Category: Grace

‘but’ and ‘Doch’

Saturday, September 4, 2021

We May Think We Have The Light of the World

Here on Our Beaches

But Not,

Doch!

God’s Light Still Shines

For Us All.

Exodus 1:17

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

Acts 5:29

But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’

Words of Grace For Today

But …

For humans there is an obligation to obey as they are commanded by other humans.

When humans choose not to do so for good reasons the consequences are usually dire, whether it is the state funded police and courts (rightly or corruptly, as it is in all places through all of history, especially here in Alberta) or criminal violence or psychological attacks on one’s well-being. This is what forms the obligation. Do or die (or at least have a chunk of one’s life is taken away.)

God always commands other than corrupt police, courts, kings, and religious authorities. God’s commands do not carry an obligation to obey them like human commands. Contravening human commands results in consequences that rob one of physical life. Obeying human commands may provide a small reward, even if it appears huge it is still small, for humans have little to offer, even if it is large sums of money, power, or fame.

Contravening God’s commands results in the consequence of one’s own choosing, that is one separates oneself from God. This does not ‘rob’ one of physical life. Being separated from God is in itself the definition of having no life, not of any kind. Obeying God’s commands provides the greatest reward, even if it appears small it is still without limit, for one chooses to walk with God, which is itself definition of an abundant life.

When we choose to ignore human authorities in order to obey God, there is a small ‘but’ after the demands of human authority and before our actions that contravene human authority and fulfill God’s will for us and for all people.

When God intervenes in our lives, showing us how small the tempting rewards of corrupt human wealth, power, and fame are, our sinful actions are not followed by a simple little ‘but’. They are followed by a universe changing statement, one like the German ‘Doch’. Then follows a statement that re-orients us back to God’s will for us and all people.

Pharaoh ordered the baby be put to death but the midwives allowed the baby to live.

Pharaoh did not care what God willed, DOCH Moses would live, grow up in Pharaoh’s house, run for his life after killing an abusive overseer, and, after years in the wilderness regaining his understanding of God’s world and God’s will, he would return to lead the people to freedom from slavery, into the wilderness, where the people would learn, and fail to learn, to hear and follow God’s commands.

Likewise Peter and the disciples choose to obey God’s will and not human authorities. They would go on to form the beginnings of the Christian faith and spread it to churches around the Mediterranean, from where through the successive generations, others would carry the faith across the whole earth. We have thus received our faith because of Moses and Peter and many other people’s following God’s will when it contravened human authority.

If we so comfortably think that we can please human authority and follow God’s will, we are naively corrupted to ignore God’s will. We either do not know God’s will, or we refuse to see how corrupt human authority is in all places and all times, even now here in Alberta. In either case there are still many whose stories can only be told with a ‘but’. And always God’s story about us contains many many ‘Doch’, as God rescues us from our sins, over and over again.

We pray for just government, church leaders, a business leaders, and leaders in all aspects of life. Doch God calls us to pray that God’s will may be done, also in and among us, for human authority always corrupts itself, ignoring God’s will and leading people to try to live apart from God. Or worse, corrupt religious leaders lead many, many people to follow false godlets, even when the call their godlets by God’s own name.

So we ought to pray that God would bring yet again a ‘Doch’ into our life stories, guide us back to God’s will, and use us to bring God’s will (which is to love, forgive, and share life abundant with all) to all people … starting with ourselves and our own people.

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?!

Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Look Up

and Rejoice

For God Is Ready

to Bless Us Each Day

With Simple Wisdom

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Philippians 1:9-10a

This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.

Words of Grace For Today

Each day we make choices of how to proceed through our day.

Sometimes our choices are simple: Do I kill the ant crawling on the window? Yes. Do I kill the wasp buzzing around my head? No. Do I share food with the young camper who, for some reason, camps for months and has no way to provide for himself, except an relative who shows up occasionally (or not) with supports of various kinds? Yes. Do I mow the grass to keep the mosquitoes down? Yes.

Sometimes our choices are more complicated: Do I help the yelling young parent with a screaming child running around the grocery store? Maybe yes. That can be a situation where a moment’s intervention can break the stress for both parent and child and allow them both to proceed in a better space. But maybe no. Intervening in a family situation may be taken the wrong way and all the pent up anger can be focused on the person who intervenes, either immediately or at some later date. Do I sign a mortgage to buy property even though I know my job is not secure for the length of the mortgage? Maybe yes, since my family needs a home. Maybe no, because we may have a home for only a year or so before we lose it and then we will have even less resources for a home. Given that pressure do I take the management job offered with another company that pays much better, but has a reputation for skirting the law and abusing it’s employees? I need the money, but do I want to become one who abuses employees?

Sometimes our choices appear to be simple but they turn out to have consequences that we did not see, either good or bad. What are we to do?

Paul, writing one of his most loving and affectionate letters (to the church in Philippi) prays for them: This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.

We would wish this for ourselves, and for other people.

This wisdom is a God given gift. It is not handed out in a day, but grows over a lifetime of living wisely, and that life begins with the fear of the Lord, As the psalmist wrote in many and various ways: Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Help us God, we pray each day, to fear and love you that we may be blessed with the wisdom which guides us to choose the best for all people in each of our choices we make.

Truth and Grace, Or Terror

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

You can lie all you want.

You can blame everyone else for your sins.

You can say it’s winter

or that there is no wasp nest in the trees

But

That will come back to sting you soon enough!

God’s Grace and Truth Always Win Out In the End!

Psalm 69:14

Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.

John 16:23

On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Words of Grace For Today

Arnold sat with his head in his hands, wondering how it had come to such an impossible state. Determined to make everything out of his life that he could, he had lied, cheated, manipulated people, used people and always kept people at a distance, so they could not see what he was really like.

He’d driven his first wife to kill herself, making sure that she made all the right decisions, and if she made a wrong decision, he stepped in to make sure she changed her mind, until she made the right decision at the right time (when two life insurance policies overlapped by two weeks) to kill herself. That made things difficult taking care of the children, and he scrambled to make things work at his wife’s store, at work, and getting someone to take care of things at home. The payoff was worth it though as the community chipped in with money, lots of money, and great sympathy and support, never suspecting that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

When the insurance companies paid out he was a millionaire. Within a year he was out of debt with mortgages paid off, business debts paid completely, and he was clearing $30k a month after all expenses. Life was great, except the volunteers for the children decided to stop helping out. He’d come home after the kids were in bed, a long hard process for the volunteers, and once too often while the volunteer was still there, woken the kids and let them run free in the house and outside.

Newly arrived in town and unaware of the previous volunteers’ work and troubles, Tina volunteered to help with the kids. He eagerly accepted her help, and started the process of winning her away from her husband. It worked and within a few months she was living with him, taking care of the children, and helping out in so many ways. Her help at home and soon at the store meant he could focus on making money at the store. When she changed her life insurance policy to name him as the beneficiary, he seized the opportunity he’d been preparing for; he drove her to kill herself. Except she did not die. It was nothing but trouble after that. A second suicide attempt was almost always successful, but no matter what he did he could not get her to try again.

So he’d set her up for criminal charges, lied to the community, the church and the police. He coerced his kids to lie as well, making Tina out to be a sexual predator, even though he was the one sleeping with the kids and having sex with them. He lied in court, the lawyers lied, even Tina’s lawyers helped set her up to be convicted. When that was not enough to be able to convict Tina, the judges lied about what was in the court record in order to convict her. She went to jail for months. She came out and was homeless. Still she just would not move away or die.

Now her sentence was completed and people were asking what really happened. If the truth came to light, Arnold could go to jail for years, lose the store, the home, and the kids. He would be homeless. All the sympathy the community and church had given him through the years would be replaced with anger at him for his lying to them. He’d be ostracized and ruined. There would be no recovery. His friends and sex partners would desert him. He would be alone.

How had it come to this?

Arnold kept blaming others, looking for someone else, someone new to blame, anyone to blame. Deep down he knew he’d been lying to himself all his life and now people were going to find out.

Tina, homeless, captive in poverty she’d never get out of, living alone, but blessed in so many ways prayed in Jesus name Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Save me from the lies of my enemies, (for there were so many supposedly respectable people including the pastor and church leaders who had lied for and along with Arnold), let the beauty of life be visible and available to me everyday.

Tina trusted Jesus’ words: Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. It was clear God was providing an abundant life for Tina.

Arnold still thought he could make his own life, and in so believing he cut himself off from God’s blessings. No matter how much money he had, he would always suffer the terror jags that completely disabled him for minutes to hours. He would always dread being found out. The only thing that could set him free was the truth, but he had run from the truth his whole life. He was still running as hard as he could. The only thing that could turn him around was God’s grace, and Arnold insisted on making his own way, with his own money, and with his lies.

…

We pray: God help us know your truth and grace, that we too may pray in your name to be delivered from our enemies, that we not sink in the mire of deceit and greed, and that we can be your beloved people sharing your grace with all people.

Free?

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Can We Choose

To Move to the Far Shores

And Posses the Land There?

Is it Fate, or God’s Will?

Or Greedy Human Ambition That Will Only Destroy Us?

Jeremiah 32:42

For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.

1 John 3:2

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

Words of Grace For Today

Today we exercise our human capacities to accomplish work that we endeavour to complete. It is often work that puts us one step closer to a goal, towards a future that we see possible for ourselves or for other people. Some goals are little more than our survival, or others’ survival. Most often even those are some variation of survival plus a better life. It is honourable to wish others to have more than the bare minimum to survive, to enjoy life abundant as God promises us all people can have. It is honourable to strive to have life abundant ourselves, to have a measure of security against those things that endanger our survival. These are the blessings of God for us that we can give them to others.

We create real evil for ourselves and many other people when we try to create securities that protect us from what we cannot protect ourselves, for then there is no end to what we take out of life for ourselves, and we inevitably take it from others at others’ expense (sometimes even their lives) and we find ourselves incapable of giving to others that which we’ve taken from others. We hoard it for ourselves.

This is all about freewill. God gave humans freewill, and we certainly exercise it, both in the beauty of love for others and all of creation … BUT also in the ugly greed and avarice that robs others and all creation of life itself.

Jeremiah expresses an ancient view of freewill. We may think we have freewill, but God at least partially intervenes and brings woe as punishment for sin and blessings as reward for righteousness to God’s people.

The Vikings TV show portrays the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok and his contemporaries (dramatized beyond what we know of that time from the available historical accounts.) The Norse gods and the Christian God play a large part in the lives of all the people, from the leaders driven to conquer and rule more territory, to the warrior and soldiers who fight for leaders, sometimes this one, other times that one, and the peasants and farmers who provide for their leaders generously and sometimes enough for their own families. The interplay provides one overriding truth (chosen by the writers and creators), which is that the gods and God are used to further the aspirations of the most ambitious, to ameliorate those who receive no advantage, and to explain everything as ‘the will of the gods’ or as it is ordained by God.

Fate. These statements undercut human freewill and responsibility.

The most ambitious and destructive individuals see all this and use this ‘religious’ excuse in every way possible to further their own ambitions … which inevitably costs many other people their lives! The freewill of these people is to use the mass acceptance of Fate as an explanation for the course of life to hide their own sins so freely done.

It is a horrible and accurate portrayal of what the human heart is capable of. Let no one today be so foolish to think this does not continue, and will continue as long as humans survive. So how are we to respond to the pervasive sin and evil wrought so freely by humans?

We cannot declare with any honesty that we are entirely free of such sin and evil. There is no one that qualifies for that purity, no one except Jesus, the Christ … who was God.

The Way of life that Jesus lead his followers to pursue, to endeavor to accomplish each day in their lives (and we in our lives) is to accept first one’s own sinfulness from which one cannot be free, to then trust God’s promise to love and forgive us even though we cannot deserve such love, to accept and trust that while we remain yet sinners God also makes us into saints who are capable of doing God’s work on earth. We remain able to choose to love God, all people, and all creation, even though we cannot help ourselves from choosing to turn from loving God, all people and all creation.

What this makes of our lives is not pre-determined by God. Our eternal end is offered to us by God, which is that we are God’s own children and God will bring us home, even as God will accompany us each day, each moment of our lives. As Christ is more and more revealed to us in our short lives and through all of history, so we will be more and more like him, for he has claimed us for God to be adopted as God’s own children.

What difference does this make for us and our endeavours each day?

We can trust that we can choose to bring life abundant to others with all God has provided us. This is the simple purpose of our lives. This is how our freewill can be directed by fearing and loving God above all else, loving all other people as (well as) ourselves, and even our enemies.

True Freedom

Monday, August 30, 2021

Everything

Even All We Think Is Hidden From the Light

Is Known by God

And Will Be Known By All!

Isaiah 29:15

Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?

Ephesians 5:13

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness … Everything exposed by the light becomes visible

Words of Grace For Today

The evil that fills the world comes from the hearts of humans.

As the heart chooses to turn from God, so the heart thinks it can hide such a choice from God, which multiples the sins and the evil that is wrought.

Always, sinful humans think they can hide from God, even though God has made them. They can hide nothing from God. No one can.

The light of Christ will shine always into every dark corner that we think we can hide in.

God sees everything that is us, that is a part of our lives: everything we think, everything we say and write, and everything we do.

This is the promise that undoes all evil and sets us free, for God knows us completely, good and evil that we are. Yet God loves us, all of us, and rescues us from sin, forgives us, and renews life in us.

If We Just Do Good Enough? Or?

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Accepting God’s Grace

Is To Find Our Way

To the Light,

No Matter the Obstacles.

Jeremiah 15:19

Therefore, thus says the Lord: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.

John 14:23

Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’

Words of Grace For Today

“If you turn back …”

“Those who love me …”

Everything in these phrases are turned on the view of God and humans that God demands of humans that we do what pleases God, and then, and only then, God will be pleased enough to love us and to give us worth by serving God.

This is a long and dangerous tradition that in history has proved to be so attractive and so destructive to both Christians and those they named as their enemies. And as far as that goes, for all other religions which have embraced such thinking.

Because humans are not capable of pleasing God enough to earn God’s favour enough to sustain life through all it’s challenges and temptations.

God is, on the other hand, very capable of loving humans, even when we do not deserve it. If this were not true God would never have loved any human.

…

What is true in all these words of Jeremiah and John is that God loves us.

God loves us enough to call us to turn back from our sinful ways, to return to God’s embrace, to allow God to be at home with us, so that we can keep God’s Word and so that we can speak God’s Word to all who will hear.

This begins with God’s promise to us to forgive us.

It continues despite what we do, with God renewing life in us.

Then God sends us out to exercise the same grace for all people.

Only then does our freedom come into play, our freedom to respond to God’s great mercy by confessing our sins and surrendering to God’s mercy, by extending that same mercy to others.

This is the Word that is so precious.

This is the Word that gives life abundant to us, and to all people who hear, believe, and receive God’s mercy willingly.

God’s way with humans is to rule always, yet to give us freedom to choose to love or to not love. No matter what we choose God promises to be faithful, to always love and forgive us, and to give us opportunities to return to God’s way of love and mercy.

God’s way with humans is not:

if we, then God.

God’s way with humans is:

Because God loves us when we do not deserve it at all, not at all,

Therefore we are free to choose to respond and be God’s mouthpiece, God’s doer of love in this world.

There is no surer promise nor hope of life abundant, than what God promises us.

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.

God Writes

Friday, August 27, 2021

Whether Written in Letters and Words on a Page

or

in the Clouds Each Day

The Light of Christ Shines Through the Darkness

and Transforms Our Hearts, Minds, and Souls

To God’s Good Purposes.

Psalm 19:8

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.

2 Timothy 3:16

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

The Words recorded in scripture are long since recognized as instructive, inspired by God (though not written by anyone other than humans interpreting what God inspires), and providing health for the body, mind, and soul.

There is an idea that we can train ourselves in righteousness reflected in the words from the letter to Timothy.

Ah, yes, the age old turn of grace into something we must accomplish ourselves, even if it is only possible after God saves us.

What good does it do for us to think that after baptism we are more capable of being ‘trained’ to be righteous and do righteousness.

Paul’s comments on this (as opposed to pseudo-Paul, or letters written after Paul’s style), and Martin Luther’s are instructive: on our own we cannot do anything to make ourselves righteous before God, only God can bring us to righteousness. No matter how much we discipline ourselves, instruct ourselves, strive to change ourselves … there simply is no hope in or good result from such efforts. In fact they serve to blind us to the reality of who we are and who God is to us and who God makes us. We are, and always remain, sinners. Any effort to pretend it is otherwise only detracts from our faith, our trust in God, our hope in God’s Grace for us.

Grace.

Grace alone.

Then are we to simply allow ourselves to be as depraved and debauched as we can or would wont to be? Are we to focus on all that is sin and attempt to multiply our sins without end?

There is no good end to that, of course, as we destroy people and creation around us, and even ourselves.

As we acknowledge that we are sinners and will always remain sinners, and that only by Grace can God make us to be anything else, and in fact God makes us saints, holy people who reflect God’s Grace, Truth, and Love … THEN

Then we can choose to put aside sin (as best we can), and allow God’s Grace to flow through us, infusing our thoughts, words, and deeds with God’s free and unconditional love for all people.

Then we may just be the reflectors of God’s righteousness. BUT we fall into the Devil’s snare if and when we try to claim that we, made to reflect God’s Grace by God’s Grace alone working in us, have somehow accomplished this sainthood on our own merits (or even in part on our own merits.)

Scripture inspires us as God-made saints to reflect God’s Grace, and to confess daily or more often that we sin and cannot free ourselves … or even do anything good … except by God’s Grace working in and through us.

Scripture inspires us. That is it creates in us an awareness of God’s presence in, with, and through us. Scripture does not make us more or other than we are. Neither does scripture reflect God’s own thoughts. Scripture remains the result of sinful humans, interpreting and reflecting God’s presence in their imperfect lives.

Not perfect: neither us humans, nor the scriptures we produce by God’s inspiration. But they are the best it gets, kind of like us. We are the best it gets, until God works through us, and then we still are the best it gets.

Which as God’s Grace works in us can be awfully awesome and wondrous … which can also be the scariest and the most comforting experience we will ever have. The scariest it is because it exposes with great clarity the raw sin and evil in us that we otherwise would hide from and deny. The most comforting it is because that raw sin and evil (so horrid as it is) is dealt with by God and it needs no further effort on our part to be set to rest in our pasts.

What a life!

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!