Covid19 – Page 8

Dreams, Power, & Home

Thursday, August 5, 2021

God’s home for us home is built

on the power of God’s

mercy, grace and enduring kindness

Jeremiah 23:28

Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord.

1 Corinthians 2:4-5

My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Words of Grace For Today

God speaks to us in many and various ways.

Prophets reported their dreams, many waking dreams, that they knew were God speaking to them. They warned the people (usually the kings and rulers, but also the common folk) of the sin and evil of their ways and God’s response of ruin and exile. They encouraged the people in ruin and exile to have courage, for God would not leave them abandoned. The warned kings and rulers of God’s people and their enemies of the destruction that would come because of their foolish, proud, arrogant, and stubborn ways of trying to find their own way without or against God!

These words remain as they have been collected and recorded. They are warnings, cautions, and encouragements still for us today.

Even so these words, from dreams and prophetic wisdom given by God, most always work from the power of might that can destroy one’s enemies.

There were many false prophets, people who spoke their dreams as if they were from God, and the dreams and the prophets were not from God at all. Even when the words were wise, or wise of a sort, they were not from God.

Jeremiah compares these false prophets to the straw that is left after the wheat is harvested. They do not bear good fruit, though until the harvest they support the good fruit of grain that feeds the people.

Straw is nothing like wheat in its value and ability to sustain life. Straw is laid down to absorb the excrement and urine from animals in a barn or barn yard. Wheat is ground to make food for people or maybe mash for young animals or as a nutritious supplement for animals. Wheat feeds. Straw once used is set out to rot or to be burned.

So the words of false prophets, even those alive today, are worth little but to absorb crap, and attract crap they do until the dung heap in politics and on the internet starts to rot and stink to high heaven.

Precious are the words from God, as wheat is precious. They give life.

How can we know the difference? Sometimes it is a challenge and we are duped into believing false words of false hope … that drive us further from hope!

The difference is in the power in the words. The power of might that can destroy is not the power of God’s word. The power of God’s word is what God does with our lack of might, our lack of character, our lack of integrity, our lack of goodness, our lack of faith, our weakness of the most miserable kinds.

The power of God’s word is that it addresses our weaknesses and failings with grace, with mercy and kindness, with forgiveness and renewed life. God’s power is made known in how God gives abundant life to even the greatest sinners and the most horrible people. God’s power is made known in the sacrifice that God makes, giving the life of his own son over to the power that would destroy life. God makes this sacrifice in order to communicate to us (in Jesus’ story) God’s love for us, and the lengths that God goes to in order to offer us grace, and acceptance, and renewed life, and a home with all the saints of all time.

Welcome home! This is where the treasure of the fruit of the vine, the kernel of wheat, and the heart of love and hope is made real by God’s love for us. This is where there is food enough for all and a feast for every soul no matter how bruised or beaten. This is where everyone is actually welcome. It’s not just an empty phrase of a congregation looking for like-minded self-righteous people to fill the pews and pay the bills, but hating and condemning those who are different.

Whoever you are … this home is built not with power and might, cement and wood, furniture and cupboards. This home is built on the power of God’s mercy, grace and enduring kindness.

Welcome home!

God’s Own Blue and Beautiful

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

God’s Creation

Blue and Beautiful

Darkened Always by Evil.

Job 12:10

In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

Acts 17:28

[God made then so that ]… they … search for God … though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For “In God we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are God’s offspring.”

Words of Grace For Today

Even the writer of the Acts came to know the truth, that God created us all and we thus search for God in our own ways.

Even so God needs not to be searched for, for God is not far from any one of us. For we in God we live and move and have our being; we are God’s offspring.

While the life of every living thing and breath is in God’s hands, that certainly does not mean that God protects our lives from destruction by those that would do us harm. Indeed we suffer great destruction from the evil one and from those that would advance themselves at other’s cost.

Our consolation is that God is never far from any of us. No matter how terrible it gets at the hands of our enemies we need not search for God, God is with us. No matter how difficult it becomes as resources, circumstances, friends, church, family, and even hope abandon us and we feel we are left isolated to die on our own in the wilderness, God walks with us. God provides everything to us that we need to live abundantly. This is not that we will have an abundance of anything in life, except that we will live with God’s abundant Grace, Mercy, and Blessings.

It can always get worse.

It never gets bad at all, since God is with us.

It is most terrible for those who work unjustly to do us harm, for they disconnect themselves from God, even as God is so near to them. By their own doing they walk alone in their self-made hell and terror.

For us every day is a day of peace, with ourselves, with God’s creation, and with God.

For we are God’s own children.

De-story-ing OR God’s Story

Saturday, July 24, 2021

The Blood Red Sun Sets

Through the Smoke

Telling Us, If We Listen

That There Is a Cost

As We Try to Breathe

For Ignoring Climate Change Warnings for Decades

Genesis 50:21

Have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.

Ephesians 4:29

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

Words of Grace For Today

There is too much to fear these days:

The Covid19 delta variant and other more transmissible and deadly variants that will come out of unvaccinated populations where Covid still runs rampant threaten us all.

Climate change disasters like crop failures, disasters for the farmers and for the people who depend on that food (at a cost that can be afforded), floods that destroy homes, businesses, industries, and kill people (putting the future habitability of so much land in doubt), fires that destroy homes, businesses and forestry industries and kill people (putting the future habitability of so much land in doubt, and drive even higher the cost of building lumber – so that it is out of reach for so many people), and wildfires that put so much smoke in every direction into the air that for thousands of miles people have trouble breathing.

Barbaric fabrication of reality (by spouses and children, police and pastors, lawyers and judges) in order to gain a fast diminishing advantage (money, power, and/or status) over good and honest people, falsifying science results or ignoring science’s best results (by politicians who lead us into destroying the very things that we need to live on earth, and by Covidiots and others who put every life at risk with their unsupported insistence that they can be right with their foolishness), and the accumulation of power by people who have driven fear into huge portions of our populations so that they are willing to surrender their freedoms in exchange for false promises that their fears will be dealt with. Instead more and more of their freedoms are taken and hate based decisions by despots destroy the lives of many good people. All which disconnects us from reality, the basic reality that God walks with us, and blesses us with many things in order that we can share them with all other people.

How are we to respond to these very real causes of fear in and among us?

First we listen as we have listened for years, for decades, and for generations to God’s promises.

Have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.

Second we learn how and practise daily to be the people who live past fear in the Grace that God provides, so that we can share that Grace with others.

We let no evil talk come out of our mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that our words may give grace to those who hear.

If that sounds simple, it is, and it is impossible for us. Doch with God all things are possible and God calls us to live exactly this way. Living beyond fear, filled with Grace and sharing Grace with others, with our words and our actions, is exactly how God created us to live in the world.

There is too much to fear these days, just as there always has been for every generation. We can get lost in that fear, destroying (and de-story-ing) ourselves and others in the process … OR

We can remember and live in the story that God has for us: God makes us saints who share the Light of Christ with the whole world and all the people in it.

We cannot help but to fear and destroy and de-story ourselves and others.

Doch by God’s Grace we are saved and can be part of God’s work of saving everyone of all time.

Not so small a deal, when we think about it and remember how much God has done for us through the generations.

Why Lord, Why?!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Lord, Why When the Light is Right in Front of Us

Do We Still Seek the Darkness?

Isaiah 61:1

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

Galatians 5:1

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Words of Grace For Today

God, why …?

God why is it so hot!

Sweat pours down my back and arms and all over dripping all my work in stinky wet.

My jeans stick to my legs as I try to move. My shirt tugs back at all my efforts to move. It’s hard to get anything done, and when I do I feel like someone has wrung me out like a sopping wet towel and left me still soaking and stinking.

Ok, God, I can get used to the heat, it’s not easy but I’m adapting to it, but

God why are there so many miserable mosquitoes ready to bite me at all hours and at dawn and dusk they swarm so thick it’s hard not to inhale more than a few just walking a few feet from the door. When they bite it hurts, and then goes away, just to come back with a terrible itch that simply will not go away and will not be ignored! What’s that about anyway. If I try to ignore them and merely wash the itch away with ammonia in the glass cleaner, that sort of works until I get itchy all over inside my eyes, my nose, my throat and my ears and I start to have a severe allergic reaction that starts to take my breath away. Really, does it have to be so bad all summer long!? I have to wear long jeans and long sleeves, thick socks and a hat with flaps down my neck and over my ears soaked in DEET to keep them away. Then every night I have to wash all that DEET exposure away before I sleep which takes water which is expensive to haul here to have to wash with. Fortunately I have friends who have loaned me the things needed to shower each night and haul water often enough from town that I can shower on the hot days before sleeping.

So God I guess I can get used to the mosquitoes, but God, I mean really: does there have to be so many black gnats that dive bomb into my face, my eyes and ears and take little chunks away as prizes for their kamikaze efforts, which because they are so many they usually survive better than I. I end up breathing them into my lungs at least once a day. I have to constantly wave my hand in front of my face to keep them away, which sort of works and they only seem to be out in certain places while I am mowing grass. So it’s not all the time, thankfully.

So God I guess I have figured out how to survive even the kamikaze gnats.

But God why are there so many wasps, not just ready to bite me when I try to work on the tarps that shelter me from the cold in winter. They did sting me, hard sending shock waves through my body and brain freezing out all other thoughts or impulses except to run. Not just once, but twice, and they hurt unbearably for hours, then itched and ached for days. The memory returned fresh each time I stepped outside and the sound of a wasp buzz reached my ears. I live in fear everyday of being smashed into panic again. I cannot have that. I cannot work. I have to huddle in fear inside.

That just cannot be. So I’ve made a suit to protect me from head to toe, even a piece of screen left over from repairs to guard my face, all duct taped together with no gaps at all. I’ve read on the internet that dish soap will suffocate wasps. I cannot find any prepared wasp control/killer spray, so I’ve filled a spray bottle with a water soap mix and I’ve destroyed the nest on the tarps, and three in the woods so close they wasps swarm around the camper each day.

So God I guess I’ve figured out how to deal with the fear created by being stung by wasps, and in the fall they will all dies off. Next spring I know what to do to keep them from creating nest here again. It’s simple if I am ready.

But God I really don’t know what to do with the people that gaslight me, that scapegoat me, that bear false witness against me, and the judges that lie about the evidence before them in order to convict me and deny me true justice. How can a society survive such barbarism anyway. It’s like the truth does not count for anything and whatever someone makes up for the courts and whatever the courts want to make up for themselves will be taken in the worse possible way for me, and I’ll pay and pay and pay until I have nothing left and still I’ll be driven into debt, further and further and further, and made to give up even the most common decent truths about myself. I have had to celebrate the Eucharist each day to remember that you too were betrayed and scapegoated and convicted and … well you were crucified. I have not been killed. I have found your blessings in each day in the most profound and simple things, like having enough to eat, and a good cup of coffee with fresh milk in it in the morning, and having medications I need, and having reason and opportunity to work hard to survive, and write and dream and use photography to speak about the wonders of your creation.

So God, I guess I have gotten used to evil all around in the most trusted, honoured places in society in this adopted country of mine. I have to remember how much you forgive me, so that I can remember that you may forgive these people as well, though now I cannot say their sins are forgiven, for they have not admitted they did and still do this same thing to others, and it is horrendous for the children. So I have bound their sins so that they might fear that they will answer to you, though with you I hope for a double victory, now that they provide justice based on truth, and that they join your people in celebrating all your gifts, encouraging others to do the same.

But Lord, it’s so hot, there’s so many mosquitoes and gnats and wasps and so many enemies of goodness, kindness, truth, and love. How can I deal with all of them all the time.

So I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep

and if I die before I wake, least I won’t wonder how much is still at stake

for the dance of life is more than a dance, gracefully, graciously partaken in.

It is also a feast and celebration with you, God, with all your people, in thanks for all you’ve suffered to do good things for us all.

So I guess I can wait for the cold, when the sweat will not run freely, the mosquitoes will be done for another year, the gnats will disappear and I can breathe easy, and the evil people are kept at bay by the cold and snow.

But God why does it have to be so cold and stormy, and why does there have to be so much snow.

I mean I like to have my peace and be able to ski ….

So Lord I pray, give me your peace, in the sleep of the righteous and pure, graciously so made a saint of your light by your own choice and by grace through faith alone.

Another simple normal summer day.

When does autumn start to arrive?

But Lord, why do the bears start to come around in the fall …..?

…

Lord, whatever it is that holds me captive, free me. Whatever it is that blinds me, give me sight. Whatever it is that robs me of joy while serving you and sharing the good news of your Grace with others, take this from me so that

because you give me life

I can be one of the saints who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the broken-hearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.

Help me live in the freedom you have so preciously bought for me; help me not return to the slavery that I know so well and feels so comfortable … until it binds me so close to evil that life starts to shrivel right out of me leaving me alone with my fears.

Giving Thanks to God ….. not to godlets.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Life is A Maze

an Amazing Maze of Wonders,

Gifts from God.

God is All Amazing.

No need to make small godlets.

Psalm 106:1

Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever.

Colossians 3:17

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Words of Grace For Today

Giving God thanks surely involves using our voices and God’s name, though when we use God’s name constantly in our communication with other people it is a grand misuse of God’s name, grace, and steadfast love.

Truly, in word and deed, doing everything in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God is so much more than mere words of thanks, or constant mention of God’s name.

Giving God thanks is an attitude towards life that brings us to reflect God’s grace towards others.

It is to give of one’s self so that others will live, whether they accept and practice faith in Jesus Christ, or not, for all people are God’s creatures, God’s precious people, people God forgives.

Giving God thanks is to extend to all others the same grace that God first has given (and continually gives) to us.

More often than not it is to do it anonymously, so our names are not known or remembered, so that our God’s name is not known or remembered … rather that God’s grace towards us is experienced as God’s grace towards other people. We certainly are not to bring people to worship or adore us for our good deeds and gracious words. We certainly are not sent out into the world to bring people to worship a ‘small god’, a godlet of any kind even one they name Jesus.

There are enough people worshipping a godlet of some kind or another, and too often they call that godlet ‘Jesus’. It certainly is not.

The past president of Tanzania is one very visible example: Covid 19 hit and shut down country after country in Africa with restrictions and precautions. What did this ‘Lutheran Christian’ do? He prayed. Certainly good. Then he announced to the country that his ‘godlet’ ‘Jesus’ had cured all Tanzanians of Covid 19. There was to be no mention of any respiratory illness as Covid 19, though there were thousands of cases everywhere. His godlet Jesus caused the avoidable death and long term disability through Covid 19 (and long Covid 19) of thousands of Tanzanians. That kind of godlet, no matter what it is called, is certainly not the Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, healer of our every ill, the creator, redeemer and sanctifier of the universe and all people in it.

Small gods, godlets, are made up every day by so many people looking for a way through life’s challenges.

God walks with us, seeing all we do, and still God’s steadfast love endures for ever for us and all people.

Because God is gracious to us, therefore we can be gracious with all the deadly covidiots out there, and all the abusers, and all those with power who abuse it, and all those who thought (and those that still think) residential schools were acceptable, … and all the enemies of life abundant for all.

Treating the enemies of life abundant for all is how we give thanks to God, for God’s grace worked first for us.

…

Happy 90^th Birthday Celebration Dort!

Very sorry we cannot cross the border to be there to celebrate with you.

Our Horrendous Truths, God’s Gentle Truth

Friday, July 9, 2021

Beauty Large and Small

Everywhere.

Abuses, Injustices, and Killing

Everywhere,

Even Here and Now.

Psalm 103:8

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Galatians 5:22-23

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

Words of Grace For Today

While Canada struggles with the reality outed now that residential schools were a place of mass deaths for first nation’s children forcibly taken from their families, the real problem lies so much deeper, and it’s effects are far more widely felt.

Canada is not a place of justice.

Canada is a place of ‘law’, where ‘law’ means that while there is process, the results are still the same as if there were no law: the result is arbitrary and moulded around the law to fit the desired results … by police, by lawyers and crown prosecutors, by judges, and by appeal judges.

Anyone can be arrested, tried, and convicted for anything.

I am living proof, as are thousands of others.

Abuse comes in many other forms as well. It comes from narrow focus, diverted interest, and biased justice. Lack of safe drinking water for communities for decades and longer. Preferential treatment for those with connections and promised support of those in power, puppets really for money-power interests. Biased application of laws; it used to be worked against women, now it’s worked out against men. More men die of violence and abuse than women, and more men die of suicide, a direct result of abuse than women, yet our attention is focused on the missing and murdered women. A larger view of the atrocities is required to be able to address the real issues.

Only a large view of what is happening can start to address the real issues and make real change possible … but those require we broaden our focus, hold our interest and provide justice based on truth … while those with power, wealth and influence have no interest in doing so; it would mean a loss of privilege for them.

It has been so since the beginning of time.

Canada is no different.

Canadians may be polite on the surface; but the corruption and abuse run as deep and wide among us as anywhere at any time in history. We just cover it with a thin layer of deceitful niceness.

And either directly, indirectly, or by omission every Canadian is implicated, and guilty, awaiting sentencing by God.

Thankfully God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love or there would be no hope for any of us, not at all.

There is another way to live: The Holy Spirit makes this possible for us: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Now that’s a way to live, and to address the abuse, corruption, violence, and killing that is so much a part of life around us – whether we choose to see it or ignore it.

This way of living guided by the gifts of the Spirit gives us the courage to see reality, the real terrible things that go on around us, in our names, each day, against good, honest, innocent people.

This Spirit-led way of living gives us the courage to respond to our terrible reality so as to change it, including the residential school mass graves now being uncovered for all to see.

A helpful, healthy, and effective response begins with the everyday responses we give to those around us: honest kindness, gracious truth, and generous joy … so that when the really devastatingly huge issues arise we are well practised in responding with peace, self-control, and gracious truth!

In this way as well God is abounding in steadfast love for us.

Barriers to Truth

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Breathe the Light,

See the Loon’s Wail,

Know God’s Power,

For God Walks with Us!

Psalm 147:5

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.

Mark 10:27

Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

Words of Grace For Today

Tina stood outside her camper, breathing in the sunset air with light pounding against the still lake waters. How had it come to this? Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of Gaslighting?

She had not earned it, nor felt any claim to it, though her attachment to the land and waters ran through her bones deeper than it had a right to.

For mortals this would be impossible to imagine; but even this is not impossible for God.

For years what troubled her is that people could do what they had done: lied, gaslit, scapegoated, made false reports to the police, blatantly lie in court (even police officers), and then the lies the judges told in order to convict her, send her to prison. How could people choose to do such things? How could people think they would get away with it, and then it seemed they got away with it.

She had always known she had not committed the crimes, or done the terrible things reported and rumoured about her around town. The impact of being declared a criminal though ran deep and she questioned what she had done wrong to ‘earn’ this kind of treatment, even if people were so evil, corrupt and cruel to do to her and say about her the things they had.

It took years of loneliness, despair, prayer, hope, and many repeat acts of people lying about her, pushing her back down as she tried to gain a voice. That was it for the first few years, silenced about the false police reports and false charges. Then silenced about the lies told to the courts. Silenced by unjust and cruel judges. Everyone was so afraid of the truth, now that the ‘game was afoot’ to scapegoat her for evil they had previously, otherwise done, and which they still continued to do.

It took years of coming to understand that the evil done to her had very little if anything to do with her at all. All those years of confusion, pain, loneliness, silence, and lost hopes. Slowly, ever so slowly she came to understand how very little it had to do with her and how terrible the things were that she had learned about, the lies and games that people played creating the lies, the horrendous perversions that people participated in and covered up, with influence, money, and raw force.

Arnold had invited, begged, persistently courted and pursued her. In court he’d said she was the one who had pursued him, for his money, for his children, for his home. All of that was lies. He had pursued her for the good company she was, for her great way with children, and, after he’d seduced her, for the sex. He made out that he was charmed, needy, and fulfilled by her. But he really knew nothing about love at all. He begged her to marry him and not just have an affair. She agreed and he promised they would marry when she was divorced. And when she was divorced he said they didn’t need to get married, that it would be just like they were married.

On it went, a marvellous, unbelievable six months of being in love, with the isolation from friends, the constant critique of little things mostly of things he did and blamed her for, the silence about her past, and all the stories about how perfect his first wife was. All that even after he confided to her that he had driven her to kill herself when her two life insurance policies overlapped and both paid out handsomely making him a multimillionaire in months. She was perfect in every way, and when she made a wrong decision he made sure she changed her mind and made the right one, especially the last decision to end her life.

He went to work on Tina right away, and got her on a drug that caused her to be suicidal, and he drove her hard, hard, hard until one day with half a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of alcohol Tina was ready to find her freedom from Arnold’s abuse.

How had it come to this?

How had that come to sitting by a lake breathing in the sunset with light pounding against the still lake waters. Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of abuse, Gaslighting, and one suicide that failed only because the cream in the Irish Cream slowed the absorption of the sleeping medication – that took three days to work it’s way out of her system?

How had it come to this after that?

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; God’s understanding is beyond measure.

So many times Tina had resigned her to God’s care and understanding of what was being done to her, for it made no sense at all, not at all, at all!

It took years but it had come to this, by the lake.

Tina still did not understand, though she agreed, For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.

…

Where are you today? How did you get there?

What unbelievable challenges blocked your path so many times in so many ways?

How has God shown you, that for God all things are possible?

Hot Party! or Keep Your Cool!

Saturday, June 26, 2021

No Matter What Fogs Up Our View of the World

God Will Bring Blessings Each Day

and the Cool Blessed Days Will Return

Isaiah 12:6

Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Luke 19:37-38

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’

Words of Grace For Today

July 1, 2021 approaches and the end of all (almost all) health orders providing restrictions because of Covid 19 will come with it, in Alberta. Unless or until the Delta or some other variant changes everything, again.

Still people are hungry for release, for freedom, for the lack of order that can be filled with their chaos, for ‘life like it used to be’ but really never was – which is always a stupid person’s excuse to want things so simple that dictators can easily take over. There will be a party of all parties, with instances duplicated all over the province, in kitchens, around dining room tables, in halls and in door conference spaces, in tourist destinations and next to the lakes, and in the bush … well that party has already started here, down the way, with fireworks and drinking, smoking and loud music and screaming into all hours of the night. Why not!?! It’s freedom, Right!?

Everyone loves a good excuse to have a party, well almost everyone, or truth be told everyone does except for the introverts (which is estimated to be somewhere between 15% and 50% of everyone).

Jesus enters Jerusalem. He is known to speak with authority and that the authorities are threatened by him. He is the common people’s hope for change. Even though he rides on a foal of a donkey, people shout and throw palms and lay down their garments for his path into the city. Which is a great excuse for a party … and for the authorities it is a great excuse to be rid of him once and for all.

God enters our days, usually quite quietly, walking with us, inspiring us to be the saints forgiven by God that God has made us to be. We make no fanfare.

Jesus is heralded as King with great fanfare, noise, and pomp. Yet he is not the people’s king to free them from foreign dictators. He is King of the universe, and King of our hearts, minds and breath … and of out lives if we continually accept that we need forgiveness, Christ forgives us, and we can live free from sin and the free from the power of the Evil One.

Each morning we have more reason to celebrate, to shout for joy, to bring on a party, than even when Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Yet it is quiet. The sun shines bright and hot on the cool of the morning, so warm already even the song birds are done until evening. The shadows are long from the northeast, the shade provides a momentary cool. God has been here even before it became light and we are quiet, the meadows and woods and lake are quiet. The partiers from last night are now quieted.

There is no need to make loud noises, for this is common, everyday, every place: God is long since been with us.

We pray that God will be with us on 1 July and for months beyond, for Covid 19 is here to stay with us so we pray that the vaccines will stay effective, that the whole world will be vaccination soon, and that we will learn to be the opposite of covidiots – covid-smarts, and all-life-smarts, knowing and trusting God’s Grace as our sole breath and life.

Weary? You Bet!

Monday, June 21, 2021

Rest, at Sunset, In the Calm

That Christ Offers

Isaiah 12:3

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Matthew 11:28

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Words of Grace For Today

Like no other words these are so welcome …

now after 15 months plus of Covid 19 restrictions and unknowns,

when my enemies pile on more lies and destruction, take more money I will never have piling debt on debt, and when it seems there are too few people who know who I a really am. Because I certainly am not the person reported to and by the RCMP, or testified about in the courts, or convicted and labelled a vexatious litigant by judges who care not for the actual truth,

when illness and disabling arthritis and injury combine to keep me from doing what I had planned to do to keep healthy, busy, and keep the mosquitoes at bay: mow, mow, and again mow,

when the death of a loved one rips the foundation of life out from underneath us,

when the darkness of the Evil One convinces us that the world is always going to be dark, even when the sun shines longer today than any other day in a year, and that evil will always win the day,

…

What we thirst for at those times, and now, is a place to rest in safety and

Jesus calls to us:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Once again God works to convince us, to reassure us with hope beyond hope, that

With joy we will today draw water from the wells of salvation.

There are no better words that these:

Come you who are weary and I will give you rest, so that with joy you will draw living water from the wells of salvation!

When we have rested, and washed ourselves and souls once again clean, when we have drunk our fill, then Christ calls us to share these words, these opportunities to rest and be renewed, and this living water. Christ calls us because there are so many people weary, carrying heavy burdens, who lose themselves as if they were separated from the love of God.

These words, these offers, this living water is all we have, it’s all we need to be able to share, it is all that anyone needs from life.

What joy comes when God calls us out of our weariness, and we share it all with others!

Responding to Wickedness with Grace

Saturday, June 19, 2021

In The Darkness

Christ’s Light Shines

For All,

Even Liars, Bullies and Tyrants

Micah 2:1

Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power.

Matthew 20:25-26

Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Words of Grace For Today

There is evil planned and done … simply because people can. Words of tyrants and bullies – I do this (evil to others) because I can.

Jesus provided a life-giving example for us: we give our lives ‘as ransom’ for others, so that they may live.

One of the many times I was falsely arrested Constable Jones stood across the counter from me after I was processed and she alone remained in the room with me. She boasted, “Lofstrom, do you know why I do this?”

Now I had not yet figured out the extent of the lies told about me, and her involvement in recruiting false reports from other people, even the lay pastor of the church I attended, Anne Zimmerman. Nor had I figured out that there would be no real trial, no truth provided by anyone except me and my words would be rejected and the lies accepted as evidence. I had not figured out, nor could I anticipate what storm of gaslighting was undertaken to get me charged, nor the lies that even the judges would tell in their decisions to convict me and deny my appeals. So many of the lies were little but the decisions relied on them, and materially on the judges’ own lies in order to convict or deny me.

I had not yet figured out the extent that this was standard procedure, easily done, building blocks of lies into bigger lies until the whole process was not even at all about what I had or had not done, said, or written. I had not figured out that the process was not about me at all. It was about the people who lied, being able to lie and get away with it, and being able to make a decent, honest, and kind man suffer an injustice of their making. I had not figured out any of this. I had respected the police all my life. Now turned on me, I was caught in a kafkaesque nightmare. It seemed I’d woken up in a twilight zone. I was silent, hurt, and scared witless.

Jones answered her own question, “Because I can!”

Micah writes, “Alas for those who devise wickedness.” Indeed one needs pity Jones, Zimmerman, and all the many others who devised this wickedness of lies against me, especially the judges. If one lies so easily, so profusely, so readily and so finally against decent, innocent, kind people, that means that their hearts are so twisted from reality around them, and so twisted from God’s goodness for them that they live in a self-made hell from which their is no escape …

except by God’s Grace.

We are not called to live by lies, certainly not to exercise them against innocent others simply ‘because we can!’

Christ exercises Grace for us, giving us renewed life each day. So we take that Grace, so prodigiously poured out on us undeserving sinners, and we direct it’s flow towards those around us. We follow Christ’s example and serve others, striving not to be ‘first’ or to rule over others. Instead we give all we have and are so that others will see the Light of Christ shining for them.

In the darkness of night, we know the Light of Christ shines for us, so that our deepest fears need not rule over us. At the dawn of each new day, we know the Light of Christ shines for us, so that we can live free of fears that cripple us, so that we can be as generous with Grace for others as God is generous with Grace for us.

We say we do this, not because we can, but because Jesus shows us that this is how we can live abundantly, and the Holy Spirit makes us able.