Health and Healing – Page 15

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 6

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Cold

Covid 19 does not die in the cold

It just lays dormant, waiting

to warm up and infect more people

Cold

means more caution is needed!

Ezekiel 39:29

I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God.

1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Words of Grace For Today

During Covid 19, like many times before though for some much more intensely, we need to be careful for each other.

The kind of care is not to avoid some great big monster of a villain, who invades our lives and leaves tracks and vivid images of the him/herself in our memories.

This villain is a teeny, tiny virus that can get us mildly sick and contagious, or very ill so that we feel we are dying, to killing us … and what many seem to forget is even if one survives, this little virus can leave it’s surviving victims’ health compromised for the rest of their lives. The compromise can be as little as an irritation to deal with, to major health issues that alter how one can live through a normal day.

We cannot know, if we are in an proximity of other people (and very few of us live anywhere NOT in close proximity to others through a normal week), if we or someone else is infected and contagious, or what air space is filled with contaminated microdroplets containing the virus, or what surface has the virus waiting for contact to infect us. And we cannot know for sure when we are leaving the virus behind for others to be infected from us.

Stupid is the infected President who waves to people from the balcony, takes of his mask, and turns to be in close proximity to a number of his staff … and they test positive a few days later!

Stupid is a lot of what people do nowadays!

Stupid and deadly for some people, debilitating for others, inconvenient for others.

God promises not to hide his face from us, again.

So God endures these stupidities with us.

God has given us all many gifts of great varieties, and to all of us God has given the Holy Spirit for the common good. Each and every one of us has received the gifts to not have to be stupid about Covid 19.

We may be sick and tired of the limits and restrictions. Still we can and must comply with health restrictions and recommendations to keep each other safe.

It’s better to be sick and tired of the limits, than to be sick and tired, out of breath, and incapable of living fully for the rest of our lives, simply because we or someone that came close to us, decided to be stupid about being sick and tired.

God, save us from stupid! Especially from those who have authority and means to provide for our safety (individually and collectively) … and they do not.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 2

Friday, October 2, 2020

Peach, Blue, Orange

The Light of God

is in all colours

for all people

Isaiah 57:18

I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort, creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips.

Mark 2:17

[Jesus] said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Words of Grace For Today

God sees the ways of the world. God sees our ways in the world. God knows we are hardly better than the people who were Noah’s neighbours.

There are no shortage of pieces of literature and film which propose or play out either the plan of a human to rid the earth of the destruction of humans by destroying most of the world’s human population, or nature’s rebellion against the human species that seems dead set on destroying the environment, which is necessary for our own survival.

On a global scale, and in every age, God sees our species destructive ways and promises to heal us, lead us, and repay our tragic behaviour with forgiveness and comfort for those of us who mourn.

Jesus, God’s Word embodied in a human life, came to call people to a new (old) way of being in creation: graciously forgiving sin and loving unconditionally everyone!

We often read ‘Jesus does not call the powerful, the wealthy, the famous.’

This is in part true. Jesus does not call those who have no need for Grace (or actually room for Grace, since every person needs Grace!) As a physician does not treat those who (think) they are well, but those who know they are sick, so Jesus calls those who know they and all creation need healing.

Healing is a loving balm, on any day, but especially at sunset, in the midst of Covid restrictions and precautions, and Gaslit into poverty, as firewood is collected for another night and day of being able to stay warm, as the peach sky fades to dark orange, Jesus promise to heal all that ails us carries the day into the dark of night, assured that a new day will rise tomorrow morning with the sun.

Do you hear Jesus calling you?

Do you know the Grace that God has for you, the comfort as you mourn, healing as you are ill, and hope when you despair?

All that troubles us, God takes from us and bears, yet again through the dark of night. God’s Light exposes, reveals, cleanses, and gives life. God’s light will shine again, in the morning.

‘When is it truly dark?’ asked the rabbi his students. They suggest, ‘when one cannot see the oak in the far field?’ ‘When one cannot see the whites in the eyes of a person approaching?’ When one cannot see colour or form against the forest of trees?’

The rabbi answers, ‘It is truly dark when a person approaches you and you cannot see them as creatures of God who reflect the Light of God.’

May it never be so dark for you, for us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 1

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Fire

Holy Spirit Fire Inspires Us

2 Chronicles 34:27

Because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me, and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.

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

Because we do something, therefore God does something good for us.

This is the half faith understanding of God.

It is good to humble ourselves before God. It is good to be penitent before God. Nothing we do, though, can effect how God exercises Grace for us. That is something God does even though we clearly do not deserve anything good from God.

In fact we deserve nothing but condemnation.

God graciously gives us life abundant, adopts us as children, promises us life eternal, and walks with us each day.

Everything that we are is by the Grace of God.

Knowing we are all God’s Grace can make us to be, inspires us to be more than we otherwise could be.

Life is wonderful, by Grace, even though we may think the Devil is running our lives to ground.

So we work hard, very hard at being the best people we can be, by living God’s Grace for others.

Simple.

Just not the way the rest of the world works.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 30

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Leaves of Gold

Leave it all up to God

Psalm 116:10

I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted’.

James 1:12

Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Words of Grace For Today

Enduring temptation and keeping faith even during affliction; these things are ours to strive for in response to God’s Grace that gives us life, now and for eternity.

Here the half-faith concept of our relationship with God is presented: we do right then God rewards us with the crown of life. This is not faith based on Grace, or on Christ’ Cross.

This is like receiving an inheritance from one’s uncle who one did not know about. The inheritance comes at a time when financially one is about to sink into oblivion and likely death. It provides a better standard of living than one ever dreamed of.

Thereafter one lives striving to do the right things according to the dead uncle’s wishes, though one does not know exactly what they were since the will did not make any demands or requests. It just provided the inheritance.

One strives and tells everyone, including oneself, that since you have kept worthy of you uncles’ wishes, you have earned the inheritance, therefore you deserve it and need not share any of it with others.

We are the poor nephew, given the best inheritance. We are adopted as children of the living God, the creator of the universe.

Now, we are not clueless about God’s wishes for us. God calls us to imitate Jesus’ generous, unconditional, universal love for other people, especially our enemies, our neighbours and ourselves. Jesus lives a full life of sacrificial giving and healing others. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to actually imitate Jesus. One our own it would be hopeless, but with the Holy Spirit giving us everything needed to imitate Jesus, we work the work of the saints.

What a life!

It is as beautiful as nature at the turning of the seasons, as gold carpets our paths and all our ways.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 29

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Trees Reflecting the Light,

See Through the Trees

to the Living Water

Zechariah 8:19

Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful festivals for the house of Judah: therefore love truth and peace.

John 8:32

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Words of Grace For Today

When people wish to deceive in order to gain and maintain power, wealth, status, and position, truth becomes relative to one’s perspective, because the actual truth cannot be admitted. If it were all the falsely gained power, wealth, status, and position would be lost.

In war the first victim is truth.

In greedy business practices in a world based on greed there can be no truth except what is made up to be claimed as truth after the fact.

Truth is a double edged sword, it cuts down everyone living out of lies, and on the back swing lays to waste everything built up based on those lies.

I’ve always had a hard time believing people actually expected others to accept as truth the lies and deceptions they practised and presented as truth. Yet not only do they expect, they demand, and even threaten ruin or death to those who do not accept their lies a truth.

From lies comes death to the one who lives by them. First comes death of one’s own soul, for there is no integrity between creation, one’s actual history, and what one claims supposedly happened. The gaps grow and rip apart one’s soul. One walks, breathes, and appears to live, but one has sacrificed the soul of one’s existence, the essence of being alive. One walks through life a shell of a full human, rotten in the core with a thin veneer of life surrounding one’s dead innards.

As one loses one’s soul one loses connection with God’s creation, which as an embodied human, a child of God, is one’s connection to God and to other people, as one of God’s creatures.

Quickly one becomes entrapped by one’s own lies as one caught in quick sand, until eventually the lies rule one’s life, relentlessly and ruthlessly.

….

What is one to do, if one has so died and yet still walks and breathes, or if one’s loved ones have chosen this path of walking dead, serving greed, money, power, or position, instead of acknowledging our place in God’s creation as one of God’s creatures?

The sad truth of human existence is that every person at times and in various ways sinks into living out lies that at first seem to be to our advantage, but then cost us everything good about being human.

How can one be freed from this enslavement to lies and falsehoods, to evil?

The first thing to do is pray.

The second and ongoing thing to do is seek out truth, absolute truth, in God’s Word and among God’s people, good people who strive to live by truth. Seek with all our being the truth of God, and the truth of God’s Grace for us creatures, and the great possibilities for our response to such prodigal dealings with us!

The Truth is that Jesus brought and brings to us, of God’s attitude towards us and all people being fundamentally Grace, bought at God’s Son’s own life. This is an absolute truth. No relative factor applies or can be applied to it. Jesus welcomes us though we do not deserve it at all. Jesus welcomes all people, tax collectors in his time like liars of all times. As Jesus has paid the price for us and all our sins, God frees us from our captivity to all sin, including our lies.

This is true freedom.

Then by Jesus’ invitation we get to be gracious (on behalf of Jesus) with all the people we encounter, especially those we would normally ignore or discredit.

The Truth sets us free, to be the kind of people God created us to be; to be kind people, filled with gratitude and grace for all the people we meet.

When we know this Truth, then even in months of fasting, and doing without, God blesses us and calls us to share the blessings joyfully with others.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 25

Friday, September 25, 2020

Covid 19, like most viruses,

sleeps fine when frozen, in stasis,

waiting to thaw and live down the road

to surprise you!

Psalm 119:165

Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.

Colossians 3:16

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

Words of Grace For Today

Love God’s Law and you will have peace, for nothing will make you stumble, and let Christ’s words dwell in you, teach and admonish each other all wisdom, and with grateful hearts sing to God!

All this is providing care for ourselves, though none of it earns us God’s favour or Grace. God promises us God’s favour, righteousness in God’s eyes, even though we certainly do not deserve it. What God gives us we do not and cannot earn. It is all free gift!

Then we get to respond. That’s our time for loving God’s Law, and letting Christ’s word dwell in our daily lives, as we teach and admonish one another (note that it’s mutual, not an authoritarian telling others what is right or wrong – that kind of judgment is God’s and God’s alone.) The great thing we get to do (actually one of so many great things we get to do) is to sing.

Covid 19 is transmitted by micro-droplets of breath, and singing produces lots of them and spreads them great distances, much greater than 2 metres! So we do not get to sing in large groups. Not until the pandemic is finished.

Just because stupid people say they are not worried about Covid 19, or they are going to live, or they are done with it, does not mean Covid 19 is done with us. Singing in groups for now is just stupid. As is coming close to strangers when it is not at all necessary. Or shaking hands with strangers. Or not wearing masks and face shields (oh, that’s right, hardly anyone wears a face shield!) Or not leaving in ‘isolation’ purchases for 3 days before handling them, and refrigerated or especially frozen items should be washed with a strong bleach solution. (Cold and frozen temperatures preserve the virus, and waiting three days for something in the freezer does no good for letting the virus die of its own accord. Warm up that frozen or refrigerated item and bingo bango splat – any virus on it comes back to life to infect you.

All the precautions that we can take are good. Learn a few more each week and add them to your fall repertoire, before the 2nd wave hits us harder than the 1st!

It’s a long haul discipline, not a short sprint. So take care of you and yours. Make new connections (physically distant.) And sing. Go into the bathroom, turn on the ventilation fan and sing your heart out! Go outside on a windy day or a great distance (at least 10 metres) from others and sing your heart out. Who cares what people think! We all know we need to sing with grateful hearts every day.

Teach, learn and admonish one another to take new precautions and keep the old ones. Practice them more diligently. Voluntarily shrink the size of you ‘cohort’, which means start keeping 2 metres apart from people who used to be in your cohort, wear masks and wear them correctly! (how many people do I see wearing them not over their nose, not even over their mouth! or handling them as if they could never be full of the virus!) even at home except with the smallest number of people possible (your children and spouse, for example,) and buy a face shield and start using it, use hand sanitizer right away after every time you touch anything that could be contaminated, and frequently all through the day, at every transition. You know the drill. Practice it without one leak in the guard between you and Covid 19.

Be smart. Be wise. Be patient. Be kind. And this thanksgiving and every one from now on you will still be able to celebrate with the ones you love, knowing you did not kill someone else with your reckless or just sloppy Covid 19 prevention practices. Covid 19 prevention practices are part of God’s Law: Do not Kill.

Rather be at peace, knowing you have done everything possible and wise to keep you and others safe.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 14

Monday, September 14, 2020

Rocks

Rock on With the Wonders of Light

The Light of Christ

Isaiah 41: 14-16

Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you insect Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. 15 Now, I will make of you a threshing-sledge, sharp, new, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff. You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. Then you shall rejoice in the Lord; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.

Romans 5:11

More than that [i.e. having been reconciled, we will be saved by Christ’s life] we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Words of Grace For Today

Worm Jacob and Insect Israel, judging the mountains!

Jesus reconciling wretched sinners, so that we can boast of the mighty sacrificial love of God.

When we know our place, there is no joy in threshing, crushing, and scattering the mountains and our enemies.

There is only boasting in what God has done for us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Who can give us life?

There is no life in judging others, especially not for what you have done yourself in order to make yourself appear better than you are. Worms and insects abound and do not make good judges.

Doch, to receive reconciliation, that is to receive as a gift that everything between us and God is made right, not by our own feeble and futile efforts, but by God’s own miraculous work through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now that is a gift that keeps on giving every minute right into eternity.

Now every day, the simplest visions of light, colour and hope spread God’s glory before us to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated.

We may be mere worms and insects, doch through God’s own will and work we are made to be saints, bearers of God’s blessings of light and grace for all the world.

Shine Jesus shine, in us and through us.

Let Jesus wonders be scattered throughout the universe.

Let us remember the marvellous light of Christ, even on cloudy days when it rains, even when Covid 19 still runs rampant, aided by fools and deniers and ‘I’m done’rs’.

Because God has made everything right between us and God, the our lives are made right in every way. Challenges become opportunities to share God’s grace, in our mundane tasks and among our enemies that work to kill us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 11

Friday, September 11, 2020

Light of death

Fire of life

Life in the Light, even in our deaths

Psalm 39:13

Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.

Matthew 15:24-8

He answered [the disciples], ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But [the Canaanite woman] came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many sayings that poignantly highlight some aspect of human existence. One is ‘no on gets out of life alive.’ Another ‘the fatality rate for humans is 100%.’ Another, ‘In the end what do they call the man who accumulates the most [fill in ‘power’, ‘money’, ‘status’, or anything else humans compete for]? … dead.’

Knowing we will die is part of knowing who we are … and what we are not. We are not immortal, nor godlets. God gazing on us directly is a most terrifying experience (or so we are told, never having experienced it myself.) As one approaches the end of life, it is a simple step, one that every instinct drives us to avoid until it is unavoidable. Then it becomes an inevitable, immediate, one way event, with no mulligans.

One can waste all of life fretting about one’s inevitable death. Or one can learn to immerse oneself in the present, find great joy in the abundant blessings God fills and overfills our lives with, and we can smile. Our smiles are not mere lips turned up at the corners, nor even a twinkle of life in our eyes. Our smiles at the great abundance and wonders of the universe and our lives in it, stretch from our mouths, far past our eyes, deep into our minds and to the foundation of our souls.

Those smiles help us imitate the Canaanite woman, who knows enough: 1) Jesus can heal her daughter, 2) she can beg to Jesus, 3) she will persist no matter the insults thrown at her. She trusts that God wants to heal her daughter, and Jesus is the One who God sends to heal all who he encounters.

Being insulted always matters, it just does not matter even one iota in the context of saving her daughter. She’ll take whatever scraps of Grace Jesus has for a non-Jew, for a Canaanite, for a woman. Even a scrap is enough to save her daughter.

No matter who we are, even a scrap of Grace is more than we need for life to be wondrously filled with breathe, love and hope.

No matter who we are, Jesus has time for us.

That ought to put a smile into us who know Jesus is our judge, or it will scare the living daylights right out of us, if we do not trust Jesus’ to provide us wretched sinners Grace.

We pray, with simultaneous smiles and terror for we are saint/sinners always, that Jesus will show us the way as we follow him, and that Jesus will turn away for we would like to smile without the terror ripping our hearts out of us.

Always in terror and in our joyous smiles, God is with us. The Spirit guides us. And Jesus reaches out, and asks us to lend him our thoughts, our voices, and our hands, that we can be Jesus’ presence for others.

That’s Hallelujah … everyday, every way.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 29

Saturday, August 29, 2020

No matter how cold life seems

God is with us, laying down tracks with us

shining on us day and night by sun, moon, and Holy Spirit

Thank God!

2 Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. The leper was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

False pride and arrogance or humility and gratitude, two apparently mutually exclusive manners of responding to all God has done for us.

In 2 Chronicles the writer interprets the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem as God’s response to Hezekiah’s proud and hard heart. In Luke the writer interprets Jesus’ healing the lepers as done in response simply to the lepers asking.

That one returns to thank Jesus, against Jesus’ directions that they fulfill the Jewish Law and show themselves to the priests (to be recorded as cured and therefore free to return to their families and position in Jewish society.) The one who returns gains nothing by visiting the priests. He is an outsider and gains no ‘return’. Leper or not, he is not accepted into Jewish society. He returns then to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus has more authority than any priests.

Luke’s message is that those who are burdened with their own religious authorities and practices may well fulfill their obligations to them, Jesus still comes and heals those people. People with no locally recognized religious authorities and practices to fulfill (the Samaritan perhaps had some, just not recognized by the Jews), are free to recognize Jesus’ greater authority and to respond with appropriate gratitude.

Who are we?

We wish we were like the Samaritan, free to recognize Jesus’ authority and power with thanks and gratitude.

If we are honest, we are like the other 9 Jewish lepers, bound to duty to other authorities, and easily able to miss the wonders Jesus provides and therefore easily able to miss out on thanking Jesus and living with wondrous gratitude. That gratitude is a more powerful force in life than ‘falling in love’, about which much is written, spoken and known – how it transforms life for the better (or worse.) Gratitude transforms life always for the better, and it does not wear off after a short few months.

If we are honest, we are also often like Hezekiah, proud and hard hearted, completely capable of pleading to God for help when life catches us in disaster or deadly illness or total loss. But when it comes to giving God thanks for all God has given us, our breath and very lives … Well then we are back to fulfilling our ‘obligations’ to other authorities and demands (like careers, money, status, reputation among those driven by greed and avarice, and false images of ourselves as above or without God).

Luther described all of these as happening simultaneously in our lives as responses to the same events. To which he prayed as we well can: God save us!

And save us, Luther knew as we can know, Jesus already has.

We can choose to live lives transformed by thanks and gratitude. Bit by bit each day.

Why not?

Where else are we going to turn for the living water? the bread of life? the Words of eternal life? the hope that does not disappoint? the promises that fill us so that we have more than enough to share with all who need life?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 26

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Left Behind by Accident or as Sacrifice?

Christ reconciles us to God, no sacrifice required!

We have a blemish free record, no matter how many ‘gloves’ we’ve lost.

Isaiah 43:24-25

You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Colossians 1:21-22

You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.

Words of Grace For Today

The sacrifices made to God have changed through the centuries and generations. Once we offered birds, animals, and before that other people, even children. We knew that, having done something wrong, having sinned, we owed God payment for our sins.

When we know we have sinned our minds recognize how estranged we’ve made ourselves from God. Knowing what we’ve done we become hostile to God as well.

We ‘dig our own grave’. Yet God does not leave us there.

No sacrifice by us is sufficient to pay for what we have done, and continue to do, and will do. God knew this, knows this. God sent Jesus, his Son, to sacrifice himself, the one last sacrifice needed to set things right between us and God, between all humans and God.

Nothing is needed on our part.

Now since God sets us right with God, holy and blameless … well the possibilities are astronomical, and wondrous.

Jesus calls us and the Holy Spirit equips us to be the voice, hands, and feet of Christ on earth, extending unconditional love to others, providing justice based on truth combined with mercy and wisdom, and blessing all people with more than just the basics of life. As the Holy Spirit equips us we can offer others abundant life. That may require sacrifice on our part, yet all we have is given to us, so it is not really ours to give up, it is ours to share with everyone.

Makes for a wondrous life for us, and for all people.