Remember me, O Lord, when you show favour to your people; help me when you deliver them.
Ephesians 4:7
Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Words of Grace For Today
Our hope is always that today, yes finally today, we will be saved, at least me and mine. God teaches us patience through life as we suffer, pray for deliverance, and the suffering continues and increases, until in old age we are more than ready to give up the mortal frame and the suffering that goes with it, to go home where there is no more crying, weeping, death, and suffering.
Until we reach that point we learn to endure.
We learn to pray, if Lord you do not save me today, at least Remember me, O Lord, when you show favour to your people; help me when you deliver them.
We learn to trust that we are given what we need to make it through this day. The suffering may go on, and there is nothing we can do about it. We can learn to live the days we have, grateful for all God gives us. The measure we receive is not exactly what we want (thank God, or it would sink us from all consideration that we might need God, yet alone need to be thankful for life and all that is in it!) The measure we receive is given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
That measure is simple: what does God need to give us so that we will share all we have and are with those who are truly poor and needy.
Ah, that measure.
The measure of self-sacrificial love, not just for the people we think are good, but for the people that are truly evil.
Yes, that measure.
Simple. And so difficult to embrace. Impossible to embrace if we do not first know to be grateful in all things for everything God gives us.
So we pray, teach us, God, to be thankful, and prodigiously generous and gracious with all people.
That’s a full day for any of us.
For that God gives us the full measure, 24 hours, until our last day. For now, we give thanks, and move into the day.
As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.
Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Words of Grace For Today
Most of the people who have ever lived on earth have been quite truthfully able to say: I am poor and needy.
Even I can say that, homeless and so far in debt I will never be out of it before I die.
BUT
But, in comparison to most the people who have ever lived on earth, I still enjoy a standard of living and honest expectation of a life which far exceeds what most people have had at the best of times in their lives.
Those that are poor and needy, on a relative scale to all the people who have ever lived, are truly poor and needing for, please, even one day’s good nourishment at a time, and an expectation that they will survive the coming week’s weather, challenges, and … well you name it.
We might learn to be a bit more appreciative, for God has provided for us in abundance, enough that we can share it with others.
Some of us have even stepped out of the normal routine of life to extend help to others and been caught by dishonest accusations and claims about us that have caused us to suffer. Others of us suffer failing health, or the loss of a loved one, or … well you name it. There are more than enough ways to suffer to go around and come back around many times over.
In our suffering, can we with Paul say that our suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us?
I am not so sure it works that way very often, though to have that expectation is to change how our suffering affects us. We minimize it and live in the hope that God will walk with us, suffer with us, not abandon us, and help us endure with character that produces hope by way of God’s love poured into us in such great quantities that it spills out around us wherever we go.
While we (many of us, anyway) enjoy an extraordinary standard of living, it is not due to our great merits or abilities to earn such distinction or to better ourselves and our circumstances. Almost everything that determines our standard of living is given to us, by when and where and to whom we were born.
We can boast only that by grace we enjoy life, for God gives everyone the chance to enjoy life, if only a short bit of time.
We can boast only in God’s grace.
God’s grace is for us and
for all people.
Today, how are we going to be grateful for all we have received, and for all we can share … especially with those who are truly poor and needy?
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
Revelation 1:4-6
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
Princes of this world.
OR
The Prince of Peace, Jesus the Christ, the Saviour of all, the Son of God.
In whom do we trust?
The USA dollar has inscribed on it ‘In God We Trust’, and that dollar has symbolized so much done in the last century that did not trust in God, but in the princes and powers of this world.
Oh, well. We do like to state the opposite of what is so obviously condemning of us, as if that could possibly save us from all we do to dominate over others. Instead of freeing ourselves, we lose our souls and destroy and destory so innumerably many other people.
By grace, today, the Holy Spirit will direct our thoughts and words so that we may hear, see, and acknowledge the folly of our trust in princes of this world, and the wonders of trusting God, loving God, and of giving God all glory and honour … and dominion over our hearts, minds, and souls.
‘Simple Sam’ the other children taunted him through grade school. He was different. He rarely paid attention in class. He was off elsewhere in his thoughts. The surprise that caught his teachers off guard was when they started doing basic algebra in grade 5. Sam flew through the assignments faster than they could even read them. He corrected and explained to the teachers, in concepts they barely understood, when they made math mistakes in front of the class. When his book report came in instead of the assigned two pages on a 125 page, easy to read book, he produced ten pages on Tolkien’s Trilogy of the Rings, with insights the teachers had never read of before, not even at university.
Then one teacher had a newspaper upside down on his desk, open to an editorial on the market fluctuations caused by the recent conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and climate change. Sam came up, glanced at the newspaper and said that the author had totally forgotten to factor in the rare earth resources in Ukraine, the drive to carbon free energies, and the massive coalitions coming together between Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists to move governments, multi-national corporations, research, and even world markets towards responsible living on planet earth, including carbon neutral living and ways of doing business. That would likely change the markets at least 2% this week and maybe 10% by the end of the year.
The teacher asked Sam if he’d read the article before, or if someone had told him all this. ‘Simple Sam’ answered, “No, this is the first I’ve read anything by this author.” She asked again, “When did you read this article?” “Just now. It’s there on your desk. It’s upside down, but that doesn’t matter.” “You read it now! That article fills the bottom half the newspaper!” Sam shrugged, “I read the top half, too. It just takes a glance to read it, doesn’t it?” “Sam, can we talk about this later.” “Sure.”
‘Simple Sam’ continued, by his choice through Grade 6, totally blowing the minds of his teachers. Instead of Grade 7, that year ‘Simple Sam’ was admitted to a special 2 year tutoring program to prepare special students for university. By October he completed all they could offer, and he attended University classes. By age 16 he earned two PhD, simultaneously. One in physics-pure math, and the other in political science. In both his theses, which were published immediately, he brought many other disciplines together, as well as his own faith perspective as a Lutheran, and the impact other faiths had on his topics.
Sam continues to write and publish technical as well as popular articles and books on our past, present, and future as a species, to teach grad students at the university, and to lead children, youth, and adults in small groups at his church. He’s amazing with his guitar and on the piano.
His favourite answer to complicated questions starts with, “It’s really simple if you start by trusting God, first. Then consider that ….”
.
To the tree above Sam said: “It’s not hard to work out the math of the physics of why that tree is bowed down, but start by trusting God. Then we see the tree knows to give God the glory. After that it’s all in the biology of the tree, the weather, and the magnetic attraction of the person passing below it.”
The last, he’d explain, is a bit of humour. No science at all.
.
If you listen, look, and consider with loving care, God demonstrates every day in many ways, the folly of trusting in princes of this world, and the wonders of trusting and loving God, and of giving God all glory and honour … and dominion over our hearts, minds, and souls.
David said, ‘The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.’ So Saul said to David, ‘Go, and may the Lord be with you!’
1 Peter 4:11
Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
Going into battle with nothing more than trust in God is wholly foolhardy.
David has brought provisions from their father to his brothers who serve in Saul’s army, now facing the Philistines. He hears of Goliath’s challenge. He witnesses the Israelis cowering in fear. He speaks up that facing such an enemy and putting him to defeat would surely win the king’s favour.
That just gets his brothers angry with him for his seeming foolishness.
David’s words reach Saul’s ears, he is summon, and David offers to be the one to fight Goliath. Saul rebukes him. David is just a boy. Then the verse above is David’s response. He has faced down lions and bears. Certainly he can face down one man. Saul, with few other options, sends David as a last hope, or rather as a meaningless sacrifice to let Goliath demonstrate his battle powers.
Saul dresses David in Saul’s own armour, and David takes it off because he cannot move in it. Instead he takes staff and 5 smooth stones from the wadi.
The rest is history.
Goliath falls. David rises to become the celebrated king of Israel.
Most of us, fortunately, will not have to go into battle, nor serve as king. Instead our battles will be less fatal by all appearances. Our callings will be varied, and God sends us out to be as courageous (not to be confused with foolhardy) as David in what we do.
Most of all, just as David relies fully on the little skills he has and the great faith that he has in God, so we are to rely on our God-given skills and more so on the great faith God gives us.
It is our attitude of gratitude (for God saving us and giving us renewed life each day) more than anything else that will carry us through adversity.
God did not create us all so that we can seek our own glory. God created, redeems, and renews us so that all people will know how great God’s mercy is, how abundant God’s grace is, and how beautifully unconditional God’s love for us is.
That’s something to start the day with: knowing that we, whatever we are called to be and do, do it all as God’s people.
Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.
1 Timothy 2:5-6
For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all — this was attested at the right time.
Words of Grace For Today
Today, as in many times before, most people pick and choose what they accept as ‘god’ for themselves. The other options in other times is for people to accept blindly what others have chosen to declare as ‘god’ for others (usually in order to control them better, and rarely to provide a better life for people), or people can take all that others say about ‘god’ and just declare they refuse to accept any of it.
Most everyone claims that, with their choice of ‘god’s’ attributes, they worship the one, true ‘god’, and all other people are just plain wrong in their false beliefs. Through history this has gotten more wars started, people killed, and the attributes claimed for ‘god’ to be wholly undermined by the people’s thoughts, words, and deeds.
When we start with the declarations like 1 Chronicles provides: Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all then what should, and at best, follows, is our humble confession that we simply cannot know God enough to choose God’s attributes at all. It’s not only above our pay grade, the kind of knowledge that such choices require belong to a completely different kind of existence that begins outside of creation itself.
And we are mere creatures in this, God’s creation.
So how can we know anything about God at all?
Only as God chooses to reveal God’s attributes and attitudes towards us, can we know anything about God at all.
Jesus, as fully God, born as a full human, living and ministering to all kinds of people (especially the poor, the ill, and the outcasts), dying on a cross crucified on false charges (brought by the religious leaders of the day), being buried in a rock tomb, and rising from the dead on the third day, … Jesus is God’s clearest revelation to us: God loves us, sacrifices everything to let us know that we do not need to sacrifice others, certainly not to please God, and that we are forgiven, as are our enemies and our lives are given to us so that we can be God’s love and forgiveness for all other people.
Now that’s a good beginning to giving God attributes that are fitting.
It is a beginning which places God for us, and beyond our control, and involved in our lives, and wishing and doing everything possible to give us the ability to love and live and choose to:
1) love God above all else
2) love our neighbours
3) love ourselves
4) love even our enemies,
and to do so humbly.
The problem we all run into when we choose ‘god’s’ attributes to accept is that our ‘god’ ends up to be a small ‘god’, a ‘god’ that can do only what we want ‘god’ to do.
Small ‘gods’ lead us right to the Devil’s doorstep, and fuel great arguments for refusing to accept that God even exists. Everyone’s lives would be so much better if we could all refuse to accept all small ‘gods’, and begin each day with a similar declaration as in Chronicles.
In short it might go like this: God is greater than anything I can know. I am just clay enlivened by God’s spirit. God’s first and foremost attitude towards me, and all people, is love. God asks first and foremost that I love God, all people, and even myself. Thank you, God, for everything that gives me life. Now there’s a day to live, work to do, gracious things to say, people to love, forgiveness to beg for, and courage to be Christ’s voice, feet, and hands for all people. Never a slow day, thank you, God, for everything.
Well, what are we waiting for. Sun is up. Day is begun. Onward into the fray.
Love always leaves us feeling a bit frayed. It’s not cheap. It like life is precious.
And I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’
1 Peter 1:6-7
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Words of Grace For Today
This world does provide an ample sample of suffering for anyone who chooses to live ‘eyes wide open’. While some may say it is ‘now for a little while’, the suffering never seems anything like ‘little’ to those who are caught in it.
The image often referred to in scripture, as in these two passages, is that through our suffering our faith is refined, and it becomes more precious. This may be a great philosophical perspective on other’s suffering, though I’m not sure it helps those who suffer now. Yet it is repeated, and repeated, and repeated … as if the repetition would help or that the writers and thinkers just cannot come up with something more helpful.
Maybe there is nothing helpful!
That would, of course, depend on one’s perspective of towards what end, what goal, what value, those who suffer will be helped.
If the end, goal, and value is to not suffer, then there seems (as history well attests to what we humans are capable and eager to do to others) to be no shortage or end to suffering.
What if the end, the goal, and the value is something else than ending suffering?!
What if it the end, goal and value is how one lives, when one is in the midst of suffering, when one is free from suffering, and in fact in all circumstances of life?
Say (given the scriptural witness to this) that the end, goal and value is that we humans live in a love with God, and therefore we love all people, even our enemies and ourselves (which is usually the most difficult kind of love, since we know how little we deserve love.)
This first long weekend of the summer the crowds returned to the random camping area, first dribbling in on Wednesday already to secure a campsite for themselves and their group, most often a group using at least 2 camping units and numerous tents, trucks, cars, and noisy cycles, quads and side-by-sides. By Friday night all but the chilly spots along the lake (all well within 30 metres of the water) were overfilled, most bursting with drink, drugs, and loud music though a few had children and kept a quieter presence.
My nights’ sleep was more than once disrupted by the throbbing base of a piece of ‘music’ that spoke to a visceral, instinctual encounter with nature (having nothing to do with the peaceful nature that surrounds this lake until it is so disrupted by humans trying to escape reality.)
Saturday the kicker came. I made my usual walk along the high road and immediately saw something was wrong. A camping unit sat in the trees where no vehicle had ever sat before. A family had moved in two shorter, older campers, parked them on and on each side of the road easement that forms the border between crown and private land. The easement is only a trail passable by careful off road driving of something more robust than a 4×4 truck. They camped on each side and across the road that is the only way to bring in a camping unit to this end of the random camping area and into the private land where I rent and camp. There is another lower, closer to the lake roadway, with tight turns, many roots and holes where stumps have been removed that exits in the lake side of the random camping area. There everyone sees me coming and going, and it’s impossible to bring water in and out since the rough road spills more water than not. In other words they were blocking my roadway out and back in.
The father said they were not completely set up yet, claimed they (with weed and alcohol in hand) that they wanted to camp away from the noise and partying of the other campers because of the children with them, and refused to consider moving to other established camping sites that were still available where they could fit both their campers.
The threats voiced towards me, the belligerence and profanity, the open threats, and the orders to leave belied … well it belied a fear in them. And an animal that is caught in fear can be unpredictable and destructive. I could well be caught in their unpredictable violence that certainly more than bubbled to the surface of one young man.
I returned a second time later, after continuing to work on the writing due that evening, as I had been before this unwelcomed surprise. I asked how long they would be there. The young man, bursting with profanity and incomprehensible challenges, came so close to striking me that I was shocked. Another man, broken with age, a long grey beard, challenged me as well. Because neither would engage in a meaningful exchange of words I turned to the father who had come around one of the campers to join the ‘not conversation’ and said they would be there until tomorrow.
Tomorrow has come and gone and they camp still there in the way, promising to vacate the roadway if I need to use it, but blocking it from all practical use.
The real threat they pose to me is, since they can see when I come and go, they and others have clear opportunity to come up to my camp and ransack it or sabotage pieces of essential equipment, loaned to me to help me survive year around here, or worse.
How to put an end to this?!
Remove them from the face of the earth? That method has been tried so often in history and the results are ugly and never successful, or if they appear to be successful the backlash is worse than than the problem one sought to solve.
Ignore them and let them block my roadway, and the roadway for others. Another family came in last night to a site along that lower, lakeside road … and busted up the awning on a tree. The road is not wide enough, the turns too tight, and the holes tip a camper into trees one is trying to avoid. Ignoring them campers blocking the roadway is a passable solution, and really the only option for now. The danger is that they will stay with whole summer, or that others will move in when they leave, and the block will continue, and the danger that comes with it.
Or I can reframe my mind about what constitutes a danger, and trust beyond reasonable trust, that though so many will know my comings and goings my camp will not be damaged (again, for the theft and sabotage has already happened more than a few times.)
Or I can work to build some trust with these fearful people, ameliorate their fear, and defuse their under-the-surface anger so that they are less unpredictable, and less likely to vent on me or my camp.
Which is the raw, unfaithful response?
Which is the immature faith response?
Which is the ‘refined gold’ response?
Which provides for ‘us’ and ‘them’ that which every soul yearns for: to be heard, to be treasured, to be encouraged, to be welcomed and accepted just as one is?
May God provide the ‘fire’ needed to refine our faith, so that in all we think, say, and do others will hear us rejoicing and calling on God’s name saying ‘The Lord is our God’, so that the Spirit may reveal with our praise, Jesus Christ’ glory and honour … and love for all people, those that threaten us and that part of us that lives in fear.
May God provide, through us, that every soul will b be heard, be treasured, be encouraged, be welcomed and accepted just as one is!
Will We Choose to See Beyond Our Own Greeds, to Other’s Needs?
Ecclesiastes 5:10
The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity.
1 Timothy 6:8-9
If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
Words of Grace For Today
It would seem to be common sense that money is necessary for life and a lot of money will make for a better life. Much of humanity has lived so. Before there was money it was wealth of whatever kind was recognized in their day.
Wisdom has always taught that pursuing money/wealth is a sure route to despair and futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes is right, such pursuits are all vanity, and vanity that serve nothing in life or in death. In fact they hasten death even though one may still walk, talk, breathe and chase after more money/wealth.
The writer of 1 Timothy has it correct if incompletely so. When we have the necessities of life we can be content, though the necessities of life are more than just food and clothing. They also include clean air and water, adequate shelter, meaningful labour and being able to love and be loved. With these we ought to be content, though we rarely are.
Built into our DNA, our survival, is the drive to make things better for ourselves and those with us. So even after we have the necessities of life we strive to have more … and that striving is rots our souls at the core.
Our ability to labour on earth is not intended to be used for ourselves alone. It is to be labour that makes life possible and better for everyone.
Today, just another today, is a day …
when we are able
by Grace
to labour
for God’s bountiful blessings to be enjoyed by more and more people.
One Would Hope Enough Brains to Figure Out Something Better for the Environment,
Like Haul It Out (As The Law Requires)
1 Samuel 3:19
As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.
Luke 10:16
‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.’
Words of Grace For Today
Letting one’s words fall to the ground.
That’s a great image of losing one’s voice, of not being heard, of not being enough that one’s voice reaches any ear and merely peters out like a plane out of fuel and they bite the dust.
But
To have God ensure that one’s words do not fall to the ground! Now that is something blessed.
We really don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it. And then when we lose our voice, and people shun us (though we’ve done nothing to deserve it, it’s all lies and deception made up to cover other’s sins), and we are cast out, unable to work, or earn a living, and we become dependent at best and desperate at least, and dead at worst.
So after one has been made to be nothing by other people’s cruelties that seem to have no end, when God comes along and promises to ‘not let your words fall to the ground’, it is to be raised from the dead and to be brought home again.
So it is.
Whoever listens, listens. And whoever rejects a person, rejects the one who gives life to that person.
May we learn to listen more carefully, kindly, with empathy to those ‘cast out’ by the world’s ways.
That’s what those two good ears God gave us are for, after all! Holding glasses in place and hanging ear rings from them may be good and even beautiful, but listening …
to be damned by our own blindness and foolish ways?
Jeremiah 31:34
No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
John 6:28-29
Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’
Words of Grace For Today
‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’
Or to put it another way: It is God’s work, not ours, to believe in Jesus.
Here we see Jesus responding to questions that really have no good answer, not as those asking would understand what a good answer might be.
The person comes with a certain way of seeing the world. It is a very unhealthy, sometimes really destructive way of seeing the world. It is a common way of seeing the world. It is to see the world as if God really did not exist and as if God did not create the universe and everything in it and as if God did not love every person in ways we can at best imagine only a little bit.
One such common question is ‘How can I save myself and my family from the threat of the foreign powers that rule our world?’
There are lots of things that one could try to do. Maybe they are even possible to do. But none of them will save you from the real threats to you and your families lives, because the foreign powers are not the greatest or the worst threats to your lives. The greatest threat to life is always to assume one lives outside God’s favour, blessings and grace.
Another common enough question is, ‘How can I get a [fill in the romantic preference, girl/boy/woman/man/monkey (just kidding)] to fall in love with me?’
The reality is no one can get anyone else to fall in love with them. Often people think they can ‘trick’ or ‘seduce’ another person to love them, but the result cannot ever be love. It is much, much less and if it’s based on deception, it will always be destructive to all parties.
The right question is, ‘How can I love someone with all my being, even when they might never love me in return? And if they never do, can I then learn to love someone else with all my being?’
The answer to that question is simple: be honest, open, trustworthy, kind and … be yourself. Then if someone should love you, they will love the real you.
The tricky part of all these ‘love me’ questions is not the love part, it is being ‘me’, and being ‘me’ in such a way as to be the best that God created ‘me’ to be.
But, as is almost always the case when people ask important questions, the problem is in the person asking the question, not the world around them; and usually the problem is they have not figured out how to be themselves. They imitate, pretend, hope, and fail, but they never really know who they are.
So in the reading for today the people come to Jesus and ask, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’
Which is an odd question. They might mean, ‘what must we do to do what God would have us do?’ but instead they ask, ‘what must we do in order to do the things that only God can do?’
The obvious answer is ‘you cannot do a thing since you simply will never do God’s work for God’. God does that work just fine, thank you. And only God does that work.
But telling the people who are asking in earnest this odd question is not kind. So Jesus answers another question, perhaps a question the people meant to ask, and perhaps the question that they could have asked. Always Jesus answers the people with something that is REALLY important for them to hear.
So Jesus tells these inquisitive people: ‘God’s work is to believe in me, the one God sent to you!’
That’s what they need to hear. It’s all about believing in Jesus.
The thing they do not hear is this: only the Holy Spirit can bring a person to believe in Jesus. Oh, people, dear stumbling, controlling people. No one can bring themselves to believe. And look at all the work, the words, the movements, the effort spent over the last 2000 years to get people to believe in Jesus!
Writing long before Jesus’ day Jeremiah knew well what faith in God was all about. It is about God working in us all that God wills for us: that we know God and love God, ourselves, our neighbours and our enemies, and all creation! Jeremiah sees that God does it all for us: ‘No longer shall we teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for we shall all know God, from the least of us to the greatest, [as the Lord says]; for God, and God alone, will forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more.
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.
Ephesians 4:23-24
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah Ephesians, Ephesians. So like so much truncated and 1/4 turn twisted faith. Jesus shows us we cannot save ourselves. The twist is simple: after Jesus saves us, then we are able to save ourselves.
Ha!
The world and people in it would have to be of an entirely different creator for that to be possible.
Yes, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to recognize that we should, and by God’s grace sometimes do,
put away our former way of life, you old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This is a marvellous miracle for us when God accomplishes this in us, and in those around us, or anyone on this planet … and then we go off the rails, back to our old ways
like Ephesians, thinking we can save ourselves, and not being able to at all, but making up story after story as if we can, have and will …
which is the devil’s fertile ground for all the destruction that follows in such self-delusions.
So we beg: God save us again,
and again,
and again,
and again without end,
so that we might reflect the power of your grace for us, so that others may know your grace for them.
Oh, God, give us a bit of righteousness, today, if you could. We certainly do need it. We all need it.
