Choose – Page 21

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 09

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

In the Dark

The Light,

God’s Promise Guides Us

Isaiah 47:13-14

You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you. See, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before!

Hebrews 6:18

Through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us.

Words of Grace For Today

The cool of fall has arrived, so that sitting in front of a fire is not merely an evening pleasure for campers, but a necessity for keeping oneself warm.

The fire that God sends the condemned to is no such fire. It is like a raging wildfire that consumes everything in its path. Our human efforts to know the future, in order that we can have the advantage over others are legendary … and futile. Our efforts to destroy others in order to get ahead are also legendary. Destruction we succeed at quite well. Getting ahead is a real failure as well, not that we have not often thought we’ve won and made great headway forward. It is that we make headway toward the Devil and our own condemnation, not that we make headway toward God’s will and design for us, namely that we live sacrificial lives in order that others may live abundantly.

The challenges that the Devil places in our paths seem without end. They obscure our vision of God’s will, our ability to thrive as we give life to others, and our discerning the value of truth in the face of lies that seem to flourish better than Canadian thistle or leafy spurge.

Into a world filled with these challenges we awake each day. God knows this well, for God is with us, Jesus’ name is Emmanuel (God with us). God created us with a spirit to discern Good from Evil, and God knows we so often choose Evil, for others and for ourselves.

So God makes promises for us to know and trust. Land flowing with milk and honey. Descendents greater than the stars in the skies. A Saviour for all people of every age that we can live freed from our bondage to sin, so that we can imitate the Christ in our daily lives, forgiving others their sins.

God guarantees these promises by the greatest authority of all, God’s own.

In this we can live, trusting our very lives to God’s promises and God’s living Word.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 7

Monday, September 7, 2020

Tire and Robin

I’m tire-d

But by Grace Alone I see God all around.

Sing for Joy, even if you are tired!

Jeremiah 32:19

Great in counsel and mighty in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways of mortals, rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.

1 Timothy 4:10

To this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe.

Words of Grace For Today

I’m tired. Tired of being Gaslit, by people I do not know, people I’ve known intimately, people who claimed to have loved me, people who I’ve loved, people who’ve corrupted their authority to protect and serve, people who are supposed to be religious leaders, people entrusted to exercise the law to provide justice based on truth.

I’m tired. I’m tired because it’s a whole lot of work to stay alive each day, and I’m getting old, worn and weary.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of people (without masks or shields or any protection for them or me, or without any brains about how Covid 19 kills old people and young people as well) trying to push me (yes literally push me) aside to walk past me while I’m shopping. Or people breathing at me from a foot or two telling me it’s ok that ‘I’m so close’ to them when they walked right up behind me and I have to turn around because a lift blocks the aisle ahead.

I’m tired of people lying, begin stupid, and trying to kill me, intentionally or stupidly out of ignorance.

I’m tired of people lying to steal everything I have and then trying to steal even more than the courts have lied to give to them from money that is really not mine to access, or that they really should not have access to either.

I’m tired.

Perhaps you are tired, too, of things similar, or of different Evil worked against you and people you know and care about.

Or perhaps you are not tired at all, since you have everything that you need for life, and your energetic work is about accumulating more wealth and privilege at others’ expense, so that you can get ahead in life.

For us all we read today: [God knows all and rules everywhere, and judges everyone,] rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.

Yes, we can say. May it be so.

Finally Justice based on real truth for everyone! Especially those who’ve dealt with me as if I were a completely different person than I am. Justice. Let it be done, and soon!!

So we can wish. Unless we look at the sins we’ve committed to separate us from God – which are NOT what people Gaslight me or you perhaps, saying I have done. Sins that allow words that are unkind to be spoken, selfish acts to be done, and selfless acts to be undone.

Then we may be more humble, resting in God’s Grace given to us, trusting God’s wisdom not to be so simplistically applied to all, but with Grace first.

Still for those who corrupt justice, who seek to destroy others for no good reason other than the joy of the destruction, can we not hope that God’s Justice may reflect what they have done already?

So we pray: God save us, save us all from Evil. Help us each day to toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people.

I’m tired of it all, Doch God help me rest in you, in your justice and grace.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 5

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Ice and Floods

Heat and Drought

Nothing compares to the Evil humans inflict on others.

Isaiah 25:4

You have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat, when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm.

Revelation 2:8-9

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Since Jesus’ record replaces ours, since our baptisms we have known and been able to trust even in the most horrific and trying times that our record before God will be sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not even the miracles of God (or so we say) can (other than by replacing ours with Jesus’ record) keep our spirit and soul and body sound and blameless at all. We have and keep free choice, which in exercising we continually sin, i.e. we are hardly sound and blameless.

The question is not if we can be sinless. If it were no one would be acceptable to God, and the Kingdom of God would be empty forever.

The question, after God favours us and blesses us, what are we going to do with this ultimate favour and blessing?

Then we may pray earnestly that it can be said of us that when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, then we have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

There is no shortage today of the blast of the ruthless. Now is the time to act. It is the time to be the refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needing in their distress, and a shelter from all that comes, whether it is the vicious rain, hail, snow and windstorms of climate change (the ‘new normal this year is last year’s extreme weather‘), or the blistering heat, wind and locust of drought, or the flooding of rain that will not let up.

The real blast, as in every generation, comes not from nature, not even pandemics like Covid 19. The real blast comes from ruthless and evil people, possessed by the empty promises of the Devil. The two legged wild animals bring more disaster to more people, more quickly than any new weather storm.

The dangerous ones are those who say there is no danger. They claim with words and/or actions: There is no more Covid19. It’s back to normal. We’re done with Covid 19. There is none here. They likely will not die or be maimed by Covid 19 or any other real danger. They will be oblivious to the loss of life around them, unless it invades their own home, and some even then pay it no heed.

May God protect us. We may wish that we can be sound and blameless, but that is the first step to ignoring our place, station, calling and weaknesses as the two legged children of God that Jesus calls us to be.

We still wish for what is not possible, and then we pray: May God protect us. May God protect you.

Before it is too late.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 29

Saturday, August 29, 2020

No matter how cold life seems

God is with us, laying down tracks with us

shining on us day and night by sun, moon, and Holy Spirit

Thank God!

2 Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. The leper was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

False pride and arrogance or humility and gratitude, two apparently mutually exclusive manners of responding to all God has done for us.

In 2 Chronicles the writer interprets the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem as God’s response to Hezekiah’s proud and hard heart. In Luke the writer interprets Jesus’ healing the lepers as done in response simply to the lepers asking.

That one returns to thank Jesus, against Jesus’ directions that they fulfill the Jewish Law and show themselves to the priests (to be recorded as cured and therefore free to return to their families and position in Jewish society.) The one who returns gains nothing by visiting the priests. He is an outsider and gains no ‘return’. Leper or not, he is not accepted into Jewish society. He returns then to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus has more authority than any priests.

Luke’s message is that those who are burdened with their own religious authorities and practices may well fulfill their obligations to them, Jesus still comes and heals those people. People with no locally recognized religious authorities and practices to fulfill (the Samaritan perhaps had some, just not recognized by the Jews), are free to recognize Jesus’ greater authority and to respond with appropriate gratitude.

Who are we?

We wish we were like the Samaritan, free to recognize Jesus’ authority and power with thanks and gratitude.

If we are honest, we are like the other 9 Jewish lepers, bound to duty to other authorities, and easily able to miss the wonders Jesus provides and therefore easily able to miss out on thanking Jesus and living with wondrous gratitude. That gratitude is a more powerful force in life than ‘falling in love’, about which much is written, spoken and known – how it transforms life for the better (or worse.) Gratitude transforms life always for the better, and it does not wear off after a short few months.

If we are honest, we are also often like Hezekiah, proud and hard hearted, completely capable of pleading to God for help when life catches us in disaster or deadly illness or total loss. But when it comes to giving God thanks for all God has given us, our breath and very lives … Well then we are back to fulfilling our ‘obligations’ to other authorities and demands (like careers, money, status, reputation among those driven by greed and avarice, and false images of ourselves as above or without God).

Luther described all of these as happening simultaneously in our lives as responses to the same events. To which he prayed as we well can: God save us!

And save us, Luther knew as we can know, Jesus already has.

We can choose to live lives transformed by thanks and gratitude. Bit by bit each day.

Why not?

Where else are we going to turn for the living water? the bread of life? the Words of eternal life? the hope that does not disappoint? the promises that fill us so that we have more than enough to share with all who need life?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 27

Thursday, August 27, 2020

History of Slavery

currency of slavery

Work for Freedom, also in oneself

Joshua 24:17

It is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Words of Grace For Today

We have ‘our orders’. Given to us by the one who brought us up out of slavery in Egypt.

It is all really simple. It is all really complicated.

God sends Moses to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt. Remember the people went there as famine refugees, welcomed by Joseph, Pharaoh’s second in command. They were welcomed and well provided for during the famine and the early years following.

Times change. Joseph’s people multiplied, Joseph is long dead and his Pharaoh. The powerful Egyptians resent the outsiders thriving, so they enslave them and force them into hard labour.

Slavery is a matter of getting significant attention today, as established families in Canada are recognized with street named after them, and now their participation in slavery is exposed. Who we honour and why says much of who we are today, and the powerful of Canada are as much blind to the suffering of those on whose backs they make and maintain their wealth as ever in the bleak history of human oppression and slavery. There is push back. There ought to be always.

God pushed back through Moses and led the people out of slavery into the wilderness for 40 years. It took a generation to cleanse the effects of slavery, to build the people into those who could occupy their own land.

Generations later the people expect and hope that the Christ will lead them to throw off the oppression of the Roman empire. Today many people expect and hope that the Christ will lead them to through off the oppression of so many different governments and multi-national corporations. There is push back to the oppression and slavery. There ought to be always.

Jesus does not come to create yet another new revolution, after which yet another new group of powerful people can oppress others, sometimes those who earlier oppressed them. Jesus comes instead to end all oppression and slavery. Jesus works to transform individuals and families and communities and towns and cities and countries, so that from the inside the attitudes of slavery and oppression are wiped out of each heart, until in the Kingdom of God all slavery and oppression is obliterated. The wonder is that as one’s heart is transformed in baptism through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, slavery and oppression’s effects on ones heart, mind and strength are removed. It is as if through baptism we enter 40 years in the wilderness, so that the effects of slavery and oppression are removed from us entirely.

We work to remove slavery and all kinds of oppression as free people, as blessed people, as peaceful people. We go out into the world as the people who invite people from all other nations to join us, as the people who bring Jesus’ commands: to love one another as ourselves, and our enemies, and as the people with whom Jesus abides even to the end of time.

We are not alone in the wilderness, no matter the challenges, not even Covid 19 and everything that comes with it, irritating precautions and the suffering when precautions are not kept or are not enough.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 26

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Left Behind by Accident or as Sacrifice?

Christ reconciles us to God, no sacrifice required!

We have a blemish free record, no matter how many ‘gloves’ we’ve lost.

Isaiah 43:24-25

You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Colossians 1:21-22

You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.

Words of Grace For Today

The sacrifices made to God have changed through the centuries and generations. Once we offered birds, animals, and before that other people, even children. We knew that, having done something wrong, having sinned, we owed God payment for our sins.

When we know we have sinned our minds recognize how estranged we’ve made ourselves from God. Knowing what we’ve done we become hostile to God as well.

We ‘dig our own grave’. Yet God does not leave us there.

No sacrifice by us is sufficient to pay for what we have done, and continue to do, and will do. God knew this, knows this. God sent Jesus, his Son, to sacrifice himself, the one last sacrifice needed to set things right between us and God, between all humans and God.

Nothing is needed on our part.

Now since God sets us right with God, holy and blameless … well the possibilities are astronomical, and wondrous.

Jesus calls us and the Holy Spirit equips us to be the voice, hands, and feet of Christ on earth, extending unconditional love to others, providing justice based on truth combined with mercy and wisdom, and blessing all people with more than just the basics of life. As the Holy Spirit equips us we can offer others abundant life. That may require sacrifice on our part, yet all we have is given to us, so it is not really ours to give up, it is ours to share with everyone.

Makes for a wondrous life for us, and for all people.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 22

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Lake as Muddled Mirror of the Sky

So Dimly We See God

Except in Jesus’ Sacrifice to Save Us

Daniel 2:47

The king said to Daniel, ‘Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery!’

Philippians 2:10

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 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

What is it that God created us able to accomplish and control?

Everyday life presents us with constant reminders how little of our lives we control. An invisible virus mutates from a previous one, jumps to humans, and spreads around the world. We cannot stop it, so limits and restrictions are placed on how we live and move. It’s a pandemic lock down. Everything needed to stop the pandemic in it’s tracks is known or at least estimated. Yet no one has enough control over others to make those extreme measures happen. It takes only a few people to refuse to comply before extreme measures are wholly ineffective. So authorities implement strict (but not extreme) measures not to stop the virus, but to ‘flatten the curve’, to limit the number of people who have it at one time. That so that health care services are not over taxed, and/or the bodies do not pile up faster than they can be buried (depending where in the world the authorities are.)

Some strict efforts are effective, despite the constant refusal by these people, those people, and oh, those other people, who somehow think they are exceptions. Somehow they think that they do not need to keep distances, or they do not need to stay home when healthy or sick, and their gathering must go ahead, limits be damned.

So the numbers known to be currently infected continues to fluctuate, up and down. Always in the background everyone knows that the count can escalate quickly out of control … as it has in many places around the globe … and the death count escalates out of control as well. Lately 20-40 year-olds have a great increase in infection. They get minor symptoms mostly, and they spread it to the more vulnerable among who the severely and permanently affected numbers climb, as do the deaths.

Survival of the fittest? The natural course of events? Culling of the herd? All this is spoken as if to excuse the hubris and lack of empathy necessary to see the pandemic this way. It takes just one small mutation and those 20-40 year-olds will be the ones dying in droves.

There are many great mysteries in this world, and we encounter plenty of them up close and personal in our short lives on earth. Though the spread of Covid 19 and how people intentionally make that happen is no mystery.

The real wonders fill the universe in all time and space. God reveals them to us many times each day … if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts and minds to understand.

One great revelation of mystery comes with Jesus’ life. What was a mystery before is how God works and intends us to live and work and play. Jesus is most powerful and influential demonstrates that for us to see by humbling himself. Jesus does not ‘know his place’ as superior to all others. His is God’s place, above all in every way. Yet God sends Jesus to humble himself, to submit himself to the torturous power and destruction of Evil, in order that we humans may understand (at least a tiny bit) for what God created us.

It is not to ensure that we are the ‘fittest’ and that we survive while others die.

God created us to face the unknowns of life, sacrificing ourselves so that others can have life and have it abundantly. Humble sacrifice is Jesus’ Way which we are called to imitate.

Having received life by Jesus’ sacrifice, we praise him for who he is: God, above all else.

Our tomorrows remain as unknowable as the mysteries of our todays. Yet we are secure in God’s hands, secure as no other effort or perspective or … anything.

So we are able to comply with the pandemic restrictions, remind others to keep complying even when people are fed up with them, and we work to save everyone without excuse … for we are all in this together.

Humbly complying with restrictions and ‘standing together’ for each person, we may survive. But if we all proudly ‘stand alone’ in our failing to comply with the restrictions asked of us, then more of us will surely fall.

Choose, deadly pride or life giving humility. Sometimes life’s choices are clear and possible for us to make.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 14

Friday, August 14, 2020

Where to Go?

Why go for love

When it is right in front of you?

God’s unconditional love!

Psalm 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

John 6:67-69

So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

Words of Grace For Today

To be loved unconditionally.

To know that one is chosen, precious, cared for, watched over, and fully desired; this is to know one is loved by God. God equips us to embody this love for one another. We do this imperfectly, and only by God’s grace working through us.

Do you wish to go away?

There is much in life that is difficult. We learn early on that life is easier if we avoid what is difficult. The most powerful people in life learn how to avoid the messy parts of life, or if it is not possible to spin the events so that some one else is seen to be the cause of and main character in the mess. Passive aggressive personalities develop out of this, always presenting that nothing is wrong, and then behind the scenes, hidden from others’ knowing, they manipulate, scheme and carry out revenge and punishments for those that dare cross them. Variations of passive aggressive personalities, the more severe cases, are named personality disorders (like borderline personality disorder), or psychoses, like sociopaths and psychopaths. In whatever guise these people who adroitly learn to pass the ‘mess’ of life on to others, accumulate power by appearing to be devoid of ‘mess’. They end up destroying many many lives around them. As parents they most often raise children who are even more effectively destructive then they themselves. The ‘cleaner’ these people make themselves appear the more dangerous they become.

If we are blessed we learn early on that the goodness of life is not in running away from what is difficult, but in facing it, being challenged, and overcoming the challenge. Sometimes there is a reward. For the most significant and difficult challenges the reward is ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’, seen only with eyes equipped to see God’s work.

The disciples know it is difficult travelling with Jesus. The disciples know there is danger staying with Jesus, the signs are clear that trouble BIG TROUBLE is ahead. Some people leave, no longer facing the difficulties and dangers. Jesus turns to the twelve and asks if they, too, will leave.

Peter’s response is that they will stay because they believe Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Where else would they go? Well there are lots of places they could go. And lots of other ‘teachers’ that they could follow. None are like Jesus, though.

That is what they have experienced, as Jesus reaches out to the worst sinners, the most vulnerable people (women and men alike, and children), and to the most sick. They have learned that the difficulty and danger of following Jesus is the only way to experience the real, profound, powerful, and live giving goodness of life.

So it is with us today. We need not seek out difficulty. It will come our way. We need only face it with all the grace and love Jesus has demonstrated for us.

Until the great difficulty finds us, for every day we have the ability, we ‘collect two days’ worth of firewood, one for this day, and one for the day we ‘cannot gather firewood’ and it is ‘cold, life threatening cold.’ Then when the ‘cold of difficulty that can kill us’ finds us, we will be equipped with ‘firewood aplenty’. We will have God’s real grace, embodied in the reality of this world like ‘firewood’, that we can draw on to see us through.

When we find ourselves having walked into a hell of our own or someone else’s making, knowing Jesus was here before us, is with us even now again, and that cooler days are ahead, we need to keep moving, right through the heat of hell to the refreshing air of a good thundershower providing cool winds and the water of life.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 13

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Sacrificing a Tree

a dead tree for firewood is one thing,

stripping the bark to kill a living tree for no good purpose is evil.

Isaiah 53:5

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

John 11:51-52

He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

Words of Grace For Today

We humans understand how innocent people or animals are sacrificed to ‘pay a debt’ and free us. There are two kinds of sacrifice, one destructive evil, one gracious goodness.

Rene Girard developed a few ideas that many have applied and adapted. At the core is his mimetic theory that we ‘remember’ we desire something by seeing others having it, which causes senseless competition between even friends. Competition leads to conflict and conflict cannot be between friends, so the friends use a scapegoat (an innocent, vulnerable bystander) on whom they pile fictitious blame. This cathartic release of blame onto a third party relieves the conflict between the two friends and they continue on, the desire that caused the conflict resolves into the senselessness it was at the beginning. The friendship is saved, the friends continue on.

The vulnerable, innocent scapegoat is destroyed.

This is the destructive evil sacrifice.

Girard interprets the story of Jesus’ sacrifice for us as God’s clear statement that scapegoating innocent, vulnerable people is not acceptable or needed, just as God’s clear statement by calling Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice his only son Isaac, and then stopping Abraham, was that God did not want any child sacrificed to himself.

God clearly does not want destructive evil sacrifice by any humans.

God does send his son, Jesus, to live, preach, teach, heal and sacrifice himself to the corrupt power of his time, the Roman empire and the Chief Priest. This is the sacrifice of gracious goodness. It is chosen by the one surrendering to sacrifice. The sacrifice does not destroy innocent and vulnerable people. Exactly the opposite, it gives life to all.

Jesus calls us to wisely sacrifice, sometimes little, sometimes everything, in order that other people will be able to live. We do not send someone else to be the sacrifice. We go ourselves, knowing that all we are and have is a gift from God, and if God can use us to give life, then as followers of Jesus we can give of ourselves, and even give everything of ourselves, in order that others may live, and live in the abundance of Grace, Love and Hope that God created us all to enjoy.

So much in life tries to get us to strive to achieve and receive at others’ cost (the destructive evil sacrifice). This is not the way of life for the followers of Jesus, and for all the children of God.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 11

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Sing Praise

to the One who rides upon the Clouds

Who is the Light in the Clouds

Who is the Light of the World.

Psalm 68:4

Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds— his name is the Lord— be exultant before him.

Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Words of Grace For Today

Our human survival instincts keep us much more alert for trouble, mindful of the troubles of the past, than basking in the good things of life.

It would have done our for-bearers little good (and we might not be here) to sit around the campfire regaling their escape from the mountain lion (who hunts humans for sport) earlier that day, letting the mountain lion pick them off in their relaxed stupor. Better to notice their success with a slight sigh of relief and continue building their defences, keeping a very alert watch for the silent hunter.

So also today we need to keep sharp, guarding ourselves against dangers of this life, much less from four legged animals, and much more from the Evil One working through two legged animals (ourselves included.)

Yet that war is already won, and the battles we are left to fight may even destroy us, but they cannot determine the outcome of the war: Jesus conquered death and all evil with his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection to life.

While yet alert for danger, we also need to not turn everything into danger. We do need to celebrate all that God has done for us, meeting our daily needs for survival in this abundant life God provides for us. Celebrating God’s work for us, God’s protection, reminds us we cannot survive on our own, that the Evil One can snatch us away if we try to survive on our own.

Songs since the beginning of time have carried profound meaning, combining the rhythms of life, the melody of the spheres, and the words of God-given visions. Not all songs do this. Many cheapen the possibility reducing life to a crude and corrupt perversion of life as God gives it to us. Perhaps the worst version of those crude songs are ones that mention God’s name and carry little of God’s real blessing.

There are plenty of good and profound songs, the songs that carry God’s love and purpose for us give life. These we can sing to express our joy each day for all God has done for us. Some of these songs are simple chants, mantras really, like Dona nobis pacem. Others are complicated working through the darkness of life to a purpose of health and resilience, like Cohen’s Anthem. Some even bring hope and thanks to our hearts in spite of the composer’s intent, like Tikaram’s Cathedral Song. Many have no words, like Anthony’s Song of Hope.

There is no shortage of songs already composed and many more will be composed. They provide us a full song book from which we can sing God’s praise, rejoicing each day for all that was, all that is and all that will be – only by God’s Grace.