You have an abundance of workers: stonecutters, masons, carpenters, and all kinds of artisans without number, skilled in working gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you.
Acts 4:33
With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
Words of Grace For Today
Labour.
It is one of the necessities of life, well … not just any old labour, but meaningful labour.
When one builds a house or church or temple or mosque, even today, there are many different specialized crews that show up (hopefully on time and necessarily in the right order): surface prep earth movers, utilities installers (usually underground, leaving stubs above ground ‘at the curb’), a track hoe and maybe a dump truck to haul away the extra dirt, foundation builders, concrete crews (today with fewer wheelbarrows to move the concrete into place and one big cement pump truck that can deliver concrete anywhere in a 50’-75’ radius,) basement framers, concrete crews again, framers or insulate block assemblers (depending on the style of house, wood framed or insulated blocks filled with concrete), and on it goes with roofers for everything from rafters to shingles, eavestroughers, siding installers and/or parge and stucco appliers, carpenters to build the inside walls electricians, plumbers, drywallers, painters, cabinet makers, floor installers, and interior designers. Maybe one needs specialized trades to install a heat pump, in-floor heating, ventilation, and computer power and internet connections.
When Solomon starts to build the temple the list is shorter, the work much more muscle intensive and the materials considerably heavier, starting with stones for the foundations and walls.
That was labour intensive.
It was not labour that Solomon likely engaged in other than to give the orders for the work to commence and be done, if even that.
There is other labour that many people engage in, labours less of one’s hands and more of one’s mind, like writing, teaching, researching, inventing, designing, exploring, serving, healing, protecting, leading, buying and selling, and the list goes on. (There are also many bogus labours that try to cheat people of their some or all of their lives.)
One additional one is mentioned in the second verse for today: preaching (or giving testimony about Jesus.)
What is odd is the description given for how the apostles preached, ‘with great power.’ This is odd because everything about Jesus was that he called for us to take note that the ‘power’ we used in this world is not the kind of ‘power’ that God intends for us to use. God’s power (made so clear by Jesus’ life, ministry to forgive and heal, death, and resurrection) is the power of serving others with unconditional love and forgiveness that offers renewed life to all people over and over and over again.
With Great Power, the power of sacrificial love, to give witness in thoughts, words and deeds, to God’s intended manner of us living in this good creation.
That is the labour of all faithful people.
This kind of labour may net one nothing, or even cost one greatly, even costing one one’s own life! This is the basis of love, the unconditional love of God that God intends for us to BE for one another.
And that is hard labour!
That is a very special kind of labour.
That is a labour that we carry on as we work at our meaningful labours of contributing to a good society around us.
Is This the Path, The Life, That Christ Calls Us To?
Where from Comes Our Strength to Carry on
Into the Wilderness?
Only from God Who Walks with Us!
Isaiah 45:23-24
By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.’ Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength; all who were incensed against him shall come to him and be ashamed.
John 6:51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
Words of Grace For Today
Yesterday the snow started in SE Saskatchewan, cm and cm fell. Then the wind up to 90km/hour blew it around like a chauffeur on meth.
The CBC article was well organized. A truck headed east to Brandon stopped to wait out the storm. Not his life, not his cargo is worth the risk of piling it up in the ditch or worse into other vehicles.
A young couple from Brandon travelled to a concert in Regina and they are on their way back, interviewed at the same spot the trucker has parked his rig, along with a collection of 18-wheelers. Who goes to a concert now in Covid times when all the restrictions are lifted leaving everyone so vulnerably exposed!?! A photo from the RCMP shows the visibility, which is forecast to get worse out of SE Saskatchewan into Manitoba. The road disappears into the white of snow and cloud ahead at 100 feet at most. The young couple says they are going to keep heading east until they come across a barrier across the road, or they simply cannot go further.
RCMP photo near Estevan SK
They are hell bent on getting back home.
What a contrast to the trucker who wisely sits out the danger of killing himself or others.
The arrogant leader portrayed in Isaiah at least knows where from his righteousness and strength come from: it comes from the Lord. I suppose that kind of arrogance could see him head out into a blizzard, ‘knowing’ that God calls him to travel!
But not likely.
For no matter how haughty we humans become, and even foolish, for those who recognize that their only righteousness and strength is not their own but that given as a gift to them by God, do not test fate for little to no reason. Risks are taken only to do God’s work.
So we know, that our lives are not anything, in fact we would not still be breathing, except that God has fed us the bread of life, Christ’ body. In him there is no darkness at all, the night and the day are all alike. In him we do not succumb to the fear of life, the fear of having to make our own way, the fear that we must achieve in order to have value. We know that our value is given in Christ’ body, and no one can take it from us. We are free and forever righteous and full of strength!
Therefore we follow Christ’ example: ministering to the poor, the marginalized, those whose voices have been taken from them. We bring God’s promise of life abundant, in sacrifice, giving life to others.
Come what may, blizzard or heat wave, floods or drought, war or barbarians ruining peace, we know that we live to Christ. We will die to Christ. And then we will live again with Christ.
So now we trust that God walks with us, and rests with us, as we stop to wait out the blizzards of life.
Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.
John 12:24
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Words of Grace For Today
How is it that we make progress forward, onward in life, by surrendering, even dying, as we wait for a saviour to be born, as we wait for the fruit of our sacrifices to grow among the peoples?
This is an out-of-the-ordinary path to follow, to give up, wait, and then be handed victory.
Or is it?
In wars, the strategies of winners have often been to sacrifice many battles, and many lives, in order to win the war, and, as they always say to justify the sacrifices, to save so many more lives and our ‘freedom’, our way of life (which usually means our people get to be the master who abuse and exploit and leave in poverty the great masses of people for whom the war was supposedly fought.)
In God’s good creation there are examples everywhere of life, of flora and fauna, is ended precisely in order that new life can be born and flourish better than it was before. Seeds are a simple ubiquitous example.
Another pressing example is the use of cool fires, cultural fires, to prevent hot, destructive wildfires. The western world exploits and controls nature to provide energy and progress towards … well towards what. Now we see nature (God’s good creation) boomeranging back on us. We sought to stop all destructive fires, pulled energy out of the ground in the form of coal and oil to do work for us that we simply could not do for ourselves, and used ‘inputs’ into farm land like never before to produce enough food to feed the population growing and doubling in less than 100 years!
‘Mother Nature’, or simple God’s good creation, is struggling to survive this human onslaught. Climates change melting waters from the polar caps that will flood hundreds of the biggest cities in the world and displace 100s of millions of people.
Weather patterns change, bring wet climates to previously drier climates and impossibly wet climates and flooding to livable climates … and drought and wildfires to areas previously drier but livable. New deserts are being formed. Wildfires only start by devastating huge areas of land, many larger than a circle taking in Albany NY and Philadelphia PA, or most of England, or about the distance from Athabasca to High River (taking in both Calgary and Edmonton) or more than from Vegreville to Jasper. The smoke from the fires disrupts life down wind for thousands of miles. A wildfire creates its own thunderclouds and lightning, which can start more wildfires. While the land does come back, sometimes, the fires are very hot, very destructive, more so than the flora needs. Fauna can be wiped out not to return.
Seeds must die into the ground to sprout as new life.
Land must burn to rejuvenate some trees and bushes, and to avoid the devastating destruction of wildfires.
Nature responds to unrestrained human exploitation by flooding out the major cities along all coastlines. Fewer humans give the ecosystems of the world a better chance of surviving the human onslaughts. Instead of the human species being extinct or decimated to a few million, a quarter of the present population may survive the next 200 years!
And what of us, now?
As always, God works to bring to an end our hubris and hellbent destruction of ourselves and others around us, by sacrificing Jesus’ life, replacing our terrible records with Jesus’ (forgiving us) so that we might live, renewed and freed from the unbearable burdens of our own sins … so that we might start to live, at least a bit, as God intended us to live: gently gracious, loving and forgiving, trusting and hope-filled for our unsure futures.
Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, ‘The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
Colossians 1:13
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Words of Grace For Today
Usually the cry to ‘get out!’ is made in order to move people away from danger. Isaiah provides it to the people in exile in order to move the people toward their homeland, again. This is the cry that is part of the beginning of the return of Israel. It is still going on today, not just with people returning to Israel, but people left homeless for all sorts of reasons and even more during the Covid pandemic.
Today for many would be the cry “Flee the tent gatherings, the river valley tent cities, the shelters, the wilderness camps, the friends couches, the families basements, the temporary housing places, the foreign cities, and from the refugee escaping lines and the refugee camps! Go out from these places, and come home!”
Home!
That conjures up so many memories, and imaginations for those who’ve never had their own homeland or even a home to call their own. Home is … where family is, where one’s heart is, where one’s heritage is, where one’s culture is, where one’s language is spoken and listened to and understood. Home is where one can love others and be loved by others, safely, without risking one’s reputation and life. Home is where God calls us to be … sometimes that is not a home at all, but a time and place where we can provide for others, a place where we can give our everything to secure health, well-being, and joy for others.
Home!
Come home!
Please, come home!
There is no end to the power of darkness that drives so many of us out of our homes, separating us from our loved ones, our children, spouses, parents, and our being. Of course some homes are not safe at all, filled with that darkness itself, of abuse, lies, false blaming, and treachery. God calls us from those ‘homes’ as well back to, or forward to what we may have never known: a place where we are safe from violence and abuse and belittling and isolation from the rest of our family and friends. It’s not just men that do this to women, its also a lot of women doing it to a lot of men. Abuse by whomever always ends in the death of the abused at the hands (directly or indirectly) of the abuser. So God calls us out of these places of destruction of life, to places where our value is known and named regularly, where our contributions are received with gratitude, where our weaknesses are compensated for, where our faults are forgiven. Home is where we grow, together we grow, and we grow together, through the challenges of life.
There is no end to how the powers of darkness consume us and leave us ragged, spent, depleted and at most half alive. So God calls us and rescues us from the power of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
There we live saved by Grace, and filled with gratitude, equipped and empowered to provide safety, value, and love to those with us, those outside our home, and even our enemies (who are so hungry for love and know not how to find it or live it for others.)
From God to all those in all the corners of the earth: Come Home.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.
Romans 5:1-2
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.
Words of Grace For Today
Waiting in hope, taking courage, having received grace … What is this all about?
Paul N. Hanson provided this snippet as an illustration:
Skip-Bo is a simple game for all ages. A bit simplified: cards are drawn, and unloaded to the discard piles matching a top card by number or colour. Special cards in the deck spice up the play: “Draw 4,” “Skip the next player,” “Trade hands” with another player. You win by emptying your hand. We four parents and four kids sat to play. Then the burdens grew too great for my youngest and his little eyes poured out tears. His small hands could not hold all the cards he was stuck with. The other dad, holding only two cards, drew the “Trade hands” card. He announced he would swap his two cards for my boy’s twenty. Imagine my son’s reaction!
What a sweet exchange! Christ emptied Himself, took our burdens, even our deaths, and gave us renewed life. Christ sets us free! (Luther Seminary God Pause – reworked by TL)
Now that we are free we have lots to be thankful for. We no longer hold the losing hand, so great a hand it is that we cannot even bear to shoulder the burden and make our way through the day. We no longer have to unload some of our guilt and debts on to others.
Jesus takes our burdens from us, not just once, and thereafter we’d better get it together to avoid another losing hand! No! In fact, no matter how hard we try, give anyone of us a little time and we accumulate another burden of shtako so heavy that our lives just stink like hades. Jesus comes and walks with us, and continually offers to swap loads with us, freeing us so that we can offer God’s unending blessings of forgiveness and renewed life to everyone we encounter.
What a sweet exchange! Over and Over and Over again.
We boast, not in how little our burden now is, nor in the loads we’ve been relieved of, but in the Grace of God that is expressed in Jesus continually swapping burdens with us!
I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
Titus 2:13-14
… while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Words of Grace For Today
Enlyn Ott, Executive Director of Healthy Congregations, wrote early on in the Covid Pandemic (16 April 2020) in her invitation to her then upcoming workshop:
Constant change, new models and numbers are a way of life for us now. Regular patterns are upended. Relationships need to be maintained in new ways. Technology is used in places that never considered it a possibility before, raising issues of inadequacy as well as a sense of accomplishment. Death and illness are only a breath away.
I have decided to take a line from Winston Churchill for my workshop at the upcoming Navigating the Rapids conference. It is entitled “For Such a Time as This.” What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?
Isaiah begins, I will wait …
Titus continues a previous thought with while we wait …
This ongoing, perhaps never quite ending, Covid Pandemic, among so many other things has taught us again that we wait. We must wait. We must wait for the day when we can rush out with no thought of protecting ourselves and others. While we wait for ‘normal’ to return, we need to protect ourselves and other by physically maintaining distance, by wearing the best masks we can get, by improving ventilation and avoiding areas with poor ventilation, by constantly washing and sanitizing our hands, and ‘staying the blazes home!’ when we do not need to go out.
What is this ‘normal’ that we wait for?
Is it worth the wait!?
There is no advantage to anyone by disregarding reality, denying reality, and pretending that Covid is not here and here with a vengeance, and coming yet again with new and more contagious and deadly variants. The real problem we all have is that while we wait we have to know what we are waiting for! Otherwise we can go mad, and like so many, head out without waiting, without caution, without protection for ourselves and others … and with our denial of it’s reality we make the reality of the pandemic last and last and last … and kill and maim more and more people.
On this Psalm – Passion Sunday we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem so celebrated by people, by people fervent with hope, but hoping for a saviour that was and is never to come, a political, a military, a worldly saviour to lead us into our own cruel and evil ways of living off the backs of others, instead of continuing as it is now when others live off our backs, while 2% of the 7 billion on earth live off the backs of the 70% who have next to nothing, and off the backs of the other 25% who believe they have lots, but have so little. The other 3% are God’s saints. Maybe the percentage is larger. One cannot know.
This Sunday we remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and we remember what followed.
Confrontation
Celebration
Betrayal
False Charges
False Conviction
Capital Torture the Sentence
Cruel Taunting
Death
What kind of a saviour suffers these things, and willingly?
The Saviour of the world
Our Saviour
Our Saviour who redeems us from all iniquity and purifies for himself a people of his own.
The ‘normal’ we wait for is certainly not the return of what was ‘normal’ prior to the Covid pandemic and all it’s changes to our lives.
What we wait for is life,
blessed life, as one of Christ’s own, redeemed and purified, still sinners and always saints.
Constant change …. What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?
This is, as always, God’s time, God’s blessed time for us. Our blessed time in God’s time, in God’s blessed creation.
This time, like all time for all generations, calls us to return to Christ, to confess the reality of our lives, the inevitable brokenness of our lives, and to give thanks for the blessings that flow over us so abundantly, waiting
waiting for us to share them with all other peoples.
David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’
Nathan said to David, ‘Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.’
Colossians 2:13
When you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses.
Words of Grace For Today
Going out of bounds.
Growing up in Tanzania before the land was so densely populated so that our backyard went on for miles and miles of bush once we crossed the dry creek bed (which flowed strong and dangerously in the wet season) and on two different farms in ‘northern’ Minnesota both of which were surrounded by open land for miles, and in the Twin Cities where our back yard bordered on an old farm yard surrounded by acres and acres of undeveloped land which continued across the road into a huge impenetrable swamp, when we played we had free reign for miles. In each place there were boundaries as to how far we would venture, sometimes how far we were allowed to venture, sometimes how far we had agreed with each other to venture when we played. There had to be boundaries so that the games we played would work.
We did venture outside the boundaries, of course. We were after all children.
We did venture outside the invisible boundaries, like the time my older brothers killed a bird, started a fire, roasted it, and we each had a small bite. So exciting, in part because killing was ‘out of bounds’, starting a fire was ‘out of bounds’, and eating a wild bird was ‘out of bounds’. Thinking about it today the fire was reasonably dangerous, but eating a wild bird was ridiculously dangerous. Today, with all the ‘new’ diseases around it would be even more so.
Then there was the time that I just absently minded, not yet 5 years old, ventured beyond where my three older brothers were playing in that dry creek bed behind our house in Kiomboi. I was making what-I-cannot-remember in the sand and gravel. Darkness approached. My brothers probably yelled for me to come with them. They took off for the safety of the house. I continued to play, unawares of what was falling fast all around me. It was a short hike back home. Twilight lasted a mere 24 minutes at best. Once it was into dusk …
At night in the dark, as we were tucked into bed, each in our own bed, four beds, four older boys, in one large room with windows on one long side and one shorter side of the oblong room, the shrill piercing vicious cries and growls, the gaping mouths filled with big teeth, the yellow eyes and long noses of the hyenas more than often enough would jar us back awake and keep us awake for hours. Not that the hyenas wasted that much time at the windows, but our hearts would make up all sorts of terrible scenarios of them breaking in through the glass and/or the screens if the windows were open to cool the room for the ‘quiet’ of the night.
There I was, out of bounds playing in the sand and gravel of the creek bed, darkness falling fast as I was unawares. And then it fell. I jumped up in terror-alarm, and sped as fast as my panic fuelled short legs would carry me along the path between the bushes. The growls began behind me, the shrill cries pierced my little mind and my legs just would not pump any faster.
When I reached the closest door, the door to the kitchen, I grabbed it with what strength I had and …
…
Susanne, our house helper, pulled me in, closed the door behind me, and soothed my fears, before she stepped out the door for her walk home.
I was safe, and that welcome from Susanne told my little heart and mind that, though I had strayed outside the boundaries of safety, I was welcomed home, even if that welcome cost her her own safety as she made the trek to her own home of safety somewhere out there past the dark boundaries for us little boys, though well within her boundaries.
David steps many times outside the boundaries God has set for the ruler-warrior of the Israelite nation from its infancy to its heyday. The time he must pay with his life is when he has not only taken Bathsheba for his own, but he has ensured that her husband, his good general on the battlefield, will not return. David arranges for ‘friendly fire’ to kill Uriah, so that he can keep her, and cover up that she is pregnant with his child.
Nathan steps up to give David a lesson, a lesson that proud, powerful David needs, in order that David can confess once again how far out of bounds David has ventured, this time worse than many other times. The punishment must be David’s own life in exchange for Uriah’s.
Like Susanne at the kitchen door, once David has confessed his terrible sin, Nathan pronounces God’s forgiveness and welcoming of David, back ‘into bounds’, back into the safety of living in God’s house, in God’s creation, within God’s boundaries, boundaries that keep us safe from ourselves and from the evil ‘hyenas’ out there ready to tear us apart without hesitation.
So it is as always that God’s unconditional and steadfast love restores us to life. We can trust that even when we stray ‘out of bounds’, as we confess God promises us that we shall not die. Indeed God makes us alive together with Christ, forgiving us all our trespasses.
Stay safe today, and always. Know that even when we stray, God welcomes us home to safety with open arms, and the honest love of friends like Nathan, and soothing comfort of people like Suzanne.
Spring Snow Falls Heavy on Rust Leaves That Forgot To Let Go Last Fall
Are We Also Out of Sync with Creation
Or
Has God Blessed Us Beyond All Imagination or Image of Blessing?
Genesis 49:22-26
‘Joseph is a fruitful bough,
a fruitful bough by a spring;
his branches run over the wall.
The archers fiercely attacked him; they shot at him and pressed him hard.
Yet his bow remained taut, and his arms were made agile
by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,
by the God of your father, who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
The blessings of your father are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains,
the bounties of the everlasting hills; may they be on the head of Joseph, on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.
by the God of your father, who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
1 John 3:18-20
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Words of Grace For Today
Images of God’s blessings reflect the world of the writer.
These passages from Genesis use the image of the bow held taut, arrows shot at one by one’s enemies who press hard against one (seeking one’s death), in counterpoint to God’s blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, blessings that are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains, the bounties of the everlasting hills.
The bow and arrow are no longer common in the arsenal used to kill us by our enemies. Mighty warships with great guns, fighter jets with smart missiles, drones for surveillance and armed with missiles and guns, automatic rifles, RPGs, tanks and artillery, fighter helicopters, nuclear submarines, silent submarines, radar, sonar, anti tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and propaganda. Closer to home the weapons are hunting rifles, shotguns, poisons, deadly-wrongly-provided health care, webs of lies and deceptions, and corrupt police, lawyers, prosecutors and judges.
The deadliest, the least detected or spoken of, are always the psychological assaults, most destructively spun by one’s who have pursued, won, and spoken of love, though love is so far from their capability. Their self-interests are everything to them, and the lies told never end until one is dead and gone and hopefully forgotten … for if and when the truth is known the false-love persons are most detested and shamed … for they attack under the guise of what all know (even if they pretend not to accept): namely that love is the one precious piece of life that God gives us so that we can overcome all other challenges to life, and with love press on to live honest, honourable, and holy lives.
So we say with the writer of 1 John: Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
In love we see God’s attitude toward us and all creation, and by love we are emboldened to live and live abundantly, blessed with all blessings ever imagined, including God’s blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, blessings that are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains, the bounties of the everlasting hills.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
John 10:27-28
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Words of Grace For Today
Covid has exacted a huge cost on us. Not to mention the cost to global, national, and local economies. Not to mention the many people Covid has killed in one of the most excruciatingly painful ways. Not to mention many of those who survive serious Covid symptoms continue seemingly without end for years long-covid: fatigue, pains, circulation and nerve malfunctions, organ malfunction, brain fog, and depression. So much depression.
The greatest number of people suffer even though they have not had Covid, or the symptoms were so mild they barely noticed more than as if they had a light bout of the flu or a bad cold. The suffering is part and parcel, we are told, of living through a pandemic.
“pandemic fatigue” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney recently said that, despite the rapid spread of the Omicron variant across the country, Canadians may be at their “outer limits” of what further public-health restrictions they’re willing to accept. While many people are “burnt out” on COVID and COVID-related news, many [say] ‘We’re sick of it. We hate it, but we’ve got to do it anyway.’ However, the researchers also discovered that pandemic fatigue affects “a substantial minority of people” who tended to have “greater levels of emotional burnout, pessimism, apathy, and cynical or negative beliefs” about the pandemic. “In other words, pandemic fatigue was associated with heightened self-interest to the expense of community needs,” That has led to a form of “systematic desensitization…. it’s as if we had built up antibodies against fear.”
There are many, many more things going on with all of us, not all of us equally, and some of us to the point that we are nearly totally debilitated, unable to live anything like normal, even taking into account that we may be isolated physically from others.
The words that describe what we suffer go on and on like this: languishing, languor, lethargy, apathy, listlessness, supine (laying on one’s back), supineness, anxiety, fearlessness, angst, dread, disquiet, foolhardy, imprudent, reckless, irresponsible, depression, desolation, despondency, gloominess, dispirited, bleakness, Weltschmerz ….
Or as University of Calgary classics professor Peter Toohey put it in an interview with CBC’s Chattopadhyay: We’re experiencing the ancient state of “acedia”
There are so many voices blaring all over the place, whispering in corners, projecting over crowds and chat rooms, telling us what to think, what to do, who to blame, how to ‘return to normal’, how to be done with Covid, how to cope with Covid, how to live with Covid, for while we may be done with Covid, Covid certainly is not done with us!
Which voices will we listen to?
Like never before, like always before for every person in every generation how we see the world greatly determines what we see, how we feel (the emotional response that takes in all our perceptions, mixes them up with our convolutions from our past experiences), which in turn forms our ‘take’ on the world happenings, which in large part determines how we respond.
So how do we start each day?
Do we enter the new day with angst, panic, depression, apathy, detachment and fear?
Or
Do we listen to the voice that we know, the voice of the One who knows us completely, who created us and loves us and forgives us and renews us.
The One who makes us lie down in green pastures; who leads us beside still waters; who restores our souls. Who leads us in right paths for God’s name’s sake.
Whatever else we know about this day, first and foremost we know that No one will snatch us out of Jesus’ hand.
God Works in the Most Roundabout Ways to Bring Us New Life
Like Traffic Circles Now Called Roundabouts,
Moving Traffic Through Intersections Most Efficiently
Saving Fuel and Carbon Footprints
Exodus 13:18
So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt prepared for battle.
Romans 8:28
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
Words of Grace For Today
Silvia lay, unable and unwilling to move for fear of what might happen next. Maybe everything would disappear and she’d find herself waking up in her own bed as the sun rose casting rays of warmth across her bed … and she’d still be unable to move … or would she, hope against hope, be able to get up out of bed and stand on her own two feet. The news was expected, feared, and finally hoped for. Even the worst news would be the best news. It’d be her last possible escape from the pain and spiralling descent into despair her life had become.
Silvia had heard that God works in roundabout ways, almost always. That our challenge is to trust that God works for our good as those God has called to love God and all God’s people and all of creation. She had heard that so long ago in a different lifetime, but she had not been able to believe it, back when the world made sense. Back then she’d worked to help refugees settle in safety in her neighbourhood and across her city, and prayed every opportunity she could for them and for the many refugees who never found their way to safety, and for the millions who never escaped the violence that ruined their neighbourhoods and cities. She knew that some people ruined life for so many other. She figured she had to undo their destruction, at least the little bit she could. It was all up to her and people like her. God may well save people, but she could never figure out how one could believe that. That was back then.
For almost a decade now she had given her body every chance to survive it’s own battle with itself. Cancer had seemed someone else’s concern … before that day back then, so vividly burned in her memory: a call from the nurse asking her to come see her doctor that day. Could she make it in an hour. He would be free for a few minutes. …
And then the news:
‘youhavestage4melanomaradiationshouldstartthisafternoonfollowedbychemotherapy.’ It was all a blur from then on, the IV’s, the nausea and pain, the fatigue and insomnia, the loss of hair, skiing, tennis, hiking and even walks in the parks, and the puking her guts out, the weight loss until she was a thin pencilled in skeleton on a two dimensional bed sheet. There were breaks in those ten years. Breaks from the chemo and from the despair and from the puking. There was even a temporary bit of weight gain. But there were also bone breaks, and spirit breaks, as the cancer showed up in her bones, more chemo and radiation and then it showed up in her muscles, and then in her stomach, then in her everything.
‘In everything’ was just 3 months ago. The doctors, for there were three of them that time sitting next to her wheelchair, … the doctors said radiation and chemo were out of the question. She was not strong enough and the cancer was growing too fast to wait again for her to rebound enough from the last treatment regimes. But …
But there was an experimental treatment in the first stages of human trials, and since she was terminal with less than a few months to live she would probably qualify. It involved DNA manipulation and nanobots and … That’s all Silvia heard before she passed out. She woke hooked up to what looked like an octopus coming out of a dialysis machine with tubes running in and out of each of her legs and both sides of her neck pumping blood in and out of her. More tubes ran in and out of her stomach, her nose, and other places she could not see or feel anymore. She blinked, the nurse noticed, the doctor came and she was put back under.
When they were done with her she was carted off home to recover. Safer than being in the hospital. A nurse watched her round the clock. A week later they did the same thing all over again. She felt weak. But at least it was not like radiation. Her hair continued to grow back. There was a quarter inch on her head now. And it was not like chemo. She could sleep, eat, and her strength continued to return. She remember that first Wednesday waking up and the sun warmed her face and she did not need to puke. It was by comparison heaven!
Each week it was the same. Her Mondays disappeared in the hospital and Wednesdays she woke up at home. Three months she had not seen a Tuesday. The snow was surely melted and the trees would be budding. But she could not stand and walk. Not that she did not have the strength, but the protocol was she had to remain sedate, quiet, relaxed at all times, or they would sedate her to ensure she stayed still … but the less medications the better for the experiment. This week, after her ‘dialysis disappearing Monday’ wrapped up they’d carted her up to a hospital room and, while she was still unconscious all day long on Tuesday they did thorough blood tests, biopsies and imaging.
Now Wednesday afternoon, the doctor called and asked her to come in. It really wasn’t up to her. The nurse had all the work of prepping her for and loading her on to the stretcher and into the ‘ambulance’ (actually an empty van with anchors for her special stretcher was all it was) for the ride to the hospital.
She remembered that first call by the doctor to come to the office as soon as possible. Could she make it in an hour!
And then the shock of the deadly news.
Silvia lay, unable and unwilling to move for fear of what might happen next. Maybe everything would disappear and she’d find herself waking up in her own bed as the sun rose casting rays of warmth across her bed … and she’d still be unable to move … or would she, hope against hope, be able to get up out of bed and stand on her own two feet. The news was expected, feared, and finally hoped for. Even the worst news would be the best news. It’d be her last possible escape from the pain and spiralling descent into despair her life had become.
The doctor said this time, ‘There is no sign of cancer anywhere. The treatment seems to be working. Even better: some of the damage to your heart, liver and kidneys seems to be repairing itself! We want you to start physio with the nurse at home. Come in each week for continued treatments, though you will not be unconscious. Let’s see if we can get you walking this week, and jogging a bit again before the end of the month. You should be able to ski again next winter.’
After the shock subsided, Silvia prayed with thanks, something she’d not been able to do for years. Before this shocking news holiness was all that had remained for her. She had hoped to die, to be done with the suffering, and to walk with Jesus into her eternal home. Now she could hope that she would walk, jog, and ski again. She understood how roundabout God could work, how roundabout God had worked in her life. She wondered what God had in mind for her next. Whatever it was, she prayed she’d be up for it.
