Category: Covid19

Correct(ed) Science, Used For Evil

Saturday, September 25, 2021

From Dark Matter, To Sub-Atomic Strings,

To Beauty in Roses All Around Us,

God Created.

God Lives With Us.

God, Provide Protection from All Evil.

Jeremiah 25:6

Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, and do not provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.

Acts 17:24-25

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

Words of Grace For Today

A pre-peer review study about the rate of inflammation of the heart following Covid-19 vaccination published a huge error in that rate, having begun with a hugely smaller number of vaccinations considered (25,000 instead of the correct 800,000). The inflammation is treatable without hospitalizations, and the correct rate is significantly smaller than the rate of the inflammation as a result of being infected by Covid-19.

The error was quickly caught by peer reviewers and immediately accepted by the authors, with apologies, and the study was withdrawn.

There are people who do not respect the order that God created, and the ability God gives us humans to explore, discover, and organize our knowledge of God’s order. Remember that science was possible only because of the religious faith that accepted God created an order that could and should be explored and better understood! So much for the simply stupid old antagonism between ‘science’ and ‘faith’. Both, pursued correctly, must depend substantially on the other!

In the midst of a pandemic (no it’s not over and able to be dealt with as an endemic, Premier Kenney, no matter what your supporters wish were so) science done correctly will always produce errors that need to be corrected. This study into the rate of inflammation of the heart after vaccination is one such. The process to correct the errors was pursued well by all involved.

So what’s the problem?

There are many, disingenuous people, who promote false ‘science’ in order to sustain a powerful and large enough antivax portion of the population. This error in this study has been spread like wildfire around the internet. There the correction has not been made. The error, honestly corrected by the authors, is intentionally left as if it were truth. This false science is spread as if it were true and people who have disconnected themselves from reality (wishing it were something it is not and will not ever be) are stupidly convinced to refuse to be vaccinated. The problem is that enough people refuse to be vaccinated so that the pandemic continues.

The same people who claim the pandemic is not real, that vaccines do not work, keep the vaccines from being used in enough people … and they make the pandemic continue. The poor, stupid people who wish there were no pandemic and who behave as if there were no pandemic, by refusing to be vaccinated, are exactly the people that allow Covid-19 to continue as a pandemic.

And the people who intentionally spread false science to promote these stupid opinions and actions know full well that they are a significant factor in continuing the pandemic. What kind of evil runs rampant in them?

These people have certainly gone after other gods to serve and worship them, and brought God’s anger down on themselves … and unfortunately on all of us, as the health care system is at a breaking point, running out of ICU beds, converting other beds (and the real and needed health care they would provide to ill people) to Covid-19 care beds.

At this time, when reality becomes worse because some people want it to be worse, and others refuse to accept that it is as bad as it is already, we need to remember that God is not contained in our shrines (of ‘small religion’ or false realities) doch, God gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

God walks with us, even in these days when our very lives and livelihoods are threatened by Covid-19 and other more common diseases (from heart disease, strokes, cancer, and even the out of season cold and flu). God created us and all of creation with order which (because we are created in God’s image) we can discover with fertile, inquisitive minds working in reality within the capacity to organize our knowledge. God does not abandon us in this marvellous universe. God accompanies us, and gives us a history full of stories of how God has been present with people through all time. Jesus’ story is the most clear, as God became human, lived among us and healed our illnesses.

We pray, may God cure us of Covidiocies that prolong the pandemic and put us all at risk. May God protect us from the fools who hold Covid parties, sharing air and food with people with Covid in order to contract the disease intentionally, falsely hoping that they will have some immunity thereby – when what they do is fill up ICU beds and add to the death toll … and overburden the health care system with long-Covid symptoms for decades to come.

From such people, God we pray, protect us.

Comfort, Comfort

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Looking

To

Each

New Day

Isaiah 40:1

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Luke 9:11

When the crowds found out [that, taking his disciples with him, Jesus had withdrawn privately to a city called Bethsaida], they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shortage of people today who suffer unimaginable pain, hunger, thirst, and torture. Many of the suffer so at the hands of other people.

It has been so through all time.

Many people today suffer diseases, Covid -19 only one of the many that are deadly in horrible ways. Many suffer for lack of care or recklessness of other people. Many in Alberta’s health care sector, overrun and pushed to and over the brink as they are by Covid cases, refer to the fourth wave (the worst of all of them) as the Kenney-wave, since he recklessly pushed his ‘Open for Summer’ program through, which fuelled the fourth wave to be so huge and destructive, and deadly.

Is has been so through all time.

The greatest suffering by far is not measured by physical ailments or torture. The greatest suffering is what we humans experience in our souls, or spirits, or hearts and minds.

In the midst of all kinds of suffering, God is still present providing comfort, healing, and hope.

God’s unconditional love in action provides the most essential element of life for us: hope.

Hope that our yesterdays will be blessed.

Hope that today will be blessed.

Hope that our tomorrows will be blessed.

Hope that tomorrow will be at least in some small way better than the horrific illnesses, injustice, abuse that is today’s offerings for us.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God, and [Jesus] heals those who need to be cured.

No Shortage of Covid Deaths

Sunday, September 19, 2021

People walk on Friday through an exhibition of white flags representing Americans who have died of COVID-19 that have been placed over eight hectares of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The U.S. has recorded more than 660,000 official coronavirus deaths. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Psalm 37:8

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.

James 3:5-6

So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.

Words of Grace For Today

Covid 19 has claimed so many lives, and so many of these deaths would have been avoidable if ….

There is no purpose or gain from being angry about this, or to be consumed by wrath at the Covidiots who multiplied the death count. There is no good in even fretting about it all.

We have seen how the tongue is capable of setting ablaze many things that should not be burned, like truth, reality, and common sense protections.

It is also where, we’ve come to know, the Covid 19 virus passes to enter the air as aerosols that linger in the air like fragrances of meals well prepared, cigarettes smoked in no smoking areas, and flatulence let loose in the milk cooler corner of a grocery store, as a silent, and deadly smelling protest against the mask and shield worn as a safety precaution (when the mask mandate was foolishly lifted in Alberta!) That little virus that finds it’s way into a body through inhaling such aerosols, is spread swiftly and effectively, when an infected body exhales, silently or with speaking (putting that little, yet powerful tongue in play.)

There are good uses for our breath, for our tongues, and for our concerns and responses to foolishness that costs people their lives: it is to speak the truth!

It is to speak the truth clearly.

It is to speak the truth clearly, and with grace.

It is to speak the truth clearly, with grace, and with compassion.

For it is only by the Grace of God that our failings have not resulted in a multiplication of unnecessary deaths. We pray may God save us from ever being party to such foolishness.

We pray, in thanks, for all the goodness of life, that which we enjoy still today, and the lives of so many who have avoidably died, surrendering their breath to Covid-19.

Mercy, Mercy! How Can We Be Bored?

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

The Tree

The Same Tree

The Same Old Tree

How Can Beauty

Or

Being Merciful

Ever Be Boring?

Psalm 41:2

The Lord protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. The Lord does not give them up to the will of their enemies.

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday’s headline was “Trouble in the Prairies as surgeries postponed in Alberta, Saskatchewan due to COVID’s hospital burden.”

For weeks now the reports are that the large majority of those people burdening the hospitals with their Covid crises are those that have chosen not to be vaccinated. Meanwhile there are protests against vaccine passports required in order to gain access to events that are perhaps safe, but not if unvaccinated people attend. They put both themselves and others at great risk of being infected, the transmission rates go up (or rather wild) as vaccinated people also spread the virus, and the hospitals are overburdened. The results are catastrophic for so many people. Those with Covid in hospital suffer and die or more likely suffer for years from long Covid (further burdening the health care system). The overburdened hospitals push ‘elective’ surgeries off to an unknown future time, and those they do not result in immediate death, many postponements do contribute to more severe suffering and then earlier death.

The real tragedy is that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated, they are (because of those over 12 who choose not to be vaccinated) infected in greater numbers, and their suffering and death – and the fear of suffering and death – increase dramatically, a fear shared by their families and friends.

One has to ask why we do not gather those who choose to go un-vaccinated, line them up, and shoot them …

the first thought is with lead,

but mercy would dictate that we use needles and vaccinations,

and then many of us realize that we ought only shoot them

…

with a camera, post their photos on the internet, and let the chips fall as they may.

And

there ought to be a Canada-wide mandate that Covid vaccination passports must be established by all provinces and territories, and those without passports or exemptions due to health be barred from gatherings or services or business that they could not access during the height of Covid 19 lockdowns.

We probably will do nothing like that, for the political fallout would be great, where as the political fallout for doing nothing (and refusing to accept scientific guidance) seems to be less (and in some parties it seems to win political support – for fools are in no shortage.)

In these Covid times, we do not need a personal enemy to have our lives put at great risk. The Covidiots are doing that with great efficacy to us all.

So we trust that God protects us and keeps us alive. We know that God does not give us up to the will of our enemies, therefore we are called happy in the land.

No matter the Covid fools that endanger us all. No matter the personal enemies that attack us based on lies told about us to cover the liars’ own terrible sins. No matter the real likelihood that, even vaccinated we will be infected and suffer long Covid in some form or another. No matter how poor health care becomes because the system is overburdened by Covidiots’ and their victims, both intentional and unintentional. No matter the real fear we suffer that our children will contract Covid and suffer or die.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God walks with us.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God is always merciful with us, and God enables and motivates us to be merciful to all other people.

We have many challenging days ahead (only some of it is responding to Covidiots) never leaving us an excuse to be at all bored. Thanks be to God!

Lord, Save Us From Aerosols & Idiots

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Forests Start With Seedlings

Each Spring Growing New Leaves.

So We Start as Children,

And Protect and Nurture Children,

Or

We Have No Future.

Psalm 10:14

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief, that you may take it into your hands; the helpless commit themselves to you; you have been the helper of the orphan.

Mark 9:22

It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.

Words of Grace For Today

When I hear this ‘cast him into the fire and into the water [that place where uncreation bubbles up to border on and at times consume creation], to destroy him’ I think of the guy yesterday who jumped in front of me. The corner of No Frills where the milk coolers are was congested with at least 6 different people. So I stood a good 2 metres short of the pack, waiting patiently for them to move on. A few were visiting so it took a while. That’s when the guy came up from behind me and wedged his way less than a foot from me past me and another customer waiting to get at the cooler. The guy was an obese bear of a middle aged man. He quickly worked his way to the coolers, but then dwaddled getting his milk jug as if they had been moved since the last time, as if he could not find the right shelf of 2% which is always all the shelves behind door 2. Then he peered into the coolers dwiddling in the corner a few extra minutes before finally leaving.

I paused a bit, not too long, considering the other customers waiting politely behind me. When I stepped into the corner to door 1 to get skim milk it was clear the jerk had dwiddled to leave the air filled with flatus expelled through the anus, an aerosol that could be full of Covid virus.

The news is all full of Covid 19 fourth wave in Canada, fuelled by the Delta variant and 39 times more infecting the unvaccinated, though vulnerable (otherwise health compromised – read old or ill or young) vaccinated are still among those in hospital, ICU, and the morgue.

This jerk’s antics are a clear demonstration how aerosols hang in the air, filled with Covid virus, waiting to be breathed in, and how impossible it is to avoid doing so, except by staying in total seclusion … without milk.

The passage from Mark is not about this at all, of course. Covid 19 did not exist when Mark wrote his account of Jesus’ ministry. This passage is about the ‘demon’ who inhabits a young boy, which casts him into fire and water to destroy him.

Taken with the Psalm one could point to our work done to help alleviate the trouble and grief of the helpless and of the orphan. This is the work of the saints. Our courts commit themselves to taking the ‘best interests of the children’ as the first priority in family court … though they certainly do not! Quite the opposite. The courts commonly sacrifice children to be raised by the most dangerous of possible parents (most favoured are birth mothers, no matter the indications that the birth mother is a clear and present danger to the children!) Apparently the courts want more clients (criminals) in the next generations, which is the result of these dangerous parents’ parenting.

So with our prayers and our work as God’s voice, hands, and feet we say, “have pity on us and help us” You are the one who can take our trouble and grief into your hands. Do so now, for among the most vulnerable are the children (who cannot be vaccinated yet at all!)

Our future is at risk. There are so many idiots, jerks, antiscience idiots, anti-vac idiots and covidiots abundant enough to put us all at risk, to put the vulnerable at risk, to put our children and our future at risk.

You, Oh Lord, are the only one who can take our trouble and our grief into your hands, and heal us of these idiots and their destruction of life and future.

Run or Fight … … Or Be At Home?

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Even as the Evenings

Turn Blood Red into the Dark,

God With Us is a promise of an evening of great delight!

All is Well, All is Well , All Manner of things are Well.

Isaiah 52:12

For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard.

John 14:3

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many reasons to run.

There are many reasons to run away.

There are many reasons to run for one’s life …

and to run fast, as fast as one can run.

When God promises to be with us, the reasons to run do not disappear, though we can be a whole lot less stressed, and have a whole lot less panic in us that rises into our throats, which panic leaves us only a choice to fight, flee, or freeze.

Instead when God promises to be with us, when God promises to be our rearguard, we can think clearly, without haste, for we can trust that God leads us in paths of righteousness.

When everything goes belly up, when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, we can trust that God has our backs. More than that we can be assured that when it seems that God leaves us, in fact God prepares a place for us, a place to call home, where God’s plan for us is always sure, even when we lose track of how God is with us.

Home, with God at our side, before us, behind us, promising to walk every step with us. Home, where our hearts are loved unconditionally by God.

Then, we can be at home where God brings us. No one can chase us away, and our enemies will be dealt with by God. We walk calmly through every hour, knowing that justice will be done by God. No lies, no deceit, no gaslighting, no false reports, no false arrests, no false testimony, no false convictions, no cover up. God sees everything, knows everything. For God a lie is seen and always remains a lie. For God the truth is always known and it always remains the truth.

Home, safe in God’s hands. Home where truth and beauty bring breath and life no matter the challenge. Home. Home in the wondrous creation God created for us to enjoy. Home safe and sound. Home where no one can chase us away and no evil can rule over us. Home.

It does not get better.

Hope is for what wood be …

Friday, September 10, 2021

Is it just wood?

Or is it warmth on a cold winter day?

Or is it hope based on God’s gifts, that winter will be blessed in all ways?

Or is it just what would be?

…

It is certainly God’s gifts, God’s presence, our help and shield.

Psalm 33:20

Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield.

Romans 8:24

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?

Words of Grace For Today

What do you hope for?

I hope for justice based on truth, which will require that those who lied and gaslit me and their lies come into the light; meaning either their sins be confessed or their sins be exposed, from my ex, to the girls in and out of court, the lay pastor Anne, the church council, the wealthy people who control the church, the RCMP including Murphy, Ward, Jones and Jensen, the lawyers and prosecutors and especially the judges that lied about the testimony provided, the evidence presented, and all the evidence they refused to hear, all to make irrational rulings, convictions and denials on appeals.

This has not been seen, or even a speck of light shone on this corruption and barbarism hiding in plain site as a perversion of a system of law, as justice in Alberta, and as the Grace that the church is supposed to exercise for all people.

That is my hope.

That is my first hope among many things I hope for. The others are mostly for myself and my families: health, security, meaningful work and future dreams that provide purpose for today. Yet everything else pales in comparison to my primary hope for the great, good, and gracious impact this coming to light would make for so many people.

It is still waited for, for apparently only God will make it right, only God as my help and my shield will bring this evil mess to light. As long as the guilty perpetrators still breathe God provides them time for the amendment of life. That would be a victory for God in so many ways. It would be a step toward health for so many people in the family, the community, the church, the courts, and in the province … and far beyond.

So we wait for God to act.

…

What do you hope for?

What do you hope for that is unseen?

Will it bring life, health, and grace to bear on many, many people. Or will it simply set a small thing (maybe a huge thing) right in your own life … in your body, mind, or spirit?

Still it is what you hope for … and wait for God to bring to be.

Hope is exactly what God gives to us when God saves us sinners, redeems us, renews life in us, and sends us out into God’s good creation among God’s people to be instruments of God’s grace for all. Hope gives us the heart and mind and soul to see beyond the material things, beyond the human things, and beyond the evil that permeates and perverts life so thoroughly. Hope is the vision of seeing God in all things, in all times, in all places, and in all ways.

God created and is present with us always, promised so in our baptisms. Hope is God’s gift to us, by which we see God present.

Thus we fear

…

and love God

…

and trust God

…

to bring all sin to light, and to perfect all life in us as the saints God makes us to be.

Where will you see God today? For what will you wait for, trusting God’s promises? What will you hope for, so that you can live as God’s Grace for all people this day?

Soon And Very Soon

Sunday, September 5, 2021

As Surely As The Winter Cold Will Come

Removing Wasps and Bugs From

Disrupting Good Living

Jeremiah 31:16

Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

Luke 18:7

Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?

Words of Grace For Today

Words of hope fill scriptures: God will come to the aid of those downtrodden, those driven into poverty, those dealt injustice and abuse, and those ostracized with lies and gaslighting.

These are not events that happen elsewhere or at other times. These evil things done to good people take place in this place and time. Corrupt individuals (some known as the wealthiest community leaders) are recruited by corrupt police to file false reports about situations they create in order to lie and denigrate good people. Corrupt police lie about what they have reported to them in order to make good people look guilty. Corrupt pastors cooperate in creating false reports about honest, innocent and good people in order to gain favour with corrupt church and community leaders. Corrupt lawyers pretend to defend the innocent, though they do just enough to make it look like a plausible defence while leaving room for false convictions of their innocent clients, from whom they take tens of thousands of dollars in fees – all to ‘throw them under the bus’, the financial ruin part and parcel of the means used to ruin innocent, honest people.

Even though the evidence does not make out the charges, corrupt judges abound in the courts, and testimony that exonerates the accused is removed from the transcripts (as judges are allowed to edit the court transcripts), and even then testimony is falsified in their judgments at crucial points in order to make convictions possible.

In a word, barbarism rules! Here and now barbarism rules!

Because the courts command armed police and sheriffs and the entire penal system, which is staffed for the most part by bullies and more than a few totally corrupt guards and staff, most people either are naively and intentionally unaware of the injustices done to so many innocent people. Or people who are fully aware of the injustice, keep quiet so as not to attract attention to themselves, hoping not to be the next victim of the barbarism.

…

God’s chosen people have no such choice.

And God does not abandon God’s chosen people. God comes to our rescue soon and very soon. God brings us out of the land of this barbarism and establishes justice here and now for all people, by the work of God’s chosen, the many good, honest, and outspoken people who dedicate their lives to bringing justice and truth to bear on this barbarism that corrupts not just individuals, but the very foundation of civilization.

Soon and very soon.

Yes, soon and very soon, those who are so corrupt, who habitually undermine true justice, our enemies will be exposed and removed, so that God’s will may be done among us, through us.

Soon and very soon.

Giving God an Earful, and Then …

Sunday, August 15, 2021

In God’s Creation

God’s Glory Is Always Grand

And

Our Place is Always

Quite Humble

Job 40:3-4

Then Job answered the Lord: ‘See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.’

1 Corinthians 15:9-10

For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Words of Grace For Today

Job answers God, ‘I lay my hand on my mouth.’

Anyone who has read Job even a bit knows that Job does not ‘lay his hand on his mouth.’ Quite the opposite. Job is an example of one who speaks clearly, desperately and angrily at God. A good example Job is, too, in this way; an example that shows we can throw everything at God, everything that is in our hearts and on our minds, no matter how desperate or angry it may be.

The second half of that lesson is in the verses above. After Job has thrown everything at God, Job is more than ready to listen to God. Job does keep quiet. And God gives him an earful (which is more like a whole body-ful and a lifetime-full.)

Job knows God is the One great enough to handle all his pain, all his suffering, all his anger, all his frustrations. Remember Job has, through no fault of his own (though his enemies and even friends continually tell him it must be his fault – not really good friends) Job has lost all his livestock, his workers, his home, his wife, and his children. Job has lost everything and his health is failing. He is very near slipping into his grave. To put it in perspective, the view of how most people viewed misfortune was that when someone suffered a loss of any kind, it was because that person or that person’s parents had sinned. Job’s losses are so great that it seems so obvious to people that Job must have sinned greatly. The book of Job, in part, is the story that corrects that view. Just because one suffers, does not mean that one has sinned in a way to deserve that suffering.

The story of Job and that lesson needs to be repeated often, for the lesson is hard to learn and even harder to remember. Even in Jesus day (John 9:2) the disciples ask Jesus ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ And in our day, we so often dismiss the poor, the disadvantaged, the outcasts, alcoholics, addicts and co-addicts, the falsely accused and convicted because we think in some way or another or even directly, they have reaped the rewards from their own sinful living.

In this way we try in vain to build some protection for ourselves, some false barrier between us and the disasters that have taken these people down. Truth is, though, we could all be taken down. When an innocent person like myself can be falsely accused, the police invite so many people to make false reports, the lay pastor and church leaders create false scenarios and make false reports, even banning me from church, the lawyers invite false testimony, plenty of people provide outright lies under oath, and even the judges lie about the evidence in order to convict me (and the judges did not lie about peripheral things, they lied about the key evidence that exonerated me, and created false evidence needed to convict me) … when all this happens to an innocent person, then the truth is simple: there is no justice available to anyone (not even my false accusers) and anyone can be convicted of anything at any time. We live in a country where the courts are easily able to be no less than barbaric and cruel. It is one of the signs that our societal contract is shredded at it’s core. There is no protection for anyone, and all continues on it’s merry way as if the justice system were actually just because we are all too afraid (rightfully so) to admit that there is no justice system, there is only an institutionalized system of bullying people, whether they have broken the law or not.

Like Job, we need to take this to God, in all the horror that it is for us all, and then listen to God’s response.

Paul provides us an example of how we prepare to listen to God’s response. Though he writes and is listened to by many people as an authority, a messenger from God, Paul does not become a bully over others. He remains humble, knowing his place and knowing God’s place in his life. God walks with him. He remembers always that though he worked harder than any of [the other apostles] … it was not [Paul who did this blessed work of sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love], but the grace of God that is with [him]. Paul remembers clearly the days when he persecuted the followers of Jesus, and even organized the stoning of Stephen.

Paul knows his place. Paul knows God’s place. Paul counts on God to keep God’s promise to walk with him, no matter the suffering that comes his way, .. and the suffering comes in spades.

Paul and Job are examples for us, to bring everything to God, and to count on God to keep God’s promise to walk with us, no matter what.

Job recovered, and regained more than he had lost. It rarely works that way in life. More often we come to the end of our suffering by the release of death, and being called home – as Paul was, like so many other martyrs for Christ.

God’s Law; God’s Love

Saturday, August 14, 2021

My Enemies Full of Lies, Hate, and Injustice

Exiled Me to the Wilderness.

They Did Not Realize That

This is God’s Promised Land,

Where I Live as a Holy Hermit

With My Joy Complete.

Psalm 119:52

When I think of your ordinances from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.

1 John 1:1-4

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a fine line between living fully alive and appearing to live though one is in all ultimate matters dead.

It is the line between a) giving God control of all that we are and have, or b) taking (well, assuming one is taking) control of what is God’s.

The Psalmist takes comfort in God’s ordinances from of old. All good and well, except the Psalmist takes comfort not because they are a gift from God or God has guided one’s life to goodness or that God has convinced the Psalmist of his/her own sins and with mercy saved her/him from those sins. No, the Psalmist, with as much arrogance as one can have, takes comfort in God’s law because the Psalmist claims to have kept them all and has the audacity to burn hot with indignation at the wicked who do not keep God’s law!

That’s faith based on hate for others, a total miscomprehension of one’s own place among the worst of sinners, and an attempt to take on God’s role as judge – and turning that role into one of condemning others! Hate-based faith is widespread, unfortunately. It has fuelled, does and always will fuel strife, conflict, and outright wars … and it has nothing to do with God’s communication of reality in many and various ways, and most clearly through Jesus, the Christ’s story, the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

The writer of 1 John puts it more correctly, more life-giving, and without a hate base, if confusedly with so much Johannine imagery of life, light, Word, beginning of time, abiding, revelation, eternal life, fellowship, and complete joy.

How else do we humans speak about that which exceeds our language and our knowing and anything that is of our comprehension?

The meaning of life is simple, using Johannine imagery: it is to live in complete joy, given to us by God, and brought full circle by us sharing it with others. It is to live in fellowship with Jesus, the Light of the World from before time to beyond time. It is to live eternal life now, sharing that life with all other people. It is to recognize one’s place as God’s humble creatures, given the gift of eternal life that is only a gift for us if we share it, testify to it, and include others in that gift.

The meaning of life has nothing to do with judging others, or claiming one’s ability to follow rules, laws or ordinances. The meaning of life is to recognize God’s truth in all things: Grace and Love make life possible. Hot indignation consumes life … for all people.

God, we pray, save us from hot indignation and the arrogance that would have us claim we are better than others, especially our enemies.

Give us the wisdom and patience, the courage and character, and the love and hope instead to endure the injustices that our evil enemies work against us … so that one day they may encounter your truth in our testimony about your Grace: the old, old story of Jesus and his love. On that day our joy will indeed be complete.