Category: Buffalo

Life is Fragile! So …

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

All of Our Lives Will

Eventually, Inevitably

‘Go Up In Smoke!’

So What Are You Going To Do and Be

Until That Day?

Deuteronomy 2:7

Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.

Matthew 16:18

I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Words of Grace For Today

Life is fragile, so eat dessert first.

The value reflected in this humour is that pleasure is all life has to offer, and life is going to end at any time, unpredictably, so grab all the pleasure you can while you still can.

God acts to free God’s people from slavery in Egypt, delivering them to 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Wilderness is not plentiful with the necessities of life, and even here God has been with the people, walking with them, and providing all the people need. They have lacked nothing.

God sends Jesus to be a living human, in the most understandable language for us humans. Jesus story is to teach and guide us to live lives worthy of God’s blessing given to us. Even as Jesus offers himself (in order to demonstrate God’s power in weakness, in forgiveness {not vengeance}, and God’s enduring unconditional love that graciously forgives us all our sins), and will no longer be present to the disciples as he has been, Jesus does not desert the disciples. He provides the Holy Spirit to guide them, and takes their ‘rock’, Peter (the one so zealous yet foolish and full of faults), and builds on that a church that will last and not succumb even to the power of the Devil.

How do we respond?

The popular concept that comes the closest to simply explain our appropriate response is ‘pay it forward.’ That is, give to others what God has given to us, namely abundant life (through gracious forgiveness and the renewal of life).

Pay it forward.

A concept that is easy to understand, and very exactly when we try to exercise it fully … since God has given us so, so, so much!

God’s value for our lives would have the humorous saying go like this:

Life is fragile, so give it to others while you still can.

No Worries, Just Wonders! … OR?

Friday, September 3, 2021

We can see both the darkness

and

the morning light.

…

Which do we consider first?

Psalm 33:5

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Matthew 6:25

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Words of Grace For Today

What is it to worry?

What would it be like to have no concern for drink, food, or clothing? Would we survive? … Well not in most of the world no we would not.

So is there something other than ‘worry’ for our drink, food and clothing, and having no concern for our drink, food, and clothing?

The question is not if there is something between these two extremes. The question is how do we consider our needs? Do we consider these first from our needs’ demands on our time and energy … or do we consider everything first from God’s great generosity with us, and God’s abiding presence in the world?

If we start every calculation from God’s grace and love for us, it makes no sense to be worried about our daily needs, for all that we need for life is already given to us. We only need to remember how filled the earth is with God’s steadfast love.

Then we can get on with life. The purpose of our lives is no longer trying to get for ourselves. Rather we have the greatest purpose in sharing all that we can, with everyone, especially those who do not have enough to provide for their and their family’s basic needs.

What a life! A life of plenty!

With every opportunity to share everything with those most in need.

It does not get better.

…

So why do so many people think they have to take as much as they can get from others, just to meet their daily needs?!

God Calls, Come Home!

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Come Home

Live in Christ’s Light

In the Truth

Ezekiel 11:19

I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

Acts 2:39

For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Godself.

Words of Grace For Today

God calls home, home to life as God created us to live it.

Home to live with lively hearts of flesh, and renewed spirits.

Home to leave behind our hearts that have grown hard as stone with the travails of life and the evil that has bombarded us, and the evil with which we have bombarded others.

God calls us home to live with new spirits and hearts that are shared among us all. Hearts the love one another because God first loves us, though we certainly do not deserve God’s love at all, not at all.

There is no greater promise than that God will renew our spirits and give us new hearts, for our spirits and our hearts are what we have to share with each other, with the strangers, and even with our enemies. In our hearts and in our spirits God’s image is made known to us and to others, as God created us, in God’s own image, thus able to choose to love and live and give without end generously to others so that they may live.

Come home, this morning, this day, this evening, this night.

Receive the gifts that God promises

and

live.

Shepherd Guide Us

Thursday, August 26, 2021

God’s Great and Mighty Deeds

Are Reflected in the Wonders

of All Creation,

Even in Our Enemies!

Psalm 28:9

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

1 Peter 2:9

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

Words of Grace For Today

When one thinks of all the times and all the things that have been done by people claiming to be God’s own people, a royal priesthood, and a chosen race, one’s stomach must turn dark with boiling acid. How such promise and blessing has been perverted to evil to serve the Devil’s purposes, against God’s will, and to great detriment of the perpetrators and the victims.

What are we chosen, as God’s own people, solely so that we can give witness to God’s power in weakness, God’s power of love demonstrated to us again and again by saving us by grace, though we never deserve anything from God.

There are many mighty acts of God that we are called to tell in our stories, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories that we write and speak to others, and the stories we create with our lives.

What we have demonstrated through history and in each of our lives, is that without God’s grace, without surrendering in humility (at the horror of the sin we can commit) to our need for God to save us again and again each day, without Grace giving us breath … without God’s help each moment we are capable of the most evil and depraved things done to others, even to those we profess to love, and even to ourselves.

So we pray:

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

Having acknowledged who we are, sinners all … having turned to God yet again to rescue us and carry us … having recognized God’s great and mighty acts for our ancestors and for us in our own lifetimes … we celebrate God’s promises for us, God’s claim on us as God’s own people, that God has chosen us to be examples of what goodness can be accomplished when God redeems God’s people.

We sing and we dance in celebration with all people, even our enemies; for if God can save us, certainly God will do what is necessary to save them (starting with us seeing clearly if they are even our enemies at all, and if they so remain, then celebrating that God still gives them time for the amendment of life.)

Such a celebration! A feast in paradise already today!

Our Efforts Compared to God’s Promises

Sunday, August 22, 2021

The Marvels of Technology

That Made Mobile a Living Space

Hardly Compares To

God’s Love

Which Makes a Living Space a Home,

A Safe Home.

Leviticus 26:12

And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

1 John 1:3-4

We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

God creates.

God creates humans.

God creates you.

God creates me.

God knows what wretched sinners we each will be.

God still creates you and me and all of us.

God plans that in our wretched sinfulness, God’s power will be made obvious to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to love and live and believe. God does not abandon us to our sinfulness, though we may experience the painful results of sin, of others’ and our own sins, as unending suffering and abandonment by God.

God brings words to the ancient writers minds, words of promise to counter our limited understanding of our own lives and of God’s great goodness, mercy, love and grace. The ancient writers put in words for us to read so many generations since: that God promises to not abandon us, not even to our own wilful sins and their consequences. God promises to walk with us.

This many mystics and other faithful people have experienced in the face of sin’s great destructive consequences: that God walks with us each step of each day, no matter what we do, say, or think.

God’s promises are sure.

We use many things to make life safer for us:

Natural gas for heating, though some of us only have wood heat it is still heat against the winter cold.

Gasoline to power engines to do work for us, mowing grass, clearing snow, moving vehicles to and fro bringing food and other supplies to stores and home from stores.

Coal, natural gas, and water (and a tiny amount of wind turbines and solar panels) to generate electricity to a distribution grid that powers industry, business machines, and home appliances to wash and dry our clothes, wash our dishes, run our computers and TVs, charge our phones; though some of us cannot afford to connect to the grid, and some of us use our own generators run on solar power or gasoline.

Science and engineering accomplishments and implementations that bring water to us and remove waste; that have allowed us to build vertical cities from deep underground to high above the streets; that have given us a system of roadways and railways and shipping systems and air transportation systems including complex trucks, trains, ships, and planes that span rivers, valleys, oceans, and continents; that have provided specialized buildings for research, health care, magnetic imagining that provides details unimagined by even Röntgen; computers with all their benefits and detriments to healthy living.

The list of what we use to make life more secure goes on and on.

Nothing of our own efforts guarantees us a good future.

Our own efforts are so marvellous that previous generations would hardly comprehend what we’ve done, and what we rely on. We rely on our accomplishments so thoroughly that we seem unable to give up any of it, not even to walk away for a few days without that always-at-hand ‘smart’phone. We’ve become so dependent that we by and large equate security with our ability to posses and use these technologies.

Yet nothing of our own efforts can guarantee us a good future. Reliance on them as security for life is a reduction of life to what they provide us; God created life to be so much more than our own technologies (marvellous as they are) can provide. No matter the marvel, no thing can match the power of love, the power of forgiveness, the power of healing with mercy and grace.

Only God’s promises can and do provide us the guarantee we ask for, that today and all our tomorrows be life abundant for us. As God walks with us, God loves us each step through our days, today and every tomorrow. There is no more powerful provision for and assurance of life abundant, even as we inevitably face death, of our loved ones and our own deaths than that God walks with us and love us unconditionally. There is no comparison in all our technologies that enables us so to live and to provide life abundant to others, everywhere in God’s good creation.

Listen Up!

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Sometimes

We Need to Stand Up Above the Fray

And Be

God’s Listening Ears

and

Loving Hearts

For Others

Isaiah 65:24

Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.

Romans 5:8

God proves God’s love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s real simple:

we don’t deserve God’s love,

God loves us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness,

God forgives us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s blessings,

God blesses us with renewed life again and again anyway.

Peter and Michelle had a son, Lloyd, who as he grew into his teens went from a kind and gentle soul to an aggressive, vengeful and hurtful angry whirlwind of trouble. More than once the police brought Lloyd home and released him into his parents care.

After a year of that, the police came one morning when Lloyd had not come home for a few days. Not coming home for days on end had become more and more the routine rather than the exception. The police informed Peter and Michelle (on a first name basis by now with the police) that Lloyd had been arrested and charged with murdering an elderly woman. It appeared, the police said, that a group of teens had attacked her going into her home, roughed her up, tied her up, robbed her, gained entrance to her home, looted the place, and then were about to beat her more when a neighbour interrupted them with a lantern and a large stick. Lloyd was in the hospital still unconscious from a blow to the head from that stick.

Peter and Michelle headed out to the hospital in their horse drawn wagon, found Lloyd, and sat by his side. Taking turns returning home for food and to clean up, they spent the next four days holding vigil by Lloyd’s hospital bed.

When Lloyd finally started to come to Peter was about to relieve Michelle for the ‘graveyard’ shift. Lloyd took a good hour to figure out where he was. Peter and Michelle repeated for him over and over again, that it did not matter what he’d done, they had always loved him and they always would no matter what.

The next day Peter and Michelle returned to the hospital to find the police interviewing Lloyd, who had very little to say. When they left Peter and Michelle sat with Lloyd, assured him that no matter what they loved him and always would.

That night when they came to share supper with Lloyd, a neighbour, Mr. Platt, and Lloyd’s girlfriend, Ginny, were with Lloyd talking. When Peter and Michelle arrived they shared the details of Lloyd being knocked unconscious.

Ginny started out and Mr. Platt jumped in with some details only he knew. Lloyd had been walking home with Ginny, after a two day trip over the mountains to see her grandmother. Since she was Ginny’s only living relative they asked her for her blessing for the two to get married. On their walk they came upon Mrs. Swenson, tied to a tree. Michelle ran for help and Peter stayed to untie Mrs. Swenson. The neighbour, Mr. Platt, alerted by Michelle, told her to stay with his wife and kids. He went out to find Lloyd bent over Mrs. Swenson and without delay disabled him to ‘free’ Mrs. Swenson from her attacker. Mr. Platt then chased the remaining teens but did not catch any of them.

It wasn’t long before the police came, listen to the whole account by Mr. Platt, Ginny, and Lloyd, and the promised Lloyd all the charges against him would be dropped.

A month later at Ginny and Lloyd’s wedding, Peter and Michelle and Ginny’s grandmother welcomed the same police they had come to know so well, and Mr. Platt and his family, along with many of their neighbours. Together they all celebrated the goodness of God’s grace that brought Ginny into Lloyd’s life, and the night that Mr. Platt ‘knocked’ some sense into Lloyd. It’d been a year since Lloyd had been in trouble, though his outings with Ginny did make it seem to everyone that he was still rebelling and heading down a dark road, so Mr. Platt’s knocking really had not changed anything, except made it known to all what Lloyd had been up to. The following summer Grant was born to Ginny and Lloyd, and the whole neighbourhood celebrated again. They knew it took a whole community to raise healthy children, and they’d done their part with Lloyd, and they would again with Grant, all his siblings to come and all the other children raised in that community.

Sometimes we need good friends to be the ones who demonstrate that God listens to us even before we pray, that God saves us even as we are still wretched sinners. Sometimes we need to be the ones who do the demonstrating of God’s Grace for others.

Singing and Dancing

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Every Step In Life

Leads Us to Sing and Dance

For God Is With Us

Always.

1 Chronicles 13:8

David and all Israel were dancing before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Words of Grace For Today

When one surveys through memory how God has exercised great grace and steadfast love for our ancestors and for us in this time and place, there is only one response that we can engage in:

We sing and dance before God with all our might.

And we work each day to let our gentleness be the mode of our lives, gentleness that is born of enduring great suffering, and still receiving great grace and deliverance by God’s hand, for God is always near.

So we sing with all our hearts, minds, and strength, singing the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

This is the dance that celebrates everything that is good in creation: God’s grace and love for us all. There is nothing better possible than this in all our lives.

What Do, What Can We Delight In?

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

W hen the Evening Closes In

And The Dark is At Our Door

God’s Steadfast Love

Carries Us

For God Delights In Us.

Jeremiah 9:22-23

Speak! Thus says the Lord: ‘Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them.’ Thus says the Lord: “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight”, says the Lord.

Luke 9:25

What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?

Words of Grace For Today

What are the things that we delight in?

Many of us work for profit, a little more than we have, “Just a little more, please,” we beg God. “Make our lives just a little easier, a little more secure, a little more hopeful! Give us enough that the challenges we face are overcome, our enemies defeated, and so that we know that our futures are secured.”

So we, the wise, boast quietly about our wisdom, trusting that our wisdom will deliver us into a good future. So we, the mighty, boast quietly about our might, trusting that our might will deliver us into a good future. So we, the wealthy, boast quietly about our wealth, trusting that our wealth will deliver us into a good future. Or whoever we are, with whatever we have, we use it all to try to ensure our good futures. It is not actually boasting, we say. But we rely on ourselves and our own.

What are the things that God delights in? It is as God acts, with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

These things, by God’s Grace alone, are what can secure us a future that is worth living. Everything else leads to living in futility, struggling on our own to secure our futures, when the whole time we waste the little time we have on earth.

Each days challenges, our enemies’ evil actions, and the unknown in our futures are exactly the opportunities God uses to demonstrate that God walks with us, right with us, no matter what. We can rightfully boast only in God’s gracious love for us. We need nothing more than God’s gracious love to know that our futures, whatever comes, are fully secured in every way that they need to be, in order for us to live life fully as we are created to live it.

As the evening closes in on us and the skies darken, we pray in thanks for all the blessings God provides to us, starting with our daily food, and that we are able to breath, the good work we are able to engage in, and more than anything else we include thanks for all the people we love and who love us.

We lay down to sleep trusting that all is in God’s hands, God is with us, and the morning will come with new opportunities for God to show us and all people God’s steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

We strive to make life a little better for ourselves, and all the people around us. We willingly give up the little that is our lives in order to give others the basics of life and to demonstrate to them God’s steadfast love that accompanies us each day. Life is a miracle, a miracle that surprises us each day. Each morning we trust that the coming evening will provide rest after good work of the day, followed by another marvellous morning, or we will wake with God at home with Jesus and all the saints in light.

Not bad for our options, eh?!

Itchy Ears and God’s Truth

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Help Us

To Not Be Lost

In The Woods

Confused by the Devil’s Wiles and Smoke

That Obscures Your Light.

Psalm 119:43

Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

Words of Grace For Today

The time is coming, or it has arrived already, when society will fail, because “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Of course this was said by Socrates who lived from 470 to 399 BC, more than just a few generations ago … and it has been true in many generations (among the privileged of the world) ever since.

The time is coming ….

In every generation about many and various failings of humans it is repeatedly said (as if it were said for the first time) For the time is coming when people will [and then fill in the sinful thing of humans since the beginning of time.]

Some people of all generations have always refused to put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and have turned away from listening to the truth and wandered away to myths.

The truth has always been knowable if one would humbly listen to God’s Word, provided to us in many and various ways, and most clearly in the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

The danger in life is that one not only refuses to acknowledge that disaster has been part of human history since forever, but one builds up habits of denying reality (when reality is something one does not want to deal with.) The danger of this refusal is that one chooses to remain ignorant about what history can teach us, and ignorant one acts stupidly and often dangerously for oneself and those effected by one’s actions (which can be those distant in place and in time!) The danger of denying reality when one does not want to deal with it is that one ‘allows the lion’ to consume one’s family and oneself, and more significantly, one loses the ability to see God’s reality: that God created everything and everyone, oneself included. With that one loses the ability to know anything real of God, and anything real about oneself. One is truly lost in the clutches of the Devil’s hell on earth.

One is then not only a danger to oneself, but to everyone!

So we pray: Do not take the word of truth utterly out of our mouths, for our hope is in your Word. Save us from seeking comfort for our itchy ears in myths and falsehoods. According to your promises to us, guide us and use us as vessels of your truth and grace which brings life to all people.

God’s Law; God’s Love

Saturday, August 14, 2021

My Enemies Full of Lies, Hate, and Injustice

Exiled Me to the Wilderness.

They Did Not Realize That

This is God’s Promised Land,

Where I Live as a Holy Hermit

With My Joy Complete.

Psalm 119:52

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

1 John 1:1-4

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

Words of Grace For Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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