As God mixes us bad people in with creation and comes up with Grace and Wonders!
Psalm 71:16
I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.
Ephesians 2:10
We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Words of Grace For Today
It’s simple: God created us to do good works.
We sign God’s praises for God’s righteousness, God’s alone.
It’s all way too simple said this way and expounding on just these words will leave out the truth about God all together.
We will set ourselves up to have to praise God, and God alone. We will set ourselves us to do what we are created to do: to do good works. We will fail, and many of us will lie to ourselves and others in order to pretend we are not failing … so great is the cognitive dissonance when we cannot do the good deeds we think we are created to do.
Not that we should give up on doing good works and praising God alone.
On our own we can never do either.
How is life then ever at all good enough with us for God to even pay us any attention?
Simple in a word, and as complicated as the whole universe held together at the subatomic level, yet vulnerable to even the smallest parasites and viruses!
Grace is that Word. God acts first to forgive and renew us. Then, guided by the Holy Spirit (in spite of our wishes and understandings that would lead us astray) we are able by Grace to do good deeds.
Thanks be to God, for the greatest miracle is that God chooses to save us, again and again.
We start each day with prayers. We end each day with thanks.
All day long we are caught (if we stop to notice at all) by the wondrous miracles God does to forgives us and renew us … we are caught up on God’s Kingdom, and we share it, imperfect and ungraceful as we are, with others … who are also imperfect (needing forgiveness) and ungraceful as the like us bungle through life, as if we were wild elephants in a china shop.
Crash, Bang, Crash.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle
We keep breaking God’s heart of steadfast love. And God keeps on forgiving us and renewing us.
Now that is a simple word and as complicated as moving to live in the mountains and ensuring we can enjoy both sunrise and sunset; The way the world works, we are privileged if we can have either one or the other … but both, and new life? That’s a miracle for which we can give God thanks and praise each day.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
Mark 10:27
Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’
Words of Grace For Today
Tina stood outside her camper, breathing in the sunset air with light pounding against the still lake waters. How had it come to this? Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of Gaslighting?
She had not earned it, nor felt any claim to it, though her attachment to the land and waters ran through her bones deeper than it had a right to.
For mortals this would be impossible to imagine; but even this is not impossible for God.
For years what troubled her is that people could do what they had done: lied, gaslit, scapegoated, made false reports to the police, blatantly lie in court (even police officers), and then the lies the judges told in order to convict her, send her to prison. How could people choose to do such things? How could people think they would get away with it, and then it seemed they got away with it.
She had always known she had not committed the crimes, or done the terrible things reported and rumoured about her around town. The impact of being declared a criminal though ran deep and she questioned what she had done wrong to ‘earn’ this kind of treatment, even if people were so evil, corrupt and cruel to do to her and say about her the things they had.
It took years of loneliness, despair, prayer, hope, and many repeat acts of people lying about her, pushing her back down as she tried to gain a voice. That was it for the first few years, silenced about the false police reports and false charges. Then silenced about the lies told to the courts. Silenced by unjust and cruel judges. Everyone was so afraid of the truth, now that the ‘game was afoot’ to scapegoat her for evil they had previously, otherwise done, and which they still continued to do.
It took years of coming to understand that the evil done to her had very little if anything to do with her at all. All those years of confusion, pain, loneliness, silence, and lost hopes. Slowly, ever so slowly she came to understand how very little it had to do with her and how terrible the things were that she had learned about, the lies and games that people played creating the lies, the horrendous perversions that people participated in and covered up, with influence, money, and raw force.
Arnold had invited, begged, persistently courted and pursued her. In court he’d said she was the one who had pursued him, for his money, for his children, for his home. All of that was lies. He had pursued her for the good company she was, for her great way with children, and, after he’d seduced her, for the sex. He made out that he was charmed, needy, and fulfilled by her. But he really knew nothing about love at all. He begged her to marry him and not just have an affair. She agreed and he promised they would marry when she was divorced. And when she was divorced he said they didn’t need to get married, that it would be just like they were married.
On it went, a marvellous, unbelievable six months of being in love, with the isolation from friends, the constant critique of little things mostly of things he did and blamed her for, the silence about her past, and all the stories about how perfect his first wife was. All that even after he confided to her that he had driven her to kill herself when her two life insurance policies overlapped and both paid out handsomely making him a multimillionaire in months. She was perfect in every way, and when she made a wrong decision he made sure she changed her mind and made the right one, especially the last decision to end her life.
He went to work on Tina right away, and got her on a drug that caused her to be suicidal, and he drove her hard, hard, hard until one day with half a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of alcohol Tina was ready to find her freedom from Arnold’s abuse.
How had it come to this?
How had that come to sitting by a lake breathing in the sunset with light pounding against the still lake waters. Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of abuse, Gaslighting, and one suicide that failed only because the cream in the Irish Cream slowed the absorption of the sleeping medication – that took three days to work it’s way out of her system?
How had it come to this after that?
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; God’s understanding is beyond measure.
So many times Tina had resigned her to God’s care and understanding of what was being done to her, for it made no sense at all, not at all, at all!
It took years but it had come to this, by the lake.
Tina still did not understand, though she agreed, For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.
…
Where are you today? How did you get there?
What unbelievable challenges blocked your path so many times in so many ways?
How has God shown you, that for God all things are possible?
My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips.
Colossians 1:11-12
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
Words of Grace For Today
Life is tough, even cruel, and overpoweringly challenging to one’s own sanity, soul, and spirit.
What God gives us, freely, more than overcomes all that, easily, if we but recognize reality as it is.
These days it is a bit more than normal, after a Trump presidency more noticeably than otherwise, to make up whatever one wants to, to spin reality inside out and upside down, or just make a clean departure from it, all the while claiming to speak only the truth.
Wonderful way to live, making it up as you go, in whatever way you think will be most beneficial to you; to hell with all the people that you hurt or destroy along the way.
Feasting on God’s reality is much easier. One gets to admit everything about life and how it is, the good and the bad … and the very bad. After all God forgives it all and gives us new life each day.
Which gives us an unending source of strength to face how cruel and tough and overpoweringly challenging life is to our sanity, soul, and spirit. The promise that pulls us through it all, keeps us moving forward in Grace is that God sees us as another inheritor as God’s own children with all the saints in light.
The company is made up of great sinners all, and great God-made saints. No need to make up falsehoods to get through anything. We get to feast each day on the bread of life and drink the living water. Nothing compares.
Meanwhile our enemies live in fear that the truth will catch up with them, that their lies will be exposed, and that they will be found out to be fakes. The truth causes them real terror. Which is a horrible way to live.
We, meanwhile, are able, no matter what happens around us, to sing God’s praises in thanks for the grace upon grace that God pours over our lives without end all day long, every day! We have strength that comes from God’s glorious power, making us prepared to endure everything with patience. Life does not get better!
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
Matthew 11:28
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Words of Grace For Today
Like no other words these are so welcome …
now after 15 months plus of Covid 19 restrictions and unknowns,
when my enemies pile on more lies and destruction, take more money I will never have piling debt on debt, and when it seems there are too few people who know who I a really am. Because I certainly am not the person reported to and by the RCMP, or testified about in the courts, or convicted and labelled a vexatious litigant by judges who care not for the actual truth,
when illness and disabling arthritis and injury combine to keep me from doing what I had planned to do to keep healthy, busy, and keep the mosquitoes at bay: mow, mow, and again mow,
when the death of a loved one rips the foundation of life out from underneath us,
when the darkness of the Evil One convinces us that the world is always going to be dark, even when the sun shines longer today than any other day in a year, and that evil will always win the day,
…
What we thirst for at those times, and now, is a place to rest in safety and
Jesus calls to us:
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Once again God works to convince us, to reassure us with hope beyond hope, that
With joy we will today draw water from the wells of salvation.
There are no better words that these:
Come you who are weary and I will give you rest, so that with joy you will draw living water from the wells of salvation!
When we have rested, and washed ourselves and souls once again clean, when we have drunk our fill, then Christ calls us to share these words, these opportunities to rest and be renewed, and this living water. Christ calls us because there are so many people weary, carrying heavy burdens, who lose themselves as if they were separated from the love of God.
These words, these offers, this living water is all we have, it’s all we need to be able to share, it is all that anyone needs from life.
What joy comes when God calls us out of our weariness, and we share it all with others!
We ponder your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.
Ephesians 2:22
In Christ Jesus you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
Words of Grace For Today
God’s temple, that temple built by humans, is a great place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works.
God’s temple, that temple built by God – that is all of creation and especially the wildernesses untouched by human ‘domination’, development, and destruction – is the place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works visible and obvious before one’s eyes, if one will open them and notice what is there.
God’s temple, that temple, the body that God dwells in, in each of us provides no end of cause to pause, contemplate, and ponder all of God’s great works that give us breath and life, re-newed life, and hope.
God’s temple, that temple, the body of Christ made up of all the followers of Jesus the Christ, through all time and in all places, is the most remarkable opportunity to contemplate and ponder the great works of God, for in the gathering of Christ’s followers (not at all the greatest people ever) the evidence of God’s Grace is blatant to even the casual observer. Here, in those Christians alive now, great sinners we each and all are and by Grace God-made saints we each and all are, along with the sinner-saints of all times and place, give ample witness to God’s greatest work; that by Grace God claims us, walks with us (even when we sin, trying to ‘run from’ God), forgives us, renews us, and sets us free (sin-free, though we always choose otherwise) to live each day again. That marvellous Grace, for each of us, and that marvellous Grace among us, holds us alive, in body, mind, and spirit. That Grace does not cease when we try for the million-times-millionth time to ‘run from God.’ God’s Grace, miraculously accompanies us through all our lives and into eternity.
If the trees create remarkable shadows on the ‘dark side’ of the sun’s light, we humans cast a shadow far more obvious with our ‘trying to run from God’ efforts. The Grace of God, in the Light of Christ, does not fail to shine even on the cloudiest of days or the darkest moonless nights. Our sins make God’s Grace as blatantly obvious as the trees’ shadows on the dew lit grass of the early morning sun.
This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love.
This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you (no matter what you have done ‘running from God’, or how desperate your enemies are that attack you, or how lost in it all you may find yourself!)
This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you, this day, this night, and your every tomorrow.
This is worth pondering, and being awestruck by once again.
My companions who went up with me made the heart of the people fail; yet I wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.
Revelation 3:11-12
I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Words of Grace For Today
There are many days when God’s coming cannot come soon enough, when enemies not only seek to destroy us, but are well on their way, and our days seem numbered, short … ever so short.
We hope beyond hope that this new day when the sun rises justice will prevail over all evil attempts to do us in. There are so many days that nothing goes well for us and the efforts of evil against us seem to slowly work to take away all that life can provide us.
One may well think, like ordinary humans can and do, that what we seek is revenge. This is far from it; we want the evil efforts against to stop. We want those stopped, those who continually do such evil, not only to us but to others as well, and so easily, so readily, so blithely. We want it to stop and we want those who do it to stop doing it. We want them, not killed, not even maimed, we want them converted to become God’s people, people who resist evil and by grace do good for all people wherever and whenever possible.
We know there will always be people who make the hearts of God’s people to fail. We know there will always be one or two of God’s people, like Joshua, to inspire us to be the best we can be.
We know that since Jesus has written on us the name of God, and it is indelible, and cannot be removed ever, that nothing can separate us from God’s love.
God is gracious, and we, with God’s name written indelibly on us, are able to be gracious for all people. We are not merely able to be gracious ourselves, we are able to be God’s grace for others.
So we do not wish, even for our enemies, that they come to an end of life. Rather we wish even and especially for our enemies, that will come to receive grace, recognize it, and turn to God as new and faithful followers of Jesus, the Christ.
So it is that we follow Jesus, who conquered all evil, even death, by sacrificing himself, paying the price we see sins will cost (our lives – though Jesus gives his for us), and rising to new life, as God raises us to new life when our sins are forgiven.
What a life, an abundant life, which cannot be taken from us by even our worst enemies!
We, by grace, pray that we may wholeheartedly follow the Lord our God, so that it may be well with us in the New Jerusalem, starting this day, already here on this earth … and that it may be well for all people (even our worst enemies!)
This is our crown to give life abundant to others.
He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.
Luke 24:30-31
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many things that people do to others that are so hideous one can hardly believe we humans are capable of such things. There are so many things that people do to others that no one ever finds out about. Some are so evil that every effort is made to conceal them from all time. Others are so marvellous, and yet no one gets to celebrate that at least every once in a while a human being is actually capable of doing something to others that is a gracious and merciful … and generous … as God is with us all.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what evil things that person has done. They have concealed them well enough from us.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what great things that person has done. Somehow we do not put two and two together.
Fifty five year old Joe had never married. He was not gay, or mean, or uninteresting, or poor. Nor was he wealthy, addicted to chemicals or work or anything at all. He was just plain, not aggressive, not driven. He was an introvert so life alone did not bother him at all. He was well educated and still he found work as he could doing this and that, never for much more than a simple living. He loved the outdoors, not shooting at it or fishing food from it, just to be in it. He hiked mountains to find solitude. He took photos of some magnificent things in nature, moving and still, large and so small though he rarely shared them with anyone.
When Maggie met him climbing a mountain taking photos of a pair of eagles playing in the sky they hit it off right away. They shared a love of being in nature, enjoying the solitude, finding beauty in unexpected corners. They spent months out in nature together, and it did not matter to either that he was 15 years older than she … they fell in love. Despite her children from her deceased husband and her parents not approving at all, they were married.
Her parents had been looking for a home of their own for decades. Maggie, as the only child, knew exactly their mantra of what they wanted: a three bedroom house, with a garden and shed out back for her mom to grow a garden of vegetables and flowers. A garage large enough for their small car and a boat on a trailer for her father to use fishing. A few months after the wedding, which her parents did not go to, one of their oft-contacted-realtors called them. They’d found the perfect house for them. They thought for sure they could not afford it, but the realtor said that it was listed at a rather unbelievable price for a fast sale, and they could afford it. They bought it and moved in within the week.
Maggie’s twin daughter and son each had their eye on different colleges, but neither could afford it. They applied and were accepted. Both were offered financial packages that made it possible for them. So off they went to their dream studies.
Then Maggie was diagnosed with cancer; she battled it with Joe at her side. Her children and her parents came once early on and then stayed away, showing their judgment against Joe. Within a month she died, the pain only somewhat mitigated by the large morphine doses.
Her children and her parents openly blamed Joe, though there was little reality in it. They were angry, looking for someone to blame. Joe was devastated to have lost his only love in his life.
Three years after her death Joe invited Maggie’s parents and twins over for a coffee at his simple house. When they sat to drink tea and coffee, Joe asked about the garden and the boat, and about the twin’s studies. It was not until they had finished their coffees and teas, along with homemade cake and ginger snaps that they realized the details of Joe’s questions could only be asked by someone who knew so much more than they had told Maggie about even before their marriage. It was minutes later as they said good bye and walked to their cars that it became clear: Joe and Maggie together had made the parent’s house and the twins studies possible.
As the parents and children had condemned the two, they had responded with grace and generosity to give them their dreams … and they had only discovered it years later after Maggie’s death … and after they had blamed Joe for Maggie’s death.
God does not let us go on and on without recognizing the wonder of God’s deeds of grace and mercy for us. So after Jesus has spent the day with the disciples teaching them everything (and they do not recognize him because he has died) when Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
By God’s grace and mercy we know all that God needs us to know of his wondrous deeds.
The question of our lives each day is this:
What are we going to do, since God equips us to be the doers of such generous grace and mercy?
He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Words of Grace For Today
Lord have mercy on us!
The people, led by Joshua, move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. They are going to take it, occupy it, and claim it as their God given right. They have something of a claim to some of the land, for this is where Abraham and Sarah raised first Ishmael and then Isaac, and their grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and after them the great grandchildren including Joseph. The 2nd generation of those who ran from Pharaoh’s slavery to be delivered into the Wilderness are all there is left, for those that were delivered from Pharaoh’s chariots and army through the Red Sea, turned against God at Sinai, made a godlet, an idol of their own gold in the form of a calf, and worshipped it.
Now, the story is told that God has subdued the ancient gods, shattered the forces of old, driven out the enemy before them and called on them to ‘Destroy.’
For the Love of God, how can we mess up God’s story for us so badly.
And then Luke continues in the same vein, for it is not a seldom embraced idea that somehow ‘we’ are good or at least ‘chosen’ and ‘blessed by God’ and they (or all others) are bad and not chosen and not blessed, and here as it reads are destroyed.
First off we ought to notice with open minds that the ancient gods are not subdued. They and their supports in force have risen up in the form of ‘new age’ religions.
Second off we ought to notice that God has not driven off the enemy before us. The enemy is still here, doing great damage to so many people. Further, the greatest enemy is not those that work against us; it is ourselves working against God who give power to evil from others and from within ourselves. We end up worshipping that ‘golden calf’ of our own making from our own ‘gold’. We turn from God as fast and thoroughly as any of God’s people ever have!
Third off we ought to notice that humans have used God as an excuse to ‘destroy’ since the beginning of time. The story of Jesus, the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love does not include destroying our enemies. It teaches us that we, like God does for us and all people, are called to love, forgive, and hope that God can save our enemies, as God has saved us.
Lastly we ought to notice that God’s mercy, in so much of Jesus’ story this is made blatantly obvious, extends not to just a chosen few, not to just those who fear and trust God, but to all people, even our worst enemies! God’s mercy extends to all people, from generation to generation.
Those who God has saved, as we are, received abundant life. That is not a life of comfort and abundance. It is life lived, no matter our circumstances, blessed with God’s truth, with God’s Promise, and with the call to extend Grace and life abundant to as many people as we possibly can in our ‘3 score, ten’ that we breathe.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
Luke 12:22-24
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!’
Words of Grace For Today
I am not sure about this:
You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
We humans have a way of ‘desiring’ so much more no matter how much we have.
Further the birds, bees, and beasts, and not to forget the fish, struggle under the effects of our ‘possessing the land’, ‘dominating it’, and destroying ecosystems that have taken millions of years to establish!
So?
The truth is God created the world quite capable of sustaining all the life created on it, satisfying the desire of every living thing. God promises to provide for the needs those desires are given to life of all kinds, in order that all life can continue on God’s good earth.
That includes our desires that God gave us so that we could continue to live among all the life on this planet.
How did we screw it up so badly!?!
Well, God loved us, wanted us to be able to love, which means we need to be able to choose to love or not, and …
Well so much of the time we humans have chosen, do choose, and forever will choose to do other than love! Youch, what a price!
We are destroying what provides us the ability to live on earth! It’ll take us maybe 100 or so, maybe only 25 or 5 years, to unmake the earth capable of sustaining life, something God created in 6 days, or millions of years measured in our time.
What power we have … to destroy!
And what power we have, as well, to love, when we so choose. Choosing to love is possible, for any one, for every one, of us … though only as God makes us able.
The beginning of God making us able is to promise that God values us greatly. Knowing that we can choose to act responsibly and responsively to that unconditional, life-giving and life-renewing love!
God willing and ‘the creek not rising’ (maybe it ought to be ‘the oceans not rising’) we may still live on planet earth in 1000 years and more!
God’s Word started this all. God’s Word sustains us all. Certainly God’s Word is able to bring us to that miracle of miracles.
So what are we going to do today, with God’s love?
I took you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.’
Romans 11:1
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
Words of Grace For Today
The history is that God chose the Israelites, only the Israelites. Everyone else was unchosen and unclean. This we humans do to make ourselves special: we claim that we are chosen and all others are not. This does not make us special. It makes us typically self-centric, arrogant, and judgmental.
When Paul was converted after Saul went blind on the road to Damascus, he studied for years, held himself in retreat from activity. He underwent a profound change, from an effective, eager, persistent pursuer and persecutor of Christians, to a leading proponent of Jesus’ Way of living, i.e. by Grace.
Paul did not restrict sharing the Good News, which he encountered as Jesus’ Way of being God’s people, with just the traditionally ‘chosen’, the Israelites. Paul went out to share the Good News with anyone and everyone who would listen and wanted to be baptized in this Way of living.
That brought the obvious question: were the Jews wrong to claim God had chosen them, or had God changed God’s mind and rejected those God had earlier ‘chosen’?
Paul’s answer is simple: No. God’ choosing people is expanded, not ended. The Jews are still chosen, as are all other people who Christ calls to follow his Way.
History repeats itself. Many times God’s people have declared that only they are God’s chosen. As many times God’s message comes to bear on the mess this exclusive claim creates: God’s chosen are chosen, DOCH God does not choose only some people. God chooses all people.
Our human way of living does not make sense of this very well, if at all.
It does not need to. God still chooses all people and offers them abundant life. Not life in abundance (of wealth, things, etc.), but life filled to overflowing with blessings and the ability to share those blessings with others, all others.
God gathers us from the ends of the earth, from all corners of creation, claims us as God’s servants, does not cast us off, and sends us out to share the Good News. (Like Paul.)
