise is to always be with us, not to abandon us, and not to allow Evil to extract from us life itself.

Baptized we enter eternal life already during our time on earth.

Wonders of wonders, that nothing can take from us. We can surrender it, though God protects us from even that.

Wonders of wonders, we live, even in the face of corrupt, destructive, and unresting Evil worked against us.

There is much to celebrate each and every day.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 5

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Ice and Floods

Heat and Drought

Nothing compares to the Evil humans inflict on others.

Isaiah 25:4

You have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat, when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm.

Revelation 2:8-9

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Since Jesus’ record replaces ours, since our baptisms we have known and been able to trust even in the most horrific and trying times that our record before God will be sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not even the miracles of God (or so we say) can (other than by replacing ours with Jesus’ record) keep our spirit and soul and body sound and blameless at all. We have and keep free choice, which in exercising we continually sin, i.e. we are hardly sound and blameless.

The question is not if we can be sinless. If it were no one would be acceptable to God, and the Kingdom of God would be empty forever.

The question, after God favours us and blesses us, what are we going to do with this ultimate favour and blessing?

Then we may pray earnestly that it can be said of us that when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, then we have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

There is no shortage today of the blast of the ruthless. Now is the time to act. It is the time to be the refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needing in their distress, and a shelter from all that comes, whether it is the vicious rain, hail, snow and windstorms of climate change (the ‘new normal this year is last year’s extreme weather‘), or the blistering heat, wind and locust of drought, or the flooding of rain that will not let up.

The real blast, as in every generation, comes not from nature, not even pandemics like Covid 19. The real blast comes from ruthless and evil people, possessed by the empty promises of the Devil. The two legged wild animals bring more disaster to more people, more quickly than any new weather storm.

The dangerous ones are those who say there is no danger. They claim with words and/or actions: There is no more Covid19. It’s back to normal. We’re done with Covid 19. There is none here. They likely will not die or be maimed by Covid 19 or any other real danger. They will be oblivious to the loss of life around them, unless it invades their own home, and some even then pay it no heed.

May God protect us. We may wish that we can be sound and blameless, but that is the first step to ignoring our place, station, calling and weaknesses as the two legged children of God that Jesus calls us to be.

We still wish for what is not possible, and then we pray: May God protect us. May God protect you.

Before it is too late.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 31

Monday, August 31, 2020

Trees

and child Trees

God created this all

and us in this world.

Psalm 100:3

Know that the Lord is God. It is God who made us, and we are God’s; we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.

Acts 17:26-28

From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and God allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God – though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For “In God we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said.

Words of Grace For Today

Who are we?

Whose are we?

Why for are we here?

What is this life all about anyway?

These questions and many more have given humans something to wrestle with in our minds and souls.

It is troubling to not know anything of who we are. Literature is made up of all sorts of examples of people who do not remember who they are. Amnesia comes into play.

The worse cases are when people live through what should be a full life and have not taken time and effort to discover who they are. The un-examined life. Not knowing thy self. Bourgeoisie living. We have lots of names for it.

Worst are the cases where humans make every effort to establish for themselves that they are the king of their universes. The results are always pathetic.

Striving to find (and control) God is common, and futile. God is already, always with us. Trying to control God is the original sin, common to all, and always ends poorly.

We can celebrate: God is with us. God created us, and all the universe. God gave us a thirst and hunger to know God. God claims us and makes us God’s own children.

That should put any pride to rest in us; we remain children always! Not that it does … pride flourishes, a great favourite of the Devil to separate us from God’s unconditional love. A futile effort on the Devil’s part, but the devil is great at convincing us we are separate from God.

As poets have written of since words were first etched and scratched to express the wonder of life being larger than what is only obvious.

That’s where life really is, in surprise and miraculous wonders.

Like God loving us. I can accept me, but you … God is really something! (As truth is for us all, we are more astonished that God has time for us, ourselves, than for other people. We know deep inside how imperfect we are.

Yet, God is here with us. God claims us as God’s own children.

Life is good for God’s children. For us it is no exception, no matter how terrible our circumstances, life with God is good. It is what life is to be.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 30

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Cold Winter Winds Will Blow

Cold Hearts Will Set

The Holy Spirit Will Keep Our Hearts Thawing

Trust God’s Promises

Isaiah 32:17

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Of what is life?

Food and drink?

Peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and joy?

The basic requirements for minimum and full human life are:

clean air to breath
clean water to drink
nourishing food to eat
adequate clothing to wear
adequate shelter to protect one from the elements
meaningful labour so that one contributes and receives sufficient reward for one’s labour
love: most significantly that one is loved unconditionally, and that one can love others unconditionally.

Food and Drink are requirements, as we all know. One can last 3 or so days without water, and up to a few weeks without food. Not well, and not many times over. One should have water and food multiple times each day to stay healthy.

Yet we can too easily get our priorities all wrong.

We can loose balance, perspective, focus, and gratitude. There are many ways to say this, and it happens to us in as many ways. When we live with food and drink as the focus of our lives, to the detriment of labour and love, then we live off balance, out of kilter, or, as it’s said in so many ways, ‘messed up.’

It is exceedingly difficult to achieve peace, quietness and trust, righteousness or joy. Truthfully one cannot achieve them at all. We receive them as gifts from God.

It is hard to imagine that we would over focus, live out of kilter, living for peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and/or joy. Yet this also is possible. We humans have great ingenuity when it comes to ‘messing up’ life.

These gifts from God are not for us to achieve. Rather they are for us to share, and in sharing God fills us to overflowing with them.

While Covid-19 restrictions, and even the lifting of restrictions and a return to more ‘normal’ can tax us, at times beyond our limits, the stress of these times do not change who we are. The stress just makes very clear to ourselves and to others what kind of people we really are.

We are children of God and wretched sinners, simultaneously. We need to be loved, unconditionally. And to love unconditionally. Yet we ‘mess it all up’ terribly.

Thank God, we are forgiven, and given re-newed life each day, each hour, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us, despite our wretchedness.

It is beginning to feel much like fall as I write this. Cool air blows, tree tops sway, leaves rustle and fly, rain spits and drips. Everything inside is set to retain warmth and let in what light there is. In this day whatever it is like where you are may God’s blessings be obvious and not forgotten by our living off balance.

May we be caught tipped by the weight of blessing raining down on us, refreshing us, giving us the most precious things to experience and share.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 29

Saturday, August 29, 2020

No matter how cold life seems

God is with us, laying down tracks with us

shining on us day and night by sun, moon, and Holy Spirit

Thank God!

2 Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. The leper was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

False pride and arrogance or humility and gratitude, two apparently mutually exclusive manners of responding to all God has done for us.

In 2 Chronicles the writer interprets the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem as God’s response to Hezekiah’s proud and hard heart. In Luke the writer interprets Jesus’ healing the lepers as done in response simply to the lepers asking.

That one returns to thank Jesus, against Jesus’ directions that they fulfill the Jewish Law and show themselves to the priests (to be recorded as cured and therefore free to return to their families and position in Jewish society.) The one who returns gains nothing by visiting the priests. He is an outsider and gains no ‘return’. Leper or not, he is not accepted into Jewish society. He returns then to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus has more authority than any priests.

Luke’s message is that those who are burdened with their own religious authorities and practices may well fulfill their obligations to them, Jesus still comes and heals those people. People with no locally recognized religious authorities and practices to fulfill (the Samaritan perhaps had some, just not recognized by the Jews), are free to recognize Jesus’ greater authority and to respond with appropriate gratitude.

Who are we?

We wish we were like the Samaritan, free to recognize Jesus’ authority and power with thanks and gratitude.

If we are honest, we are like the other 9 Jewish lepers, bound to duty to other authorities, and easily able to miss the wonders Jesus provides and therefore easily able to miss out on thanking Jesus and living with wondrous gratitude. That gratitude is a more powerful force in life than ‘falling in love’, about which much is written, spoken and known – how it transforms life for the better (or worse.) Gratitude transforms life always for the better, and it does not wear off after a short few months.

If we are honest, we are also often like Hezekiah, proud and hard hearted, completely capable of pleading to God for help when life catches us in disaster or deadly illness or total loss. But when it comes to giving God thanks for all God has given us, our breath and very lives … Well then we are back to fulfilling our ‘obligations’ to other authorities and demands (like careers, money, status, reputation among those driven by greed and avarice, and false images of ourselves as above or without God).

Luther described all of these as happening simultaneously in our lives as responses to the same events. To which he prayed as we well can: God save us!

And save us, Luther knew as we can know, Jesus already has.

We can choose to live lives transformed by thanks and gratitude. Bit by bit each day.

Why not?

Where else are we going to turn for the living water? the bread of life? the Words of eternal life? the hope that does not disappoint? the promises that fill us so that we have more than enough to share with all who need life?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 28

Friday, August 28, 2020

Leaves Strewn on the Path

God’s Glory is as obvious as these golden leaves

Jesus’ voice is as prevalent as the wind in the trees.

Psalm 63:2

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

John 7:37

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.’

Words of Grace For Today

Everyday life is filled with many mundane things. We can busy ourselves seemingly endlessly in things that have little significance in God’s Kingdom, and we know nothing other than we keep ourselves busy, so busy.

Then when we are not paying attention, we see God in all God’s glory. When we are so busy celebrating, even giving God thanks, we hear Jesus offer us thirsty people a refuge, the living water that is the only water that will quench our thirst.

Our thirst is what drives us to keep so busy, trying to fill ourselves with things that really mean nothing. The challenge is that we get rewarded so apparently well for busying ourselves as we do. What is really meaningless appears by the heavy rewards we gain to be actually full of significance for life.

Wealth, power, and status come our way as if rewarding us with everything we could dream of, just for such devotion to our pursuits.

How can anything take us away from these pursuits?

Then we see God’s glory right in front of us. Then we hear Jesus call to all who thirst.

Are we ready to see? Are we ready to hear?

The Holy Spirit enables us to see and hear, and then we can respond. Will we respond as we can?

…

When we see, hear, and respond, then we have something to celebrate. Then we have everything to celebrate.