Are we like that, weighed down, instead of enjoying life!
Psalm 95:2-3
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
1 Timothy 6:14-16
He will bring about the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
Sometimes there is little time.
Still,
Give God thanks.
A foot and half plus of heavy snow fell. I had a full day, with little time to write.
Still there were many things to be thankful for, many more to laugh at, and some I just had to shake my head at. One over-arching thing keeps getting proven over and over: God has a sense of humour and keeps hoping for us … why else would we humans be left to do such ridiculously, humorously, crazy things that both fill the news and are apparent right in front of one’s eyes … too often done by the one who the eyes belong to!
Patch Adams had it right: the unexpected joyful thing gets people to notice a bit more of life, and life is wonderful. There is every reason to be “excessively happy.” So why not be that for as many people as you can?
God is everywhere watching, a Light that powers the universe, a Light so great we cannot behold it, so we need not wait. Here and now (in each moment of each day) is the right time and place to make a joyful noise to God!
Which do we see as we progress through life today?
Malachi 1:6
A son honours his father, and servants their master. If then I am a father, where is the honour due to me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due to me? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’
Matthew 21:28-31
‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?’
Words of Grace For Today
Everyday there are so many things and people that demand our attention and demand our subservience. The governmental orders that restrict our freedoms in order to protect us all from the deadly and maiming Covid 19 are high on the list of those we are constantly aware of.
Where does God fit on our list? How would we know? How would others know? Does it really matter where or if God is on our list of those we give our attention to and whom we give subservience to?
Malachi thought it does, as did Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, all the prophets and prophetesses, the woman who provided for Jesus and his disciples, and surely Jesus does!
Matthew points out how we humans too often recognize that we must give attention and obedience to God, but we can’t really be bothered when the rubber hits the road; we’ve got other things that keep us busy.
Wayne said he would honour God. But then in his honourable profession the temptations of greed and avarice, the pressures to perform the impossible, and the corruption of absolute power overwhelmed him. He had promised to honour God, but he honoured no one but his own reputation. Sitting in a position of power he destroyed people, and dealt with honest honourable people as cruelly as he could. He identified their greatest vulnerabilities and exploited them until they had no resistance or hope left. He loved watching people crumble behind him as he moved on to the next victim.
God cried, for his son, Wayne, who had started life with such great brilliance and promise, such extraordinary gifts and opportunities, such hope and kindness, had given up on himself, on the goodness of life, and on God.
Tina grew up with church all around, and saw the hypocrisy of her parent’s faith, the pastors’ greed and blatant sinfulness, and the church leaders corruption and dishonesty. She stood at her confirmation, as she thought she must for appearances and to avoid the guaranteed battles with her parents if she did not. She stood and professed her faith, but under her breath she cursed the whole process and her hypocrisy. Afterwords she stood by herself in the woods behind the church and cursed the church, it’s people and it’s God. She vowed she would never, ever do more than the absolute minimum to make people accept her and leave her alone. Later as an adult she would avoid the church at all costs! This she promised herself, and God if there was one.
With a budding career after scholarships and fellowships and the best education available in the world, Tina had it all. She was even considering getting married. She’d found a kind man, an honest man, a man of integrity who stood up for what was right and worked to bring justice to those to whom it was denied.
Then in a blink of an eye, he was dead, killed by an addict in a frenzied high on meth looking for money for more drugs. The addict had been a normal mother of two who needed knee surgery. Prescribed opiates for her pain even before the surgery, which was postponed twice, she became hooked. Her doctor did nothing except cut her off. She turned to prescription drugs on the street, and when she ran through all her family’s money losing them along the way, she turned to cheaper street opiates.
Tina tried to make sense of it all. It was impossible. Nothing made sense. Not her own life. Not the sad story of the addict’s life and her children without a mother. Not her fiance’s death. One day she found herself walking in a wood, praying that God would help her. She remembered that promise she’d made herself in the woods after her confirmation. Still she prayed. When she walked out of the woods, she went looking how she could make a good difference in the world. She found, trained, and volunteered at a safe injection site for addicts. She listened to the addicts who wanted to talk. Many came to trust her. She wasn’t fooled by their lies, or taken in. She listened. She learned what resources were available. If they asked for help, she was ready to guide them, sometimes even walking with them to the place where help was offered, where they could be given a safe apartment, where people would help them get stability, and help dealing with their addiction. She attended lots of AA and NA meetings, sitting in the back with an addict who’d asked her to come to support them.
…
Who are you today? Like Wayne or Tina? Full of words and short on action? Or full of action humbling submitting to God’s Word to love God, neighbour and self with all our heart, mind and strength, even our enemies?
Whoever each of us are this day, pray that none of us are like the priests who are so far lost we can say: ‘How have we despised God’s name?’
Let us honour God with our prayers, praise, and humble work to bring justice to all people, grace to all people, and hope to all people … starting with ourselves.
We and the Wilderness and all Creation need healing!
Jeremiah 23:3
Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.
Luke 15:4
Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
Words of Grace For Today
This past Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of Jesus, and our own baptisms. For what purpose are we baptized into God’s flock, into God’s family together as children?
What was God planning, when God gathered the remnant back into the fold and let them be fruitful and multiply?
Back then of course land was abundant, people scarce. Survival as a people required increasing the population enough to fend off enemies.
Now the earth is overrun by humans, multiplying out of control. Wild lands are difficult to find, precious when they are, and seldom well protected from being overrun by mining, oil extraction, clear cutting, paving over, filling in the swamps (nature’s water filtration system), and generally developing them so that they serve human short term interests at the cost of our long term survival.
Covid 19 is only nature’s latest reaction to us way-too-many humans putting un-survivable stress on the ecosystems of creation.
Very few of us have ever been close to having 100 sheep. The image still is clear. Even the most cantankerous, stubborn one among many is precious to God. So precious that God goes away from the flock grazing together in the wilderness in order to pursue that hard headed one … ok to be honest that ‘one’ is each one of us at some time or another – sometimes quite often.
Baptized, we are God’s people. It is too easy to write off people who stray from reality, God’s reality of Grace. It is very sensible to write off those who attack us to destroy us … better that than to go on the offensive to destroy all our enemies. (That policy relentlessly pursued always ends with only one survivor.) God does not let us abandon even our worst enemies. Instead God sends us, away from the flock, the safety we find in our lives, and God gives us the task of rescuing, with God’s Grace, the one stubborn, cantankerous one, even if that is our worst enemy.
God does not kill our enemies. God transforms them into one of God’s children … through our kindness and grace.
We can understand that Covid 19 is not God’s plan to reduce the human population by killing off so many of us.
It is surely a wake up call. Creation needs us to be responsible and work to reduce the human population and right now, to preserve what wilderness and swamps and forest lands and arctic tundra and rain-forest and savannas that are left … before none are left, and to save the many species who are threatened today with extinction.
Hard choices. Wake up. Help us all make them starting today, before there is no more today for us all. That certainly is not God’s choice for us, but God does not limit our choices; we are free to destroy ourselves and the earth’s ecosystems … and we are well on our way.
Or we can behave together as the baptized saints that God makes us to be.
The cuts sliced into the side grab the wood so the wedge doesn’t just pop back out.
God’s Word of Truth sometimes bites, so that it sticks in us!
Isaiah 56:8
Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
1 Timothy 2:3-4
This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Words of Grace For Today
In the movie, The Bucket List, two old men in a hospital room together are told they have six months, maybe a year to live. One’s a rich, mean old guy. The other a thoughtful kind man.
The kind man starts a bucket list, but crumples it up and throws it away when his bad news arrives.
The other picks it up and eventually they expand the list … and then together they head out on the rich man’s dime to live it, (sky diving, visiting the Great Wall and the Pyramids … ) until the kind man discovers the limits of running away from life and love at home. The rich guy has left his love far behind him in life.
They return, one dies, the other goes into remission. By last letter and final request the kind guy asks/commands the rich mean old man to finally visit his estranged daughter … and the mean old guy discovers he has a granddaughter.
That lets him check off “Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world!”
Life, Covid 19 being no exception at all, at all, is filled with harsh realities, severe limitations, and breath robbing losses.
Into this life, Jesus is born. He does not live a life of comfort. His end is an undeserved, excruciating death, the purpose of which is to demonstrate for us (and give us a story to tell our children and grandchildren about) how much God loves us. God loves us so much so that God chooses to pay for our sins with God’s own son’s life. We get to live, because of that love … we get to live abundantly …
… unless we wish to ignore the story and God’s Grace, Love and Joy for us!
God is still busy …
gathering in people, even cantankerous old Lutherans who think they are saved so they ignore the inspiration and directions of the Chief Medical Officer … opps … the directions of the Holy Spirit (some of which indeed come from the Chief Medical Officer).
God, after all, desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Who are we to get in the way of God’s wishes?
Who are we, once we are baptized and saved, to do anything but work to fulfill God’s wishes?
If not now when? You never know when death (or loss of health) will cut your time short so that you run out of time to complete your bucket list … or God’s bucket list for you.
If you don’t have a bucket list and have not realized the list God has for you try this one each day:
Be boldly kind!
And then pause, breathe, and listen: God has a list for you, and is trying in many ways to show it to you.
Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.
Colossians 2:6-7
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Words of Grace For Today
Eldon worked hard, sought to save as many people as possible wasted money. Yet his life went off in all sorts of directions as he sought to find purpose, meaning, or some fulfillment in life. He chased things that some would call extras or luxuries, just to have something fill up his life. He avoid alcohol and drugs, yet his addiction to things of comfort, pleasure and status had him deep in it’s grasp.
Knowing little, but that his addiction was killing him, he sought any help he could. He even prayed, Lord save me from my addiction. Show me the way to life as you created us to live it. Show me what you have created me to be and do with this life, this life that is so empty.
Jane grew up in the church, was confirmed, participated in the youth group activities and studies. Bright as anyone she knew she went off the university, on to grad school, with full scholarships. She applied to study history for a Ph.D. at Yale and was given a fellowship. While she had always applied herself to study beyond each course, the course work being rather easy for her, she found the Ph.D. studies all encompassing and demanding, so that for the first time in her life she was afraid of failing. She worked long hours each day, through every weekend. Three years into the work she was grinding away at her thesis when it all came tumbling down on her.
She tried to study and could barely see letters on the page. She tried to remember what she’d just read and made notes about, and it would not come to her. She tried to sleep and she could barely sleep.
She went to the doctor, who did a full work up but everything tested fine. The doctor did confirm that Jane was unable to focus on anything. It was as if she’d become an idiot overnight, and it stuck. It was so frustrating. She went to a therapist, who was kind and knowledgeable, but there was no help to give Jane. Finally she took a two week trip back home. Walking her old home town high school paths, nothing seemed to bring her to be able to read and remember.
She went to see her pastor, who listened thoughtfully to everything Jane told her. Her pastor said she had no idea what was happening to Jane. She advised simple things, stop to breath, say morning prayers, sing her favourite hymns, go to confession, come and partake in the Eucharist.
Jane then confided in her pastor that she had stopped going to church when the work load for her doctorate because so demanding.
Her pastor pointed her to a verse from Colossians:
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Her pastor pointed out that no matter what else was going on with her, Jane still had so much to be thankful for. She suggested keeping a daily journal of everything that she had and could be thankful for.
Jane started a Gratitude Journal, making entries each morning. Weeks later after returning to the university and her teaching duties (part of her fellowship) Jane realized she was less stressed about her studies, and she could sit and read and remember.
She dove back into her thesis work.
It was decades later when Jane crossed paths with Eldon, who was still praying for relief from his addiction as life meant nothing if he had not acquired something new that day.
Eldon could see how Jane was kind, thoughtful, and assured of herself, even as she took on some of the toughest challenges at the university where she was a full professor, shortly to take over as head of the history department. He asked how she managed to appear so … so … maybe it was that she looked so content.
She said she always found ten things to be thankful for each morning to enter into her Gratitude Journal. After that no matter what happened, she reminded herself all day long, that God was good to her. The rest was relatively easy, even if it was nearly impossible.
…
Today, remaining alert and consistently doing what is required to minimize the spread of Covid 19 after nearly a full year of it, may seem almost impossible. It need not, if we remember to always be thankful for all we receive from God.
You will be in the right, O Lord, when I lay charges against you; but let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
Matthew 20:10-12
Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
Words of Grace For Today
Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
Why, working for God, do they, who arrive at the latest hour, receive the wages of those who showed up to work at sunrise?
We think that the world is so that we can understand how it works? For example when we ski off a cliff we should plan that we are going to land down below where we took off from. Gravity is a thing that we can understand.
So is it with many things in our world. Things we do have consequences, consequences that we can prepare for, consequences that anyone with a clear working mind and heart understands very well.
But when it comes to how God works with us and with other people, it easily seems everything we know makes no difference.
God’s ways are opaque for us.
Until we start to comprehend Grace.
Grace is the upside down stuff of our normal lives. Grace is how God works in the world.
If we try to understand, then it seems the guilty prosper and the treacherous thrive, and it seems that our work for God ought to be paid according to our efforts and time invested.
Yet, it is not so in God’s creation.
Grace alone brings us to life, life as we were created to live.
According to Grace, God’s purpose for each and every person is not to reward us according to our efforts. God’s purpose is to bring each and every one of us, freely, to live abundantly.
Cars run on gasoline or diesel. Bodies run on nourishing food and good drink.
God’s creation runs on Grace, the best of everything is free. Everything is free, but like manna given to nourish the people in the wilderness, manna that was good only for a day, and could not be stored, all that God gives us freely cannot be hoarded for ourselves. The goodness that God gives us is only good when we give it freely to others, just as we have received it.
So …
What appears to be unexpected and up-side-down, is God’s Grace working for us … and we can be ready to share all God gives us with all those we meet. Though we give, give, and give, God’s blessings will never run out; they will always flow, pouring over us and to all around us.
Ahh, to understand God’s ways is beyond us, but blessings flow; for them we can be filled with gratitude … and that makes everything wonderfully different, even when our tit-for-tat mindset is surprised or frustrated that our wicked enemies seem to win forcing us into an early grave.
(‘Joke’ is on them. We get to live abundantly, thankfully, sharing blessings freely, loving and dancing with grace through life. Then as they continue to live on earth, futilely pursuing more and more worthlessness, we enter the heavenly home prepared for us, for eternity. – If they could only see the end of their gaslighting and corruption.)
of Christ Will Reach Us, Save Us, Heal and Renew Us
…
Now what are we going to do to heal well?
What are we going to do with renewed health?
Psalm 62:7
On God rests my deliverance and my honour; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.
Hebrews 12:12-13
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
Words of Grace For Today
Trump encourages his supporters to storm the Capitol to disrupt the democratic process of the Senate certifying the electoral college vote, giving Biden the presidency in 2 weeks and Trump the boot to face charges and lawsuits aplenty. It is Trump’s mess, his supporters’ mess, the whole country’s mess. Corruption has run rampant, and false news runs freely. This is the result: people who know there is corruption and who believe the false news about where and who is corrupt, so they support someone who is even more corrupt … and dangerous.
Fear is no way forward. It is what brings empires, dynasties, and families to their demise, while destroying so many as they fall.
…
It is all too easy to live, trusting one’s own cunning, strength, and position to ensure one’s own deliverance and the deliverance of one’s family and friends; or to blame oneself or others for one’s own and one’s family’s demise.
Surely there are enough enemies, if one has lived life with integrity, who will do one in.
The truth is, though, there is only one who can deliver us from all evil. This is our God, Creator, Redeemer, and Inspirer.
The pertinent pressing question for our living each day is, now that Jesus’ story affirms God’ Grace and Love for us, God’s adoption of us as children, God’s blessing us so that we can be a blessing to all people and all creation … the question is: what are we going to do!
There is not a one of us, having lived a few years with integrity and having endured the onslaught of enemies, who do not have the scars, the drooping hands, the weakened knees, and the staggered crooked gait to show for it. God promises are sure: God will heal us.
As we heal it is our task each day to raise our heads with gratitude, lift our hands to kind action, and lift other’s burdens to strengthen our knees. We need to practice walking straight, so that we will be well as God heals us.
Heal us God will, ready or not.
How then do we wish to be when we are healed: all lame and bent, or renewed with grace, kindness and love? It has less to do with our physical bodies, than with the shape of our hearts, thoughts and dreams.
What shape are you in today? What shape do you want to be when the sun sets, and night enfolds your ways and thoughts? What will you do this day, so that as God heals all that ails you, you will heal as a whole being, filled with grace, kindness and love?
I am yours; save me, for I have sought your precepts.
John 15:7
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Words of Grace For Today
Ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you!
At first glance it looks like we get carte blanch requests; our every wish will be fulfilled!
That result flows from an equation that starts from life only as we might presume to know it, that everything about us is chosen and determined by ourselves or others working against us. In this setting God (supposedly) promises that our every wish can bring us fulfillment and life abundant.
That is not the start of the equation for God’s promise that all our wishes will be fulfilled.
The promise flows from blessed life as God created us to be alive: the ‘equation starts’ with a life of seeking to understand God’s Word, God’s precepts.
The ‘equation starts’ start with us abiding in Jesus, God’s Word of life.
That of course sounds like we need to earn our way into God’s favour and blessings.
Yet, we know very well that we cannot earn God’s favour and blessings, God promises us them first, as free gift.
Given God’s favour and blessings, we then can choose to respond with gratitude, and that is us abiding in God’s Word.
Full of gratitude, abiding in God’s Word, our wishes are not the same as when life is lived as if we or others determined everything about our lives.
Instead our wishes flow in line with God’s good will for us …
and then of course, all our wishes, being God’s wishes for us, will be done for us!
O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.
Matthew 2:10-11
When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Words of Grace For Today
The day we celebrate Epiphany, the revealing, the in breaking of the Light of Life, is today.
Happiness is something we can spend our lives trying to find or achieve … in vain.
It is something that we can receive, as a pure gift, as grace, from God. When the Holy Spirit inspires us to trust God, life may not appear outwardly to change, yet the inner workings of our lives are transformed. The criteria of happiness are not attached any more to things or money or comfort or shopping … nor even chocolate or 42.
Instead our brains are re-wired, our hearts along with them. We evaluate the whole of life according to the joy of being humbled before God and being able to give God praise … and being able to serve God by extending God’s Grace to all other people.
Wisdom of the eastern people guided them …
to know the meaning of a bright star, and the courage to follow … for hundreds of miles … the star into Israel, and later to find Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem a cow’s stable and in the stable the infant Jesus in a cow’s manager.
There they offer up treasure of great value to Jesus. It is the honour they have to give, a rare honour.
When we are inspired to trust God, we know happiness as it is only truly possible, as we are able to allow God to connect our hearts, minds and souls to Grace. In that we have courage to be a bit of what God created us to be, happy … for that is certainly part and parcel of life abundant.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Words of Grace For Today
On this the last day of Christmas for this season, the Christmas Tree comes to mind again, as many prepare to (or already have) remove(d) it from the home. The decorations, reminders perhaps of friends who have given them as gifts in years past, are packed away, the star or angel on top brought down, and the lights carefully removed and coiled up for storage. Again: what is the meaning of all this in relation to what Christmas really is about?
Again from Wikipedia:The Christmas tree is considered by some as Christianisation of pagan tradition and ritual surrounding the Winter Solstice, which included the use of evergreen boughs, and an adaptation of pagan tree worship; according to eighth-century biographer Æddi Stephanus, Saint Boniface (634–709), who was a missionary in Germany, took an axe to an oak tree dedicated to Thor and pointed out a fir tree, which he stated was a more fitting object of reverence because it pointed to heaven and it had a triangular shape, which he said was symbolic of the Trinity.
While the challenges, losses, and joys of the coming days, weeks, months and years await us, we know (if we’ve been awake and alert at all) that we will many times need to be pointed back to Christ as the source of life for us, abundant life. When we remember from whom our very breath comes, and from whom all blessings flow over us, then we can live filled with gratitude. Filled with gratitude we can amend our lives to serve Christ more: we can ensure all people receive the requirements for life, abundant life.
Whatever and however we’ve kept Christmas this year, carrying on past traditions, adapting old traditions, creating new traditions: few if any of our traditions contain in themselves the essence of Christmas. It is in knowing how our traditions express, inform and strengthen our faith that we encounter the Christ, again and again, anew.
For that we may well adopt a tradition, if not this year, then next, where we gather together and, pointing to each item and pointing out each event of our traditions, we provide a short comment on that tradition’s history passed on to us, and how we have adopted it for ourselves to reflect the Light of the World.
Therein we can also proclaim again: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord our whole lives long.
