My son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.
1 John 4:13
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Were we to measure our lives by any means dependent upon our own abilities, actions, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or anything that is of us, we would come up with a fools result.
It’s like using a tape measure to figure out how much sewer the whole city of 2 million produces in a day. The tool is not up to the task of the things measured.
One thing we know is our own records are not far off from the sewer contents when it comes to being something we can boast of before God.
To measure our ‘success’ in life (as God might measure us) we simply need to admit we cannot. The only things we know about God and God’s measure of us is what the Holy Spirit gives us as gift. We cannot measure those gifts either. So we come up empty handed trying to measure our success before God.
We can only trust God (trust made possible by the gift given to us by the Spirit) that God does not forsake us, abandon us, or leave us to stand on our own, now in this life, or ever in eternity. God stands by us, walks with us, suffers with us, and does everything to convince us that all is well, all is well, and all manner of things are well, because (and only because) God is gracious with us.
Of course we would prefer to know that we can serve God with a single mind and a willing heart, and that we can seek and find God. That way we are in control of what happens to us and to the world around us. But that’s not how God created us to live. God designed us to live guided by love, grace, faith and hope; and none of that gives us the ability to judge our own ‘success’ in serving God with a single mind and a single heart. It certainly does not give us the ability to accurately judge others.
We try to judge ourselves and we love to judge others. It gives us a sense of control over our lives, control that is not ours to have.
We are only by grace able to live fully when we are guided by God’s love, faith, and hope. That will fill up any day we wish to give over to them, and then some.
Ready or not: Hang on to your hat, it’s another of God’s days for us.
Remember me, O Lord, when you show favour to your people; help me when you deliver them.
Ephesians 4:7
Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Words of Grace For Today
Our hope is always that today, yes finally today, we will be saved, at least me and mine. God teaches us patience through life as we suffer, pray for deliverance, and the suffering continues and increases, until in old age we are more than ready to give up the mortal frame and the suffering that goes with it, to go home where there is no more crying, weeping, death, and suffering.
Until we reach that point we learn to endure.
We learn to pray, if Lord you do not save me today, at least Remember me, O Lord, when you show favour to your people; help me when you deliver them.
We learn to trust that we are given what we need to make it through this day. The suffering may go on, and there is nothing we can do about it. We can learn to live the days we have, grateful for all God gives us. The measure we receive is not exactly what we want (thank God, or it would sink us from all consideration that we might need God, yet alone need to be thankful for life and all that is in it!) The measure we receive is given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
That measure is simple: what does God need to give us so that we will share all we have and are with those who are truly poor and needy.
Ah, that measure.
The measure of self-sacrificial love, not just for the people we think are good, but for the people that are truly evil.
Yes, that measure.
Simple. And so difficult to embrace. Impossible to embrace if we do not first know to be grateful in all things for everything God gives us.
So we pray, teach us, God, to be thankful, and prodigiously generous and gracious with all people.
That’s a full day for any of us.
For that God gives us the full measure, 24 hours, until our last day. For now, we give thanks, and move into the day.
As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.
Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Words of Grace For Today
Most of the people who have ever lived on earth have been quite truthfully able to say: I am poor and needy.
Even I can say that, homeless and so far in debt I will never be out of it before I die.
BUT
But, in comparison to most the people who have ever lived on earth, I still enjoy a standard of living and honest expectation of a life which far exceeds what most people have had at the best of times in their lives.
Those that are poor and needy, on a relative scale to all the people who have ever lived, are truly poor and needing for, please, even one day’s good nourishment at a time, and an expectation that they will survive the coming week’s weather, challenges, and … well you name it.
We might learn to be a bit more appreciative, for God has provided for us in abundance, enough that we can share it with others.
Some of us have even stepped out of the normal routine of life to extend help to others and been caught by dishonest accusations and claims about us that have caused us to suffer. Others of us suffer failing health, or the loss of a loved one, or … well you name it. There are more than enough ways to suffer to go around and come back around many times over.
In our suffering, can we with Paul say that our suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us?
I am not so sure it works that way very often, though to have that expectation is to change how our suffering affects us. We minimize it and live in the hope that God will walk with us, suffer with us, not abandon us, and help us endure with character that produces hope by way of God’s love poured into us in such great quantities that it spills out around us wherever we go.
While we (many of us, anyway) enjoy an extraordinary standard of living, it is not due to our great merits or abilities to earn such distinction or to better ourselves and our circumstances. Almost everything that determines our standard of living is given to us, by when and where and to whom we were born.
We can boast only that by grace we enjoy life, for God gives everyone the chance to enjoy life, if only a short bit of time.
We can boast only in God’s grace.
God’s grace is for us and
for all people.
Today, how are we going to be grateful for all we have received, and for all we can share … especially with those who are truly poor and needy?
‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!
1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Words of Grace For Today
David built himself a fine palace. He wanted more. He wanted to build God a temple, God’s own house on earth. That would demonstrate to all that David served God … well, really it would demonstrate that God served David, so God says no.
Solomon moves ahead with David’s plan to build God a home, a temple on earth, even though Solomon is wise enough to know that God cannot be contained by … well, God cannot be contained by anything! Solomon builds the temple so the people have a place to go to pray to God and know that God hears them. Of course God hears us wherever we pray, but sometimes we people want more. We want to be convinced by mind games others play on us, that God is with us.
It’s hardly ever enough for us humans to know that God is with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us. We want more.
The verse from 1 John points to how we frail humans can fully know that God is with us. When God’s love is perfected in us as we love one another, then, though no one can ever see God, we can know that God lives in us.
True: God lives in us. True: when we love one another it is God in us that makes that possible. False: then we must work to love one another to convince ourselves that God lives in us. Nope, doesn’t work like that.
Start with God. Continue with God is for us. Then on to trusting that God lives with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us.
And we want more.
So we go off on all sorts of quests to achieve the unachievable in order to fully live life, leaving behind us in our dust the only thing that gives us life at all, and full life at that: that God lives in us.
There is no more. From that we can be more than we can imagine, bringing God’s love and grace to other people.
Still we want more.
So we pray: God save us … and give us more.
That’s what the Devil plays with, and it is that which brings so much suffering to us, other people, and to God who lives with us.
If we could only admit that we see God every day, in the most ordinary and the most extraordinary things and events. We would know that life on this planet earth is everything because God lives in us, walks with us, hears us, and guides us through every day.
Oh well, today like every day, we will do the best we can to reflect God’s love to all people and creation!
… the rest we trust God will somehow forgive, mend, and renew.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
Revelation 1:4-6
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
Princes of this world.
OR
The Prince of Peace, Jesus the Christ, the Saviour of all, the Son of God.
In whom do we trust?
The USA dollar has inscribed on it ‘In God We Trust’, and that dollar has symbolized so much done in the last century that did not trust in God, but in the princes and powers of this world.
Oh, well. We do like to state the opposite of what is so obviously condemning of us, as if that could possibly save us from all we do to dominate over others. Instead of freeing ourselves, we lose our souls and destroy and destory so innumerably many other people.
By grace, today, the Holy Spirit will direct our thoughts and words so that we may hear, see, and acknowledge the folly of our trust in princes of this world, and the wonders of trusting God, loving God, and of giving God all glory and honour … and dominion over our hearts, minds, and souls.
‘Simple Sam’ the other children taunted him through grade school. He was different. He rarely paid attention in class. He was off elsewhere in his thoughts. The surprise that caught his teachers off guard was when they started doing basic algebra in grade 5. Sam flew through the assignments faster than they could even read them. He corrected and explained to the teachers, in concepts they barely understood, when they made math mistakes in front of the class. When his book report came in instead of the assigned two pages on a 125 page, easy to read book, he produced ten pages on Tolkien’s Trilogy of the Rings, with insights the teachers had never read of before, not even at university.
Then one teacher had a newspaper upside down on his desk, open to an editorial on the market fluctuations caused by the recent conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and climate change. Sam came up, glanced at the newspaper and said that the author had totally forgotten to factor in the rare earth resources in Ukraine, the drive to carbon free energies, and the massive coalitions coming together between Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists to move governments, multi-national corporations, research, and even world markets towards responsible living on planet earth, including carbon neutral living and ways of doing business. That would likely change the markets at least 2% this week and maybe 10% by the end of the year.
The teacher asked Sam if he’d read the article before, or if someone had told him all this. ‘Simple Sam’ answered, “No, this is the first I’ve read anything by this author.” She asked again, “When did you read this article?” “Just now. It’s there on your desk. It’s upside down, but that doesn’t matter.” “You read it now! That article fills the bottom half the newspaper!” Sam shrugged, “I read the top half, too. It just takes a glance to read it, doesn’t it?” “Sam, can we talk about this later.” “Sure.”
‘Simple Sam’ continued, by his choice through Grade 6, totally blowing the minds of his teachers. Instead of Grade 7, that year ‘Simple Sam’ was admitted to a special 2 year tutoring program to prepare special students for university. By October he completed all they could offer, and he attended University classes. By age 16 he earned two PhD, simultaneously. One in physics-pure math, and the other in political science. In both his theses, which were published immediately, he brought many other disciplines together, as well as his own faith perspective as a Lutheran, and the impact other faiths had on his topics.
Sam continues to write and publish technical as well as popular articles and books on our past, present, and future as a species, to teach grad students at the university, and to lead children, youth, and adults in small groups at his church. He’s amazing with his guitar and on the piano.
His favourite answer to complicated questions starts with, “It’s really simple if you start by trusting God, first. Then consider that ….”
.
To the tree above Sam said: “It’s not hard to work out the math of the physics of why that tree is bowed down, but start by trusting God. Then we see the tree knows to give God the glory. After that it’s all in the biology of the tree, the weather, and the magnetic attraction of the person passing below it.”
The last, he’d explain, is a bit of humour. No science at all.
.
If you listen, look, and consider with loving care, God demonstrates every day in many ways, the folly of trusting in princes of this world, and the wonders of trusting and loving God, and of giving God all glory and honour … and dominion over our hearts, minds, and souls.
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.
1 Timothy 2:5-6
For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all — this was attested at the right time.
Words of Grace For Today
Today, as in many times before, most people pick and choose what they accept as ‘god’ for themselves. The other options in other times is for people to accept blindly what others have chosen to declare as ‘god’ for others (usually in order to control them better, and rarely to provide a better life for people), or people can take all that others say about ‘god’ and just declare they refuse to accept any of it.
Most everyone claims that, with their choice of ‘god’s’ attributes, they worship the one, true ‘god’, and all other people are just plain wrong in their false beliefs. Through history this has gotten more wars started, people killed, and the attributes claimed for ‘god’ to be wholly undermined by the people’s thoughts, words, and deeds.
When we start with the declarations like 1 Chronicles provides: 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 then what should, and at best, follows, is our humble confession that we simply cannot know God enough to choose God’s attributes at all. It’s not only above our pay grade, the kind of knowledge that such choices require belong to a completely different kind of existence that begins outside of creation itself.
And we are mere creatures in this, God’s creation.
So how can we know anything about God at all?
Only as God chooses to reveal God’s attributes and attitudes towards us, can we know anything about God at all.
Jesus, as fully God, born as a full human, living and ministering to all kinds of people (especially the poor, the ill, and the outcasts), dying on a cross crucified on false charges (brought by the religious leaders of the day), being buried in a rock tomb, and rising from the dead on the third day, … Jesus is God’s clearest revelation to us: God loves us, sacrifices everything to let us know that we do not need to sacrifice others, certainly not to please God, and that we are forgiven, as are our enemies and our lives are given to us so that we can be God’s love and forgiveness for all other people.
Now that’s a good beginning to giving God attributes that are fitting.
It is a beginning which places God for us, and beyond our control, and involved in our lives, and wishing and doing everything possible to give us the ability to love and live and choose to:
1) love God above all else
2) love our neighbours
3) love ourselves
4) love even our enemies,
and to do so humbly.
The problem we all run into when we choose ‘god’s’ attributes to accept is that our ‘god’ ends up to be a small ‘god’, a ‘god’ that can do only what we want ‘god’ to do.
Small ‘gods’ lead us right to the Devil’s doorstep, and fuel great arguments for refusing to accept that God even exists. Everyone’s lives would be so much better if we could all refuse to accept all small ‘gods’, and begin each day with a similar declaration as in Chronicles.
In short it might go like this: God is greater than anything I can know. I am just clay enlivened by God’s spirit. God’s first and foremost attitude towards me, and all people, is love. God asks first and foremost that I love God, all people, and even myself. Thank you, God, for everything that gives me life. Now there’s a day to live, work to do, gracious things to say, people to love, forgiveness to beg for, and courage to be Christ’s voice, feet, and hands for all people. Never a slow day, thank you, God, for everything.
Well, what are we waiting for. Sun is up. Day is begun. Onward into the fray.
Love always leaves us feeling a bit frayed. It’s not cheap. It like life is precious.
Will We Choose to See Beyond Our Own Greeds, to Other’s Needs?
Ecclesiastes 5:10
The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity.
1 Timothy 6:8-9
If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
Words of Grace For Today
It would seem to be common sense that money is necessary for life and a lot of money will make for a better life. Much of humanity has lived so. Before there was money it was wealth of whatever kind was recognized in their day.
Wisdom has always taught that pursuing money/wealth is a sure route to despair and futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes is right, such pursuits are all vanity, and vanity that serve nothing in life or in death. In fact they hasten death even though one may still walk, talk, breathe and chase after more money/wealth.
The writer of 1 Timothy has it correct if incompletely so. When we have the necessities of life we can be content, though the necessities of life are more than just food and clothing. They also include clean air and water, adequate shelter, meaningful labour and being able to love and be loved. With these we ought to be content, though we rarely are.
Built into our DNA, our survival, is the drive to make things better for ourselves and those with us. So even after we have the necessities of life we strive to have more … and that striving is rots our souls at the core.
Our ability to labour on earth is not intended to be used for ourselves alone. It is to be labour that makes life possible and better for everyone.
Today, just another today, is a day …
when we are able
by Grace
to labour
for God’s bountiful blessings to be enjoyed by more and more people.
My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness.
Colossians 2:11-14
In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.
Words of Grace For Today
There is really only one huge challenge in life, and that is: to perceive, comprehend, and wisely respond to the reality one faces each day.
Our minds are marvellously powerful organs, capable of visions and imagining a better tomorrow. We are also able to hide from the reality that we face, and make life going forward next to impossible for ourselves and/or for people around us, even people around the globe (now and in the future!) Oh, what power we have!
When one is ill, the symptoms can be mild. One can try to ignore them, continue with the aid of medication to minimize the symptoms, share the illness with unsuspecting contacts, and likely end up with worsening illness if not in the short term then as a chronic condition (which one may not even recognize as being a result of one’s ‘carrying-on with a stiff upper lip’.)
When the symptoms become severe, as the Psalmist reflects today, with fouling and festering, the illness is hard to ignore. A stiff upper lip will not do. Yet one may be so out of it that one cannot figure out how to or be able to provide the necessary care to bring about healing. The psalmist makes clear that the challenge is to find the cause of ones illness. Admitting that the cause is ones own foolishness is difficult, or at least all too often avoided by us humans.
The Colossians passage puts it right out there: we humans are very successful at … sinning. And it leaves us spiritually rotting, festering, and fouled. God uses Jesus’ story to convince us that, no matter the power of our minds to deny reality and our successes in building a perspective of life for ourselves that excludes God and God’s saving love for us, – no matter what God works to save us. Our sins are nailed to the cross. The illness of our spirits are healed. We are spiritually ‘circumcised’, so that God’s mark is made on us, a protection from all illness is provided to our souls, and we are set free to live as God created us to live: being the reflectors of, the voices of, and the hands of God’s saving love for all people.
Young William McCormick Sudbury, ON, with a group of two dozen people was awarded the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers this last Apri;. Only one piece of his volunteer, work McCormick started A Place to Call Their Home with his brother, with a goal of reaching out to underrepresented or underserved populations by sending care packages of school supplies, and providing clothing to groups in need. He said, “My parents have always tried to instill in us a deep sense of gratitude for the situation we’re in.” Then came his rare words of recognition of the blessings he enjoys through no merit of his own: “I’ve been provided a loving family and all the support I could ever need. It was really important to try to give back.”CBC Morning Brief <info@newsletters.cbc.ca> for Friday 20 May 2022
If we could only see the true reality of the day we face each day, and our place in it (for most of us that is a place of privilege so great it has been unimaginable for most humans who have ever lived!)
Since we rarely do see God’s reality for us which includes both our foul and festering souls and God’s healing, loving grace, God uses every means possible to open our eyes, ears, minds and souls to the day that comes our way.
Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’ Selah
And I say, ‘It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’
Romans 5:20
But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more!
Words of Grace For Today
It hurts.
That sums up much of the evil that we encounter in life, whether we are the cause or others are the cause.
It hurts.
We cry to God, but it seems God does not answer.
Selah
[Selah is an unknown word in Hebrew that shows up as a refrain in the Psalms – ‘God be gracious!’ or ‘God hear us!’ … or it may mean ‘so it is’ … or it may just mean ‘Sigh!’ or some other onomatopoeia.]
There is nothing more hurtful than to have all the evidence before us that God has turned from us and condemned us, that God has ‘forgotten to be gracious and in anger shut up his compassion!
Were God to abandon us to our own ways and means and the Devil’s guile, deceptions, and seductions there would be no rescue, no respite, no release from such a terrible state.
In all circumstances, though, no matter who convinced we are otherwise, God does not abandon us. From all evil and the hurt it does to us people, God still reaps greater demonstrations of grace. While we dig ourselves deeper and deeper in the muck of life, God shows how powerful Jesus’ saving love is for us. God’s love is always more powerful than any evil we can make or be subject to.
A young man pulled a 32’ foot bumper pull camper in to the random camping area a few nights ago. He tried to pull it on the ‘Low Road’, through trees and turns that no one has ever even tried to pull a camper except for the first 30 feet, and that only with a 12’ camper. He did not smash the camper sides against any tree, though. Instead he caught the roots of the first tree with the hitch jack, bending it back 30⁰. Which means he probably did not have a weight distributing hitch in place. He left the foot by the root where it was ripped off the jack. The propane tanks were taken off and the regulator left hanging in disarray. The battery was missing as was the cover to the battery case. On one side half the lug nuts were missing on one wheel, and the lug nuts were loose on the other wheel (one barely still on it’s lug). A support set of boards, screwed together for stability was dropped 100’ away.
It had all the signs of being a stolen camper, though the young man and woman returned last night at 3 am, and ‘parked’ their big Ram truck next to the camper where they had left it, backed into Lake3 or Wet3, which is always soggy unless it’s near drought conditions. When they tried to pull out with the truck the front end sank into the soggy grass covered ground and (from the hours of the truck roaring ways) they spun it deeper and deeper into the muck.
This morning the truck sits on it’s oil pan and lower frame under the engine, a jack is set up half way back on one side, rocks and branches are on the ground or poked into the holes made by the wheels. A straight edge shovel stands poked into the soft ground.
He needs it lifted off the frame or a big tow truck to pull him out. By grace there are people who will help him, people who have big equipment. People who once helped me out of my folly of trying to pull a camper through soft sand. I had three days more to work my way out of that and the winch pulled the camper and truck back up on top the sand and out. The truck and camper were not bottomed out, though. I had enough sense not to keep spinning the wheels when there was no movement forward or back.
When we try to get ourselves out by spinning our wheels, they act as little shovels, round and round they go, digging a deeper hole in the muck of life, sending us deeper and deeper.
Selah.
Our only hope is help, help sent by God.
Grace abounds.
Love is more powerful than Evil.
God’s creative power flows through the universe, like a great big tow truck and winch, pulling us up out of the muck, healing and restoring us. The greater the mess we get ourselves into the more obvious the power of God’s great love becomes, as we are set free.
God’s right hand has not changed, neither God’s left.
Grace brings renewed life to us, every day and every moment that we need it, often before we know we need it so badly.
Be of good courage today, this is (another of) God’s time with us!
God Created Not One Person to Live In the Dust and Ashes
1 Samuel 2:8
He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Words of Grace For Today
God creates the universe, and, though evil and the results of it are always a necessary possibility (so that we can choose to love) God did not create people to live in the dust and ash heaps of life.
God created all people to live with honour,
with respect,
with sufficient clean air, pure water, adequate clothing and shelter,
meaningful labour,
being loved and able to love.
This is God’s blessing for us, that creation provides more than plenty for all to enjoy the necessities of life all their days on earth.
Through history (and certainly today) human greed and self-righteousness have driven so many into the dust and ash heaps of our excesses. What are we to do? Shake our heads in disgust at those living in the dust and ash heaps? Develop religions and ethics that allow us to ignore those poor, those without the necessities of a blessed life? Arrogantly assert that God created us and by our own hard work and merit we have earned and deserved more than the necessities of life even though that has thrown so many other people on to the slags heaps of life?
No!
God’s blessing pour over us.
We need not fear that there is not enough, no matter what the world (that’s all of us) tells us. We can share, and sharing every person will have the necessities of life. That may as well free those caught in the despair of having too much, for having more than enough drives one’s mind and way of living to become unnatural, other than as God created us to live.
