The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.
John 16:33
I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!
Words of Grace For Today
To whom do we look for security, for deliverance, for help in our distress?
If you, the reader think that you will not be persecuted, then either you are one who has chosen to be one of the persecutors, or you are simply blind, deliriously blind, to the reality of what others are doing to you.
All of the rest of us surely know we are persecuted, for our days are made more and more difficult by what others do to us, trying to ‘step on us’ to get ahead.
Ahh, what all the world does to us! It is best not to recount all the evil done to us. It is simply too depressing, unless …
We need not let ourselves sink into this dark reality, as if we were all alone in our misery (along with all the other people oppressed and stomped on into misery). For we know The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer.
Even more so, though the people in this world may persecute us endlessly, we know that Jesus has conquered the world. In Jesus we have peace, peace in the face of everything evil that each day and all sinful people would ‘throw’ at us.
So we take courage. Unfaltering courage for each day, based on God’s protection and Grace for us.
Thus our recounting all the evil we experience is only a small part of the complete story of how God gives us life each day. For we know The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer.
In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. …
Before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of your ancestor David: ‘I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’” Then Isaiah said, ‘Bring a lump of figs. Let them take it and apply it to the boil, so that he may recover.’
Matthew 7:7
Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
Words of Grace For Today
Hezekiah received 15 years added to his life, deliverance from Assyria and … Then when the Babylonians arrived he showed off all his treasure, which Isaiah predicted rightly the Babylonians would return and take back to Babylon with them, and Hezekiah is pleased for there will be peace and security during his lifetime.
Like many people, politicians in office most tragically, Hezekiah’s concern is not for the long-term well being for all the people. Instead those in power sell out the future for short-term peace and security while they are yet in office, while they are yet alive. All that sacrified for their present power, comforts, and questionable security.
It is very doubtful that many Ukrainians would agree that God is honouring Jesus’ promise: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
What are we to make of this?
The passage from Matthew is not preceeded by some context that makes is more believable, such as if we ask for what is God’s will for us. In fact the passage continues and makes it even more unbelievable for those in desperate straights, fearing for their country, their cities, their friends, their families:
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
There are many attempts to explain Evil’s destruction, especially to such great swaths of humans so undeserving of the what they face; and to explain how a loving, caring, attentive, protecting God can allow such things to happen. None of them will ever suffice for those facing their own death or the death of loved ones, and the death of their reasonably peaceful way of life.
The only one that I have for my own situation (my enemies seek my death trying to achieve it within the ‘legal’ framework possible in this country) is that God suffers with us, even dies again and again with us. First though God created humans in order that we would love one another, God and all creation. In order that we are capable of loving, God gives us all the prerequisites, including freewill, that is the choice to love or not to love. After all, love that is not freely chosen is not love. Love is the free choice to give the best of life to another.
So we humans have freewill and can choose to love, or not to love. And as we so often choose not to love, those choices are evil in themselves and lead to even greater and greater evils, which always lead to the destruction and death of other people, creation, and our foolish attempts to deny and put God to death, once and for all.
Bleak.
Until we remember Jesus’ story: God always brings life out of death. God always responds to evil with Grace, Love, and Forgiveness … which offers people renewed life, and freedom from their past choices to not love, freedom from the evil that ensnares their hearts, minds and strengths. God always responds to our bleak present with a future of hope, peace, security, and joy fearing, loving, and serving God, and God alone.
We do receive all that we ask for. Most of the time on the other side of death, as God brings us to new life after death, life in the city of God where we all freely choose all the time to love.
Ask and we will receive … according to God’s timeline.
It is one thing to have the time of age lean in on one, as death looms.
It is an entirely other thing to have other people work to advance the arrival of one’s death.
God save us from such people.
Psalm 141:8
My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.
John 14:19
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
Words of Grace For Today
Lots of people are dying from ‘natural’ causes, some of the ‘natural’ causes are induced by other people, so the causes are not that natural, rather homicidal. Lots of other people are trying to kill even more people, forget about inducing natural causes, these efforts run the gamut from open violence to secretive schemes, and all of them are the work of the Devil and people cooperating with the Devil. Lots of people will die because others are trying to kill them. Lots of people die because of the Devil and his followers.
That’s the way with humans. It’s terrible. It’s worse if you are one of the people induced or openly or secretively sought to be killed by others, the Devil’s sacrifices in an attempt to supplant God’s rule over all creation and all beyond the universe we know or imagine.
So we, the people who others seek to kill … we pray: My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.
We trust, no matter whether we live or whether we die, whether by natural or very not natural causes, we live and we die with Christ at our side.
As Jesus lives, even though Rome crucified him at the behest of his own religions leaders, so also we, no matter who seeks our deaths or how, we too shall live, and not just another day or week or year, but for all eternity.
The truths that guided our living will live into eternity.
The lies told by those that seek to kill us, will be remembered as lies for all of eternity.
We are not defenceless, though we die. For our God is our rock and our shield, a mighty fortress against all the works of the Devil.
So we sing: In Him there is no darkness at all, The night and the day are both alike.
And
Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen, erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag. Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.
(Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers We look forward confidently to what may come. God is with us in the evening and in the morning and surely on every new day.)
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
2 Corinthians 1:7
Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.
Words of Grace For Today
We all want justice now! Justice that does not first sacrifice truth in order to proceed with lies, bias, corruption, and blatant replacing light with darkness, sweet with bitter, life with death, and justice with cruelty.
God walks with us. Not that in the moment that really helps, we still want justice now! Even so, and even though, we already know that we must wait for the Lord. We must be strong and let our hearts take courage and wait … wait … wait for the Lord.
Sometimes the little things get blown out of proportion because the big things are so unjust. And then … well then there are hours and hours of darkness like the following:
Wait for it.
…
The Bad News: It’s been so cold, -40⁰ or so for nights now. I’ve been burning through wood. I’m running out of wood. It’s a lot of work to haul and split enough and I’m getting behind.
The Good News: I wake the other morning and after working so long to haul and split enough wood the previous day, despite being exhausted and sleep deprived (stoking the fire every 2 hours night after night will do that) the wood lasted easily through the cold night!
…
But Wait for it.
…
Bad News: the wood lasted because there was no fire from 21:00 to 1:00 and the shelter that houses the wood stove got down to zero! It usually needs to stay at 50⁰ to keep the water tank from freezing, especially in this cold! (But I was so tired I fell asleep at 18:30 and woke at 22:00 ish to a phone call.)
Good News: when I saw the fire was out I brushed away the ashes and looked closely at the fire bricks. Yep!
…
Bad News: under the chimney the brick had a hole, if left it would burn through the stove wall itself.
Good News: I’d seen a crack in the brick two days ago and bought stove cement and fire bricks with points (I’m out of money and need to save for food) earlier yesterday.
…
Bad News: the bricks were sort of held in place by a retaining bar held by bolts, which are unreachable without taking the whole furnace apart. That’s possible but it’s a 10 hour job and it’s NOT possible when it’s cold, especially not this cold.
Good News: the brick were all so broken I could pry them out with a screw driver.
…
Bad News: new bricks had to be fit in past the retainer bar.
Good News: the bar was burned away at the chimney and the rest could be bent with a pliers far enough to slide all the bricks in under what was left of the bar.
…
Bad News: the bricks were too tall by 3/16 of an inch.
Good News: they can be cut with a cutting blade on a hand grinder and fortunately I’ve been loaned a grinder with plenty of cutting disks.
…
Bad News: the grinder runs on 110volts and my camp has no utilities: no electricity, no water, no sewer, no nothing but Grace.
Good News: I’ve been loaned 2 small 2200watt generators that only weigh 65 lbs to provide electricity when I need it.
…
Bad News: I need gasoline to run them.
Good News: There’s still some gas left in both generators.
…
Bad News: they are not supposed to be run at anything colder than -5⁰C and it’s below -20⁰, which is 10⁰ colder than I’ve ever gotten one to start.
Good News: one’s inside.
…
Bad News: I’m too tired to haul the generator from inside to outside where it can be run. I can’t risk pushing my bad back and spasming leg muscles too much, especially when I’m so exhausted and fatigued and sleep deprived!
Good News: Small miracle! After 40 pulls on the starter cord my shoulder has not given out on me and I get the other one – the one out in the cold – to fire up and run.
…
Bad News: it takes until past midnight to individually cut each brick to custom fit, clean the ash and crud out from where they need to slide in, and get them fitting in place. And then 2 brick are still flopping loose where there is no retainer bar left to hold them!
Good News: the stove cement maybe, perhaps, might just hold them until summer when I might be able to rebuild the whole stove again for the third time. So I glue the two bricks with furnace cement and start a fire that will light and burn fast. Heat at last.
…
Bad News: there’s hardly any heat for a half hour and I’m so so tired, so tired, so tired … and then I have to stoke the fire yet again.
Good News: I’m finally in bed after 1:00 ish.
…
Bad News: I’m wired and can’t sleep.
Good News: I’ve got no meetings in the morning so I can sleep in. (I never have meetings, ever, really. No one really cares to meet with a person who is homeless. It kind of shames them that they don’t fix the systemic problems that cause homelessness!)
…
Bad News: I wake at 4:45 to almost no heat, 17⁰ in the shelter (and the water tank is at 0⁰!), and a chilly 12⁰ at the bed.
Good News: I get a fire going.
…
Bad News: it takes 50 minutes.
Good News: the bed is still there.
…
Bad News: morning is there too.
Good News: I don’t care. I’m punch drunk tired, laughing out loud at it all, thankful the stove will last, maybe, another year.
…
Three nights later I finally get enough sleep to start breaking out of sleep deprivation.
…
We wait, and with courage wait, and wait, and wait, for the Lord, who works at God’s own pace in God’s own time and in God’s own way.
We have courage to wait because ‘Our hope for God is unshaken; for we know that as God shares in our sufferings, so also God shares in our consolation.’
Think about it. God dies. God suffers with us. God finally got enough sleep to start shaking off sleep deprivation.
Makes one wonder …
Who was in charge of creation while God is sleep deprived,
or unconscious for suffering,
or dead?
…
The other persons of the Trinity? That’s a (weird) argument for a Trinitarian God, eh!
Good News: God will let us go with it. There are far greater humorous things to laugh along with as well! Learn to laugh at them all. It builds courage as we wait!
For the Lord will vindicate his people, and have compassion on his servants.
Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Words of Grace For Today
Today there is little to say other than prayer on prayer for the good people of the Ukraine, who have lost so much, and now so much more is taken from them … and for all the people for generations to come who will loose again and again because of this occupation and stealing of land by Russia.
So we pray that the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, and that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.
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.
Matthew 9:36
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Words of Grace For Today
The great masses of humanity have always lived subjected to those with power and the ability to lord it over them. There’s never been a shortage of those lining up to take on the place of power and privilege and comfort … and lording it over others to have all that.
Jesus, God’s story of God’s amazing unconditional love for all people -especially the poor and the outcasts – sees the crowds gathered to hear the Good News that he preaches, the healing that he administers and he knows their plight.
God has walked with God’s people in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes. God knows everything. God knows the plight of the great majority of humans who have ever lived. God knows the corruption of those who lord it over them. God has, seemingly, abandoned God’s people at many and various times to the clutches of those oppressing, persecuting, and driving masses into poverty. God has always walked, into those times of apparent abandonment, with God’s people. And God has walked God’s people out of those times as well.
God sends the Law, the Prophets, and the Good Shepherd to guide the people out of those times that are like hell. Today God continues to send God-made saints to walk with people in all circumstances, to help them reconnect with the promises of God and to live (even in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes) abundantly. So it is when we live aware that God walks with us.
There is nothing in life that is more blessed, more secure, and more rich than God’s presence and God’s promises that we, too, shall once again walk among God’s people, no longer shunned and falsely accused, but exonerated and honoured.
And those who lord it over others, driving them to poverty, into oppression, into persecution and out into exile homeless … those who lord it over others and live in comfort will face God’s judgment. Whether they too will receive God’s Grace is not for us to say. It is God’s will, which will be done. For now the ‘lords’ breathe only as a gift from God, giving them time for the amendment of life.
For the rest of us, God has compassion and demonstrates it day after day, in the simplest and most profound ways.
Made All That More Visible by the Wonderful Light,
So May the Light of Christ Make Obvious
the Fog of Evil and False Convictions
That Abound, Also Here!
Psalm 126:3
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Words of Grace For Today
Every day the only way to survive, after the evil that has been focused on me to bring about my undeserved destruction, is to remember that the Lord has done great things for me, and I rejoice!
Fridays, we remember all those people who are falsely accused, harassed by the police soliciting false reports about them, fabricating evidence, and falsely convicted by judges who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20) We especially pray for men who are falsely accused by their spouse or partner, for there seems to be no end to the false charges and convictions based on obvious lies by women about good, honest men.
We pray that the Light of Christ will come to bear on each false conviction and those that brought it to be, that God’s justice will come to be for the falsely convicted and come down on all those that contributed to the false conviction and the destruction of their lives.
We pray, that as it is for me it will be for all those falsely convicted: that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And that those heavenly places will be where we are now on this planet earth.
Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your words, and destroy the work of your hands?
Colossians 2:18
Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.
Words of Grace For Today
Sunday rest.
Monday work and remember the children.
Tuesday work and remember all the men who are abused by women.
Oh, you say, that is not how the world is. Men abuse women and kill them.
Yes, we’ve come a long way recognizing how some men, very few men, abuse women with violence that eventually and inevitably leads to the man violently killing the woman, or psychological demeaning until the woman feels so worthless that she kills herself. And we have recognized the signs, and coaxed and coached abuse women away from their abuser (which is very hard to do since the abuser’s abuse captures and makes the abused think she needs the abuser’s presence and approval), and provided safe places for abused women to recover their sense of self, their voice, and their assurance of their own worth … and a vision of life without the abuser.
And many women and men have gone beyond that to assume and punish all men for the abuse done by a few, which only turns the tables on the men. Now the women and men become ardent, unrelenting, unabashed misandrists, theirs is the destruction of innocent, good people (men), and the lies that are told about innocent men mushroom into a cloud over society from which no one can escape.
Meanwhile many men are caught in their abuser’s trap, just as women are also. They have lost their voice, their woman has robbed them of their sense of self, of all their friends, of all contact with reality as they are blamed for so many things each day, small at first, the huge things, that the man has had nothing to do with. And the end is the same as for women: some women abusers are violent and they eventually, inevitably kill the abused man who is so worthless she sees him as not even human. More women psychologically beat the voice, worth, and hope right out of the man until he withers into self-loathing and finds no way to go on, so he kills himself. Men with a even a small tendency for violence use a gun, those with none use other means like poison.
When the courts are involved, like the rest of society, there are precious few who even think it’s possible for a woman to abuse a man if the woman is not beating the living daylights out of the man, and even then they are more likely to charge and convict the man – even though it is the woman violently beating up the man, and the man only tries to save his life. When the abuse is psychologial the courts most likely convict the man of come kind of harassment or psychological abuse (even though it’s the woman who is the abuser, if they would only open their eyes to the possibility!)
The rest of society is not unlike the courts, blaming the man for being abused: ‘what kind of a man are you to let a woman treat you like that!’ ‘No real man could ever be abused by a woman. Look at her. She’s half a foot shorter, and 50 pounds lighter (though so much stronger physically, if they’d only look.)’ ‘You’re not a real human if you let her treat you like that. You must have it coming. You’ve done something terrible to her.’ ‘Hey, man, it’s your fault for staying with her. Anyone with sense would have left long ago.’ And so go the blaming of the man for the woman’s abuse.
In the end everyone loses, no one more than the children, who learn to lie to protect themselves, who learn that courts and cops and church people are all corrupt, who learn never to tell the real truth about who is doing what to whom, because they will be made to pay if they do.
So we remember Tuesdays all the men abused by women.
And we pray that we will not be led astray by our words or others’ words of deceit.
And we pray that we will not be caught up in the ‘human way of thinking’ so that we ignore men who are suffering, and whose suffering will always end in death … unless someone or some miracle intervenes.
All the livestock and the plunder of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves. So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir).
Mark 3:35
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
Words of Grace For Today
Ancient claims of land belonging to a particular people are seldom anything but a bit hypocritical.
The land claim of Jews in the Middle East is well known to be established on their claim that ‘their land’ was stolen from others and their right to it was that God promised the people land. To this day the displaced Palestinians have legitimate grievances and suffer terribly waiting for the world to provide a reasonable resolution to being displaced since 1947, and earlier.
Indigenous land claims in Canada are based on white people stealing the land, though the indigenous histories are not without similar events through their own histories.
As long as people have lived, the competition for land has been a repeated source of terrible struggles, losses, and long term grievances.
So we, in our history, record that we took land from the Amorites, and kept livestock and plunder from their towns.
We are no better than the worst of all humans.
We are only saved by God’s Grace.
Only if the Holy Spirit inspires goodness in us, inspires us to do God’s will, and inspires us to be saints, are we able to reflect God’s love for us to others.
The Holy Spirit’s work, God’s work (by God’s will) alone determines then who is Jesus’ brother, sister, and mother. God alone makes us children of God, makes us Jesus’ siblings, and brings us to recognize that we are all ‘in this together.’ We are all each others’ siblings.
Land claims are crucial to pay attention to and to honour.
More important is to honour the gifts God gives us, not to try to hoard them for ourselves, and to share them with all those in need.
Although our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake; our apostasies indeed are many and we have sinned against you.
O hope of Israel, its saviour in time of trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveller turning aside for the night? Why should you be like someone confused, like a mighty warrior who cannot give help?
Yet you, O Lord, are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name; do not forsake us!
Ephesians 1:16-19
I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
Words of Grace For Today
Jeremiah knew, even if the people of his day refused to admit it, that they had all sinned terribly against God. Jeremiah prays that God will not be known as a stranger in God’s people’s land, or like a warrior with dementia who has forgotten how to fight to save his own people.
Jeremiah knows that God is with the people, in their midst, as God has been through all the generations. Jeremiah also knows that God does not automatically ‘save’ the people as they wish to be saved.
God is not always a God of great displays of might while saving God’s people. In fact this time, God turns a deaf ear to Jeremiah’s cries for the people, and the people suffer greatly.
The truth about God is that God cannot be fully comprehended, predicted, or controlled by any human. The writer of Ephesians knows this well and prays that the people of Ephesus (and all the readers of the letter, including us today) will receive from God a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that with the eyes of our hearts enlightened in the mysteries of the saints, we may come to know the hope that God gives us, that guides us, that draws us forward each day as God’s own saints. With the wisdom we may then ‘see’ the great power of God, the power of weakness, humility, suffering, and self-sacrificial love. This is the power of God demonstrated in Jesus’ story, living, teaching, dying, and raising to new life … in order that we might finally believe the impossible … that God saves us even as we think we are losing everything we treasure, even our lives.
God’s power is the greatest power in and beyond the universe. It is the power that creates, sustains, and provides the universe as a place-time for us to live, and to live free to choose to love as God does, or to turn away from God, sinning and creating evil.
Even then God comes to save us again, and again, and again, and … always forever again, so that we might live in God’s love, and live that love for all people around us. This is the spirit of wisdom that God gives us, freely, and the hope that guides us, and the love that is life itself.
What a year to come! To live as God’s saints in this time and place, as real and messy as it is, as challenged as we all are by Covid and the limits it places on our lives, and as wondrous as life has ever been.
