I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Mark 10:49
Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’
Words of Grace For Today
Take heart; get up, Jesus is calling you.
It is one thing to be blind, blind to truth, blind to reality, blind to the consequences of one’s actions.
It is a whole other level of illness to be willingly, stubbornly, adamantly blind.
When we desire to be blind no longer, Jesus calls us – or rather: has already called us to come, to be healed, to become part of the Kingdom of God that is here, spreading the news of God’s Grace for all people, healing for all people, and abundant life for all people.
Called, healed, and given sight to see the wonders of God’s Grace, God gives us to the world as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
We get to be the ones who give our lives so that those held captive by darkness can see the Light of the World, and live.
Take heart; get up, Jesus is calling you.
Now get ready for the ride of your life, for there is nothing like serving God, bringing light to the blind, and freeing those captive by darkness!
This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.
Romans 12:12
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Words of Grace For Today
There are lots of complaints floating about, people tired of Covid19 restrictions, and generally people stressed out about life’s little challenges.
Those of us who know who we are (God’s people saved even though we are miserable sinners) know that our cries are heard by God and that God saves us – and there is in all things great cause to trust God’s promises, to remain firm in hope (and resilience), to not be overwhelmed by suffering, and to persevere in prayer.
It is a life of gratitude no matter what comes our way.
It’s so much better than a life of bitching, complaining and draining goodwill from the people around us.
So why do we continually chose to complain about other people and their stupidities?
God helps us remember that we too can be the ones doing stupid things, and are each new day.
Which keeps God active saving us from ourselves,
For which we can, instead of complaining, be ultimately grateful.
What a life, filled with opportunities to be saved and to be grateful!
Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
Romans 8:37
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Words of Grace For Today
The evening dark had settled firm. My parka, long underwear under insulated work bib-overalls, cover mittens over the warmly insulated gloves and an insulate hat, scarf, hood and a prayer kept the -15⁰C and a west wind from biting. A recent storm blanketed everything with white, and high speed traffic through the day cleared tracks, though at intersections the snow was packed.
I exited town on a road that turned gravel for about a mile. Heavy trucks regularly travelled here. The week before I had found a rather smooth track just outside the regular traffic lines. The bicycle carried a heavy load of groceries from the food bank, loaded on the rear panniers and above the rack in a ‘milk crate.’
This week even with the headlight on brightly illuminating the roadway, there was not much to be seen but dark here and light there. It was rough bouncing the bike and my back with more than a little discomfort. I tried the lighter track inside the really rough tire tracks. It’s rough and slow going pushing through the snow and slush. I turn to the outside, and there turn the wheel to head straight down the road. The wheel turns easily to the left, the bike keeps going to the right far out of balance with not even a split second warning dumping me, right butt cheek to the ice, bike and groceries on top me, and my right elbow catching the weight of my upper body.
Stunned …
Stunned I slowly pulled my self out from under the bike as a vehicle went by without pause. I could move. Nothing seemed broken or damaged beyond use. I knew the shock would wear off and that might be different in a moment. I inspected the rear wheel. It was still good. The shape of the pannier had protected it from damage.
It took minutes, long minutes down on the roadway of black ice before I could get upright. More minutes before I could pull the bicycle upright and reset everything in the rear ‘milk crate’ carrier.
I did not dare ride on that ice again that night. I walked the mile until the pavement started again, and further until the traffic had cleared it down to the black pavement. Still when I peddled again, 22 km left to get home, I stayed clear of the dark black pavement-maybe-ice.
Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way.
I guess God did not delight in my way?
Though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.
Or maybe God had me by the hand and I did not fall headfirst, knocked unconcious.
It did take weeks for the deep buttocks bruise to not hurt and the purple-yellow-green to fade more to normal pale pink-white
…
In life, if we live it to the fullest and do not hide from life, there are many times we will stumble and fall, be bruised, and require time to heal.
God promises always to be with us so that
in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Life is not safe. No one gets out of it alive.
Life is not to be lived hiding from danger. God calls us to engage, to face danger, to provide for those God loves, which means all people, including ourselves. Even if that means biking 55 km or more in the cold to get food to return in the dark on questionable roads against the wind making it a 4 hour return trip instead of the usual 2 plus hours.
If we fall …
Well, let’s be honest: WHEN we fall, God is there to protect us, to help us get back up, to heal, and if it is our day to die, to receive us into heaven where we need not fall again.
Life is an adventure (all too full of enemies that would do us in) that, for God’s beloved people, always ends well.
Deliverance belongs to the Lord; may your blessing be on your people! Selah
Matthew 9:35
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.
Words of Grace For Today
God delivers people … everyday …
and sends us who have been delivered out into the world
to deliver others
by proclaiming God’s Grace
and providing healing for all kinds of illness and disease (and dis-ease with God’s love as that which holds the world together.
Palm Passion Sunday and it’s been a year or more since we’ve had in person worship.
God delivers us …
from the anchors of old diseased habits of worship
and allows us a fresh start, thinking about what is healing in worship, what is proclaiming in worship, what is short term and long term ‘good order’ and instilling and inspiring of good faith in us.
What a challenge this last year has been, or rather what a collection of challenges, some overwhelmingly so.
What an opportunity this last year has been, or rather a collection of opportunities, some astoundingly, refreshingly life-giving (that is, healing of mind, body, and spirit.)
Thanks be to God, to whom deliverance belongs, and who has delivered us with love demonstrated at great cost … so that we might comprehend the vastness of God’s Grace and Love.
On that we can ground all hope, no matter the challenges that overwhelm us!
Gideon answered him, ‘But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?” But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.’
Mark 4:38
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’
Words of Grace For Today
Why is this happening to us?
Where is God?
Does God not care?
When unjust judges take life from us …
When the one who said, ‘I love you. Marry me?’, turns on you with physical violence or worse (because it is unseen) psychological gaslighting, lying to police and to church and to courts, destroying your reputation, leaving you so far in debt you will never get out, and your health plummets into pain and disarray …
When friends, bishops, and seemingly good people join the gaslighting as if you were a social pariah or dangerous sexual deviant, scapegoating you instead of dealing with their own failings to deal with reality and truth …
When there are no friends left to stand by you …
When flood waters wash away your home and life and hope …
When wildfires rage wiping out your home and life and hope …
When petty warlords churn your homeland into a war-wasted horror of death, bombs, night raids and killings, rape, torture, and dread of your neighbour falsely (or rightly) betraying you bringing death squads to your door to take you away never to be seen again …
When powers turn on your way of life, destroy it, and work to extract resources and power from your home land, leaving masses of your people without the necessities of life …
…
When you have lived in the wilderness for years, eking out a living of a kind, and you read of the wondrous deeds of God, as God saved our ancestors from these, similar and other worse assaults on their lives,
Then you and we will rightly ask, “God! Where are You!?! Do you not care for us!? Will you not save us, NOW! Before it is too late!”
Gideon asked this for his people. In time, as God instructed him, ((his ‘army’ blew the trumpets marching around Jericho, bringing down it’s walls, delivering it and then the rest of the Promised Land into their hands. — That was not Gideon. That was God delivering Joshua and the people. God did this so many times.))
In time, as God instructed him, Gideon with just a small army, drove out a great army and captured it’s kings … using surprise and loud noise making.
The disciples asked this as the storm of un-creation on the sea tossed their small boat about at whim between the tall waves and battered it with wind. They knew their deaths into the deep of the void (what was before creation) was imminent. Jesus wakes and speaks only a word. The un-creation void of the deep waters and winds of the storm settle into the fresh breeze and calm waters on which life was sustainable as the fishers knew so well.
God may not resolve the danger that threatens our lives. God is not a puppeteer, interrupting our freewill and others’ freewill as we choose our ragged paths forward in life through creation and human-made un-creation as we go (which we and others must then try to survive if it possible at all!)
God loves us.
God stands with us.
God suffers and weeps with us … at the loss of any of creation and any of God’s creatures … for God loves creation and all in it, and created it GOOD!
God does give us, sometimes, the possibilities to struggle against the evil that threatens us and to survive. If we live, God is with us. If we die, God is with us and gathers us home … home at last.
So whether we live or whether we die, we are God’s beloveds, blessed and grateful for whatever life we get to live in this miracle of creation!
God does not ever abandon us. Not ever. Not even during a pandemic. The stories of God rescuing our ancestors provides us witness to God’s love and care.
Thus, no matter how great the waves of evil pound over us, we do not lose hope.
As we live, we are God’s people who stand with others as the great waves of evil pound over them.
This is love. This is grateful, hope-filled living.
If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.
Acts 4:20
For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.
Words of Grace For Today
When God speaks, there is no one who ….
Well, that cannot be true, because people react on the full spectrum from loving worship to full our rejection that God exists, yet alone speaks clearly to people … for people to hear.
God is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings of control over humans, or any part of creation. Yet when some people hear God speaking, clearly, lovingly, they and we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. That is the life of a sacramental mystic, who encounters God talking at every turn in creation, even in and among those most dangerous of animals, the two-legged kind that speak every kind of word on the spectrum from life-giving truth to life-robbing, evil lies.
What kind of word do you speak this day?
Amidst a pandemic, do you speak truth that supports, enhances, and inspired people to life healthily and abundantly, blessed by God.
Or are you off worshipping another kind of godlet, one who demands strict adherence to reality denying lies, controlled thoughts and expressions, and (like the king who is ready to throw Daniel and his companions into the furnace), the painful death of anyone who will not ‘fall into line’ worshipping your life-sucking godlet.
The powerful king who demanded Daniel worship his godlet, had not encountered God, Daniel’s God, who may or may not deliver Daniel (and us) from the fiery furnace of destruction (the actual fires of burning or the fire of lies that destroy our reputations.) Whether God chooses to deliver us does not deter us from remaining faithful. For we will not begin to worship a godlet who takes life from so many people, promising the greatest life, and delivering it’s followers into a long life more painfully greedy and selfish than death in a fiery furnace ever could be.
We have seen. We have heard. We have known. God is gracious, unconditionally loving, and prodigiously generous. We need nothing more than God’s blessings and opportunities to worship and serve God … with every word and breath … even if it be our last.
On the spectrum from life-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving (reflecting God’s Grace for us all) to the Devil’s empty promised, self-made life at the expense of others’ lives:
What kind of word do you speak this day?
From the outcast homeless poverty captured person to the most powerful ruler or judge of the day, God allows a simple question to sit before us each day:
Asa went out to meet him, and they drew up their lines of battle in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.
2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans are so ready to test our strength against others, to draw up the battle lines, to commence fighting to gain what we want.
We do not need warriors or real war. We create battles, with battle lines, against those who stand in our way. So it is in a world run on greed.
Our world runs on greed.
God’s creation, the Kingdom of God, runs otherwise. It is not our strength that wins us anything. It is God’s strength that brings life to all people, not just mere struggling to survive kind of life, but life abundant. God does this by giving away God’s favour freely, generously, unconditionally.
The way God’s way of living, by Grace alone, becomes clear to us living in a world of greed only when we allow our weaknesses to be the opportunities that God’s strength is made obvious for all.
God accepts our weaknesses, pays whatever price we think needs be paid, and sets us on our way to be renewed, living in God’s favour. Thus we are able to reflect in our way of living the Grace and unconditional love that God created the world to live on.
In today’s world the greedy and ‘strong’ prey on those who are ‘weak’ to gain advantage for themselves. In today’s Kingdom of God the saints pray for the greedy and the weak that they will see God’s Grace at work in life all around them, and join the work of the saints in light.
The saints work is to be the faith that will give hope to the coming generations; our weaknesses do not separate us from God. As Leonard Cohen penned well enough in his song Anthem, “It’s through the cracks the Light gets in.”
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’
John 19:26-27
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Words of Grace For Today
There is something very wrong with this creation account in Genesis. How it has been used makes this very clear to anyone who wishes to pay attention.
While humans are both female and male, the story places one as the first consideration for God, and the other as an after-thought, a help mate for the first.
This story came out of a male biased culture and has been used to devalue females as second class humans. Abuses have abounded through history based solely on this false preference of God’s for males. These biases and their subsequent abuses used to seem so acceptable to some people, especially those that benefited from them. In truth they always have been an abomination for the whole species.
Today, as if this helps at all, many have turned these biases and abuses on their heads. Females are given free license to devalue, abuse, lie about, gaslight, and even kill males freely, as if it were their birthright as females. This ‘new’ bias-abuse of males can never set right the bias-abuse of females. In fact it is worse. For many the bias-abuse of females was unintentional, even by females who saw it as something for their benefit.
The ‘new’ (to our culture) bias-abuse of males to benefit females cannot be claimed by any to be participated in unawares. It is the flip of a terrible bias in history. For that matter continuing male-favouring biases is no longer excusable (because one was unawares) either, if it ever was.
A bias participated in aware of the bias and one’s participation in it is worse than an accidental bias in that it , on top of everything else, consciously chosen.
Female favouring biases are also most often pursued with revenge in mind. For example it is as if the abuse is pursued against this good male to take revenge for the abuse of other abusive males, even though the males are related only in that they are males.
That kind of blind revenge bias is many measures worse. It claims to set things right, yet it adds layer upon layer of lies and deception and damage to every situation.
Only Grace brings us to live past bias of any kind.
Jesus, on the cross, does not change that woman have next to no possibility to ‘take care of their own business.’ They require a man to own the property and from that provide for the woman. Instead Jesus acknowledges the disadvantage this places upon Mary, his mother, and he ensures that one of the disciples is now recognized by Mary as her son, and she is recognized by him as her mother.
Jesus does not remove the bias. Instead he ensures, despite the bias, that his followers and his mother are cared for as all people should be.
We can make changes, if all too slowly, to cultural biases. We need to do this with great courage and persistence. We need to work to remove the bias and all vestiges from our own lives. We need to actually remove and end the bias, not to merely replace it with an equally if not worse bias!
As we recognize our own sin (including biases), and the sin of our culture’s biases, we need swiftly and effectively mitigate the suffering all our biases cause people, including ourselves. We need to provide the care every human deserves for everyone we can.
This is the meaning of life, and the purpose of each day; to provide God’s Grace to all people.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
James 3:13
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
Words of Grace For Today
After we recognize our own hopeless sinfulness, which God redeems at great cost, forgiving us and renewing life in us, and that we need God’s forgiveness constantly, for we simply cannot stop sinning, then the question is how are we going to live?
The measure we humans have held up returns us right back into works righteousness, as if God suddenly has made us able not to sin, so that we must preform or lose God’s favour and blessings. These two passages certainly could be interpreted that way … making it easy for us to dismiss them.
There is more to it than that.
Once sanctified (made saints by God), though we continue to sin, God pulls out of us great works that further God’s will and work on earth among humans and for creation. Most simply put, God’s willa and work is that God’s Grace is demonstrated to more and more people, and more and more people embrace the cross as God’s demonstration of God’s love for all people; forgiveness, redemption and new life is for everyone. We can live to cooperate with God’s will, or we can constantly choose to defy God’s will and live as if God does not exist, has not created us, does not forgive, redeem and renew us, and as if we can go it alone.
We can go it alone … right to our own damnation, choosing to separate ourselves from God. God still comes to us, forgives us, redeems us, renews us … except at some point God allows us to have our way … and the hell we have created for ourselves is the hell we live forever. At what point this happens is not anything we can know. But that it happens we can know: we can choose to deny God’s good work in us.
How else can we live? There are options that God makes possible for us. Wisdom is one of them.
We can pray: Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
We can live each day so that our God-given wisdom and understanding is evident in our works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
These passages then speak to how we can pursue wisdom in our daily lives, not to our own benefit, but to the benefit of everyone around us. They speak of our penultimate striving that God make possible for us.
Nothing Can Separate Us From God’s Blessings and Joy.
Isaiah 43:5
Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
Words of Grace For Today
God promises us no easy or comfortable life. God promises us, though, when life is horrendously challenging, we need not fear what may come our way: We need not fear.
Some people somehow learn not to panic in the most stressful situations, though we all have our limits. There are things that drive everyone of us over the bend, and into such distress that we cannot see our way forward.
Life with Christ as our guide, though, need never leave us in doubt; God accompanies us, and when we stray, God gathers us and our offspring in from all the corners where we have strayed and been scattered like dandelion seeds in the winds of summer thunderstorms. Life can be rough, so rough that it will easily appear to do us in.
God promises us we need not fear that such misadventure will do us in. Paul puts it well: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
God calls us to be saints, the people who reflect Christ’s light to all the world. As we work to bring to light the wonders of God’s miracles among us, there will be no end of challenges that we will face, that will tempt us, and that will do us in, except God finds us, delivers us, and sets us right again, to breathe for yet another day of service.
Light and easy our lives may not be, though accompanied by God we can trust we will endure everything that comes our way. Knowing God’s promises are sure, we need not panic. Not because we are so great or practised or immune. We need not panic because God guards our hearts and minds and strength with God’s own strength. Life for us never ceases to amaze or challenge or inspire.
Breathe. God’s spirit enters us, cleanses us, and inspires us.
Breathe. All will be well. All will be well. All manners of things will be well.
