As your life was precious today in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he rescue me from all tribulation.
Acts 23:11
That night the Lord stood near him and said, ‘Keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.’
Words of Grace For Today
Paul, arrested by the Roman Tribunal (one man, not three), is released to stand with the chief priests and council (who had attacked him to kill him because he taught against their religious rules, faith and power). After Paul tells his story of conversion to follow Jesus and bring the Good News of God’s Grace for all people, the crowd seeks to attack him, so the the Tribunal arrests Paul again, and binds him to lash him. Paul protests that he is a Roman citizen and cannot be mistreated if he is not convicted by a Roman trial. Forty (or more than enough) Jews give themselves to not eat until they have killed Paul. They ask the chief priests and council to ask to question Paul again. They will kill him en route to them. The Tribunal hears of it from a relative of Paul’s and he is shipped off to Caesarea, the Roman capital for the region. That night, as the travel plans are put in place, and Paul waits for what will come next the Lord stood near him and said, ‘Keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.’
Dangerous times, dangerous message, dangerous travels on foot and sea, dangerous trials: the bring Paul to Rome. That’s the last we hear of Paul.
Yet Paul, imprisoned often for his sharing the Gospel of Jesus’ love, God’s Grace for all people, takes every opportunity to share what he has experienced and then studied to understand: God is gracious to all people. All people can be children of God. All people can follow Jesus’ Way.
…
David has angered Saul, the anointed King of God’s people. Saul has sought David’s death. David has run for his life. Saul has pursued him.
At night David and Abishai sneak under cover of night into Saul’s camp, and instead of killing God’s anointed (and suffer the real guilt that would bring on him) David takes Saul’s spear and water jug as proof that he was there and could have killed Saul, but choose not to.
The next day David yells into Saul’s camp, disclosing that he has spared Saul’s life. Saul relents, admits he has done wrong, and gives up his pursuit to kill David.
Then David utters to Saul these words: As your life was precious today in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he rescue me from all tribulation.
Mercy on David’s part gives David courage to beg God for mercy; that God would find David’s life precious and that God would rescue David from all tribulation.
Doch
God does not find David precious because of the mercy David has shown Saul. God finds David precious in spite of all the shenanigans and wrong and utter evil David does. God does protect David from some tribulation perhaps, but David brings all sorts of tribulation down on his own head. Such is the consequence of a thieving, conniving, murderous life that David chooses at times to pursue for his own benefit. It does not produce benefit, but great tribulation for David and his family … and God’s people.
Still God finds David precious. We remember him as a broken, sinful, God-made saint and leader. David’s story says less about David’s goodness, and so much about God’s grace, mercy and steadfast love toward David and all of God’s people.
If God can use David to bring this message to us, certainly God will use any and all of us to bring a message of God’s Grace told so well in Jesus’ story.
The price for us is not nothing.
Like Paul (once Saul who pursued, persecuted and killed followers of Jesus) and like David, we will suffer trials and tribulations, even at times unspeakable.
Yet always God will declare to all that God finds us precious, that God has adopted us as God’s own children, that we are blessed beyond all imagination with abundant life. Always God will walk with us.
We get to live filled with gratitude, humbly confessing our sins, courageously sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love for all people, and responding to all evil done against us and around us with grace. We get to live, walking through life’s trials and tribulations, like a graceful dancer, to the music of God’s steadfast love.
There is no other music so beautiful and inspiring to be able to dance to!
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.
Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.
John 3:27
John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.’
Words of Grace For Today
George was retired, having raised two children, succeeded in business, and married a very good woman. He continued to his last days to call Rena ‘my princess’.
Rena was impressive, more so than George. She was a bank manager, then a retired bank manager, living in the suite above the bank with a view out over the ocean … past the pulp and paper mill with all it’s terrible smell until the very last years of her life when it ran cleaner, though hugely cut back – a loss to the one-industry local economy.
Both George and Rena continued to be generous with their property, sharing the lake cabin with many people, us included. The cabin was on the lake, literally floating on the lake. That’s a wild idea for any Canadian who sees all the lakes freeze and freeze hard every winter. It was possible because they lived on the west coast, the lake never froze and in the days when they established their cabin cedar logs as floats were to be had.
George and Rena contributed generously to the local church, where we got to know them. They made modest financial contributions. Their real contributions were their talents. Rena served as treasure, cleaning up some real problematic messes made by less than clear headed councils, pastors and treasures and one treasure that was obviously less than honest about separating his own and the congregation’s money.
George was a available most any time, helping in every way possible. He welcomed everyone who came and helped them to want to keep coming back. He gave people room to make mistakes and be forgiven; he gave everyone another chance. Sometimes he was gruff but you never had to guess what he was thinking. Rena was gentle, always able to make the best of any situation. Together they became good friends to many people, us included.
While many other people have contributed in so many ways and many of them have given much of themselves and their wealth, few have demonstrated so clearly that their success is not dependent on their own efforts alone, or even majorly. They knew and clearly demonstrated that everything they had was a blessing from God and their duty was to share it with as many people as possible.
Which leads us to ask (as the readings do as well), what do we have and how do we share it?
(Quatsch is a German expression close to BS! in English.)
When locusts sent by God had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, ‘O Lord God, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!’ The Lord relented concerning this; ‘It shall not be,’ said the Lord.
1 Timothy 2:1
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone.
Words of Grace For Today
God sends locusts and then plagues that devastate Israel. Amos begs God to forgive the people, and God does. Yet God establishes a plumb-line in Israel’s midst, and God will not pass them by … yet then Amos reports:
The Lord said, ‘See, I am setting a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’
God follows up relenting and forgiveness with full desolation of Israel’s high places and sanctuaries, with their enemy rising up powerfully with the sword against them!
This does not seem like God provides much of a life for Israel. The message is clear: God does not protect anyone, not even the most blessed, from the consequences of sin and evil in the world, their own sin and the sin other others around them, and the evil that would take all we build up as signs of our prosperity and security we provide ourselves.
Paul, knowing full well the price that can be suffered by even himself though he deserved none of the persecution directed at him, advises the younger disciple Timothy (and all of us reading the letter so many generations later) to continue in practising his (our) faith by making supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for everyone.
We cannot save ourselves. Nor can we save others from the evil and consequences of sin that is possible since God has given us the freedom to choose to love God and all creation.
We can remember that God has saved us.
We can remember that God has saved us and continues to save us each day.
We can remember that God has saved us and continues to save us each day though we do not deserve it.
We can remember that God has saved us and continues to save us each day though we do not deserve it, at no cost to us, fully paid for by Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s Good Will for us.
We can remember to pray … each day …
in thanks for all God does for us
and for all people, that they would also remember God’s mighty, blessed works for them.
My eyes are awake before each watch of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.
Luke 2:19
But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Words of Grace For Today
Tina was beside herself, as Arnold insisted again she had to tell her ex to stop asking the church to pray for his brother would had a rare and deadly form of cancer. Though she had no inkling how terrible it would become she felt everything was taken from her already. This was unbelievable. Arnold had done everything possible to drive her ex from town, and to erase all traces or mention of him, and now it included the mere mention of his brother’s name in the bulletin, even when Arnold refused to go to church.
It was just last year, when for months as she volunteered to care for Arnold’s neglected children, he had given her very kind attention and then focused attention, and then long conversations after she put the children to bed with tea and his oldest son sitting with them. Then his son no longer was around for the late night tea conversations. He volunteered to help her with a difficult project she had building a fence to hold her goat and dog who ran after cars. He displayed his strength and eagerness to help her out, though he did bring the children along and left them with Tina’s husband who was working writing to a deadline. The children, grieving their mother who’d killed herself just a year ago, were out of control, playing and fighting, making writing impossible for her husband.
The turning point came when Tina was out working on the fence with her daughter and a friend, who knew Arnold all too well. He texted her a brief and desperate message that as he was returning from a counselling session in a town 2 hours away, he’d collapsed at the wheel, pulled over where the cell reception was poor to nil and had called 911. The message was cryptic. At first Tina ignore it and went back to work on the fence. Then it sunk in, if Arnold texted her he must have no one else to ask for help. He had given her his wife’s set of keys for everything, with even the safety deposit box key on it. Tina stopped the fence work and started driving. She called 911 and was told that Arnold’s car was parked off the road, but it should be picked up as soon as possible, and that he had been taken to the nearest hospital, which was closer than where his car was parked.
Tina stopped at that hospital to let Arnold know she would get his car with the keys he’d given her. Instead Arnold wanted her to take him home. So she did. She and her husband returned later that day to retrieve his car. Tina had become Arnold’s only confidant and person to call in an emergency.
In the next month’s Arnold found every situation possible to be with Tina, to help her, to ask for help from her. He was romancing her. And it worked. They started a sexual affair, though the emotional affair was in full swing months before. Arnold was charming, too charming. Tina dismissed as survivor’s guilt his confession that he’d driven his wife to kill herself. He begged her not to just have an affair with him, and they planned to get married after Tina divorced her husband.
It had seemed so wonderful, Arnold telling her in every text 20 times a day that he loved her. Her husband had long since taken her for granted and said very little that was romantic. Everything was work for him. She’d always come in second to his work, but he was kind and they loved each other in simple and profound ways that had worked for them for 24 years and two children who were grown up.
After she moved in though it was challenging at first. Arnold wanted to rewrite their history, insisting that Tina and her husband’s marriage was completely broken, that Arnold had not caused their divorce. He tried to get Tina to say things that simply were not true. She danced around the issue as much as she could. Then Arnold insisted that her husband had brought her to town this past year just to get rid of her to him, the new widower. A bit later Arnold insisted that Tina’s husband was doing things that Tina knew he’d simply not bother to do, things that were unkind to other people he worked with. Soon Arnold started telling made up things about others that he worked with, that he’d known through his wife. The stories were ugly. He had lots of stories of being abused by his wife. Tina was sympathetic, not knowing how much was Arnold’s making up lies about others to cover terrible things he’d done.
Right away Arnold started to isolate Tina from her friends, her extended family, and then from her own children, and her ex-husband. Then he made her call her ex and tell him to stop having the church pray for his brother or someone would get hurt.
Then within months Arnold started to tell stories to Tina about Tina herself, things that Tina had supposedly done that she knew she had not done, or did she, it was hard to know anything anymore with all the things that Arnold told her about others and herself.
She started to hate herself for what she had ‘done’ that Arnold told her she’d done, or for how terrible she dressed, or how she did not take care of the home correctly. It was always something, something small. Together though it was too much to bear. She turned to counsellors for help. All of them were of little help. She turned to her doctor who was also Arnold’s doctor. The doctor kept prescribing more and more medications that had side effects that required more medications and treatments and even a breathing machine for nights. Night sweats started to drench Tina each night. She was tired all the time. She lost 60 pounds in two months. She tried to read and could not focus. It was a living hell. Always Arnold was there to tell her she was not doing things correctly. She noticed that when Arnold did something wrong he often blamed her as if she had done it. But he loved her, so he would not do that would he? She told herself it was her fault or he was grieving the death of his first wife. When her divorce was finalized Arnold refused to plan a wedding. He just promised that it would be just like they were married.
Tina planned for months to finish this and that for Arnold and then she was going to kill herself. Arnold told such great stories about his first wife, even though she abused him! It was the only way Arnold would start to love Tina.
The planned day was coming up that week, but Arnold laid into Tina and she moved her plans ahead to that day. She bought a bottle of alcohol, and later that night after the kids were put to bed, she took half the 38 sleeping pills left in her prescription bottle, sat in her truck in the drive (so as not to devalue the home as Arnold’s first wife had), locked the doors and drank the alcohol.
Fading in and out of consciousness Tina noted that one of the children found her, later that the oldest came and did little to help, then a friend of Arnold’s showed up, a mean conniving man. Finally Arnold showed up. He and his friend dragged Tina inside. On the couch the friend said they should just let Tina ‘sleep it off.’ But Arnold insisted they take her to the hospital. It was too late.
Too late to pump Tina’s stomach. She woke up three days later.
The doctor took her off the medication that Arnold had suggested she take, which had the possible side effect of making one suicidal. She was free!
Free of all the fatigue, the depression, the unrelenting anxiety. She was not free of Arnold’s abuse though. She did not recognize the abuse for what it was, yet. She struggled each time Arnold told her she was going to kill herself. He wanted her to try again, and succeed this time.
Each time Tina was beside herself, though she had no inkling how terrible it would still get.
She prayed each morning, each night, and many times each day. She called on God’s promise to be with her. She remembered that Mary had heard promises, and suffered terribly as her son was crucified. She worked to be a blessing, to recognize the blessing God gave her, that she had enjoyed for years and that she had survived her attempt to escape. Not even now was she free.
She knew she was immune to killing herself. She knew the dark whirlpool of darkness that had sunk down over her, and would again if she let it. She practised each time it showed up at resisting even the shadow of that darkness. She knew she was immune to killing herself. She told Arnold exactly that as many times as he accused her that she would kill herself, tried to drive her to it. She would survive but she had no idea what Arnold would do to her.
She pondered all the things she knew, and to this day cannot comprehend the cruelty of all the people Arnold convinced to do her harm, as if she were the one that was a threat to him! She still cannot believe the lies that Arnold told and tells; and the illness that he must suffer to be able to lie so and convince himself and others it may all be true, or at least true enough to have fun at her expense.
She pondered, and prayed, and held on to God’s promises. None of that would save her from the amassed cruelty that would be focused and dumped on her. So many people joined in the lies, knowing it all to be lies. They recorded their laughter, their fun, their lies, even the judges that convicted her. She had no idea how cruel people could be to a kind, loving, caring step-parent.
…
This also is the life God gives us, that people are free to choose to turn from God, from truth, from reality, and then to torture others trying to force them into exile or to death.
To counter the power of evil that is real and powerful against goodness and us in this life, we need to pray at each watch of the night, meditating on God’s promises so that we can treasure all God’s words and ponder them in our hearts each day.
Only by Grace can we survive the onslaught of evil that will be worked against us, like Tina and so many others, though perhaps in more or less obvious ways.
God promises us this Grace. Hang on to it, for our lives depend on it.
Do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof.
James 3:17
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Words of Grace For Today
Wisdom is hard to come by.
For oneself and even harder to find in others, almost impossible to find in others who have power and position. Partiality and hypocrisy run rampant in humans, especially those who live with much whether that is power, position, wealth or possessions.
The wisdom that God would have us live out with our lives is not complicated, nor difficult to find, and it is not even rare to see (at least glimpses of it anyway.)
What is impossible is for us to live by it everyday in all circumstances.
An abundant life includes that we strive to live by this simple wisdom: God loves us, is gracious with us, forgives us, gives us renewed life and sends us to be all that for other people … not once or twice or a hundred or a thousand times, but without end. Because God is gracious to us without end we always have grace to give to others.
Getting to live this simple wisdom does not happen without God disciplining and reproofing us. Getting to live this simple wisdom brings us to receive and give peace, gentleness, mercy, and willingness to yield and to accept and produce good fruits of labour (God’s, God’s people for us, and ours for other people.)
Simple and impossible to live by … yet nothing is impossible for God, and for God to do with us for others.
It’s a wonderful, adventurous, and enthralling life, one that takes all our everything and returns to us more than we thought life could ever possibly provide … except God is the provider and the life is always more than we could imagine.
These are God’s gifts to us, for which we give thanks each morning, and each night.
The Thorns of Life to the Goodness God Intends for Us All
Genesis 13:8
Then Abram said to Lot, ‘Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred.
Romans 12:10
Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.
Words of Grace For Today
Tim’s father, in the movie About Time, has one line written for him that reflects a simple wisdom that many generations have discovered and passed on (from the umpteenth best man’s toast at Tim and Mary’s wedding):
We’re all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind.
When you marry, or you have relatives you did not choose, or friends you may or may not have chosen most everyone’s flaws and faults can be dealt with graciously … if both people are kind.
This is the quality of a relationship that one person in it cannot make up for in the other. One can try to forgive the lack of kindness, but eventually one will run out of energy and succumb in one way or another.
So the wisdom that Paul knew well and recommended to even strangers in a new (potential) congregation in Rome, and the wisdom that is carried for generations in the Abraham and Sarah stories is quite simple, basic, and essential to living abundantly: be kind.
In other words, show honour to each other, let there be no strife between you and your people and others, love one another with mutual affection.
Simple wisdom that is impossible to achieve at all if one is not well practised in being kind.
Being kind is a matter of choice … for a few times each day, but being kind always in all things to all people is impossible except by Grace the Holy Spirit inspires us to be like Christ for other people.
So we are kind … as we are able … and we pray that God will help us to be kind always …
that it may go well for us and our people in the land that God has promised us …
Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Matthew 5:13
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
Words of Grace For Today
Jesus sends the disciples out into the world to share the Good News, that God has sent Jesus to demonstrate God’s love, forgiveness, grace, and favour bestowed on all peoples.
We are out in the world, now in a world that ‘does not need God’, has no room for God, and pretends that everything is fine (without God.) The Good News is needed more than ever before.
How is this sending by Jesus different than God ‘exiling’ the people of Israel to foreign cities, cut off from their homes? It is done by force, first of all, against the people’s will and established by the sword of a alien ruler, not of faith in God. When Jesus sends the disciples, they choose to follow Jesus and they choose to obey him as he sends them. The exiles are not able to travel ‘back home’. The are captives in the foreign city. The disciples go out and they return ‘home’ to follow Jesus as he goes about the Galilean countryside.
How is Jesus sending the disciples the same as God ‘exiling’ the people of Israel to foreign cities? The passage for today from Jeremiah provides the link: in both sendings God’s people are to seek the welfare of the places and cities where they go. The exiles are more permanent, perhaps life long, and even many generations long. Their well being is intricately tied to the well being of the cities to which they are exiled. The disciples bring nothing with them, so their welfare is tied to the welfare of the places they go as well. The difference for the disciples is that at some point they get to leave the welfare of the places the visit and reclaim the welfare of home as their own, perhaps … if the welfare at home is controlled by people who will welcome them home.
The passage from Matthew ties it together nicely: the quality of one’s life as a disciple of Jesus, as a person of God’s people is not determined by the prosperity of one’s surroundings. Rather one’s life is determined to be of the greatest quality because God has adopted us as children. No matter what comes our way we remain God’s children.
Like salt we do not change as the surroundings around us change. We remain salt.
The danger to our lives is not prosperity or poverty. Each we can deal with easily enough, poverty perhaps more easily than prosperity because in prosperity it is too easy to forget from where the goodness of life comes. We too easily attach goodness to the things of luxury and comfort, rather than to the essentials of life provided always by God’s goodness and grace. Soon we start to assume that we can make it well through life without God’s blessings, grace, forgiveness and guidance. In poverty we do struggle to remain alive, though there are few reasons to doubt that the goodness of life comes not from things, but from God, because so often without any goods or things to divert our attention from God’s blessings we immerse ourselves (in order for life to continue) in giving God thanks for all the goodness that pours over us each day.
We are God’s children. Simple and easy. Like salt it’s not complicated. Like salt too much stops life, but the right amount preserves sustenance through the sparsest of times.
When we lose our saltiness, our simple dependence on God for everything, and our ever present gratitude for everything, then we become useless. We lose grace and have no Good News to share. There is nothing left but to make up nonsense about life. We see so much of that, so much more than we could imagine civilization can endure and still survive.
To this saltiness-lost-world Jesus sends us with Good News.
To this saltiness-lost-world God exiles us to live out the Good News.
Wherever we are or go God walks with us, and guides us to share and hear anew the old, old story of Jesus and his love, for us and the whole of creation.
One step at a time today, again; not towards our goals, but towards God’s will for us.
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.
It May Seem We’ve Lost Ourselves in the Wilderness
Doch
God Brings Us Back into the Light.
Micah 7:9
I must bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he takes my side and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall see his vindication.
Acts 9:17
So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’
Words of Grace For Today
We all walk or run ourselves ragged, running from God’s grace for us and other people. Like Micah we find ourselves bearing God’s indignation. Like Saul we proceed with great enthusiasm with what we believe is our are calling, though it is against God, God’s Will, and God’s people.
God does not leave us there in the darkness of our own sin, and the destruction we bring to others, especially to good people serving God with acts of grace, kindness, and love.
God comes to us, no matter what we have done against God, no matter how great God’s indignation is at what we have done and that we could do it. God comes to us, and stands by us, with grace giving us new sight, so that we can see God’s wondrous work in all creation and in all people.
God comes to us, and against our enemies, vindicates us, by grace, bringing us into the Light that gives life to all creation, the Light of Christ. God comes to us and not only gives us new sight to see God more clearly and new visions that reveal God’s Grace for all people. These new visions define, as they did for Paul, a new calling for us, the calling to follow Jesus, to tell the old, old story of his love, not only with words, but with our thoughts, words and deeds, with our whole being!
God fills us with the Holy Spirit, so that as we move to meet each new day and challenges that are old and challenges that are new to us, we may continue to serve God by being God’s Grace for all other people.
What a miracle, that God, after we sin against God, comes to vindicate us, to give us a new vocation!
