Category: Covid19

Injustice At Home, From Bottom to Top

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Some Days Are Deceptive

We Think Troubled Waters are Elsewhere,

But the Heavens Tell Us Otherwise!

1 Kings 8:59-60

Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.

Revelation 15:4

Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.

Words of Grace For Today

We bring our petitions to God each day, praying for justice. Many people think of countries far away, where we hear reports, believable reports of war and genocide, of intentional starvation and deprivation of populations in opposition to or of different ethnicity than those in power, gender and sexual orientation based violence and murder. We pray indeed that God will bring justice to these places around the globe, for we know that we are all in this together.

Covid 19 has taught us that there is no population anywhere on earth that can be separated from the rest of us, denied safety measures and care, without that allowing Covid 19 to multiply, mutated and spread faster, deadlier to all of us on this planet. The effects from infection are deadly to the elderly, at first. Now we learn that for all others, even those with minor symptoms the ravages of this virus can be chronic and debilitating, or give rise to sudden deadly mis-health events like stroke, heart attack, and sudden death. No age, no degree of health before the infection seems to be ‘safe’. We are all in this together, whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not.

It is good that we pray for many peoples far and wide. Our petitions for justice closer to home are harder to pray. We are right in the middle of horrendous injustices. We call for awareness of women killed by violent men; and we ignore that ten times more men are killed by violence than women. Why?

It is good that we pray for the vulnerable, for women, for children, for elderly, for the poor, for those caught in systemic prejudice, for the homeless, for those now caught by Covid 19 restrictions and tossed into poverty, for the disabled, and for those of different faiths, customs, genders, sexual orientation, colour, nationalities, and abilities. It is not nearly enough for we ignore so much reality when we pray only these prayers, when we work to bring God’s justice only to these people.

We need to pray for those with privilege, power, influence, and wealth. They perpetrate injustices while hiding from themselves perhaps and definitely from others their complicity in and complacence to injustice which helps guarantee their continued privilege, power, influence, and wealth. We need to pray not just for our government leaders, and all in government, elected and hired. We need to pray not just for those in business, large and small, who benefit greatly from the greed based economy of the world. We need to pray not just for those who serve as police, enforcing injustice as much as they enforce law and order. We need to pray for judges and justices who determine how laws are applied, or as it is in Alberta, how laws are ignored along with truth, as they knowingly, gleefully, and even cruelly hand down decisions that are irrational, unjust, and favour those with connections, influence, and wealth.

Bill Hordern wrote:

Therefore, as Reinhold Niebuhr saw so clearly, governments are never simply a protection against injustice, they are also strongholds of injustice. Although the Christians ought to seek to have the government protect the weak from the strong, in fact most governments tend to protect the strong from the weak. The sword is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities. Therefore, we should be prepared to see that service to God rather than to man may sometimes bring us into conflict with the rulers over many more matters than just the niceties of theological doctrine or ecclesiastical practice. (Living by Grace p.195)

These words were quoted by a now bishop in a text study decades ago. This year a good pastor added: Hence the wisdom from the theology of the survivors of WW2, and the wisdom of the Civil rights warriors like John Lewis who said: ‘Get into good trouble!’

We need to pray everyday that God’s day of judgment will come soon, and save us all. So we plead with our ancestors:

Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.

and

Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.

Always Darkness in Corrupt Power, Light in Christ

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Even in the darkest of nights and tribulations
God provides a promise of Light

Christ’s Light

To reveal all Truth and Grace

1 Kings 8:59-60

Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.

Revelation 15:4

Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgements have been revealed.

Words of Grace For Today

Bill Hordern wrote:

Therefore, as Reinhold Niebuhr saw so clearly, governments are never simply a protection against injustice, they are also strongholds of injustice. Although the Christians ought to seek to have the government protect the weak from the strong, in fact most governments tend to protect the strong from the weak. The sword is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities. Therefore, we should be prepared to see that service to God rather than to man may sometimes bring us into conflict with the rulers over many more matters than just the niceties of theological doctrine or ecclesiastical practice. (Living by Grace p.195)

These words were quoted by a now bishop in a text study decades ago. This year a good pastor added: Hence the wisdom from the theology of the survivors of WW2, and the wisdom of the Civil rights warriors like John Lewis who said: ‘Get into good trouble!’

It is as true today as ever, and especially here at home in Alberta, Canada. A partner Gaslights her partner, children lie, a pastor lies and schemes with the police to gather false reports, and to harass the target. Many false reports, false arrests, lies upon lies already and charges are laid. Church leaders lie to the RCMP. A petition to the court is made to protect the children. It is not only ignored and defeated and used as a ‘blood sport’ weapon against the good, honest, and kind (though not perfect) father to ruin his reputation, drive him so far into debt he will never get out of it, and to drive him homeless. Blatantly corrupt lawyers and their assistants bald face lie to the courts. Prosecutors lie to the Courts. Witnesses blatantly lie to the courts. Dozens of judges deal with the matters, those at crucial turns in the process blatantly lie about the evidence against (most of it lies already) the good father, and even about the evidence for the good father. He is falsely convicted, jailed where his life is threatened – mostly by the staff, and even by a nurse who administers a badly needed drug that has to be ingested with food, and denies him food for more than a half hour – it’s a miracle his stomach does not develop an ulcer – though he survives protected by a host of inmates and a few guards who do not want the old man needlessly hurt.

Denied support the good, honest, and kind father, Gaslit beyond imagination, is driven homeless. His body starts to fail, and he seeks the healing power of solitude and wilderness. He survives despite continuing efforts to kill him by courts, lawyers, and always his ex.

He prays daily in thanks for all he has, especially breath and health and love and work but especially for solitude during Covid 19. The most dangerous thing now is the contact he must have directly with people as most people are in flat out angry denial that Covid 19 is to be taken seriously.

The sin of so many people that has brought him thus far are too many to track, many remain hidden and unknown. This cannot be the first time such gaslighting, police harassment, blatantly false evidence by police and witnesses, false convictions and corrupt rulings, cruel games played by judges to hide they lies in their judgments, and persistent efforts are mounted to kill a good, honest, kind father. It is done so well, so practiced, so effective, so well hidden, with such disdain for truth and without fear of being caught out.

So this good, honest, kind father, now a holy hermit is me. I have forgiven my ex who is surely a borderline personality disordered person, and bound all other’s sins, known and unknown. Now I have prayed daily for God to bring the truth to light, and to deal with truth and justice and grace with those sins and sinners.

So I read today’s passage as if I had written it myself and know that I certainly not the first person to be so treated by other people. We humans really have a tremendous capacity to be cruel to others, and our methods really have not changed all that much since … well since the beginning of recorded history.

Still I pray knowing countless others have, do and pray the same with me:

Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.

For then

Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgements will have been revealed.

That day is eagerly awaited, and until then we all trust that the Kingdom of God is near, God walks with us, even us homeless, gaslit, kind people who are so far surviving the sword of the powerful and corrupt which is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities.

As member Jones said after one of many false arrests, Do you know why I do this? … Because I can.

But God will stop even this evil, in God’s time.

May We have Peace on Valentine’s Day!

Sunday, February 14, 2021

God Gives Us Light To Find Our Way Home,

To Accept and Give Forgiveness Always to Everyone

So That All May Know Peace!

Psalm 29:11

May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!

Ephesians 2:17

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

Words of Grace For Today

Peace is not the absence of conflict, nor the absence of violence even. Peace can coexist with both of these, though it works to pull us from violence to negotiation with each other, and from conflict with each other to harmony with (not each other) … with God’s Will for us.

CBC gave air time to a woman looking to organize mass fasting to call attention to domestic violence. She wanted those fasting to explain why they were hungry, and how terrible it is, now with Covid 19 restrictions, for women to be caught at home with their abusers. She wanted men to find a better model of what men can be. She wanted to call attention to the many, many women who are killed as a result of abuse.

All sort of good and well, as far as it goes. She seems to want, as many do, for us all to forget that ten times, got that, TEN TIMES! as many men die from violence as do women. Her project is a common one voiced today: women need to be protected from evil men. There are no good men, just evil men.

If similar things were said about women, their would be an uproar of denunciation of the misogyny. But no one even mentions that this woman’s statements devalue men, categorizing us all as abusers and as evil men who need to rethink who we are in order to become something better. No one voices the realization that this is misandry (the hatred of and devaluing of men.)

Make no mistake: some men kill women. AND some women kill men. Some use force, some use manipulation.

As if to make it sound like women are under greater threat, among other misandrist statements, it is said men are afraid a woman will laugh at him; women are afraid a man will kill her. The reality is when a woman laughs at a man, she devalues him, announces it for many to see, and taking his respect from him leaves him easy prey for both men and women bullies and abusers to kill him, if not directly with force then with psychological manipulation until there is nothing left of his life, not at all, not at all. The truth is men are as afraid of women killing him (often using men to accomplish the deed) as a women are afraid that men will kill them.

Abuse is abuse. Gender is not really a factor. Stereotypes are a serious problem because the mask the real issues with false issues.

That’s what is so terribly wrong with this woman’s campaign to get people to fast; it assumes all men kill women, and forgets that lots of women kill men, and regardless of who does the killing and how, many more men (ten times as many as women), our brothers, fathers, uncles, sons, and grandfathers, are dying, murdered by others.

Peace is not to point fingers and eradicate the falsely identified murder or the murderers. Peace is much more profound. Peace, real peace, requires that we acknowledge true reality. Real peace is to first realize that a part of each of us contributes to the conditions and circumstances we all live under in our society. Peace is second to forgive ourselves and accept others’ forgiveness of us, and to accept God’s forgiveness (actually that has to come first before other forgiveness is possible.) Third, peace is to forgive others so that there is no more finger pointing or calling out for others to change. The change has to be made within each of us first, and we have to point to the other as already forgiven … so that they may choose to change. Fourth, peace asks of each of us that we be profoundly thankful that forgiveness is possible, that God starts us off down that path, again and again each day.

If we are going to fast (and some like me cannot fast without putting ourselves at great physical risk of needing hospitalization to recover or we die) then it is to fast quietly, for this is what we need most: an inward healing of our relationship with God, God’s creation and God’s creatures, especially other people.

If we are going to put on a campaign to raise awareness of injustice, and in particular avoidable murder, then we cannot tie that message to misogyny or misandry. That only exacerbates the underlying lies we tell ourselves about the polarized genders, which drives us further and further from any possible reduction of avoidable murder. It in fact raises the conflict to higher levels, which in turn gives rise to more pain, which gives rise to more violence (physical and psychological) and that leads to more destruction of people, including physical and psychological deaths.

We need models for real peace. God sent us Jesus to live that model for us. There are a great number of saints who have provided models as well. We need to remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love, and of the saints that teach us faith and real peace, giving us real hope. Remember the good examples (they were human so they were not perfect) of Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Bonhoeffer, and many others. Above all begin each day remembering Jesus and his love, and all God does for us. From gratitude for all God’s blessing we can find our way to peace, even amidst conflict and violence and injustices all around us.

Cold Hard Reality … – – – …

… – – – … Cold Hard Reality … – – – … Our Own Sin … – – – … The Start of God’s Work for Us …. ..

Friday, February 12, 2021

The Sun Rises And Spreads Cold Cold Cold Light

God using the sun to draw smoke shadows on curves of snow

Proverbs 3:7

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

Galatians 6:4

All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride.

Words of Grace For Today

We become accustomed to life, unjustly lived, civilization’s thin veneer holding back barbarism, barely while so many wealthy, privileged, and powerful people utilize outrageous barbarism to hold on to what they value, i.e. their positions, corrupt as they are.

We become accustomed to life and are widely disturbed, our individual and collective mental health plummets, because a pandemic disrupts our customary living …

and we are left to face what truly lies beneath, behind, and beyond our ‘civilized’ habits. It is not pretty. It scares us. It drives us mad.

This is a small piece of the cost of living as if we could rise above fear of God. This is a small piece of the cost of pretending that we need not resist evil at every turn, lest we be dragged into the sea of it’s chaos, into it’s power to uncreate creation, dissolve all time, and possess life itself even as it all crumbles into non-existence.

Being wise in one’s own eyes is like the fool Trump, declaring himself to be so intelligent, even as he spouts idiocies that are easily proven to be false. Remember when he recommended that people drink bleach to eradicate Covid 19 from their systems. Bleach of course is a caustic poison easily eradicating life from anyone who drinks it!

Our own, your own, idiocies may not be so obvious to us, to you, though they probably are to others!

Daily we immerse ourselves in the old, old story of Jesus and his love; which starts with our past and continuing sins confessed and graciously forgiven by God.

We immerse ourselves in this story, not forgetting the beginning (our wretched inevitable sin) so that we do not forget how much we need to be saved from our sins, how much God does to save us, and how terrible our deserved damnation would be if God were not so undeservedly gracious with us. We do not forget our ongoing inevitable sins so that we do not rise to false pride.

Instead we readily accept the reality and confess our sins, knowing in that confession we also accept God’s forgiveness, which forgiveness enables us to also be God-made saints, simultaneously as we remain sinners. God has God’s way with us, and we love it!

We know our own works are pitiful. Our neighbours may look to be so as well. On our own nothing we do amounts to anything (valued by God’s criteria and measure). Aided, guided, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, God accomplishes great things through us. God saves others by giving them abundant life through our work.

Our pride in our work, and in our neighbours’ work, amounts only to pride in what God does through us. Though we last no longer than smoke we remain courageously, creatively humble as God uses us to paint Grace on this world. Meeting the new demands of Covid 19 pandemic and it’s dangers and restrictions is a mere trifle, measured by God’s criteria. It is another opportunity to see, receive, and share God’s unending blessings.

Truly Wondrous Moments

Thursday, February 11, 2021

Wondrously Golden Moments Abound

In God’s Creation

Micah 7:18

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger for ever, because he delights in showing clemency.

Romans 8:32

He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Words of Grace For Today

Watching the prequel to Treasure Island, it is a ‘wondrous moment’ when the pirates unite to pulverize the injustice of the Carolina Governor Ash and the people who delight in unjustly hanging pirates. One moment battleships lay at anchor off Charles Town augmenting the fort’s guns all aimed toward the pirate ship. Captain Flint negotiates for a reconciliation between New Providence, home of the pirates, and England. Then an aide to Governor Ash assassinates an innocent woman, Miranda Hamilton, who clearly stated the raw justice due Ash. She has just then uncovered Ash’s betrayal of herself, her husband, and his best friend, now Captain Flint, leading to her husband’s death and their exile … and Ash’s ascendancy to Governor of the Carolinas. Captain Flint’s trial follows, a show of injustice if there ever were one, all to cover up the murder committed by the Governor’s aide. Ash describes this as the ‘civilization’ that Flint and Miranda seek to bring to New Providence.

Flint’s competitor, Captain Vane, realizes with Flint’s trial, a symbol of the ferociousness of pirates will be beaten down and all pirates are doomed. After Flint’s hanging no one will fear any pirate, and they will no longer be able to seize ships and cargo without too great a cost of life and limb. So Vane goes on a rescue mission, which miraculously succeeds, for this is fiction. No matter how impossible the success in reality would be – firing canons into the square where Flint and now Vane are held and in the streets as they flee to the sea – we want it to be so and so we accept the impossible as possible.

Then to great relief all pirates back on the Spanish man of war. Flint had previous captured this warship. Then Vane and his men had taken it in Charles Town’s bay during Flint’s absence. Finally in Vane’s absence the ship was regained by Flint’s men. On this ship for the first time both crews work together. The ships guns have already destroyed Ash’s unsuspecting warships, and now they turn to decimate the corrupt ‘civilization’ of Charles Town. They bombard it into the dust.

Ahh, justice! Raw, cruel justice for people who pretend to be civilized but are more brutal than pirates to their prey.

This is not the end of it all though. As Charles Town is lay waste, the untold wealth of Spanish gold, once guarded by the very man of war Flint captured, is taken from the Spanish guarding it on a beach by Jack Rackham. The ship carrying it has been driven into the island’s rocks during a storm. The gold is too much for just one ship. Rackham’s crew fills the holds of two ships with their take. This untold wealth makes New Providence’s pirates a power for the rest of the world to contend with. Finally the pirates have a chance against the great navies of the world ruled by corrupt leaders and corrupt countries that claim to be civilized.

We love it. Moved by images, cinematography, lighting, and music we see the progression as a good development which is most deserved; Justice in an unjust world for those most unjustly treated.

It is hardly that. It is accurate that civilized society is too often so corrupt and unjust, with the most cruel wielders of power ruining people left right and centre without regard.

The fictitious destruction of Charles Town and accumulating the Spanish gold is hardly a justice in an unjust world. It is more of the base nature of humans playing out in violent revenge and theft humongous.

In God’s creation, which this is, such violence and theft goes against all that God calls us to be and do … and we clearly see how tempting sweet revenge can be. The movie makers know this and play this out well.

God knows this and plays out very well the other story, God’s story which includes the old, old story of Jesus and his love. This is the story that demonstrates that God delights in showing clemency, and gives God’s own son to save us and provides to us everything else we need for life abundant.

We need and get to engage ourselves in that story, each day, morning and night, so that sweet revenge is not the template for how we live. Rather God’s Grace, modelled in the life and ministry of Jesus, becomes and remains the template for our days and each decision we make in them: to share God’s Grace and forgiveness with all people.

Now those moments of Grace are wondrous moments, truly wondrous moments, for God blesses them and us in them. They are for what God created the universe and us in it.

Meeting Each Day with Creativity and Trust

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

We are hardly the first

to be challenged by

winter’s cold or a pandemic’s destruction.

We follow those who have gone before,

treasuring most of all our faith.

Psalm 56:11

In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?

2 Timothy 1:14

Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Words of Grace For Today

A great uncle of mine, Sven, arrived in the new land (at least so goes the legend), as many Swedish, German, Norwegian, Scottish, Ukrainian, and many others (from even more nations in later decades) also arrived in the new land to be given a quarter section to homestead. Arriving in early summer the first task was to make a temporary ‘home’. There were no RV’s, mobile homes, RTM’s or Atco Units. He felled a number of think pine trees with an axe and piled the pine boughs on an A-frame of pine poles to keep most of the rain out. The bugs could not be helped. He went hunting for meat. Then he cleared a small patch of land and planted a crop that might just produce potatoes, peas, beans and carrots before freeze up. He went hunting for meat. Then he dug out a hole and piled up the dirt around it as walls, covered it with pine poles at a sharp pitch, and wove pine boughs in four layers to hold out the rain and snow. He went hunting for meat. He put in the wood stove he had saved for, stacked up a great pile of firewood, and built a simple bed, chair and table. That would have to do to get him through the coming winter. He went hunting for meat. The bear skins from the bears he shot would be his blanket in the coldest of the coming cold nights.

Each night he gave God thanks for this opportunity to start a new life in a new land. Each morning he prayed for strength to work hard through the day, to prepare for the coming months. The -45⁰ nights that first winter nearly did him in. When thieves stole a tenth of his firewood that made him worry about the safety of everything and his survival. Still he gave God thanks, for he prayed with the Psalmist: In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?

Each year he cleared more land for the garden and for crops. In his third year, now with a simple log cabin and a shingled plank roof, his lovely wife, Brigitte, joined him from Sweden, children followed and he added each year to the cabin, a room, another room, a porch, an entrance with a better door.

When thieves struck again, raiding his garden and grain store and stealing half his wood, he was distressed. He prayed that night again in thanks, the next morning for strength. He knew he was tasked with guarding the good treasure entrusted to him, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in him. The treasure was not the firewood. It was not the crops. It was not even the land that supported his and Brigitte’s life together with their daughter and two sons. Sven and Brigitte prayed and in thanks and for strength, so that they would guard their faith, for that was the treasure that God had given them. With faith they could meet every challenge calmly and creatively, figuring out what to do each day to ensure their survival and more, that they would live well.

Covid 19 is not easy, comfortable, or predictable. Many of our habits for surviving are not possible. Other habits for surviving are required of us. Some are dictated, many others are left for us to figure out. God provides, and we, assured of the gift of faith, pray morning and night, with thanks and for strength to meet the challenges of each day.

We trust God to provide us the ability and opportunities to work diligently so that more and more people will have what is needed to live, and to live abundantly. It’s not predictable or comfortable or easy. Still we have everything we need to make each day better for everyone: it starts with faith and creativity. It concludes each day, as night enfolds us in the dark and bitter cold, with thanks.

How else can we live, but to follow the examples of our faithful ancestors following Jesus?

On Unforeseeable Paths God Calls Us To Be One

Monday, February 8, 2021

God’s Path for Us

Is Filled with Golden Moments

To Bring Us Together.

Judges 5:31

‘So perish all your enemies, O Lord! But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might.’ And the land had rest for forty years.

John 17:22

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.

Words of Grace For Today

God creates.

God creates order for all of creation … and for us.

Peace and rest come only when God’s order prevails.

From a very limited human perspective it may seem that when one’s enemies perish and one’s friends rise like the sun with might, then God’s good order prevails. Thus the passage that when one’s enemies have perished and when the sun rises on one’s friends the land can rest for as long as it takes … for forty years.

Reality is different: God’s will does not eliminate enemies by making them perish. God’s will eliminates enemies by converting them to friends. And that is the key to celebrating God’s love for us, to know that God does not wish us ill. God does everything to offer us the greatest thing, God adopts us as children even when we are yet still God’s enemies.

It is everything that God wishes us well. God breathes the essence and the best of life into us, and through us to the rest of all people and all creation.

It is God’s unconditional love for us that drives us to answer God’s call to follow Jesus. Just as in this pandemic we really do not know what will come next, so we know not where Jesus will ask us to follow. We do know from his ministry that Jesus does not overthrow governments, neither does Jesus take us into retreat from the world. Jesus takes us out into the world to meet people with diseases to heal them, with demons to free them, and with doubts to reassure them of God’s good will to all of creation.

It is for us no more a tried and true path that Jesus (also during this pandemic) calls us to follow him on than it was for the fishermen near Capernaum. The path we tread, though full of challenges, is an exciting life. It is life as we were created and redeemed to live.

God is Faithful … Waiting

Sunday, February 7, 2021

What is Your Dream wish
for these polar-deep-freeze days

for it to be summer
when a tent is sufficient
for surviving a night camping?

Isaiah 65:1

I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’, to a nation that did not call on my name.

Luke 14:23

Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”

Words of Grace For Today

There is a name … a name which can free any person from every ill and misfortune, from one’s own real guilt and shame, and from the power of Evil. This name some people seek, for they know the universe needs deliverance and us all with it.

Others, actually most of us, try to deceive ourselves into thinking that life is just fine, that we can get by as things are, that we can meet the challenges of life on our own.

Truth is we simply cannot, and history is full of examples of people trying and failing spectacularly. Most people’s stories remain untold, though they would provide the same spectacle. Truth is we need a miracle to save us.

In the deep polar cold of these days the miracle would be …

Well, what would it be for you?

For me it would be for the truth to be known of these past fifteen years, for my reputation to be restored, and for the real culprits who knowingly created false police reports, false charges and false convictions to be exposed; for good order to be restored.

It is a bit too much to hope for, yet still is not real true hope is for those things that are too much to hope for?

Forgiveness does not have a different hope, neither does scripture allow that God does either. God does not wish good order to be restored by eliminating people who perpetrate such evils. God, rather, wishes that those people be transformed from agents of the Devil to God-made-saints even as they simultaneously remain sinners each day.

This is the feast that people on the roads and in the lanes are compelled to come and enjoy. That’s quite the paradox: God must compel us to come to a feast that we will more fully enjoy than we can imagine. At God’s feast we receive not just food and drink for our bodies, nor just for our minds, nor just for our souls. We receive food and drink for all that and all that for our neighbours, including even our enemies; for God wishes for them to feast along with us at God’s table of Grace.

All through history, all through each of our lives, God calls to us: Here I am, here I am! God calls to us even when we have not listened, do not listen and may choose forever not to listen. God is faithful especially when we are not. That’s the feast of Grace God puts on each day for us and for all people.

In the cold, God does not merely want known the truth of these last fifteen years. God wants known by all people the truth of all the years since the beginning of time to the end of time: God created and holds the universe together, each string, wave and particle, and each life with Grace. God wants us all to know that is the miracle, also today in the deep-freeze of -40⁰C or F.

To all those from the past fifteen years, from all the years since forever and until forever, who have create lies, deception, injustice and chaos, God continues to call: if you do not share the blessings I poured over you this day, when will you?

Each evening time is one day shorter for each of us, then each morning we are blessed with a new day. Each day as it passes is again one day less for us and each day again is another new day to know God’s Grace and to respond to God’s calling our names: Here I am. Send me. Use me to bring true justice, Grace and real hope to all people.

If not today, when?

“Hearing About” compared to “Knowing First Hand”

Saturday, February 6, 2021

The beauty of polar cold,

deep freeze polar cold,

first hand.

Job 42:5-6

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

Acts 9:3-5

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’

Words of Grace For Today

My father served as the first civilian doctor to winter over at McMurdo when it ceased to be a military base. He tells of being asked if he’d like to hop a ride with one of the specialists out on a snowmobile. The wonders of light against the ice and snow, the distant mountains in one direction, the ocean in the other, and the shear size all came through in the email to us ‘kids’. And it was cold, real cold.

Living then on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia the winters were cold and impossible for travel if it dipped below freezing and snowed. There were few if any snow tires on the vehicles there, and lots of balding summer tires, so the cars slipped and slid, jamming up the hillside roads, and even the gentle slopes along the coastal water. I could only remember cold from my previous ‘lives’ in Minnesota and Alberta.

Before he hopped on the back of the snowmobile, my father suited up covering every stitch of skin with protective gear. He did not say they travelled fast. It would be hard enough on the machinery at a reasonable pace. It was just that at -75⁰ C everything is a huge bit different…. He missed one small piece between a glove layer and a jacket (if I remember that location correctly). He felt nothing besides the regular cold and returned with a severe frostbit patch of skin. He was fortunate not to loose a piece of flesh to the cold-burn.

Cold, so cold that it burns skin dead with freezing very quickly. We can hear of it, but until one feels the cold it is hard to imagine how powerful the cold really is.

A hard deep cold has hit the prairies extending across the central US as well. It was down to -34⁰ here last night and will get colder yet through the next two nights if forecasts are to be believed. Still a short walk outside is easy, a longer work session possible, even a long walk is doable with the warmest clothing. Cold so cold it freezes skin without any pain is a whole other level of cold.

Like the jogger who went out in shorts for his morning 3 mile run in a deep freeze and returned to have both legs amputated they were so damaged from the freezing.

Saul is enthusiastic and powerful with letters to pursue, detain and punish heretics, followers of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Then Jesus shows himself first hand to Saul. That transforms Saul’s life of persecuting followers of The Way, to one of Jesus’ most dedicated disciples, spreading the Good News around the east and north of the Mediterranean Sea, which proves to be the birthing of the Christian Church beyond Jerusalem, which sets the ground work for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach us even in this millennium.

Job loses everything, wife, children, wealth, and even his health. His friends bring him encouragement to confess his sins. The widespread belief is that if someone suffers at all it is a result of that person’s own sins. There may be no relief from the suffering, so the only thing to do is to confess and beg God for forgiveness.

This belief is alive and well today under many guises. It is a handy way to blame those who suffer for their suffering, to avoid one’s own responsibility for others’ sufferings, and to convince oneself that one is above such misfortune (because one does not sin like ‘that’ person has!)

Job knows he has not sinned in such a way as to have deserved the horrific loses and suffering he has faced. Job has heard all about God, believes in God, and prays to God (and yells in defiance at God)!

Then God appears face to face with Job!

That changes everything!

Job responds: now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

It’s deep freeze cold. We do not know cold though until we experience it in person.

It’s God’s creation. We can believe in God, and pretend we’ve earned our place before God. Then God appears in person to us and … we know how undeserving we are of God’s Grace and …

We know first hand how wondrous and life-changing God’s Grace is for us and …

We know God’s Grace is nothing if we do not share it with everyone, as freely and as graciously as God has shared it with us!

Then there is beauty in every piece of life, just as there is beauty in the cold of coldest deep freeze polar cold.

Chains and Freedom

Friday, February 5, 2021

Light and Dark

God’s Light overwhelms our Sins

Every time

Psalm 56:13

For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.

Acts 12:7

Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.

Words of Grace For Today

If we think … or rather, when we think that we are not doomed, doomed to die for our sins … When we think that we are not doomed to die in chains for crimes we did not commit, as a result of other’s sins … When we think we can somehow escape from the terrible injustice that sin throughout the world causes, our sin and others’ sins …

… Then …

Then there is really no hope for us, not at all.

When we recognize, first, that we get what we deserve, total annihilation; and second, if that does not get us, then we get what others deserve but choose that we suffer for them which destroys us, just perhaps more slowly and unjustly … then we know that we NEED to be delivered … and only God can save us.

In either case when God rescues us from our sins and from others’ sins of destroying us, then …

Well … then it really is like an angel tapping us on the shoulder and telling us to get up, our chains fall free, and we can walk out into the world.

Then we can sing with the Psalmist: We praise you Lord God, Creator, Redeemer, Advocate for you have delivered our souls from death, and our feet from falling, so that we may walk before God in the light of life.

It is no small thing to walk in the light of life before God. First to walk … that is no small feat when one remembers how close we just were to death. Second to walk before God … for it is in submission that we bow, kneel, and remain still before such as God the creator of the universe. Only very few people have ever seen God’s face and not been annihilated, have survived to walk anywhere. So to walk before God, that is a wonder and great miracle. Third to walk before God in the light of life, for that is to live, and not just survive or get by or put in our time or endure … this is to live in God’s light of life! This is to live so abundantly that God’s light shines everywhere around us, into us, and through us to the world around.

We, who were so close to death, now live to the fullest extent possible for a human. This is an extraordinary blessing from God that we certainly cannot claim to deserve.

This gives us reason to hope again hope, no matter the challenges that face us and threaten to undo us, no matter how destructive Covid 19 is or any other virus or disease or violence or injustice or anything at all, at all … no matter what comes our way, we still trust God walks with us and in God’s time all justice and truth will prevail, all joy shall return to the earth and all it’s inhabitants, and blessings will flow freely through us to all people. That will be the Day of the Lord, and for this day we patiently wait, providing to all we can everything we can so that God’s blessings may flow through us saints already in these days.

What a life!