The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
Revelation 2:8-9
[To the corrupt leaders:]I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
Words of Grace For Today
Real people are vessels of real evil.
Of that there is no doubt.
People who are rich, are afflicted and actually poor in truth, poor in spirit, poor in life. They claim to be God’s people, and serve only Satan.
From these people, the Evil they work with lies (pretending to be good), and the Evil One they serve … from all these God promises to protect us, to protect our lives.
This protection is not that we are separated so far from Evil and people that work it that we never suffer Evil’s destruction. God’s promise is to always be with us, not to abandon us, and not to allow Evil to extract from us life itself.
Baptized we enter eternal life already during our time on earth.
Wonders of wonders, that nothing can take from us. We can surrender it, though God protects us from even that.
Wonders of wonders, we live, even in the face of corrupt, destructive, and unresting Evil worked against us.
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.
Anxiety weighs down the human heart, but a good word cheers it up.
Ephesians 4:32
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Words of Grace For Today
The obvious is obvious. Anxiety is a weight on the human heart. Good words cheer the heart and lighten it.
Life is easier and more wonderful for those who are kind to one another, tender-hearted, and forgiving of one another.
We can only be kind, tender-hearted and forgiving because God has first forgiven us.
The question is, can we simply choose to be cheery with good words, instead of anxious? Can we be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving by simply choosing to so be?
Were it so simple.
Like wishing that the rain would come in time of drought, or cease in time of flood, our wishing can hardly change reality.
Except, forgiving others and accepting forgiveness from them, certainly does change our lives, and for the better. Forgiving is something we can choose to do. It is not a mysterious thing to do. We simply give the person we are forgiving all treatment and response just as before the offence. Then we simply give that person a gift, something the person actually desires. Giving changes our heart, and our minds, and we become the one who has forgiven.
Not a mystery at all.
It is a thing we can do: to choose to do the things of forgiveness.
There is so much that we allow to get in the way.
Of course when we do not forgive, then our hearts harden and hate festers and we destroy more than the sin that we are offended by.
The devil does easily run amok in us, if we do not actively choose to be forgivers.
That choice though is still impossible for us, unless we confess our own sins and accept God’s precious and expensive forgiveness for our sins.
When we have confessed our desperate need to be forgiven and God’s generosity in forgiving us, then forgiving others flows with ease from us.
It is then rather simple, if one is humble, and impossible if one is proud.
Are we like the bark, the reed, or one of the shells?
We are like a grain of sand
Psalm 148:3.5
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.
Revelation 4:11
You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
Words of Grace For Today
I heard a repeat sermon, one of the joy of a city boy climbing a mountain with friends, and experiencing for the first time the wonders of creation.
Those of us who have lived outdoors more of our lives than in, who have engaged with creation for generation upon generation*, who have climbed mountains since we were able, having grown up with the likes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift Valley as a common enough background for family vacations (actually they were visits to other missionary families in Tanganyika, before it’s independence and merger with Zanzibar to become Tanzania) have known in our bones that God’s creation is marvellous.
*It turns out that at my father’s 90th birthday celebration now a few years ago, a cousin included in her presentation that the men in our family have sought out the wilds of creation, mountains, forests, and lakes for as many generations as we can trace back our family roots in Sweden and Norway, across Minnesota, and into western Canada. We’ve got good Viking blood that draws us to engage with creation as part of our daily living. Grampa Sam moved to live on a lake in the woods in Northern Minnesota (actually central, but like Alberta it’s the perspective that is used as a reference, not the geographical reality.) My father bought a farm 10 miles out of town back when that was a 9 miles from any acreage, loved to farm when he came home from his medical practice, and took us into the woods for vacations most every year. One of my brothers and his son live in the wilds of Alaska, loving every minute of it. Uncle Sam worked for the telephone company, spending work and vacation time outdoors. He loved to hunt, fish, and camp. Retirement was a pickup truck with a camper on it, a fishing rod and rifle, Aunt June (who was also at home in the wilds), and a prayer of thanks. His sons, my cousins, have continued that tradition.
First time or a very familiar experience, one stands bolderdashed in wonder, when one stops to think about how God, with a Word, created such a wondrous creation. First time or a very familiar experience, one stands tiny and humbled by one’s place in that creation, as if an ant before a cedar tree 12 feet in diameter and more than 200 feet tall.
(If you, like that preacher, honestly have never encountered the wonders of creation in the wilds, take that opportunity if it comes your way; you will not be sorry, hopefully.)
To think that God even knows of us, or bothers with us in all that splendour. More that
How can we respond other than to thank God with praise and honour … and to honour creation with the best care we can manage … before we kill it.
Creator of heaven and earth + tiny creatures = awe, praise, and honour.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Mark 1:10-11
Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Words of Grace For Today
With the restrictions of Covid 19, sufficient to ‘flatten the curve’ but not stop it in it’s tracks, we have seen again and again that so much is dependent upon trust, reputation, and people’s reputations. So much of what seems to be significant is determined by what people think of you, or of someone else.
If we trust the chief medical officers, and/or the scientists, and/or the polititians, and/or the news reporters and internet writers … IF we TRUST then we listen and follow the ‘sensible’ recommendations/demands they make on us. The minute we hear that the any of these people are not trustworthy (and we hear it so often, sometimes with great justification!) then we stop listening, stop understanding, and stop complying … and fools that we can be, we often then stop doing what we ourselves know is best. We stop keeping physical distance and wearing masks and shields and washing/sanitizing our hands. The whole effort to flatten the curve collapses and the bodies start piling up. Real consequences for not listening and complying!
God wants us to listen … so to whom do we listen?
The root of Jesse will become, on that day (so it is not now), a signal for the people and people will seek him out.
Jesus is not just baptized. God’s voice comes from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
These are written for us to read so that we might know to whom God would have us listen.
God would have us listen to the root of Jesse, Jesus, God’s own Son.
Listening to Jesus, gives us plenty of direction: love one another. With that we know we ought to help protect everyone from Covid 19. That’s a small part of loving others.
Wearing masks, shields, keeping physical distance, hand washing and sanitizing … and whatever else the scientists and chief medical officers recommend to us IS what we will DO, out of love.
Then for every in person visit we cannot make, we make a gracious, caring phone call. For every handshake we deny, we extend a warm, empathetic word. For every hug we cannot give, we extend words of clear, simple, unconditional love.
We can become more empathetic as a people, more caring, and more loving. Covid 19 is an opportunity for us to learn how … to listen to God and to those God sends to guide us forward.
Know that the Lord is God. It is God who made us, and we are God’s; we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.
Acts 17:26-28
From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and God allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God – though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For “In God we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said.
Words of Grace For Today
Who are we?
Whose are we?
Why for are we here?
What is this life all about anyway?
These questions and many more have given humans something to wrestle with in our minds and souls.
It is troubling to not know anything of who we are. Literature is made up of all sorts of examples of people who do not remember who they are. Amnesia comes into play.
The worse cases are when people live through what should be a full life and have not taken time and effort to discover who they are. The un-examined life. Not knowing thy self. Bourgeoisie living. We have lots of names for it.
Worst are the cases where humans make every effort to establish for themselves that they are the king of their universes. The results are always pathetic.
Striving to find (and control) God is common, and futile. God is already, always with us. Trying to control God is the original sin, common to all, and always ends poorly.
We can celebrate: God is with us. God created us, and all the universe. God gave us a thirst and hunger to know God. God claims us and makes us God’s own children.
That should put any pride to rest in us; we remain children always! Not that it does … pride flourishes, a great favourite of the Devil to separate us from God’s unconditional love. A futile effort on the Devil’s part, but the devil is great at convincing us we are separate from God.
As poets have written of since words were first etched and scratched to express the wonder of life being larger than what is only obvious.
That’s where life really is, in surprise and miraculous wonders.
Like God loving us. I can accept me, but you … God is really something! (As truth is for us all, we are more astonished that God has time for us, ourselves, than for other people. We know deep inside how imperfect we are.
Yet, God is here with us. God claims us as God’s own children.
Life is good for God’s children. For us it is no exception, no matter how terrible our circumstances, life with God is good. It is what life is to be.
The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.
Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Of what is life?
Food and drink?
OR
Peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and joy?
The basic requirements for minimum and full human life are:
clean air to breath
clean water to drink
nourishing food to eat
adequate clothing to wear
adequate shelter to protect one from the elements
meaningful labour so that one contributes and receives sufficient reward for one’s labour
love: most significantly that one is loved unconditionally, and that one can love others unconditionally.
Food and Drink are requirements, as we all know. One can last 3 or so days without water, and up to a few weeks without food. Not well, and not many times over. One should have water and food multiple times each day to stay healthy.
Yet we can too easily get our priorities all wrong.
We can loose balance, perspective, focus, and gratitude. There are many ways to say this, and it happens to us in as many ways. When we live with food and drink as the focus of our lives, to the detriment of labour and love, then we live off balance, out of kilter, or, as it’s said in so many ways, ‘messed up.’
It is exceedingly difficult to achieve peace, quietness and trust, righteousness or joy. Truthfully one cannot achieve them at all. We receive them as gifts from God.
It is hard to imagine that we would over focus, live out of kilter, living for peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and/or joy. Yet this also is possible. We humans have great ingenuity when it comes to ‘messing up’ life.
These gifts from God are not for us to achieve. Rather they are for us to share, and in sharing God fills us to overflowing with them.
While Covid-19 restrictions, and even the lifting of restrictions and a return to more ‘normal’ can tax us, at times beyond our limits, the stress of these times do not change who we are. The stress just makes very clear to ourselves and to others what kind of people we really are.
We are children of God and wretched sinners, simultaneously. We need to be loved, unconditionally. And to love unconditionally. Yet we ‘mess it all up’ terribly.
Thank God, we are forgiven, and given re-newed life each day, each hour, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us, despite our wretchedness.
It is beginning to feel much like fall as I write this. Cool air blows, tree tops sway, leaves rustle and fly, rain spits and drips. Everything inside is set to retain warmth and let in what light there is. In this day whatever it is like where you are may God’s blessings be obvious and not forgotten by our living off balance.
May we be caught tipped by the weight of blessing raining down on us, refreshing us, giving us the most precious things to experience and share.
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?
Jesus’ voice is as prevalent as the wind in the trees.
Psalm 63:2
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
John 7:37
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.’
Words of Grace For Today
Everyday life is filled with many mundane things. We can busy ourselves seemingly endlessly in things that have little significance in God’s Kingdom, and we know nothing other than we keep ourselves busy, so busy.
Then when we are not paying attention, we see God in all God’s glory. When we are so busy celebrating, even giving God thanks, we hear Jesus offer us thirsty people a refuge, the living water that is the only water that will quench our thirst.
Our thirst is what drives us to keep so busy, trying to fill ourselves with things that really mean nothing. The challenge is that we get rewarded so apparently well for busying ourselves as we do. What is really meaningless appears by the heavy rewards we gain to be actually full of significance for life.
Wealth, power, and status come our way as if rewarding us with everything we could dream of, just for such devotion to our pursuits.
How can anything take us away from these pursuits?
Then we see God’s glory right in front of us. Then we hear Jesus call to all who thirst.
Are we ready to see? Are we ready to hear?
The Holy Spirit enables us to see and hear, and then we can respond. Will we respond as we can?
…
When we see, hear, and respond, then we have something to celebrate. Then we have everything to celebrate.
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.
