Grace – Page 28

This is What Life Looks Like

Sunday, November 7, 2021

A chimney pipe plugged with creosote: (who can explain evil?)

This is What Life Looks Like

When We Have No Hope.

…

The same chimney pipe after it’s unplugged: (that’s the work of the saints.)

This is What Life Looks Like

When God Gives Us Hope.

It’s Dark in Here,

But Christ’s Light Guides Us Home.

Isaiah 59:21

As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the Lord, from now on and for ever.

Romans 15:4

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

Words of Grace For Today

Hope.

Hope is that wonderful thing.

Hope is that wonderful thing that builds on the past that has become the present, and finds the future.

Hope is that wonderful thing that takes what is in front of us, projects it into the future, and comes up celebrating all the possibilities that God places in front of us.

God does as much as God knows we need: God makes a covenant with us, a one sided covenant where God does everything including making the covenant and making it something that gives us life!

God places God’s Spirit in and on us, and all around us, and places God’s Word in our mouths in such a way as it will never leave us, not us, nor our children, nor our children’s children, and on to the end of all time.

God’s Word is that all in our yesterdays, all our in todays, and all in our tomorrows will be well.

Since God says it has been, since God says it is, and since God says it will be, no matter what comes our way, no matter what challenges we face, no matter who tries to do us in, all is well with us and with all things we encounter.

This is what God has written.

This is what God has spoken.

This is what God has given us so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

And hope is that wonderful thing that undoes all that the Devil could possibly do to us, today and in all our tomorrows.

Being Real

Saturday, November 6, 2021

God’s Grandeur

In the Sky

And

In Our Hearts!

Psalm 94:18

When I thought, ‘My foot is slipping’, your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.

Luke 22:32

But I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Words of Grace For Today

At Jesus’ last supper he speaks to all about who is the greatest and then to Peter, Peter (as usual the arrogant man he was) denied he would deny Jesus, and Jesus tells him of his denial before the cock crows three times.

Jesus does not start with Peter’s failings, for they are legend and well recorded in the Gospels. Jesus starts telling Peter that he will turn back to God (after turning away).

So it is God tells us first of how God will save us, before God fills us in on how terribly we will fail God, deny God, turn against God and God’s people!

Only God’s love, in the face of our sinfulness, deceit, and destruction of God’s children, can possibly move us to confess our sins and to return to follow Jesus, pure and sinless only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we begin each day, each worship service, each sermon, each prayer by first recognizing God’s love that saves and our desperate need to be saved from our sins.

Then we proceed to celebrate the grand creation that God places us in and the calling we receive: to celebrate God’s love by being God’s love for all people.

Reality, as History and God’s Word Teach Us

Friday, November 5, 2021

Dark Is Dark

Always Dark

Always Filled with the Light of Christ

even as Aurora Borealis

Isaiah 5:20, 23

Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

1 Peter 2:21-22

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’

Words of Grace For Today

How is it that given all the literature about the corrupt nature of humans, their deceit, greed, scheming, and wilful destruction of other people … how is it that I lived so many years thinking that we had evolved beyond this and that people were basically honest, kind and good?

There are people who are so and I lived as one of them, assuming that all people live so, or those who did not were a minor exception deviating just for the moment under some temptation or variance of life that dragged them down to a darkness that cannot be survived except were one to be rescued.

How is it that I lived so long assuming that other pastors, bishops, church leaders and people friendly to me were basically good, and not basically corrupt at the core, taking advantage of anyone and any situation possible to advance their own greed, lusts, covetousness, and to fill the void in their pathetic souls?

But I did. Thanks be to God?

A more complete extract from Isaiah tells of the consequences to the corruption so rampant: Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the instruction … and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

There it is: it is so often a story lived out and told, retold and preserved that we can learn from it … and yet we simply do not! The corrupt continue their corruption and those naive like me continue to live naive until some corrupt, mentally ill, pathological liars use me yet again and scoff at me as if I were the one, and not they, who were so corrupt (as not to supposedly recognize the reality they make up where light is dark, dark light, bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter – which is a definition of hell).

How are we to live then?

The answer is simple and impossible:

We are to live as Jesus the Christ lived: follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ … For to this we have been called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example … of how to live!

Pure and blameless, no sin, no deceit at all. Perhaps those of us so wired as not to be able to be deceitful can approach having no deceit (which is seen as some kind of abnormality! by the world.) DOCH there is not one of us who can be pure and sinless!

So what are we to do!?!

We can only rely on the Grace of God to use Jesus’ record in place of ours when we are judged. Knowing that God exercises exactly this Grace for us, not just at the end judgment but every day, we are free to choose …

And we are then freed to be able to choose … not to deceive others, not to turn reality inside out, not to destroy others, and even not to sin!

We are able to do these not on our own, but only as the Holy Spirit enables us to choose and to do these. We get no credit for living this way. We can only give God thanks and …

We GET to choose to exercise this same Grace for others.

We GET to be the agents of God’s Grace for others.

We GET to be the ones who set others free from their past sins and to live by Grace.

We GET to leave the judging to God, in God’s time, in God’s way.

And We GET to rejoice that God has given us eyes to see evil in and all around us, and to respond with the only response that can change the world back to light being light, dark being dark, bitter being bitter, and sweet being sweet.

We GET to live in God’s reality, in God’s kingdom, by Grace alone.

Dressed for the Day

Thursday, November 4, 2021

A New Day at 6:41

May Look Like All the Brokenness Left from All Our Yesterdays

Doch

God, Robes All the Saints,

In New and Righteous Garments,

So That We Rejoice in God’s Grace That We Get to Share

With Everyone

Isaiah 61:10

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Acts 8:39

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

Words of Grace For Today

As she’d gotten older, year by year, month by month, even week by week, Jill had spent more and more time getting ready for the day. What started as a simple wash and run in her 20’s, by the time she was 50 was a thorough wash, application of 5 different ‘cleansing’ and ‘preserving’ soaps and lotions, followed by a ten minute exercise routine, then three different pills (a medication for GERDS, a vitamin for women 50+, and a glucosamine for arthritis), a breakfast with Omega3 and antioxidants, and a careful dressing for the day to ensure she did not leave something showing that should not be showing, and then when she was in her 60’s each year there was another thing added to the routine, and the medications at night were added and taken away, exercises, added or increased and removed, then added again, then replaced with others, and the arthritis demanded more and more medications (or additives to food, and the simple glucosamine was now a cocktail of additives that relieved the pain for a few hours, and dressing was always painful. Her wardrobe had to change depending on whether she could get her arms into a sweater, or she needed a button or zipper up front, or whether she could bend her legs and hips enough to get into something proper looking or she had to lay down to edge her way into something quite loose and comfortable, but a bit ghastly looking.

When she read the passage from Isaiah she thought about how her clothing had changed, and how getting dressed had become a major production in the last few months, worse than ever before. What a spectacular image: God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

Were getting dressed so easy and simple. Just let God do it. If that were her morning routine then she’d wear her ‘birthday suit’ everyday all day long, and that was not a pretty site anymore if it ever had been.

Still this assurance that God robed her in righteousness struck her to the core, and she involuntarily gave God thanks. Then noticing Isaiah’s words again, she realized that these ancient words from so many generations ago reported the same reaction in the writer. Because of the grace of God the writer greatly rejoiced in the Lord, my whole being exulted in my God.

Sometimes it was the simple ancient words that connect us to all the saints, those who have gone before us, those living now on earth, and all those yet to come in the generations of the future. What we experience, knowing we share so much with all the saints of all time, is what the eunuch experienced after Philip baptized him: as he joined the saints through baptism, and after Philip was there with him no more, he went on his way rejoicing.

So also this day, Jill thought, we saints, all of us, have so many reasons to rejoice, but none is more earth shaking and life altering than that God chooses us and clothes us in garments of salvation, in robes of righteousness.

Mensch, What a Life!

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

God’s Grace

Breaks Through

Our Coldest, Hardest Hearts

Leviticus 10:3

Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord meant when he said, “Through those who are near me I will show myself holy, and before all the people I will be glorified.” ’ And Aaron was silent.

1 Corinthians 3:16

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Words of Grace For Today

Nadab and Abihu ‘offered unholy fire before the Lord, such as he had not commanded them’ and the fire on the altar came out and consumed the two.

Then Moses spoke to Aaron. And God showed how holy God is by consuming the two. That’s a verdict that cannot be undone, a verdict that we all deserve. By grace, though, God forgives us and gives us renewed life.

For God created us not just to live, but to live as vessels of God’s holy Grace, God’s temple’s, inhabited by God’s own Spirit.

What a life!

And what a difference knowing that God has created us to be so holy, the instrument of God’s own Spirit.

How … how can some people behave so unholy, so deceitful, so corrupt? How can we find God’s Grace for those people?

…

Then if God can find grace for us and make us so much more than we are by infusing the Holy Spirit into us, body, soul, and strength, how can God somehow not find enough Grace for all the evil in those people!

…

Mensch! What a life! … What a life they turn away from! What a life we get to see miraculously happening all around us … and in us!

Christ’ Golden Verdict: Grace

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

The World Hands Down

All Sorts of Verdicts,

Many Fully Unjust!

Christ Hands Down

The Light of the World

That Exposes Lies and Gives Real Hope

With God’s Golden Verdict of Grace

Cause for Hope for Us All.

Isaiah 60:20

Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.

John 12:46

I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

Jill sat in her well cushioned rocking chair between the light lunch she’d shared with friends and the book club meeting she would join by zoom. She marvelled at how things had developed in the last two years, so devastating with Jack’s diabetes sending him to his Covid and pain wracked death as he drowned in his own fluids for hours, his son, Bill, suffering a heart attack months after a light Covid cough and fever, her daughter’s eldest daughter taking a severe of Covid just not quite needing to go to hospital but it never really went away as she fought to wake up each day and move even to wash and dress herself and then needing to lie down even before half the morning was by, and all her older friends and Jill herself isolated and cut off from each other … and

then …

How most of them had discovered Zoom on their computers and talked with each other at least once a day, checking in to make sure everyone was alright, helping shop for each other, and getting help when someone needed their drive shovelled or in the summer their grass cut.

And …

all the things they learned to do by Zoom, like the book club, and even a bridge club, playing computer bridge together

and the visits with the great grandchildren that seemed to be the highlight of every day for the kids and for the kid in her.

Looking out the window Jill realized that the closed in feeling over her heart and mind that morning reflected the low and dark overcast sky as if threatening rain or snow as the thermometer outside her window showed it hovered barely above freezing.

She tried to think of things that had made her life and the ever more limited horizons of her world more joyful, or enjoyable, or at least tolerable.

The darkness seemed to press in on her as she read the verse from Isaiah: Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself. Wouldn’t that be a radical change, she thought.

When she was a young person in the 50’s, they didn’t even have a television. The rich people sometimes had one, and all her friends considered themselves lucky if they had a good radio and a record player at home.

Now … well now with computers and the internet and email and Zoom … it was just a wildly different world. Still her dark days seemed to be longer and and more frequent than ever before in her life. There were always challenges in her life, and more than a few dark weeks and even years, but lately with Jack gone, the moon was hard to find and the sun barely shone at all.

As she read the passage from Luke she saw a glimmer of hope, of light maybe returning to her life somehow as Jesus said: I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.

She had always been faithful, honest and kind, and until Jack died she’d counted on the light of Christ to guide her and light her way. Now though ….

Then she remembered her friend Tina, and what Arnold had done to her, gaslighting her, trying to get her to kill herself and almost succeeding (like he had with his first wife), and the web of lies Arnold and the police and even the pastor at church had spread about Tina. She remembered how Tina found joy and light and Christ present even as she lived homeless in the woods by a lake. If she had ever heard of a brass verdict, Tina certainly would never wish that for anyone. She’d have said those kind of verdicts were God’s and God’s alone. Even so God’s judgment would be harsher than a brass verdict that ended in death, it’d last for eternity. On the other hand God always gave people time for the amendment of life. Jill knew Tina was right about all that.

It was time to start her computer to join the book club Zoom, today about a court mystery, a murder mystery, and her heart lightened when she decided she was going to share Tina’s story, and try to share Tina’s joy, light, and Christ’ gracious presence with the others in the club. That would be the best answer to the injustice and the ugly resolution the book provided, a resolution that was as terrible as the injustice that it pretended to ‘solve.’

She sat waiting for the introductory matters to be covered off and then as the moderator started them off she jumped in and said she had a real life story to share, one that helped her understand not only this book’s comments about how the courts were so unjust, but also a better solution to injustice and how one could find the best of life no matter what came one’s way, betrayal by loved ones, injustice from courts, or the destruction of lives by Covid. She thanked Tina silently for what Jill called God’s Golden Verdict of Grace for all the world’s evil.

A World of Deep Darkness … Lit Brightly by Christ

Monday, November 1, 2021

The Darkness and Cold Will Come Soon.

…

So Prepare With Hard Work

and

Trust the Light of Christ

to Guide and Heal Us.

Isaiah 9:2

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. As one who suffers a slight attitude problem with extended darkness (slight SADS) I prepare well, plan to be in the daylight as much as possible, and save for gasoline to run the generator to supply electricity for the many lights set to stun the living daylights back into me. I often unscrew a few bulbs from the set of 8 that shine from each end of my warm space (warm if the furnace is burning hot enough!)

Before I heard about and understood the effect of the lack of sunlight on my mind, I loved to joke about the darkness, and about the light at the end of the tunnel. … I still do, though now the humour is a bit darker, since I know ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ is most likely a freight train of Covid19 delayed goods, running late and fast and long and heavy, coming this way … and we’ve got no where to go to get out of the tunnel, so throwing ourselves between the tracks on the dirty ties, and keeping our heads down is probably the best way to survive what’s coming at us. Except keeping our heads down pretty much means giving up on life until the train leaves us in the tunnel in the dark, marching, marching, marching over the ties to get out of the tunnel. The advice fits well: when you find yourself having/having-been marched into hell, keep moving until you are out!

This is only a caricature of the deep shtako that so many people through history and in so many places have found themselves. It is the deep darkness that Isaiah and many others speak about. It is the darkness that can be forced upon us by our reaction to the dark seasons, by other people’s intent to destroy and de-story us, and by the cascading and accumulating effects of sins massed into evil that simply consumes all life in its wake.

We need the promise that Isaiah and so many others have provided: on them and on us a great light has shined. Even in the darkness consuming us and those around us, there is a light that shines, a great light that shines in every darkness, a light that exposes and overcomes all darkness: every lie, every deceit, every greedy theft, and even death. It is the light of Christ.

This light provides us simple respite from the darkness: we ask. Jesus delivers. We live in the light and are the saints who reflect Christ’s light to all around us.

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. There is a light that overcomes all darkness, and we are God-made saints who get to reflect that light in the darkness to all people around.

Christ has dealt with all our past sins. Christ has overcome all the past evil and darkness. Christ has prepared us and all the saints for every coming darkness no matter how dark it gets.

That’s a promise to live out today! Work hard for the coming winter. Prepare well. And always trust Christ to be with with us, no matter what comes!

Arrogant Bullies Meet God’s Word!

Sunday, October 31, 2021

God’s Word Exposes

All Bullies’

Weaknesses

Like Smoke in the Trees

And Gives Us Life

Ezekiel 12:25

But I the Lord will speak the word that I speak, and it will be fulfilled. It will no longer be delayed; but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and fulfill it, says the Lord God.

1 Corinthians 4:20

For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.

Words of Grace For Today

Paul writes to the congregation at Corinth, a very divided and problematic congregation, filled with strife and people seeking to gain power. Paul speaks to the issues through the letter, and here addresses the arrogant ones who are full of divisive talk. Paul speaks to the bullies.

While Paul has preached (spoken) about the grace of Jesus, forgiveness of sins for sinners as we all are, and renewal of life given as a free gift (grace) so that we can share the gifts God gives us each day with others who need what we have, here Paul uses his written words to move people to recognize that these promises given to us in Jesus’ story are not mere words. These promises carry the reality of the universe’s maker and all of God’s unlimited power in them.

Words carry God’s promises. The Word, Jesus the Christ, as John teaches, existed before the beginning with God, and God spoke to create all that is. Words are very powerful.

Words are also empty vessels of deceit and deception, of irreality, of things that are not, though corrupt people and the Devil wish they were, and with their wishing they give them a semblance of reality … but only a reality that dissolves like a holo program on a spaceship in a fictional story of the Star Trek series.

God’s power is in words that are fulfilled, even for a rebellious house, like Israel and like us all as we seek our own way through life. God’s power is in healing that relieves diseases of body, mind, heart and soul. God’s power is greater than anything else we could imagine and infinitely more! God’s Word creates all that is, all reality that does not dissolve but stands in time … and in hearts and minds … for bodies and for souls.

The arrogant bullies in the Corinthian congregation and all the bullies of all times and all places are no match for the power of God, the Word of God. So unsure of themselves, bullies present a false front of self-assurance and self-made power. Their so called ‘power’ and deceiving words dissolve in the face of truth, in the face of God’s Word, in the face of Grace, in the face of real power, in the face of sacrificial love, and in the face of hope that cannot be extinguished by evil.

Bullies everywhere: listen up! Bullies everywhere: stand down! Bullies everywhere: God will deal with you, will heal you, will send you out to be messengers of God’s Word that gives life (instead of the words you now use to destroy others’ lives.

Bullies everywhere meet God. God’s been with you through all time.

Bullies everywhere quake in fear, for God has spoken and your bulling days are coming to an end.

Obedience to Earn Healing? Doch!

Saturday, October 30, 2021

As Winter Cold Approaches

We Trust God’s Promises

To Heal Us Graciously

And Give Us New Life

With Christ’ Marvellous Touch

Exodus 15:26

He said, ‘If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.’

Luke 4:40

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

Words of Grace For Today

If we are obedient to God, then God will not strike us with diseases, but will heal us. So reads the text from Exodus.

Any and all came with those who were sick with various diseases, and Jesus laid hands on them and cured them. So reads the Gospel from Luke.

God’s promises are always given as a statement of God’s stance towards humans, both righteous and waywardly sinful and evil humans. Jesus’ story is God’s communication to us of God’s stance towards us, which is in a word Grace. That is God saves us from our sin while we are yet sinful, not because or in response to what we have done right, but rather as a response to what we have done that is sinful! God not only saves us from our sins, but God cures us of our every illness, renews life in us, and then sends us back out into the world, that wretched place of evil and sin and corruption and greed and lies and destruction …. God sends us back out into the world, that wonderful place of God’s good creation, of beauty, Grace, love and hope. God sends us out to be, in the midst of all that evil, the one’s who embody God’s Grace, beauty, love, and hope for all people.

So why the conditional given in Exodus and so many other places in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments? Simply because Grace is such a difficult reality for arrogant humans to swallow that we turn it around, pervert it, into to something we can earn. That is the story we are accustom to living with and it is comfortable even in the extreme as we recognize that it is the ultimate illness and disease by which we will die, by which we are dying, by which we have died and yet still walk as shells of humans on earth.

It is also the religious story, so commonly used in so many traditions, by the ‘priests’ or those who pretend to lead others, in order to control their followers. It is exactly the means the Devil uses to corrupt and pervert us and live all around us.

Jesus comes to heal us and to live a story we can understand … so we can understand and trust (amidst all the sick evil around and in us) that:

Grace still abounds, as does beauty, love, and hope.

Thankfully these abound for all the children who have grown up by those so perverted they cannot see Grace at all, yet alone beauty, love or hope.

Thanks be to God.

What Measure?

Friday, October 29, 2021

How do we measure

all we see

and experience

and know?

What is the colour of the sunset?

It’s true measure is only Grace.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Words of Grace For Today

How do we measure all that we measure?

How do we measure what angle the sun is at, so that the solar panels produce most efficiently through all the year (helping reduce our carbon footprint for everyone’s benefit, especially future generations), or so that we know when to wake up to be outside before dawn breaks to take photos of the magnificence of creation (to share and inspire others, who cannot see this beauty in person, to celebrate God’s blessings), or so that we know when to start our work for the most efficient use of our bodies’ capabilities since the warmth of the sun protects against injury and further degeneration of ‘this limited resource’ we each have?

How do we measure the wealth that we possess, or the wealth that others have, or the wealth that governments control (and waste through bungling and favouritism and fraud), or the wealth that is needed to deal with the challenges we personally, or collectively (in our local area, our country, or together in this whole wide world), face this day and can anticipate we will face in the coming days, weeks, months and decades (of climate change, breakdown of global supply lines, on-going pandemics)?

How do we measure the needs of our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits?

We can choose many different ‘yard sticks’: our or other’s bank accounts as our/their worthiness of living and living in comfort; scientific facts and theories that inform us of creation and how it ‘works’; the needs (real and addiction created or imagined) we feel each day or each minute allowing them to dictate what we do to satisfy our ‘hungers’.

There is no measure that will give us life other than placing the universe or rather our perspective of it in order at the very beginning of each of our considerations:

As Martin Luther wrote in the Catechisms again and again: We are to love and fear God so that ….

It is in that fear and love as the beginning point that all other measures make sense of life being blessed for us and for all other people.

There will be no end of need, dire need, on our part; our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits all have needs that need be met for life to continue well for us. There is no end of evil and sin that permeates the world, disrupting the meeting of those needs for us and for all people. There is no end of hungry stomachs, minds, hearts and spirits; desperately hunger grips more of us than not at any moment!

Knowing that God rules over all though our best efforts, our best measures, our best science, our best collaborations, and our greatest wealth will be demanded of us to meet the hunger that grips all people. None of that will do much good, though, if we try to go it alone, and working with others requires something of us that we can barely generate on our own: cooperation with those so different than us. Before we begin then we needs must therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Grace, that is God’s attitude towards us and all people that has the power to overcome all challenges we will ever face. It can be our attitude on God’s behalf towards all people that we work with and for whom we work each day, ourselves, families and friends, our neighbours, strangers and aliens far from us, and even our enemies. God’s grace is sufficient for all people. And God equips us God-made saints to be those who spread it liberally everywhere, to all people.

As the sun continues it’s dance with the darkness and the moon do-si-do-s around the earth, all motion of bodies celestial and corporeal, all minds great and small, all hearts generous and restrained, all spirits of every colour … all motion of everything is a dance of Grace, a dance of Grace started by God at creation and continued each day as God creates new time and reality for us all.