Sacramental Mystic – Page 10

Truth and Fools

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

The Truth Is

No Matter How Straggly

We Think

Our Lives Have Become,

Christ’s Light

Shines In Us

And Through Us to The World

Psalm 14:1

Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; they say there is no one who does good.

1 John 5:20

We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Words of Grace For Today

Fools have long since pretended to be wise saying that God does not exist, and that, in their corruption and abominations that no one does any good.

Fools we are, all of us, though we are fools by a different measure. Those are the true fools who measure us as fools because of our faith in Christ, and our unlimited capacity to suffer and still trust God and rejoice with God among us, in us, God suffering with us. We are gladly, according to the ‘norm’ of perverse thinkers and doers, to be called fools for Christ.

In Christ we have come to know that there is truth that God gifts us with the ability to recognize, discern and separate out from what people call ‘your truth’, relative truth, or situational truth. This truth enables us to clearly discern lies told by true fools.

This truth enables us to clearly know Christ Jesus, and the promises God makes to be with us always, now on earth and into all eternity.

Truth is as valuable as love, and it is so readily corrupted by those who are corrupted themselves, in an effort to hide their corruption. Doch, God is not fooled. God demonstrates truth and true love in the life, ministry, healing, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Truth is so powerful as love is so powerful, that they give us life, even when our enemies would leave us to die.

Fools think that they can live as if God does not exist.

Fools for Christ know we live only because God exists, and chooses to love us unconditionally.

And that’s the truth that brings life as a free gift to all.

Love Me Tenderly, Love Me True …

Monday, February 14, 2022

Love

Colours

Our Worlds

Golden and Good!

Psalm 108:2

Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn.

Colossians 1:11-12

May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Words of Grace For Today

Valentine’s Day.

The day we celebrate love,

Sharing special times with our beloved.

…

And praying for those who use love as a cover for greed, avarice, and predatorily making their way through life, no matter the cost to others.

Love.

Love is a tremendous things.

Love is a terribly powerful thing that can defeat death and grief and hopelessness or

Love is a terribly powerful thing that abused can defeat life itself and all that is good in it.

The thing to note is that though a person who used love as a weapon against others certainly destroys many, many other lives, but first … first that person destroys their own life and everything that makes life worthwhile, which leaves them swinging at whatever they can hit to try to establish that they exist at all … which destroys even more of life in and around them.

Love, though embraced with awe and gentleness gives life to oneself and one’s beloved and so to all who witness this love, not least of all to the children who absorb into their lives that love is possible and life is good, and gratitude rather than greed is the key to life’s success and indeed to it is the key to life itself.

Today we celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Today we celebrate love,

Sharing special times with our beloved,

As God has shared all of life with us.

Hearts and Words

Saturday, February 12, 2022

Our Words

Reflect

the Curve of Our Hearts,

Bold and Generous,

Or Selfishly Destructive.

The Light of Christ Shows Us What Is in the Curves.

Psalm 71:8

My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.

Matthew 12:34

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Words of Grace For Today

What fills our hearts erupts inevitably from our mouths.

I know, the stomach empties its contents normally down the digestive track, but in rebellion it disgorges its contents up and out the mouth.

But when it comes to words, weeeell, our words inevitably (even for practised liars) reflect what is in our hearts, whether our hearts are consumed by greed, self-interests, destruction of others, and all sorts of evil OR our hearts bask regularly in God’s Word and as blessed saints become the embodiment of God’s Grace, unconditional love, and promises for all people.

Our words say it all. They speak less what we try to accomplish, and more what slavery we have bartered ourselves into with the Devil, or freedom we are gifted by God.

So we pray, Lord save us from the Devil and all the Devil’s wiles. Help us so that we can honestly and with gratitude say: My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.

For then, all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well … and indeed all manner of things is already well, with us and with God’s creation.

Dominion, As Created, Not Won.

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

God’s Dominion

Leaves No one Lacking,

Needing to ‘Make It’ on Their Own.

Peace Permeates Everything

and Every Heart.

Zechariah 9:10

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem; and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Philippians 2:9-10

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

Words of Grace For Today

The chariot and the warhorse and the battle bow are all instruments of war.

These God cuts off. They will no longer continue.

Along with them one could also list fighter jets, drones, nuclear bombs and bombs of all kinds, RPGs, explosives of all kinds, missiles of all kinds, artillery and tanks, machine guns and rifles and hand guns of all kinds, and knives used as weapons … and ammunitions of all kinds and the list goes on seemingly without end.

The meaning is much broader: all instruments of getting the best of others, or using others as means to get ahead, all need to defend oneself against attack … all kinds of aggression and competition and zero-sum-game-winning … and the list goes on and on and on without end …. Doch God will bring it all to an end.

The model of life as God created us to live it is given to us in Jesus’ story: one serves others, teaching, inspiring, self-sacrificing, serving, healing, and equipping … all with unconditional love.

This is what peace is created out of … and even when the world around us roils in aggression, violence, and warring, even with the noise loud in our ears, we are able to live at peace, in peace, and with our gracious and grateful attitude towards all we create peace for those who wish to embrace it with us.

God provides this to us in God’s Kingdom. God’s rule extends from before all time to after all time, from the reaches beyond the universe in all directions and encompasses all that can be in our hearts and minds.

So we pray, Come Lord Jesus, Give us your peace. Shine your light in our days and through our nights so that we do not descend into the violence that the world so easily embraces. Help us, we pray, to acknowledge the gifts we have receive from you far out shine anything we might try to achieve ourselves or for ourselves in this world. In our days, which appear to be short, brutal, and of our own making, help us to rely solely on you as the Giver of Life.

God’s Compassion

Sunday, February 6, 2022

To Whom Among the ‘lords’

God Will Extend Compassion

Is Not For Us to Say or Know.

Ours is, amid the darkness, to bask in

The Golden Light of Christ.

Micah 5:3

Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

Matthew 9:36

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Words of Grace For Today

The great masses of humanity have always lived subjected to those with power and the ability to lord it over them. There’s never been a shortage of those lining up to take on the place of power and privilege and comfort … and lording it over others to have all that.

Jesus, God’s story of God’s amazing unconditional love for all people -especially the poor and the outcasts – sees the crowds gathered to hear the Good News that he preaches, the healing that he administers and he knows their plight.

God has walked with God’s people in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes. God knows everything. God knows the plight of the great majority of humans who have ever lived. God knows the corruption of those who lord it over them. God has, seemingly, abandoned God’s people at many and various times to the clutches of those oppressing, persecuting, and driving masses into poverty. God has always walked, into those times of apparent abandonment, with God’s people. And God has walked God’s people out of those times as well.

God sends the Law, the Prophets, and the Good Shepherd to guide the people out of those times that are like hell. Today God continues to send God-made saints to walk with people in all circumstances, to help them reconnect with the promises of God and to live (even in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes) abundantly. So it is when we live aware that God walks with us.

There is nothing in life that is more blessed, more secure, and more rich than God’s presence and God’s promises that we, too, shall once again walk among God’s people, no longer shunned and falsely accused, but exonerated and honoured.

And those who lord it over others, driving them to poverty, into oppression, into persecution and out into exile homeless … those who lord it over others and live in comfort will face God’s judgment. Whether they too will receive God’s Grace is not for us to say. It is God’s will, which will be done. For now the ‘lords’ breathe only as a gift from God, giving them time for the amendment of life.

For the rest of us, God has compassion and demonstrates it day after day, in the simplest and most profound ways.

Thanks be to God.

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen

Sheltered Wonderfully by God’s Loving Powers

Monday, February 7, 2022

In Every Darkness

Surrounded silently by faithful powers of goodness

Psalm 91:4

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

Philippians 4:7

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

There are days when one must wonder about the dark present God has brought one to, and what the future may hold. Many people have such days. Many more people have had such days.

Then one is reminded of words by a man imprisoned and likely soon to be killed (as he was in fact, to our great loss), words that friends shared so many years ago in East Germany, words that carry God’s blessings and hope into every dark corner (under his wings you will find refuge):

Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben,
behütet und getröstet wunderbar,
so will ich diese Tage mit euch leben
und mit euch gehen in ein neues Jahr.

(Surrounded silently by faithful loving powers
protected and comforted wonderfully
thus I would live these days with you all
and go with you into a new year.)

[Kehrvers:]

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen,
erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen
und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.

(Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers
We are looking forward confidently to what may come
God is with us in the evening and in the morning
and surely on every new day.)

Noch will das alte unsre Herzen quälen,
noch drückt uns böser Tage schwere Last.
Ach Herr, gib unsern aufgeschreckten Seelen
das Heil, für das du uns geschaffen hast.

(Still the past would torment our hearts
Still the heavy load of evil days weighs on us.
Oh Lord, for our angst-struck souls
prepare the health for which you have made us.)

[Kehrvers]

Und reichst du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern
des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand,
so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern
aus deiner guten und geliebten Hand.

(And if you offer the heavy cup, the bitterness
of grief, filled to the very rim,
we´ll take it thankfully without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.)

[Kehrvers]

Doch willst du uns noch einmal Freude schenken
an dieser Welt und ihrer Sonne Glanz,
dann wolln wir des Vergangenen gedenken,
und dann gehört dir unser Leben ganz.

(But if you choose to give us your joy once more
for this world and the splendour of its sun
then we will choose to remember all this past
and that our whole lives belong to you.)

[Kehrvers]

Laß warm und hell die Kerzen heute flammen,
die du in unsre Dunkelheit gebracht,
führ, wenn es sein kann, wieder uns zusammen.
Wir wissen es, dein Licht scheint in der Nacht.

(Let the candles that you brought into our darkness
burn warm and bright today.
If possible bring us back together again.
We know this, your light shines in the night.)

[Kehrvers]

Wenn sich die Stille nun tief um uns breitet,
so laß uns hören jenen vollen Klang
der Welt, die unsichtbar sich um uns weitet,
all deiner Kinder hohen Lobgesang.

(As the silence now spreads thick around us
let us hear those full sounds of the world
which permeate invisibly all around us,
all your children raising hymns of praise.)

[Kehrvers]

These were, of course, Dietrich Bonhöffer’s words, and now they are one of God’s many gifts for us … to share.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…

The music for the beloved hymn was written by Siegfried Fietz. He sings the first few verse here.

The translation started with that at https://lyricstranslate.com but I worked further on it.

Let the Humble Hear and Be Glad!

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

A Beautiful Morning!?

A Bleepping Cold Morning?!?

A Wonderful Day!

Another Gift From God!

Psalm 34:2

My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Words of Grace For Today

We all seem to have something that we want to be proud of, that we want to be recognized and respected for. Some of us even have skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts that we could be very proud of and that other people could recognize as good contributions to God’s good creation …

except.

Except our skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts … in fact our everything about us … are gifts given to us by God.

Each day, even when the temperatures drop below -44⁰, we always have great cause to give God thanks, to rejoice in all that life is for us, and to pray …

to pray for what seems to be missing or lacking or challenging us beyond our imagination and our perceived abilities.

Often we might pray the wonderful quote from Mother Teresa: I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. … But

But it was never Mother Teresa who said it. It’s a false attribution. So

So are we going to pray it. Probably not.

God gives us the abilities to handle as much as we can, and the truth that all humble and honest people know is that life can quite often throw up in one’s path more for us to handle than be can deal with.

Exactly then we learn our limits and …

we learn that giving God thanks, rejoicing, and praying constantly ARE things we can always do.

Well, that rejoicing part maybe not, or at least not with any exuberance when we lose those we love or we lose more of life than we thought we ever could and still stay alive. There’s grief. It’s real. It excludes the ability to rejoice. Most grief has a half life, but it can just as easily rejuvenate itself into our lives with no warning. That’s grief.

Grief and all kinds of suffering keep us humble, and teach us to pray also in our most desperate times.

What humble people can do and do perhaps better than the proud, is listen … listen to God’s Word and promises, and trust them. As God frees us to hear we live renewed and we can be glad … no matter what life puts in our way forward in time.

God’s Temple

Saturday, January 29, 2022

As Wonders Abound,

None Are More Wondrous

Than the Holy Temple,

The Holy Vessels

God Made Us To Be.

Ezekiel 37:23

They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

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

There are innumerable examples of how we have perverted life into something that is a zero-sum game, and we’ve taken it for all we can, mostly from others, as if that were our right. Some have perverted the image they have of themselves into an image of a godlet, and excluded God from their lives (as if that were possible anyway.) Others have turned themselves to pursue [fill in any thing, or pleasure, or position, or wealth, or … ] as if attaining enough of it would fill their lives, and all sorts of perverse things happen to them and the people around them because of their pursuits.

God simply created us with freewill, and we make a mess of it, a terrible mess of it, we certainly do, we do.

God does not leave us there, in the damnable places and conditions we create for ourselves. God comes, as demonstrated in Jesus’ story, to cleanse us, and to restore us as God’s people … so that we once again can be people who fear and love God above all else. We see again that God is with us always, that God has poured God’s Spirit into us, made us vessels that hold the holy of holies, so that we can be and do God’s generous, unconditional, love and grace for all people.

You, and I, and each person, are/am/is a holy temple; and our treatment of ourselves and of others as holy is properly warranted.

God don’t make no junk.

God just makes all things blessed, and us, God made holy.

Get used to it.

Be it, with gratitude.

Conditional or Unconditional Love?

Thursday, January 27, 2022

A Short Section of the Shovelled Portions

After the Daylight is Spent

as Well as My Capacity,

Energy, and

Back

are

Done.

Psalm 103:17-18

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

The drive in here, into the meadow in the woods by the lake, from the gravel road that is maintained by the MD is nearly a kilometre long.

Most years the snow and rain make it challenging though not impossible to make the trek when needed to get supplies, food, and water.

Today that seems to have changed and to find out whether that has changed is to risk getting stuck in hard, cold, soft and freezing and hard frozen ice and snow smothered with rain over the last few hours.

Whether I can make transit that fist kilometre or not is entirely up to what I do in preparation. It is at least a two week task to try to shovel the worst parts free and clear down to the hard packed snow-ice that has developed over the last months from November on. There is no need to wish I had shovelled it regularly as the snows fell. First I had lots of other work to do to survive the winter so far, with it’s plentiful snow and it’s deep hard cold for days below -35⁰ and weeks below -25⁰. Second, the task of shovelling that kilometre once would take about a week of constant work, pushing my old body to it’s limits each day. By then the next snow would have fallen and I’d have had to start all over again … meaning I would have been shovelling snow constantly for months now and doing little else … when there is lots that has to be done to survive without a home in the woods next to a lake, even if that is all a huge blessing from God. So no regrets that I drove that kilometre as I could, dragged two logs behind to bounce a bit of the snow to the side and pack the remaining in a hardened roadway that I could drive over.

With the warming to above zero and the accompanying thaw, with the rain that has drenched the snow and with the freeze coming again that will turn it all into slippery ice, that kilometre will not be ‘miraculously’ ‘fahrbar’ (drive-able). The drive-ability of that kilometre depends now almost entirely on how much I shovel, where I shovel, how far down I shovel and if I survive (no heart attack or stroke or back spasms laying me flat in the snow for days while I freeze to death, or any other of a host of ways that shovelling could put me down.)

That’s a reality that is conditional, conditional on what I do.

God’s grace, forgiveness, claim on us, and mission that we are sent back into the world to work at is not conditional at all. God’s blessings and favour are not conditional on anything we do. That God blesses us and favours us is entirely unconditional! It depends only on God’s steadfast, never changing, never failing love and grace.

We humans do not like to be so dependent on any one or thing other than ourselves. So we, along with great words of God’s grace and steadfast love, have repeatedly perverted God’s promises into being conditional on our responses to God’s grace and steadfast love. Thus Psalm that teaches (wrongly) that God’s blessings and favour for us and our children and their children and all people is conditional on us keeping his covenant and remembering to do his commandments.

That condition sets us up to strive to be and do what we cannot be or do: perfect. And it gives control of our lives over to others who interpret our being and doing as sufficiently good enough or not.

God’s grace and steadfast love are not conditional.

God sends us out to be and do that same unconditional grace and love for all people.

Are we up to the mission? It does take every bit of life we have in us, and often more.

Night Vision Always

Monday, January 24, 2022

No Matter How Darkness Arrives

in Our Lives,

God Sees Clearly

and Guides Us to Live Well!

Psalm 139:11-12

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to 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

God knows we know what it is like

to have darkness overtake us,

and

to have the light disappear on us while we progress through our work that requires light to finish.

We are thankful that for God there is no darkness that is dark. For God the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

God does not need night vision googles to deal with what we experience as darkness, for even as the sun sets, and even as we succumb to illness God sees clearly what we need to be healthy. God sees perfectly, and

through the gifts of the Holy Spirit,

God gives us sight to see what is hidden by the darkness of sin and evil, and to be the ones who bring Christ’ balm to heal any who [are] sick with various kinds of diseases.

So we can rest assured, even as the darkness grows around us and envelops us, that God sees all that we need to live, and to live abundant lives.