I lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords.
Acts 14:17
God has not left Godself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.
Words of Grace For Today
There are signs everywhere, signs of God’s good blessings pouring over us,
if we only open our eyes and
ears and
hearts
to see, hear and know.
Even as our enemies drive us into the wilderness where we must sleep among all that is there and we must lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords …
even then the goodness of God surrounds us, for there are many witnesses of God’s people, accompanied by God, who have been fed to the lions, and
…
the lions became docile, uninterested in devouring God along with God’s people.
Such works of God’s great works are not just the stories of our ancestors,
these stories are our stories, for
again and again God has delivered us from our enemies so
All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.
Luke 11:28
A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Jesus, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
Blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. Wonderful, or scary?
Blessed by the the mother or blessed be the one who hears and obeys?
As if obeying got us anywhere, since we always fail at doing what we ought, in some manner or another at each step through life.
The image that amazes is of being overtaken, overwhelmed, drowned in blessings.
Blessings indeed pour over us, so that we have plenty to share with others … if we only really knew, if we only would realize how blessed we are … and how much others need the blessings that we have and can share with them!
So God walks with us, eh? Not really that big a deal, right!?
Well, really, God walking with us, blessing us with God’s presence in all we do and every step and turn we make, that is so wondrous it is on the edge of being comprehensible, almost beyond imagination … except
except it is our daily lives, seen, heard, and believed to be as God guides us to be ….
Thanks to God is the beginning of an appropriate response … thanks that is active with words and deeds of sharing with others what God has given us, blessed us with, overwhelmed us with.
There’s always more than enough to go around, so help it go around.
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.
Acts 2:46-47
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Words of Grace For Today
That the Lord takes thought of any of us is … well it is no less than incomprehensible. More so when we consider all that God provides to us. These are not what we call ‘success’ or ‘accomplishments’ in life. The wonders that God does for us are simple: God gives us life, breath, minds that think, and hearts that can love (or hate if we choose to waste life.)
There is not a single one of us humans who can do anything before we are born to deserve such gifts. Nor can we do anything to deserve these gifts after we are born.
…
And then we screw up the ‘paradise of Eden’ with our selfish greed, deceptions, and lusts so badly that we put life on the skids for ourselves and so many people around us.
What is God to do with us then?
We, for sure, each in our own way, perhaps not so reverently or faithfully, pray that God will come and save us from ourselves. We pray do not delay, for we understand the accumulative destructiveness of our sins for those around us and for ourselves … and we know we cannot survive our own mess indefinitely.
Yet …
…
Yet …
God forgives us, gives us renewed life, breath, minds that can think and hearts that can love unconditionally again.
What are we to do other than eat the bread God provides for us with glad and generous hearts?
Wonders of wonders, God is with us, yet again … and then we sin and screw it all up and …
God forgives us, gives us renewed life, breath, minds that can think and hearts that can love unconditionally again.
And we screw it up again and …
God always walks with us and after each sin God forgives us, gives us renewed life, breath, minds that can think and hearts that can love unconditionally again.
Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?
1 John 1:2
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Words of Grace For Today
To see what God reveals as the Light of the World, to look into God’s eyes to see all creation reflected with beauty, to touch God’s hand and feel the power of self-sacrificial love overwhelming the universe, to hear God speaking and understand the Word of Life …
to know that there is no other god, except God, Three in One, Parent, Son, Holy Spirit, all and each Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier …
to be re-created, redeemed, and sanctified … and sent out into the world to share all we have received …
This is to have our joy complete,
and to know
in him there is no darkness at all.
So we sing the words Kathleen Thomerson wrote for us:
I want to walk as a child of the light I want to follow Jesus God sent the stars to give light to the world The star of my life is Jesus
In Him there is no darkness at all The night and the day are both alike The Lamb is the light of the city of God Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus
I want to see the brightness of God I want to look at Jesus Clear sun of righteousness, shine on my path And show me the way to the Father
In Him there is no darkness at all The night and the day are both alike The Lamb is the light of the city of God Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus
I’m looking for the coming of Christ I want to be with Jesus When we have run with patience the race We shall know the joy of Jesus
In Him there is no darkness at all The night and the day are both alike The Lamb is the light of the city of God Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus
…
Who Else could possibly move us to know you, God, so well?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
2 Corinthians 1:7
Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.
Words of Grace For Today
We all want justice now! Justice that does not first sacrifice truth in order to proceed with lies, bias, corruption, and blatant replacing light with darkness, sweet with bitter, life with death, and justice with cruelty.
God walks with us. Not that in the moment that really helps, we still want justice now! Even so, and even though, we already know that we must wait for the Lord. We must be strong and let our hearts take courage and wait … wait … wait for the Lord.
Sometimes the little things get blown out of proportion because the big things are so unjust. And then … well then there are hours and hours of darkness like the following:
Wait for it.
…
The Bad News: It’s been so cold, -40⁰ or so for nights now. I’ve been burning through wood. I’m running out of wood. It’s a lot of work to haul and split enough and I’m getting behind.
The Good News: I wake the other morning and after working so long to haul and split enough wood the previous day, despite being exhausted and sleep deprived (stoking the fire every 2 hours night after night will do that) the wood lasted easily through the cold night!
…
But Wait for it.
…
Bad News: the wood lasted because there was no fire from 21:00 to 1:00 and the shelter that houses the wood stove got down to zero! It usually needs to stay at 50⁰ to keep the water tank from freezing, especially in this cold! (But I was so tired I fell asleep at 18:30 and woke at 22:00 ish to a phone call.)
Good News: when I saw the fire was out I brushed away the ashes and looked closely at the fire bricks. Yep!
…
Bad News: under the chimney the brick had a hole, if left it would burn through the stove wall itself.
Good News: I’d seen a crack in the brick two days ago and bought stove cement and fire bricks with points (I’m out of money and need to save for food) earlier yesterday.
…
Bad News: the bricks were sort of held in place by a retaining bar held by bolts, which are unreachable without taking the whole furnace apart. That’s possible but it’s a 10 hour job and it’s NOT possible when it’s cold, especially not this cold.
Good News: the brick were all so broken I could pry them out with a screw driver.
…
Bad News: new bricks had to be fit in past the retainer bar.
Good News: the bar was burned away at the chimney and the rest could be bent with a pliers far enough to slide all the bricks in under what was left of the bar.
…
Bad News: the bricks were too tall by 3/16 of an inch.
Good News: they can be cut with a cutting blade on a hand grinder and fortunately I’ve been loaned a grinder with plenty of cutting disks.
…
Bad News: the grinder runs on 110volts and my camp has no utilities: no electricity, no water, no sewer, no nothing but Grace.
Good News: I’ve been loaned 2 small 2200watt generators that only weigh 65 lbs to provide electricity when I need it.
…
Bad News: I need gasoline to run them.
Good News: There’s still some gas left in both generators.
…
Bad News: they are not supposed to be run at anything colder than -5⁰C and it’s below -20⁰, which is 10⁰ colder than I’ve ever gotten one to start.
Good News: one’s inside.
…
Bad News: I’m too tired to haul the generator from inside to outside where it can be run. I can’t risk pushing my bad back and spasming leg muscles too much, especially when I’m so exhausted and fatigued and sleep deprived!
Good News: Small miracle! After 40 pulls on the starter cord my shoulder has not given out on me and I get the other one – the one out in the cold – to fire up and run.
…
Bad News: it takes until past midnight to individually cut each brick to custom fit, clean the ash and crud out from where they need to slide in, and get them fitting in place. And then 2 brick are still flopping loose where there is no retainer bar left to hold them!
Good News: the stove cement maybe, perhaps, might just hold them until summer when I might be able to rebuild the whole stove again for the third time. So I glue the two bricks with furnace cement and start a fire that will light and burn fast. Heat at last.
…
Bad News: there’s hardly any heat for a half hour and I’m so so tired, so tired, so tired … and then I have to stoke the fire yet again.
Good News: I’m finally in bed after 1:00 ish.
…
Bad News: I’m wired and can’t sleep.
Good News: I’ve got no meetings in the morning so I can sleep in. (I never have meetings, ever, really. No one really cares to meet with a person who is homeless. It kind of shames them that they don’t fix the systemic problems that cause homelessness!)
…
Bad News: I wake at 4:45 to almost no heat, 17⁰ in the shelter (and the water tank is at 0⁰!), and a chilly 12⁰ at the bed.
Good News: I get a fire going.
…
Bad News: it takes 50 minutes.
Good News: the bed is still there.
…
Bad News: morning is there too.
Good News: I don’t care. I’m punch drunk tired, laughing out loud at it all, thankful the stove will last, maybe, another year.
…
Three nights later I finally get enough sleep to start breaking out of sleep deprivation.
…
We wait, and with courage wait, and wait, and wait, for the Lord, who works at God’s own pace in God’s own time and in God’s own way.
We have courage to wait because ‘Our hope for God is unshaken; for we know that as God shares in our sufferings, so also God shares in our consolation.’
Think about it. God dies. God suffers with us. God finally got enough sleep to start shaking off sleep deprivation.
Makes one wonder …
Who was in charge of creation while God is sleep deprived,
or unconscious for suffering,
or dead?
…
The other persons of the Trinity? That’s a (weird) argument for a Trinitarian God, eh!
Good News: God will let us go with it. There are far greater humorous things to laugh along with as well! Learn to laugh at them all. It builds courage as we wait!
O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
John 4:34
Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.’
Words of Grace For Today
Most humans have never thought to listen at all to God. Their loss, literally, as they plow through life, destroying more than they could imagine.
Most humans who have thought to listen to God, have learned just enough in such a way to make God’s Will into their own will, and they blithely continue on plowing through life, destroying more than they can imagine.
Those who strive to listen to God … well …
It’s really no different for us either: we continue to plow through life, destroying more than we can imagine.
So we, we who would live life in order to give life to others … so we pray constantly that we would be able to hear God’s will for us and follow God’s will with our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Yet without the Holy Spirit it is hopeless for us and our prayers.
Jesus was a different kind of person, one who knew and followed God’s will, not his own will made to appear to be God’s will. Rather Jesus knew, followed, and received nourishment by following.
Sometimes it is not hard to think that we are more like Hansel and Gretel trying to find the bread crumbs of Jesus, and receiving mere snippets of nourishment for the little treasures we find, sometimes most unexpectedly on what we thought was certainly not a path Jesus ever trod or sent us out on to tread one step at a time.
The most precious gift we receive from the Holy Spirit is to see, hear, and touch the presence of Jesus in our lives each day, in the most unexpected manners.
To see, we look …
To hear, we listen …
To touch, we reach out ….
Another day, this day, and we pray nourish us Jesus, with your bread of life and the gifts of the Holy Spirit most precious.
Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Colossians 2:10
You have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.
Words of Grace For Today
Headstrong as we all are, we need some rigorous interruption to our daily routine, to the expected, to the unrighteousness of our lives that we’ve come to rely on in order to make our way forward.
That’s what the suffering servant, and many who have followed who have sacrificed themselves to give others life, and what God in the life of Jesus has done for all: they have interrupted the usual and expected flow of selfishness with their own sacrifice that gives others life. Their sacrifice is simple to describe. They put themselves in the way of corrupt people and powers who seek a scapegoat for their own corruption, lies, and destruction of others … and all manner of sins that clog up the flow of life with their own shtako. These corrupt people easily lie about an innocent person in order to gain some catharsis for the strain the overflow and damming (and damning) their own sins spew across their own lives.
Then as the innocent person is destroyed, the strain of the shtako in their own lives seems to be relieved. Yet it is not at all, not at all. In fact it deepens the clogged up piles that impede life, honest life, blessed life as God created us to live it. … until another innocent scapegoat is slammed into jail or poverty or derision and eventually death.
This seems to be the regular rhythm and rhyme of life … over and over again … and no one seems to care or notice that the innocent are some of the best people alive … until they are no longer.
When God sacrificed life in the death of God-Jesus, God sent a clear message: NO FURTHER SCAPEGOATS ARE REQUIRED for life to flow onward, for the goodness of life to be lived, for the overwhelming, clogging and damning sins of so many to be forgiven.
God dies.
God dies to interrupt our usual.
God dies to interrupt our usual scapegoating to save us from our sins, and to save all those we would scapegoat.
And yet so many people simply cannot bear the thought that God knows their sins, so they keep scapegoating innocent people, and innocent people are jailed, slammed into poverty and derision, and eventually killed … all for nothing more than a temporary cathartic relief of actual, overwhelming, damning and destructive guilt.
Woe to those who continue to scapegoat the innocent!
But for those who have ears, for those who have eyes, for those who have hearts …
ears to hear God’s Word,
eyes to see Christ’s Light,
hearts to receive and live out God’s unconditional love for us all …
For those who the Holy Spirit has given ears, eyes and hearts to receive God, God blesses us with God’s presence each day, each moment … no matter the false convictions, poverty, derisions, or death wishes aimed at us …
and we live lives as God intended us to live them: honest, grateful, generous, forgiving, and steadfast … and as required, self-sacrificial.
‘But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’
1 John 4:9
God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
Words of Grace For Today
There is the complication of communication between such different kinds of beings.
Science fiction has dealt with this in many ways: humanoids that have varying degrees of bodily appearances: facial hair, skull protrusions, different finger counts, different leg articulations, antennae, and on go the differences imagined. Then there are the other humanoids who require different atmospheres and must use equipment to provide their atmosphere when present with humans in theirs. And then there are the greater differences: the aquatic and air based life forms, and then the energy life forms, and more and more. Always there is, if not at first, some way for communication between the life forms.
What kind of communication can there be between the being whose power exudes greater than the sun, the creator of the universe? How can we imagine, even in science fiction terms, that we could stand inside the sun, or close to the sun, close enough to talk to the sun? What would the sun use to communicate to us, when a small burp would wipe out us and everything within millions of kilometres?
The creator of the universe did not leave us creatures clueless about our creator. Creation teems with evidence of God’s creative powers and God’s beauty and God’s Grace. Patterns are everywhere. Order is there to be recognized and understood and applied to improve our lives. Science and technology are possible because God created the universe so that we could understand and apply our knowledge in many and various ways. God also sent the Law, the Prophets, and the Son.
Whereas the sun will incinerate us long before we can approach it, the Son is a human just like us, and yet is still completely God. Those living at the same time as Jesus interacted with him just as with any other human, even though this human was different in how he lived, healed, loved, sacrificed himself, and rose to life again. Jesus’ life lived among us created a story. That story provides us the keys to understanding the universe and God’s Will for us in it: the Son’s power is unconditional love that forgives, generosity that heals and gives life abundant, and self-sacrificial love renews life and provides an example of how to respond to God’s call to live, live well, and to live fully in this universe.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
John 8:31-32
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’
Words of Grace For Today
Lead me in your truth and teach me …
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
Life is not a journey with a final destination that we can reach or achieve or earn or miss out on. Life is a journey always becoming in the next moment what is next, whether that is new, old and oft repeated, or old and first for us. So we look forward with goals and plans that guide us, yet always these goals and plans are secondary to celebrating that God gives us the journey each day and walks with us no matter what we encounter, no matter what our enemies do to us, no matter anything and everything. Our goals and plans are chosen to reflect that everything we have and everything we are right down to the latest breath we’ve taken God gives to us, freely, lovingly, wonderfully.
When I was much younger I worked at the airport in Fargo, on the line of a small flight school and charter service. The chief pilot (the only pilot) drove his black Grand Prix out on to the apron where fueled up the airplanes on day, got out and started chatting with me. Usually I was not even noticed other than to be given orders on what to do with my time.
He pointed to his car. I wasn’t impressed. Cars were not something I was interested in other than as a means of transport. Airplanes of course were a different matter, though even they were for flying somewhere fast, or getting somewhere and being able to land with little to no runway, or doing aerobatics in.
He continued with his tale that he’d dreamed of having one since he was a young teen. Other than becoming a pilot that was what consumed him. He’d dreamed and planned and dreamed and worked. Finally he had one. He was in his early thirties, growing a bit of a paunch. He never had been athletic. The business he worked for was owned and run by his friend, and it turned out it was losing money hard and fast as the two of them ran it into the ground. It had been a gift to the friend from his father who’d built it up from nothing and now was not wealthy but comfortably retired.
The chief pilot finally got to the reason he was telling me his story about his wonderful jet black Grand Prix. “Now that I have it I don’t know what else to do with my life.”
I worked there a few summers during college, and then one final semester when I audited classes since I had more than enough credits to graduate (in 3.5 years) but there was nothing like graduating at any time except after the spring semester. So I was waiting for graduation, and then I’d be off to Yale Divinity School, except a full scholarship year in Germany sandwiched it’s way in first.
I did not understand a life focused on attaining a thing, a piece of metal, plastic, and rubber, as fancy as we humans have been able to make things of a great number of materials.
I can understand it sort of now, but not really. That kind of a life is, as the chief pilot said, pretty empty after one attains one’s dreamed goal. In fact that orientation for life empties life of life itself step by step as the goals is pursued. Things just do not make life worthwhile. They never have and never will, and there are countless stories from history that bear witness to this.
What we know, as followers of Christ, is that all the things in the world cannot fill one’s life with meaning. We receive things, skills, and everything else as gifts from God so that we can give life, abundant life, meaningful life, blessed life, to others.
Continuing in Jesus’ Word is not a choice we make, though our choices, especially our choices of goals and things we hope to attain or achieve in life, reflect whether we have surrendered and continue to surrender our own will and hopes and dreams to God’s Will for us each day.
We pray that we will continue in Jesus’ Word, giving as Jesus gave of himself, so that others can live and living they can know (as the Spirit teaches us) that God’s abundant, unconditional love, is the guide to a meaningful life.
This is the truth that frees us to know that God walks with us each step of our journey from the present into the next present, giving us stories of blessed lives (no matter what our enemies do to us).
As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
1 Corinthians 16:13
Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.
Words of Grace For Today
There are many journeys, or sub-journeys of life, that we embark on or simply end up on rather unplanned.
I’m not sure if any humans just walking through a valley can make that a place of springs! That would be to reach deep in the ground, make pathways for the water through the ground, and direct the water to follow those pathways to the surface where springs would appear.
That’s right up there with terra-forming barren worlds so that they can support human life.
We need water, that is for sure. A valley filled with springs would provide good, naturally filtered water (unless the ground has been fracked, in which case no ground water is safe: even if one day it tests good, the next it may be poisonous.)
This day is another sub-journey, yesterday’s is past, tomorrow’s is yet to come. Today is now. Whether we think or hope to direct our journey is moot. We cannot and do not; at best we fool ourselves.
The guide for this day’s journey, as for every other day’s journey, is to stay alert, to stand firm in our faith, to be courageous, and to be strong, strong with the power of Jesus’ self-sacrificial, unconditional love.
As we face each day, strong in our faith and inspired to love unconditionally, then we will see the Light of Christ in each person’s face whom we encounter; we will see the wonder and beauty of God’s creation in all that surrounds us; we will feast on the nourishing presence of Christ and share that feast with all other people.
