The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
There are too many people ready to lie, and lie, and lie, and do as much damage to others as they can with their lies.
How can we respond?
We can be sure only that God loves us, and as God enables us to love God, God abides in us. God continues to be faithful to us.
While voices continue the lies, shutting us out, denying us voice, gaslighting us, expanding the terrible lies about us, how can we respond?
We can respond with grace, only truth and grace.
Those ready to destroy us will show no mercy. They care not at all for the truth. They care not for God’s creation or any of God’s children. They care only for their own advantage, their own power, their own false record of appearing to be just but actually being very unjust.
Those who wish to destroy us are of all kinds, from the smallest child to the highest powers, and many in between.
How can we respond except with grace, only truth and grace?
For while those ready to destroy us will persistently pursue us, God is more faithful than any person could ever be, even those who relentlessly pursue us to destroy us.
We count on God, for God has continued God’s faithfulness to us.
We fear and love God greater than we could possible fear or love anyone else.
Who are we that God continues God’s faithfulness to us?
We are God’s children, God-made saints, yet simultaneously still sinners – though we are not guilty of the charges made against us, nor of the convictions falsely made against us. This is truth. This is Grace.
But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them.
2 Corinthians 4:5
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.
Words of Grace For Today
It is sometimes presented as a glorious calling that we receive in our baptisms: to serve Christ, to proclaim Christ, to obey Christ.
Jeremiah (though before Christ’s life in time on earth) knew well the calling to serve God, to proclaim God’s Word, and to obey God.
God makes it clear: Jeremiah is to proclaim God’s Word, clearly, loudly. He should not break down in front of powerful people or great rulers or in front of anyone. If he does God will show the powerful people and great rulers and everyone else how much more powerful God is than they: he will break Jeremiah as an example, a warning to them.
Driven by God’s command and warning Jeremiah proclaims God’s Word. Most people do not want to hear it and turn on him, the messenger, as if that could ever stop God’s Word! Jeremiah suffers humilities and punishments that would break most people. He survives and continues to proclaim God’s Word, the true inconvenient Word of God, to an obstinate people. Sometimes it is a Word of judgment and warning, other times it is a Word of love, forgiveness, renewal and hope. The people really do not want to hear any of it; for hearing any of it at all, any at all, requires that they recognize their own sins, confess them and return to serve God alone.
They are having too much of a good time serving themselves. They are having to lousy a time suffering as slaves for foreign powers. They do not want God to change things. They want to change things themselves for themselves. They want to become the oppressors of other peoples so that they can enjoy lives of privilege and power and comfort. God will have none of it.
God desires that all people receive life abundant.
Proclaiming Christ’s Word is exactly that. It’s not admonishments to good living. It’s not threats to live moral lives. It’s not an escape route from suffering and sin. It’s not some holy panacea pill that solves every ill.
Christ’s Word is the old, old story of Jesus and his love; God’s clearest demonstration of God’s unconditionally loving attitude toward all people. When that hit’s us, it’s a life changer, not just the first time but every time we hear it and listen. The Holy Spirit sweeps us off our stayed or escaping feet right into the lap of God’s mercy, love and hope, and then the power of the Spirit inspires us and moves us to exercise that same mercy, love and hope for all other people … so that all people have life abundant.
As messengers of Christ’s Word, we also will be persecuted, riled against, and unjustly blamed for things beyond our possible doing. Welcome to Jeremiah’s club, the club of God’s messengers sent to proclaim God’s Word. God’s Word, the fire giving life to our hearts and all creation.
The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.
Philippians 4:6
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Words of Grace For Today
How can we live right, right enough to earn God’s blessings?
The world is full of ideas, of attempts, of desperations and all of them are futile.
We cannot. We are all and forever remain sinners. That is the way it is. Trying to make it to different is not ever going to work.
We need God’s Grace, that’s all there is to it.
We are only ever righteous if God makes us so, despite our sins.
After God makes us righteous we know to run and where to run – straight to God. That is the only place where we are safe. And how! In God’s arms we are safe no matter what happens around us, to us, or in us.
Of course there is no place that we actually run. Were it so simple!
It is a matter of recognizing how things are: God created everything and everyone. God created us. We always try to make it on our own without God. It’s impossible. Our on-our-own efforts land us in trouble with God every time.
Our basic attitude is that we need to make things good with God. Futile.
Instead God needs to save us! And God does that, leaves us nothing to do except accept God’s Grace as it is, unconditional. We are hard to win over, since we still think we need to go-it-on-our-own. So God came to live as one of us, paid the price we think needs to be paid for our sins; dies a terrible death tortured on a cross. We should be convinced, though our resistance is quite high!
That’s where the ‘running’ may appear to come in: we actually need to stop running on our own, running away from God. If we but rest, relax, breathe and calmly accept the world as it is God does the Grace-work for us, God makes us saints.
For all that we get to be thankful at our core.
That’s enough to keep us running everywhere, running on gratitude and wonder.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
James 3:13
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
Words of Grace For Today
After we recognize our own hopeless sinfulness, which God redeems at great cost, forgiving us and renewing life in us, and that we need God’s forgiveness constantly, for we simply cannot stop sinning, then the question is how are we going to live?
The measure we humans have held up returns us right back into works righteousness, as if God suddenly has made us able not to sin, so that we must preform or lose God’s favour and blessings. These two passages certainly could be interpreted that way … making it easy for us to dismiss them.
There is more to it than that.
Once sanctified (made saints by God), though we continue to sin, God pulls out of us great works that further God’s will and work on earth among humans and for creation. Most simply put, God’s willa and work is that God’s Grace is demonstrated to more and more people, and more and more people embrace the cross as God’s demonstration of God’s love for all people; forgiveness, redemption and new life is for everyone. We can live to cooperate with God’s will, or we can constantly choose to defy God’s will and live as if God does not exist, has not created us, does not forgive, redeem and renew us, and as if we can go it alone.
We can go it alone … right to our own damnation, choosing to separate ourselves from God. God still comes to us, forgives us, redeems us, renews us … except at some point God allows us to have our way … and the hell we have created for ourselves is the hell we live forever. At what point this happens is not anything we can know. But that it happens we can know: we can choose to deny God’s good work in us.
How else can we live? There are options that God makes possible for us. Wisdom is one of them.
We can pray: Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
We can live each day so that our God-given wisdom and understanding is evident in our works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
These passages then speak to how we can pursue wisdom in our daily lives, not to our own benefit, but to the benefit of everyone around us. They speak of our penultimate striving that God make possible for us.
For lo, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals, makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!
John 17:6-7
‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you.
Words of Grace For Today
While Covid 19 restrictions force us to deal with shortcomings in ourselves, in our congregations, in our faith …
All this can have huge upsides for us. Not that we are likely to overcome our shortcomings. Recognizing our shortcomings is the first step to confession, which is our first step back to renewed life in Christ. Our confession is not the first step back to renewed life, for God has taken many much larger steps to bring us to the point where we can confess by assuring us that God will respond graciously, forgiving us, and renewing us as we confess. In truth, our confession happens AFTER God renews life in us. Our confession is our first step to realizing (again and again) that God has already renewed life in us (again and again.)
The greater challenge in all of our-realizing-God-has-renewed-life-in-us is wrapping our finite, tiny minds (imagine so very small square holes) around God’s infinitely large being, or even God’s attitude towards us (imagine one multi-universe times infinity sized round peg!)
We just do not have the horse-power in our so limited minds, in our so limited existence as a whole species, to be able to start to comprehend God.
If you are pressed and stressed to the point of giving up by Covid 19 – a shortterm pandemic- , then we all must surrender to the reality that the project of starting to understand God is so far beyond us, there is no place to start.
Yes, humans have seemingly ‘understood God’ completely, which gives rise to all sorts of human-made-up religions, almost always tools for controlling other humans. What better way to control others than to have them believe it is not just another human ordering them about, but it is the divine, the infinitely powerful (to be feared), their Creator who orders them about. Even throw in love powered by fear and … well obedience is complete … or the just punishment has often been ruin, exile or even death administered by those in power over this made-up faith.
What about our faith that we hold to today? Is that made up as well? If you treat faith as a smorgasbord from which you can take anything as much as you want to form your faith, then I would guess that is not only the case, but you have lost yourself to a morass of ‘leaders’ who are yanking you around by the nose, though you may remain completely unaware of it.
If you adhere to a tradition … you may still be living out someone else’s control over you. OR maybe, just maybe …
Throughout scripture there is a thread woven of our God (the God of Abraham and Sarah and all the others down to Martin Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Hordern, and many others of all generations) as a God who goes the complete ‘distance’ to bridge the infinite (imagine a multi-universe times infinity round peg) to finite (imagine a teeny, tiny square hole) problem.
We refer to it as revelation. We read it in the passages above:
For lo, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals, makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!
‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you.
We are not left to try to bridge the gap, to somehow wrap our heads around the infinite, the divine. We need not worry about ‘understanding’ God. God comes to us and does that for us.
That we cannot do anything to earn God’s favour or renewed life, that we can do nothing to understand God, must leave us as the beginning of each moment humble.
Humbled we can confess. Humbled we can proceed through our days assured that God walks with us, that we can be bold (not arrogant or self-righteous) and courageous to speak of God’s Word to us, and to be the doers of God’s Word at all occasions.
God’s Will for us, for this marvellous creation is most clearly seen in … our failures, our sins. In God’s Forgiveness in response to our sins we limited humans experience most clearly God’s Will for us and all people; that we live lives of gratitude for life, forgiveness and renewed life.
Confession and humility and gratitude are not easy nor are they comfortable. There are plenty of leaders who encourage us to start, continue and carry on our days without confessing our sins. In Covid 19 times, with recorded worship, my congregation has not had confession once as part of the services (that I have seen, at least. I would hope I am wrong. Yet it should be a part of everyday, a part of every service. It is the beginning of experiencing God, otherwise we risk avoiding God all together as we ‘make up our faith’ for the coming days.
What a miracle it is that God has given us; a way to begin to understand God’s Will and Word for us and all creation!
It is said in many ways. It is the shadows that point us to the Light! Leonard Cohen expressed it, ‘It is in the cracks that the Light gets in.’
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my saviour; you save me from violence.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
Covid 19 has brought many of the challenges to abundant living to the fore, making it impossible to ignore them. Poor care in (only some) senior care facilities, the real costs of homelessness (which we used to minimize by large social housing projects which were stopped decades ago, resulted in large homeless populations nearly everywhere, which we are only recently addressing and saving money doing so!), the huge percentage of our populations who have absorbed as the basis of their ‘rational’ thinking ‘Querdenken’, false-news, science-deniers, and wild conspiracy theories, which has fed racist and minority focused hate – this is possible since the powers that be have long since used propaganda, and all the above to rationalize their corrupt agendas and to remain in power. Fear mongering by politicians and power brokers and even courts has long term costs for a society and we are paying for it now, again, and will be for decades.
While the stress of isolation taxes each person’s resilience, the first step in responding to each new wave of stress is to relax. It is in fact the only healthy thing we can choose to do in the face of overwhelming stress.
Breathe.
Breathe deeply and slowly.
Breathe in the Holy Spirit’s presence to be in us. Allow it to cleanse and renew each fibre of our being.
Breathe out the effects of all evil and stress.
Breathe in deeply and slowly. Breathe out every source of stress.
Then we can remember who our rock and salvation is. Then we can remember the words of Paul which have sustained generations of God’s people:
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So assured, again, that God is with and for us, loving us, now we can return to providing that same unconditional love to those in need around us. We can start addressing, one by one, the ills of our society that Covid 19 has made more obvious. We can in fact bring an end to chronic homelessness. We can in fact provide better value (pay) for essential workers, and less for overpaid un-essential leeches on our society, like money brokers and stock market manipulators. We can ensure all people receive respect and care. We can deal with violence (physical and psychological) against all people by anyone, not just against women by men. We can begin to deal with the many who use religion to accumulate power for themselves, to hide their abuse of others, and to perpetrate violence against anyone who stands up to them. We have more than enough ‘wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing’ in our congregations. We can begin to deal with Querdenken and raw hatred based on religion, ethnicity, gender or any other measure by speaking truth, and protecting those who speak truth for us.
And we can begin and end each day thanking God: My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my saviour; you save me from violence.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
2 Corinthians 5:20
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Words of Grace For Today
God’s Kingdom is never a static, accomplished, passive, settled thing. God’s Kingdom is God’s rule over God’s creation and all the creatures in it, including us very sinful and loving and stubbornly arrogant and gracious and cruel and kind and ….
God’s rule over us responds to our vagaries, pulling, twisting, diving, climbing, enveloping, releasing, disciplining, celebrating [and fill in everything God does in response to us] us.
God does not do this at a disinterested distance. God walks with us. Significantly God works in creation through us. God needs ambassadors of God’s will, as well as engineers, healers, teachers, gandy-dancers, architects, poets, and [fill in all we humans can be and do] of God’s will.
Always God is looking for volunteers. While God can easily voluntell us to go, God more often waits, patiently, for us to respond to God’s pleas ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’
The temptation for us is to ignore God, for history teaches us well that those who respond most often are disparaged, persecuted, and even killed for their trouble.
When we listen to God’s history told as a complete history of life, Creator and creation and creatures all together, then we begin to understand that there is no life with as much value and reward and joy and hope and love as a life lived in response to God’s call, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’
When we respond, ‘Here am I; send me!’, then we become ambassadors for Christ who entreat all people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. In response … well the responses are all over the map of possibilities given our sinfulness and love and stubbornly arrogance and graciousness and cruelty and kindness, our success will appear to be minimal at best, and the demands Covid 19 places on us are nothing compared to those creatures and Creator will place on us.
And our all our hope will be fulfilled, our joy complete, and our love will be made whole … even as we sin yet again and require God to step in to graciously forgive us, redeem us, and send more ambassadors to us to teach us how to be reconciled to God.
God’s rule requires everything from us, especially creativity in being God’s gracious, unconditional, and unending love and joy for others.
He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant.’
Luke 19:5
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’
Words of Grace For Today
When a king comes to town for a visit, unannounced (because there is no internet, or post, or telephone – either our past or our future) then we may want the king to stay with us, maybe.
First it would be life-death important to know how the king is disposed to us! If the king has come to find traitors and suspects us, will see what is not a betrayal, but something that the king will use as an excuse to vent his anger at being betrayed … well then obviously we might not want the king to come stay with us.
If the king, despite our ‘indiscretions’, is forgiving, and is favourably disposed to us, then it would be a great honour to have the kind stay with us.
Thus Abraham’s invitation seems understandable, “Come stay with us, if we have found favour with you.”
It’s a bit more complicated, since Abraham is sitting in a nomad’s tent, where the law of the desert, seldom ignored, is that out in the barren, isolated hard lands anyone seeking refuge from the heat and sands will be welcomed in, and welcomed in will be protected from all danger, even from one’s own desire for revenge if this is one’s enemy. As enemies go the desert is a greater enemy. Thus when three strangers stand in front of Abraham, who has made untold enemies in his journey up and down the golden tradeways from Ur to Egypt, Abraham may not know if they are enemies or not. He may be letting an enemy in three parts enter his tents, trusting the rule of hospitality will keep him safe, and will not put him in the middle of a fight these men have with others, others who may or may not honour the law of hospitality.
Perhaps Abraham hedges his bets, so to speak, and offers hospitality, if he has found favour with these three men.
Another piece of the complications is that this is not a known king, or just any passer-by either. This is three men. Not just men. Whether Abraham knows it or not the narrator tells us that this is the Lord, this is God. Three men are God. So not so simple, whether Abraham is in the know or not.
Perhaps Abraham really hedges all his bets, so to speak, and offers God hospitality, but only if he has found favour with God. What a way to find out where one sits with God! What a risk! What a wager Abraham makes, for if he has found favour with God and these three demonstrate to him he has, and others hear of it, Abraham’s reputation will increase immensely!
Pause a bit to notice in all these considerations I have led us to pass up one obvious thing: if these three strangers need hospitality, then they ought to be the one’s asking Abraham, ‘If we have found favour with you, sir, may we stop and rest within your hospitality.’
Stories about God’s interactions with us are always something different than we should expect.
Jesus’ story is one such unexpected development after another, always with a twist or seventy, to keep us on our toes about what we think Jesus is about and what God is trying to demonstrate to us with Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension.
Good people, travelling about as Jesus did, teaching in the synagogues and to the people (if the traveller teachers were honourable people) did not mix with dishonourable people. They avoided ‘unclean’ people because it made them unclean and therefore unable to enter the synagogue until they had completed the purification ritual that lasted days.
Reminds us of obligatory self-quarantine requirements of travellers and those with close contacts with people diagnosed with Covid-19!
Zacchaeus was anything but honourable. He collected taxes for Rome, able to exact from whomever whatever he wished in order to collect his allotment. He got to keep any extra he collected. Tax collectors were wealthy and hated; the preyed upon those from whom they could take the most with the least ability to protect themselves. They hardly collected from the influential and really wealthy people who could exact their own revenge against any tax collector taking anything but a token tax from them. Tax collectors were hated, really hated and really feared. One did not want to end up on the wrong side of a tax collector who could ruin you financially, or if you resisted, could have you jailed for debts.
Jesus interaction with Zacchaeus is exemplary of what Jesus demonstrates to us. Jesus does not stand at all on norms or expectations. Jesus stomps all over them, not to stomp on them but to point to something that norms and expectations violate: God’s unconditional love for everyone.
Again the invite is backwards, given by the one who ought to be the invitee. It would be Zacchaeus’ honour to host Jesus. Zacchaeus is more than curious about Jesus. He works to overcome his own shortcomings and short stature (real and figuratively) to get a view of Jesus. Zacchaeus should be inviting Jesus to stay with him, begging for the honour of Jesus’ presence in his ill-gotten and supplied home. – If you have not caught this in reading the Zacchaeus story, we are all equated to Zacchaeus; we should all be desperate to invite Jesus into our lives, and all we do is try to overcome our shortcomings and lack of standing in the Kingdom of God in order to get at least a glance of God’s own Son, Jesus. As if that is enough, or as if we actually could every overcome our shortcomings, our sins.
Instead Jesus is the one who sees Zacchaeus (us), and Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home (our lives). When Jesus arrives Zacchaeus is converted from a lost soul to one of Jesus’ followers. Zacchaeus moves from Jesus’ presence back into his own life … in order to make things right that he has made so wrong.
Jesus arrives in our lives (well we notice Jesus’ presence as an arrival even though he’s been there since before we were conceived – God is always with us!) and our first steps are to put things as right as we can in our lives, for those we have done harm to. Like Zacchaeus our putting things right for others is a good step toward doing ourselves something good too, not in order to gain something, but in response to being given everything, namely we have been given God’s favour.
Jesus will seem to arrive again and again in our lives. Today what are we going to put right in response to God’s greatest blessing, namely that God walks with us through everything, that Jesus has made his home in our lives, forgiving us our sins in order that we might forgiven all other people and make things as right as we can.
Lord, if we … no, that’s not how it goes for us that trust God walks with us. We say instead: ‘Lord, since we have found favour with you, and you abide with us, what can we do for you this day?!’
Even in the darkest of nights and tribulations God provides a promise of Light
Christ’s Light
To reveal all Truth and Grace
1 Kings 8:59-60
Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.
Revelation 15:4
Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgements have been revealed.
Words of Grace For Today
Bill Hordern wrote:
Therefore, as Reinhold Niebuhr saw so clearly, governments are never simply a protection against injustice, they are also strongholds of injustice. Although the Christians ought to seek to have the government protect the weak from the strong, in fact most governments tend to protect the strong from the weak. The sword is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities. Therefore, we should be prepared to see that service to God rather than to man may sometimes bring us into conflict with the rulers over many more matters than just the niceties of theological doctrine or ecclesiastical practice. (Living by Grace p.195)
These words were quoted by a now bishop in a text study decades ago. This year a good pastor added: Hence the wisdom from the theology of the survivors of WW2, and the wisdom of the Civil rights warriors like John Lewis who said: ‘Get into good trouble!’
It is as true today as ever, and especially here at home in Alberta, Canada. A partner Gaslights her partner, children lie, a pastor lies and schemes with the police to gather false reports, and to harass the target. Many false reports, false arrests, lies upon lies already and charges are laid. Church leaders lie to the RCMP. A petition to the court is made to protect the children. It is not only ignored and defeated and used as a ‘blood sport’ weapon against the good, honest, and kind (though not perfect) father to ruin his reputation, drive him so far into debt he will never get out of it, and to drive him homeless. Blatantly corrupt lawyers and their assistants bald face lie to the courts. Prosecutors lie to the Courts. Witnesses blatantly lie to the courts. Dozens of judges deal with the matters, those at crucial turns in the process blatantly lie about the evidence against (most of it lies already) the good father, and even about the evidence for the good father. He is falsely convicted, jailed where his life is threatened – mostly by the staff, and even by a nurse who administers a badly needed drug that has to be ingested with food, and denies him food for more than a half hour – it’s a miracle his stomach does not develop an ulcer – though he survives protected by a host of inmates and a few guards who do not want the old man needlessly hurt.
Denied support the good, honest, and kind father, Gaslit beyond imagination, is driven homeless. His body starts to fail, and he seeks the healing power of solitude and wilderness. He survives despite continuing efforts to kill him by courts, lawyers, and always his ex.
He prays daily in thanks for all he has, especially breath and health and love and work but especially for solitude during Covid 19. The most dangerous thing now is the contact he must have directly with people as most people are in flat out angry denial that Covid 19 is to be taken seriously.
The sin of so many people that has brought him thus far are too many to track, many remain hidden and unknown. This cannot be the first time such gaslighting, police harassment, blatantly false evidence by police and witnesses, false convictions and corrupt rulings, cruel games played by judges to hide they lies in their judgments, and persistent efforts are mounted to kill a good, honest, kind father. It is done so well, so practiced, so effective, so well hidden, with such disdain for truth and without fear of being caught out.
So this good, honest, kind father, now a holy hermit is me. I have forgiven my ex who is surely a borderline personality disordered person, and bound all other’s sins, known and unknown. Now I have prayed daily for God to bring the truth to light, and to deal with truth and justice and grace with those sins and sinners.
So I read today’s passage as if I had written it myself and know that I certainly not the first person to be so treated by other people. We humans really have a tremendous capacity to be cruel to others, and our methods really have not changed all that much since … well since the beginning of recorded history.
Still I pray knowing countless others have, do and pray the same with me:
Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.
For then
Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgements will have been revealed.
That day is eagerly awaited, and until then we all trust that the Kingdom of God is near, God walks with us, even us homeless, gaslit, kind people who are so far surviving the sword of the powerful and corrupt which is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities.
As member Jones said after one of many false arrests, Do you know why I do this? … Because I can.
May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!
Ephesians 2:17
So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
Words of Grace For Today
Peace is not the absence of conflict, nor the absence of violence even. Peace can coexist with both of these, though it works to pull us from violence to negotiation with each other, and from conflict with each other to harmony with (not each other) … with God’s Will for us.
CBC gave air time to a woman looking to organize mass fasting to call attention to domestic violence. She wanted those fasting to explain why they were hungry, and how terrible it is, now with Covid 19 restrictions, for women to be caught at home with their abusers. She wanted men to find a better model of what men can be. She wanted to call attention to the many, many women who are killed as a result of abuse.
All sort of good and well, as far as it goes. She seems to want, as many do, for us all to forget that ten times, got that, TEN TIMES! as many men die from violence as do women. Her project is a common one voiced today: women need to be protected from evil men. There are no good men, just evil men.
If similar things were said about women, their would be an uproar of denunciation of the misogyny. But no one even mentions that this woman’s statements devalue men, categorizing us all as abusers and as evil men who need to rethink who we are in order to become something better. No one voices the realization that this is misandry (the hatred of and devaluing of men.)
Make no mistake: some men kill women. AND some women kill men. Some use force, some use manipulation.
As if to make it sound like women are under greater threat, among other misandrist statements, it is said men are afraid a woman will laugh at him; women are afraid a man will kill her. The reality is when a woman laughs at a man, she devalues him, announces it for many to see, and taking his respect from him leaves him easy prey for both men and women bullies and abusers to kill him, if not directly with force then with psychological manipulation until there is nothing left of his life, not at all, not at all. The truth is men are as afraid of women killing him (often using men to accomplish the deed) as a women are afraid that men will kill them.
Abuse is abuse. Gender is not really a factor. Stereotypes are a serious problem because the mask the real issues with false issues.
That’s what is so terribly wrong with this woman’s campaign to get people to fast; it assumes all men kill women, and forgets that lots of women kill men, and regardless of who does the killing and how, many more men (ten times as many as women), our brothers, fathers, uncles, sons, and grandfathers, are dying, murdered by others.
Peace is not to point fingers and eradicate the falsely identified murder or the murderers. Peace is much more profound. Peace, real peace, requires that we acknowledge true reality. Real peace is to first realize that a part of each of us contributes to the conditions and circumstances we all live under in our society. Peace is second to forgive ourselves and accept others’ forgiveness of us, and to accept God’s forgiveness (actually that has to come first before other forgiveness is possible.) Third, peace is to forgive others so that there is no more finger pointing or calling out for others to change. The change has to be made within each of us first, and we have to point to the other as already forgiven … so that they may choose to change. Fourth, peace asks of each of us that we be profoundly thankful that forgiveness is possible, that God starts us off down that path, again and again each day.
If we are going to fast (and some like me cannot fast without putting ourselves at great physical risk of needing hospitalization to recover or we die) then it is to fast quietly, for this is what we need most: an inward healing of our relationship with God, God’s creation and God’s creatures, especially other people.
If we are going to put on a campaign to raise awareness of injustice, and in particular avoidable murder, then we cannot tie that message to misogyny or misandry. That only exacerbates the underlying lies we tell ourselves about the polarized genders, which drives us further and further from any possible reduction of avoidable murder. It in fact raises the conflict to higher levels, which in turn gives rise to more pain, which gives rise to more violence (physical and psychological) and that leads to more destruction of people, including physical and psychological deaths.
We need models for real peace. God sent us Jesus to live that model for us. There are a great number of saints who have provided models as well. We need to remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love, and of the saints that teach us faith and real peace, giving us real hope. Remember the good examples (they were human so they were not perfect) of Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Bonhoeffer, and many others. Above all begin each day remembering Jesus and his love, and all God does for us. From gratitude for all God’s blessing we can find our way to peace, even amidst conflict and violence and injustices all around us.
