Choose – Page 25

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – June 3

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Dead and Dying

Wonders of Creation

See What You Will

Beauty is Still There in Creation

Psalm 34:16

The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

Matthew 7:7

‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

Words of Grace For Today

When instructing new skiers, it is important to teach them to fall first, then to ski. Falling is inevitable, especially as one learns, and for most skiers always. It is also important to teach them to focus on what they want to do, and where they want to go … not on what they do not want to do and where they do not want to go, like into a tree, other people, and obstructions of any kind.

God created us able to love, and therefore also able to choose (otherwise it is not love since an essential part of love is one’s choice to love). Choice means there is something other than love to choose, which is hate, which is sin and evil.

That is a simple explanation, though helpful when we get frustrated that evil persists all around us.

God wants us to remember and focus on choosing the Goodness of life that God makes possible for us in creation. To accomplish this God turns away from evildoers (that part of each of us, not a ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ who supposedly do no evil), so that our memory of evil is cut off from all the earth going forward.

That starts with forgiveness.

God forgives us so that we deal with our sins:make confession and restitution … and then move on, focusing on the Goodness of creation, instead of focusing on our sins. Likewise God makes us then able to forgive others, so that we and they can move to focus on Goodness, instead of their sin and the evil it reflects and creates in the world.

Jesus sends us out to tell Jesus’ story, of forgiveness bought and paid for at huge cost to God. That story focuses us on what is Good in creation, and helps us minimize evil’s role.

While evil is eradicated from memory (or a good start towards that is made) Jesus assures us that the Holy Spirit is with us. When we need, desire, or hope for something, Jesus encourages us to ask, seek, and knock; The Holy Spirit will help us receive all that is given to us, find all that God has made for us, and the doors that lead to an abundant life in God’s creation will open to us.

Ask, it will be given; seek, you will find; knock, the door will open: all this does not apply to asking for, seeking out, and knocking at the door of evil. Thank God. What a mess we would make of the world … of course we’ve done just that anyway.

God gives us blessed things overflowing, to help us choose to leave evil alone to die on the vine.

Like a virus that will not go away, we remain infected with the desire for other than love, i.e. evil; thankfully God continually transforms us into saints, so that we can also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, embrace the Goodness of creation.

Ask to see beauty where you are, you will see it.

Seek out the wonders of God’s creation, and you will find them.

Knock on the door behind which blessings overflow, and that door will open with an outpouring of blessings flooding your life.

Thanks be to God.

Take that Covid 19.

By being respectful and kind to others we can choose the goodness of life without this virus infecting us, and through us others.

Mayor Nenshi, of Calgary, said on CBC: Don’t act like someone who doesn’t want to get sick. Act like someone who already has the virus and doesn’t want to spread it.

Act like everyone you come into contact with is your favourite 90 year old grandmother.

Remember clean hands, clear heads, open hearts, stay safe, be kind always!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – June 1

Monday, June 1, 2020

The Rock

Jesus, the only Rock of Salvation

Isaiah 44:8

Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one.

Matthew 10:27

What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

Words of Grace For Today

Whistle blowers are not generally well received or liked by others. People simply do not like to have their nefarious activities exposed to the light of the public’s scrutiny … and possibly to face criminal charges for crimes committed.

Investigative reporters put everything on the line to search out sources, for stories that people of power may not want to have published, and which usually some people of ordinary living desperately need to have published, so that things can be set right for them, at least somewhat.

We do not need to work investigating to get the story we live to tell. Jesus story is an old, old story. We can hear it in many different voices and settings.

The story has been told since the days of old.

Jesus tells us to tell the story again. And again.

And again!

We are God’s witnesses to other people that God sent Jesus to save us from our sins, to give us new life, and to show us we no longer need to scapegoat or gaslight others in order to gain peace for ourselves.

The Holy Spirit brings us peace. We reside in it, abide in it, and when we sojourn, it stays with us. It is as permanent with us as the cross on our foreheads at baptism that never goes away. Claimed as God’s children we need not fear anything.

Not a virus, not anything.

Which does not mean that we are stupid about protecting ourselves and others from the virus as so many people are, walking as close to others as is convenient, breathing on others without further thought, and loudly telling everyone that there is no virus here!

When we are not afraid, then we can be wise about protecting ourselves and those we live with from the virus. The recommended precautions are just a beginning. We are ever vigilant … and always we pray, God protect us, for you alone are God, the rock of our living, the rock of our salvation.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – June 2

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

…

All Beauty Begins to Die

and wither as if winter were setting in

1 Samuel 2:1

Hannah prayed and said, ‘My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.

1 Peter 1:8

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,

Words of Grace For Today

It is sometimes much easier than at other times to give God praise. We stand in awe of Hannah, though, because her heart exalts in the Lord at a most unlikely time. Her victory is nothing small. It is what Jewish women (or so we are told by tradition, fuelled by the need to increase in number in a sparsely populated earth!) in her day saw as God blessing them, that is to have a child demonstrated God blessed them. To be barren was the opposite. Societal expectations aside, Hannah has prayed for a child, has given birth to one, a son, who they name Samuel. So far so good!

Before Hannah sings her praise of victory, she has prayed with such fervour that Eli thought she were drunk. Now! now she gives up this child, her only child to Eli that he may be raised as a Nazirite! Hannah sings to God of her victory as she loses what she has prayed for: her child.

I’ve had children and raised them as the at home dad, long before that was common at all. I cannot imagine giving up one of my children. I was forced to, due no fault of my own, but as part of being terribly gaslit. It was and still is one of the most painful losses I have ever suffered. Those responsible, who are mentally ill, I have forgiven. But others, people of position and power, authority and responsibility who do this repeatedly, routinely, as a matter of course, and then cover it up … these people I cannot forgive, and I have bound their sins – God must deal with them, judge them, expose their sins that they cover up so well, and then move on as if they have done nothing wrong. I have learned of a corruption that I never thought could exist except in history books. My response is to remember everything, and pray to God every day. Every day I practice who I am and whose I am, so that I neither forget the gaslighting nor God’s gifts of beauty, joy and love that remain in my life, despite the Gaslighters’ efforts to ruin everything in me and in my life. I give God praise each day, but not for the loss of my children, or the gaslighting that was done to accomplish it.

Hannah gives up her only child willingly! and then sings God’s praises! She does give up Samuel to live with Eli and to be raised to serve God. She trust her son to God’s care and service. Samuel will become more than he ever imagined.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves us to be more than we imagined we could ever be. Too often the Devil invites us to be more malicious and destructive than we ever imagined we could be.

We pray again today that no matter the stress of Covid 19 or anything else in our lives, we will respond to the Holy Spirit working in us, and not the Devil working against us all.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 31

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Living Here is a Little Tents, no Covid though.

Better than some

Temporarily Good Enough

It’s Inhabited by Grace

Isaiah 5:8

Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land! The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.

1 Corinthians 12:13

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Those who greedily gather more and more for themselves, though they have many houses, even if the are physically in one of those houses, that house is desolate and uninhabited; for it takes a person of gratitude and generosity to inhabit even a small house, and it takes yet more grace, gratitude and generosity to inhabit a large house, yet alone a mansion.

Row after row of BIG BOX HOUSES line the new subdivisions. Families move in and the houses are left without inhabitants.

To be a person … a person at all and more-so a person in God’s Kingdom … one needs to rely on the Holy Spirit gifts given at baptism …

One needs to drink the Holy Spirit and become one of the saints connected with the other saints through every generation …

working with the gifts the Holy Spirit gives you to build up the people of God

and as the Spirit makes one able, to call upon the Lord in humble confession and profound gratitude for the forgiveness given, the new life received, and the Grace enabled in one’s heart, mind and strength.

There is no person who is not offered these gifts from the Spirit of God, all Greeks, Jews, Gentiles, Free and Slave (to the powers that be), of whatever gender or preference of drink or joy, whatever generation from whatever family. All are equal. All receive precious gifts. All can accept them with gratitude and live to build up instead of tear down the people of God.

From the gift of true soul-peace we gain the ability to generate external peace for those around us.

We pray, may our living spaces (some of us have no home) be inhabited with God’s people of Grace.

Charlotte is not Home

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 30

Saturday, May 30, 2020

All the Gold in the World

Cannot Create God’s Beautiful Creation

Numbers 22:18

Balaam replied to the servants of Balak, ‘Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God, to do less or more.’

2 Corinthians 2:17

For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence.

Words of Grace For Today

Human history is fouled with people using God’s name as a commodity, peddling it for sale, no matter the consequences. Or using it as a hammer to shame, condemn and control others. Or as a means to power.

The world today is built on globalized capitalism. Poor people living in conditions no human should have to endure, put their labour (time and energy and life-force) into the hands of wealthy multinational corporations to produce goods that rich people like us buy at great prices (for us), with the corporations taking more money from our purchase by far than the labourers receive for making the goods.

Everything can be bought and sold for a price. Leonard Cohen wrote that the Holy-Dove is bought and sold again. And while his poetry-words seem to refer to the process of Peace being sold and bought and sacrificed and sold and bought again, it is an image that applies to all that is good in life. Capitalism brings [in-]stability, false security, and irreverent comfort to a few people, while the great majority are kept in poverty, so as to be available for cheap labour, and so as not to consume what the few consider their zero-summed resources that support their comfortable, privileged lives.

It is not hard to write, read, or talk about the injustices in the economic systems of any age. It is dangerous to actually live so as to bring about a bit more justice, a little less injustice in one’s short time on earth.

Balaam speaks clearly to Balak (through his servants): Balaam is not for sale. God’s Word is not for sale. Balaam will not go against God’s Word, no matter the price paid by Balak. Telling power that it is corrupt and one does not and will not participate in that corruption is a good way to meet one’s maker more quickly, with a shorter sojourn on this earth than God may have made available to one otherwise.

Pastor Brian Rude, in El Salvador, reported that they are able to secure food for a few days. You think that your life is complicated a bit by Covid 19 restrictions. There most of the people do not have a secure food supply. They have no food supply, or water supply, or health care at all. Each day they need to venture out to find food, in the city, in the countryside. Most often water and food is there to be found, maybe … maybe enough to not die of starvation or illness from malnutrition. With Covid 19 if you venture out to secure food and water the police arrest you and place you in a quarantined area, which is more a prison than anything else, and the disease and death rates are astronomical. It’s a death sentence, slowly implemented.

What are your Covid 19 restrictions like? How are you coping? Do you have water and food enough, and the ability to secure more when you need them? Do you have the ability to worship as you choose? Do you have people who value you, whom you value, with whom you can speak freely, even if you cannot gather with them, cannot exchange hugs and handshakes, and cannot participate in food preparation and meals together?

Count your daily blessings!

Every challenge that we face (the real ones) is better met when one comes to each day thankful. A grateful heart and mind function better.

And as you meet others who are struggling, remember that you can be in much worse circumstances. The change can come as quickly as a day or less.

So be kind. You may be dependent on others’ kindness much sooner than you ever thought possible.

If you are one who cannot be kind, rather you are compelled to compete for as much as you can get and always demand more than you already have… if you are a greedy, covetous, dangerous, cruel person … well pray that you learn sooner than later, and before it is too late … that we are all in this together.

We are in this Covid 19 pandemic together. We are sojourning on earth as God’s people together.

What you do does come right around to you.

If you think that life is all zero-summed, then eventually that is all you will encounter, after you have ruined so many people it is impossible to count how many. And whether you get ‘enough’ of everyone else’s ‘share’ of what is available in goods, there will be no goodness in life left for you.

If you are kind and sacrificially generous with all that God has given into your care as a steward, then life will continue to be a blessing, and even if/when you do not have enough, or the vagaries of life catch you and you meet your Maker earlier than needed to have been: well every minute of your life will be an ever increasing overflowing abundance of gratitude and generosity. That is what life is about, that is what makes life good and worthwhile. The amount of goods you have and consume is not the measure of your worth, nor of the goodness of your life. Giving (and forgiving) to those in need is the measure of our worth before God.

One who stands in God’s presence, who with sincerity speaks God’s Word for others, will know first how to humbling fear and love God before anything else.

Pray that you are that person who is grateful and generous, and not the person who is greedy and covetous.

Covid 19 makes our choices to be blessed to be a blessing, OR

to greedily take what we can from everyone else

that much more obvious.

Learn, reflect, and grow in Christ.

God’s Wealth is In Light and Grace

Grace is Beyond Compare

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 29

Friday, May 29, 2020

Bare Bear

Face one of these up close without a wall and window between you

and you may give thanks for weeks.

Face the devil as we do each day

and there is cause to give thanks our whole life long.

Psalms 35:28

Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all day long.

Luke 24:52-53

They worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Words of Grace For Today

If you have ever faced death, like in a car accident that should have killed you, and recovered from the shock, you may be familiar with that overwhelming feeling of joy and gratitude at being alive!

On a late winter day we set out to a study conference. Unknown to us … well wait for that. Climbing a hill to a right full speed bend in the highway down to the hotel and lake that we would continue by on our way … with no warning the minivan started to fishtail.

The opposing lane was suddenly filled with vehicles and a semi. I held just a touch of power and barely held the van from spinning out. The turn finished I caught the fishtailing and it was just one moment from ending … when we hit the bridge over the railroad track very far below the van lost it completely as the tail end slowly spun counter clockwise, crossing the opposing lane, missing the railing on the far side of the bridge by less than a foot.

It hit the hard snow bank a few feet high already facing backwards and did a full flip in the air down the steep embankment, rolled twice more and stopped against the tree line at the bottom.

We walked to the hotel and when the highway patrol arrived he stayed only as long as it took to ensure we were okay and to share the news that he had 75 calls due to the ice storm that covered roads with black ice for hundreds of miles. Our near death accident was nothing compared to many fatalities that morning.

The next day, sore and stiff, with cuts on our hands and faces, we progressed through the usual work day … until … about supper time … we both told the other how fully alive, engaged and joyful we were. The day before we were not depressed but we had great cause to see life dimly, for the congregation we served had served up a real sour douzer.

This joy lasted for weeks.

This kind of surviving is exactly what Jesus does for us each day, forgiving us and setting us loose, free in the world to share the Good News … of Jesus’ forgiveness for everyone!

We get to be the feet, hands and voice of Jesus freely dispensing forgiveness that brings new life to everyone.

Give praise and worship God each day, all day long, even as we work, play, and relax.

This is what God created us to do.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 28

Thursday, May 28, 2020

No one to bring me to the water

and it’s all frozen hard.

Help.

Help us all through the ice of sin and shame.

Psalms 25:16

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

John 5:7-8

The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’

Words of Grace For Today

If ever there were a time when loneliness and afflictions were shared by so many people, even those who are not caught alone by the Covid 19 restrictions!

So we pray: God turn to us/to me, be gracious to us/to me. We’ve waited years for someone to carry us to the living water and immerse us in it so that our body, mind, and soul could be healed. Now we know, we only need Jesus to speak a Word, and we will be made whole again.

…

We are, since our baptisms, the hands, feet, and voice of Christ, anointed to bring the living Word to those in need.

Stand up, be counted among the saints, and speak.

Today speak with the holy healing whispers of the wind as the Spirit inspires you.

So many people thirst for the water that will make them whole.

Today speak of the water that overflows our cups giving all more than enough to drink.

So many people hunger to hear the word that will make them whole.

Today speak simple words of Jesus’ love renewed yet again in us, for all people.

Today, be God’s grace for others. ‘Pay the rent on the air you breathe’ today by doing Grace.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 26

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

God’s Pavement on Earth

God’s pavement looks wondrous wherever we are!

Psalms 14:2

The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Words of Grace For Today

Conformity to the world’s standards is required of anyone who wishes to prosper in the manners and methods of the world. Those standards change some from one millennium to the next, though their similarities are greater than their differences.

Human pride, greed, and coveting remain the same. The temptation to create or be one’s own God remains the same. The pursuits of this world work consistently on a zero sum game assumption. That is every generation assumes that there are going to be only so much whatever for everyone to enjoy, so the purpose of life becomes to ensure one gets more than others … by taking it from others.

God looks at us all (in each generation), to see if there are any of us who are wise. Is there anyone who understands the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, gracious generosity is the key to profound happiness, and giving, sacrificing, and sharing bring greater blessings than taking, competition, and hoarding for oneself.

A man insisted he be able to take all his wealth with him to heaven. He converted it all into gold and platinum. He was positive he’d won the competition that life is, he had more than anyone he knew. They buried him with enough gold and platinum to feed his whole country and all the neighbouring ones for a decade.

When he arrived St. Peter told him to leave the gold and platinum behind so he could be shown his room. He insisted he be able to bring it along. St. Peter laughed and let him pull the four carts that held just a small portion of it. Angels pushed the other 100 carts.

They stepped out onto the sidewalks made of platinum, and walked across the street of gold. Others stopped to gawk at the man hauling all those paving stones passed piles of it where the streets and sidewalks were being repaired.

The man insisted on pushing on, but as soon as he was out of sight of the others to save face, he asked St. Peter if he could leave it at the construction site they were passing. St. Pete nodded, ‘That’s why we took this longer route. Don’t worry though, everyone already knows about your paving stones. It’s time to learn somethings about God’s Kingdom. Are you ready to finally learn the basics?’

What paving stone foolishness do we each pursue daily?

What wisdom does Christ offer us each day?

What’s our next step, today?

God’s watching.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – May 25

Monday, May 25, 2020

We sojourn in these,

God in these [below]

pure clear beauty reflected in the weeds

Evil is not seen in the beauty of God’s Creation

But God is reflected even in the weeds of Creation

Psalms 5:4

For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you.

Ephesians 6:18

Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

Words of Grace For Today

God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

God is merciful and gracious.

God delights in forgiving and receiving home the sinner.

God delights not in wickedness. Evil does not travel to stay temporarily with God.

Evil, and we are that when we sin, tend to run from God. We do not travel to stay with God even temporarily. We want to hide from God’s view, God’s judgment, and our shame.

God though stays with us, no matter where we go. Evil does not stay with God, because God forgives it and transforms it, by the sacrifice of Jesus and through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Evil in God’s presence is transformed so that the evil is eradicated and God’s good creation abides with God.

That is really good news. It’s exactly as if God stayed with us when we venture out to places with people we are not supposed to be near, and we spread Covid 19 and are silent about where we’ve been so others are infect unawares, until there is another outbreak with no known source.

Except God’s presence eradicates the virus from us and from everyone else that would have been infected. And all is well, not because we’ve done the right things, but because God works for us in all things.

Except God does not eradicate Covid 19 or any other disease, contaminant, or destructive organisms that we can encounter in the world. God is with us, and suffers with us. God gives us eternal life starting the day we are baptized, but God does not make life free of danger for us.

God does send the Holy Spirit to guide us, inspire us, and to light a fire (under us, mostly).

Therefore each day we can pray as the Holy Spirit moves us, for all the other saints struggling, and all others, so that God will also transform their lives to be lives of purpose reflecting Christ’s sacrifice to bring life to so many.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Devotions – May 24

Sunday, May 24, 2020

The grass is greenest,

where the most manure is found

(where the cows ate for years, when this was a barn yard.)

Forgiveness is not needed for perfectly good people (they don’t exist!)

Forgiveness is needed for the rest of us, every last one of us!

Psalms 130:4

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

Colossians 3:13

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Words of Grace For Today

Rulers and people seeking power have long since used condemnation and fear to control people, with marginal success to surprisingly good success.

God is different. God seeks our respect through forgiving us, being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

One may (incorrectly) think that God works more on the carrot approach, and less on the rod approach. God goes in a considerably different direction, in fact in the opposite direction from both carrot and rod. Instead of motivating us to do the thing that God wants us to do, with either a reward (the carrot) or with threat of punishment (the rod) what God does requires that we take a step back from ‘trying to motivate’ others to do what we want them to do, and realize God approaches ‘motivating us’ to do what God wants completely differently.

God realizes that the matter of getting us to do what we were created to do is not at all getting us to recognized what we must do, then to choose to do it, and to follow through when the going gets tough.

God shows us with Jesus’ story that no human is capable on our own of recognizing, choosing or following through with what is right.

The problem is that we cannot do what is right, well enough, to make it right. When we fear condemnation and shame for failing, we do even worse things, fooling ourselves into thinking the good is something it is not, just so we can do it, or that we’ve done a good thing, when we’ve at best messed around with good just a bit too much to leave it good.

We need a permanent fix, a re-creation, a new start, total redemption, and total freedom … again and again and again and ….

God does not trifle with us. God inspires us through the work of the Holy Spirit in us to accomplish pieces of goodness, in spite of ourselves. Thank God or everything would be ruined by us!

Covid 19 is just another challenge that forces us to pause. It is a tremendous opportunity to see what we really are like when we cannot cover ourselves with consuming, owning, travelling …. You name it, we’ve used it to run from the reality of our lives.

Now, with much of that taken from us, we’re left to deal with more of the actual reality of our lives … as God’s creatures.

We can now as much as ever revere God, for God forgives us and sets us free from our sins to move into each new moment of time as God’s forgiven saints.

God equips us by Jesus’ example to forgive … ourselves, and to forgive others, freely, unconditionally, and repeatedly.

Thanks be to God, there is so much to do, so much forgiveness to do, especially for ourselves, our enemies, and the stranger who seeks refuge among us.

That’s why being kind is the beginning of every good day. If one is kind, it’s easier to move to forgiveness from kindness than any other attitude when forgiveness is required (and it always is or will be shortly.)