Month: June 2022

What Was He Thinking?!

Thursday, June 30, 2022

The wedge is there on the side of the tree towards where it is markedly leaning, with a long back cut towards the other side. And there is a cut above it, made by poking the saw nose first through the tree! That’s an unusual, often dangerous cut to make, and completely unnecessary here. So what was he thinking?

Here you see clearly the angled cut made up into the top cut. What was that for? It guaranteed the saw would get clamped by 3000 lbs.

From the other side you see clearly the cut that was not made, which left the tree hanging and clamping his saw. When I arrived the idea they had tried was to ‘push’ the tree over. Really! Physics is pretty much unbiased: two people totally maybe 300 lbs are not going to break that much tree fibre by pushing with all their might. That’s what saws are for.

Exodus 15:2

Moses started off his recounting God’s great deliverance through the Red Sea: ‘The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.’

Luke 1:49

Mary said: ‘for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.’

Words of Grace For Today

Lordy, Lordy, what was he thinking?!!

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what motivates people or what they were thinking when the started down the road you find them on.

Take the man and the woman who found themselves cutting down a tree on private property (not their property at all) claiming they thought it was public land, as if that would make it better. His excuse was it was dead already.

(Now I was done for the day, tired and sore. There was just enough time before the late sunset at 22:00 ish to get a shower and be in bed to enjoy not being awake still for the almost as-late-as-it-gets-all-year sunset. Then I hear voices, excited, and a chainsaw revved up, working a cut, then another, then another, and then … hard to tell what that sound was, by then I’d found the three of them, and one was as it should be … the chainsaw, because even if it was stuck, it was doing exactly what it was designed to do, letting a fool get into trouble and saving his butt. My first question was, “What were you doing?” “Cutting down the tree.” “Yes, I see that, but what were you doing with those cuts? I’m curious and always willing to learn. I’ve been around a lot of tree felling and I’ve never seen any cuts like that?” To which he just got belligerent, swore and refused to talk, like a teenager caught in something stupid and inexplicable.)

Yes, the tree was dead, but what was he thinking going on private land to cut down even a dead tree.

He challenged the information I gave him that this was private land he was cutting down a dead tree on. He asked about all the other campers out here.

Well, that’s hard to figure since the neighbouring piece of land is public land, either crown land or municipal district land, that people have used and abused for generations as a camp and drink and drug and bush party place. Admittedly consumption of marijuana is legal and the current government has made it legal to drink in the provincial campgrounds, and then only at your own campsite. It’s still illegal to use other recreational drugs anywhere (well almost, since there are safe sites and cities where possession of small amounts is still illegal but they have permission from the government of Canada not to enforce those laws) and it’s still illegal to walk away from your own camp and drink, or to drink on public land without a campsite of your own. Which means that Uncle Bill cannot come visit you where you are camping and legally down a beer with you, or smoke a joint, or shoot up some ‘joy’.

That all said, the neighbouring piece of land is public land and it is illegal to cut down a standing tree (living or dead) on public land (unless you have bought and paid for a permit to do explicitly that.)

So what were these people thinking or planning?

More concerning is, if one takes a look at the cuts the guy made with the chainsaw, why did he intentionally get the chainsaw clamped in the tree?

There are lots of ways to bring down a tree, many of them very dangerous that you can get away with until that last time when you don’t and that’s the last thing you do in this life. These kind of cuts are like that: intended to get someone killed.

He was luck, extremely lucky. He went to fetch and axe to cut the last few inches that held the tree up. I went and brought back the chainsaw I borrow and waited. I offered to cut it carefully while he held his saw. No, bravado and stupidity won out and he proceeded to whack at it with his dull axe until the tree fell, all ~3000 lbs of it and his chainsaw hit the ground, luckily clear of the tree.

And there the dead, felled tree sits, 200 yards from the property line, in the middle of the woods, not even near a road. It’s pine so it’s not safe to burn in a stove unless one cleans the chimney very often, like every two weeks at least. Lots of fuel (with that sap that sticks around) to burn, but there’s no good use for it.

This guy is one of God’s creatures. What was God thinking when this guy was created?

As for me, like Mary, I can say for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And with Moses: The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

But what was God thinking? And what was that guy thinking: ‘gonna test God’s ability to save me?’

Choose?

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Entering Our Golden Years,

We May Find That

The Golden Hue is Actually

Orange Rust,

and We Are All

Rusted Out,

Done In,

Kaputt,

Until The Spirit

Renews Us

For Another Day

of Service.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

John 17:3

[Referring to himself in the third person, Jesus prays:] Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Words of Grace For Today

Sophie was old and tired, worn right out, leaking where leaking definitely should not happen. Through the years so many different people had taken her out to the most remote places, far away places, beautiful places in the wonderful creation of God, and used her and abused her, and then dragged her back home and left her and ignored her until the next time they wanted to drag her out again. Then she would be sold to others who would do the same to her, over and over. She could barely stand up right anymore. It’s as if someone had taken her spring right out of her step, if she had had a step left at all. While she had been all cut up to fit someone’s fantasy, it had not worked too well. Most of all that pesty leak grew into a big leak, and a second started, and her pretty skin started to turn black, oozing with stink.

Gillis was smaller than Sophie, but his history was pretty much the same, though more extreme. He’d been jacked all around, dragged through all kinds of mud, out into the boonies far from civilization, and there used and abused, smeared with mud, gunk, and all kinds of unspeakables. Lucky for Gillis, though he too was worn right out and had started to leak where leaks should not happen, his did not progress to the stinking, oozing stage that Sophie’s had.

Both Gillis and Sophie came to the hermitage in the meadow, bought to give them their freedom, to be fixed up well for their last years. In the peaceful surroundings, with much time, soothing talk, hard work using the tools of a counsellor and healer-fixer-whatnot, at least Gillis became something. First his leak was dealt with, cured and healed with barely a scar left. Then he was treated and cured and fixed up from the inside out, given a new look, if not new, at least respectable. Even his water works were fixed and started to flow as they should.

Sophie sat, waiting her turn, her leaks bandaged up for the time being, the black oozing stopped so that more damage would not take her down. Some of her parts that she could not use were transplanted into Gillis to give him new life. When her time came, she would get brand new organs, parts and pieces until she, too, could go out, if not new, then respectably providing for at least a few people.

Moses puts before the people, after reminding them of the wondrous works of God to bring them to where they are, alive and free, ready to enter the Promised Land, that they have a choice: to serve God who has provided for them and their ancestors following God’s Law provided to them, or to turn to other gods, and other ways of living, cursed ways. They get to choose: blessings or curses.

We, too, even today, are free to choose to either serve God and enjoy blessings unending or to turn to other gods and to serve the Devil in all his many guises, bringing curses down upon us and ours.

We have free choice.

Jesus comes to save us from our choices to turn from God, to renew for us the possiblities to choose God, and to follow God’s Law, updated as it needed to be, from the many hundreds of thousand of words to a concise comprehensible ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself, loving especially your enemy.’ Of course this Law, Jesus’ law taking into it all the Law of Moses and all the commentaries and guides provided to it, is just as impossible for us to keep.

We with free choice, can only ‘choose’ to serve God and keep God’s Law, when the Holy Spirit brings us to so choose and live. A bit of a paradox: free but not able to be free. Martin Luther held it to be single predestination: We can fully choose to turn from God, but only God can and does save us.

This is life, and we have, by the blessing poured over us by the Holy Spirit and the gift of renewed free choice, the ability to choose to ‘try’ to serve God.

Sophie and Gillis, part of God’s good creation and having brought great joy to so many people, now entering their last years of useful life, have no such choice. They are, as one might suspect, merely recreational vehicles, camper trailers, small campers 14’ and 12’ respectively, both built in the 70’s and now near 50 years old. People have used and abused them to camp in. Some with some respect for the camper and creation that the camper made them able to visit and overnight in, some not with tremendous abuse of camper and creation.

Let us give God thanks, this day again, for all that God has made us to be, even if we are old and worn and have sprung leaks and, and, and ….

It’s another day in God’s Promised Land, the wonders always before us, the blessings flowing freely over us, the work never ending.

God Keeps, We Celebrate

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

The Little Things of Beauty,

Remind Us of The Great Goodness

God Intends

for Us All

Psalm 16:8

I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

Acts 26:22

To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: ….

Words of Grace For Today

It is like us humans, to say that we keep God ….

Knowing that we keep God always before us should give us little comfort, for what we do can be changed in an instant, and then God would no longer be our right hand, and we would be moved, and moved so far the universe would appear to have disappeared to be replaced by something entirely different and unimaginable.

Thank God, it is not so for us.

God keeps God always before us, and therefore God is always at our right hand (and in our minds, in our spirits, and in our hands and feet … and everywhere else – and we cannot change any of that!) We shall not be moved except by God’s choosing to move us or allow us to move, or by allowing others to move us (for good or evil.)

There is great comfort in knowing that what one proclaims is what the saints in light through the generations have proclaimed: God is steadfast in love and mercy for us, whatever comes at us, and since the beginning of time God has planned that Jesus would be born to demonstrate to us God’s steadfast love and mercy, and not just to us but to demonstrate to all people. And God’s love and mercy are not just steadfast for us, but also for all people, especially the worst sinners. (We worst sinners make God’s demonstration of love and mercy all that more obvious to even the thick-headed, hard-hearted, and dark spirited people.

Ours is therefore a life of celebrating with gratitude all that God does for us, even in the midst of the worst our enemies can throw at us. We also get to celebrate what God does for our enemies who would kills us or have us killed: God provides steadfast love and mercy, and if they refuse God’s work for and in them, then God’s justice and judgment will prevail for them. That will be a loss in God’s Kingdom, but it is what will be.

So we stand to proclaim what the prophets and Moses said would take place, the work of God in Jesus (born, ministering and healing, harassed, falsely accused, arrested, convicted, tortured, and killed … and risen back to life) to demonstrate God’s will to save us all.

And we shall not be moved, not by any lie or attempt to bring us to our deaths.

Today, it’s just another day, doing God’s work … as best we can, assured that God keeps God with us, no matter what comes our way, bringing us to celebrate with thanks all things good and wonderful.

Blind Bullies

Monday, June 27, 2022

Here, in the Hermitage Meadow, the Sun Goes Down

And No One Is Falsely Accused, Not People, Not God,

but it is not so beyond this small refuge.

Ezekiel 33:17

Your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just’, when it is their own way that is not just.

Ephesians 5:10

Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

A common illness among humans is to know full well something is wrong, but somehow be unable to identify oneself as the source. Instead we blame others, believing the fault cannot possibly be ourselves. Innocent people are blamed. It may be simple scapegoating. The blamed person never even knows they are blamed. Seems innocent way to deflect responsibility for one’s sins.

Until it is not so simple, for one has been doing this for so long one does not know when one is blaming others for one’s own sins, and when others actually are the wrongdoers, and one carries on, driving people out of town with their reputations ruined, taking people to court, fully perjurying oneself, and sending innocent people to jail. These things just get out of hand.

Lawyers, Prosecutors, Clerks and Judges see this so often and care not one wit, simply carrying, knowing full well innocent people are accused and then convicted, and very not innocent people blatantly lie under oath in court. The courts care not one bit because they, too, add their lies on top of the perjury provided, in order to convict innocent, unfavoured people, and giving guilty, favoured people the privilege of destroying other people, as the courts themselves participate. There must be some kind of reward for the courts, prosecutors, lawyers, rcmp, and the actually guilty people who perjure themselves. It’s the reward all bullies enjoy as they beat up others who certainly do not deserve to be beaten.

It is an easy step to blaming God for one’s own sins, claiming God is unjust, when the guilty and unjust player is oneself.

Against this there is little defence.

There is only the comfort in knowing that saints of all generations have suffered the same kind of injustice, and even Jesus himself was falsely accused and convicted, and killed in a most torturous way, by crucifixion. The comfort comes in knowing that one is not the only person so unjustly dealt with, and that through the generations, God has always accompanied those falsely accused and convicted, and killed.

While we live, we pray, God save us from such injustice, from such blind and sick people.

While we live, we pray, God helps us each day to find what pleases you, and to think, speak, and do as you would have us.

Small Pieces, Profound Peace?

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Great Country,

God’s Country!

Humans Doing Their Best

to Undo It All.

Psalm 71:20

You, who have made me see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Words of Grace For Today

For generations people have gathered at the smaller lakes surrounding the larger Cold Lake. Cold Lake’s 210 square miles of water surface stretches for 21 km and it’s 142 meters depth keep it cold even in the hot short summers. While it has a great variety of fish, it’s catch and release today. Back as long as memory serves (some days that’s just hours) people of the area have gravitated to the many smaller lakes that dot the bush around Cold Lake. They warm up in the summer making swimming a real possibility (sort of) and freeze over sooner in the winter making ice fishing possible much earlier. Their smaller size also means that storms year around and the cold winds of winter are less drastic. Sometimes that’s a real factor when out fishing. And it makes for a better camping experience when camping, which usually means June through August, and maybe also September and May, for most people. Only the hardiest camp earlier in March and April and later in October and November. Only the real desperate homeless or the most die-hard campers stay at all in or through the winter.

The problem with the campers through the generations is that, while camping in a number of areas is by reservation and with payment only, there are plenty of ‘free’ places to camp, some even legally. That ‘free’ cost has meant that a number of people, incapable of caring for the land or water or other people have gravitated to these ‘free’ sites. During Covid restrictions they were abused as places to gather huge numbers of people to party, drink, eat, and drug up with no measures for anyone’s safety. Long before Covid the ‘bush party’ attitude descended on a number of these sites as well. Annual ‘Grad Parties’, organized by parents and grandparents descend on these sites, bringing hundreds of young people to drink, drug, and music their sanity into oblivion, as if that were the best life had to offer them. While a 14 day limit exists, there are many who claim the ‘right’ to camp for months on end. Among the many who have shown up and still do camp more discreetly are known drug dealers. The traffic in to their campsites to share a drink and buy supplies is constant. Now it’s into the third and fourth generations of people who show up, demanding that they have a heritage right to party away, without any limit, their brains, bodies and souls. To hell with the land, the trees, the animals, the water, or other people. Their claim extends to the surrounding privately owned land as well. They bring the loudest ‘toys’ to rip up the ground, traverse the private lands, belching noise and fumes as much as possible, exercising their ‘rights’ and demonstrating the value of their lives.

The land, the water, the animals, the trees, the sane people ask: where is peace to be found? Those with enough money find a quieter lake, buy property, and secure their piece of paradise with their money and ability to pay taxes, build cabins, and fence out intruders. Those without any money or choice to live elsewhere wonder aloud: how long oh Lord, how long, before peace is possible, not only when the bitter cold keeps the most dangerous of animals away?!

Would it not be nice to know that blatant disregard for life is only present here? It is everywhere. It is obvious here because there are fewer things that provide ‘cover’ for the abuses of life.

Yet, when the abuse subsides for a few hours, a day, or a week, even though nature may storm away, biting bitterly cold or thrashing wildly with ferocious winds, the beauty of God’s creation not visibly overwhelmed by human domination renews one’s spirit.

The unrelenting human need to draw out energy from the ground is all around: with bitumen drilled for, extracted, processed and shipped out. Though in the woods one can ignore it for the most part. Knowing eyes and ears discern the mark oil extraction has made everywhere.

So we pray: “Lord, when will peace come to this land, and to it’s people?”

Even if we are not afraid, how long before the nights are not broken by loud ‘music’ or exhaust pipes untamed? How long before drugs, alcohol, ‘music’, and sex are not constant escapes for so many people who might otherwise have lived productive lives? How long before … before your blessings flow to these people so far lost from life as you created us to live it?

How long, Lord, before, You, who have made me see many troubles and calamities, revive me again?

How long before your peace is apparent each day?

Or is it enough that it is only occasionally to be found here?

Stinking Dirty

Saturday, June 25, 2022

This is the Servant-Slave’s view

through the weeds,

near the dirt.

Deuteronomy 8:5

Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you.

John 13:15

For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

Words of Grace For Today

Jesus hosts the disciples for his last supper, and provides for them as a good servant/slave. He washes their feet, dusty from the day walking with sandals (socks were not yet a thing, nor boots the common footwear, yet, oh, you say it’s shoes, ok. Still back then it was sandals for everyone). At the end of the day one’s feet would be just a tad, shall we say, stinking yucky dirty. So the one who washed feet was not just a small bowl and cloth routine. It meant a lot of stinking, really stinking, dirt and grime. It’s no small job, and it’s not a pleasant one.

Then Jesus continues: I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. So we are to serve others, even doing the most servant/slave kind of service even if it just plain stinks.

We certainly are not to be the one’s who set our discipline over others, lording it over them, thinking that our example can be set before them and either by punishment or carrots of encouragement we can change others to be better.

Our work is to be the one’s who make others stink less by our work. We leave the ‘making others aware of their failures’ to God.

And we understand that God will discipline us to put us back in line. (If we can even find a line to be in, serving others needs.)

A great day: finding our way out of being lord over others and into being servant/slave for others.

Great joy. (May not seem like it, but when you give it a go, you find the servant/slave for Christ is always living a better life than any rich, powerful, or famous master.)

Enjoy, today as well as every other day.

Purpose?

Friday, June 24, 2022

There’s lots of weeds in life to be caught by, and lots of opportunity to share the sunset, and everything else in life with those in need.

Psalm 19:8

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.

Luke 3:10-11

The crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’

Words of Grace For Today

We are born with pretty much empty minds, which get filled with all we take in.

So we ask many people: how do we live well?

That is part of being human.

God does not leave us without any guidance. Sometimes that guidance is abused by others to steal life from us and many other people. Sometimes that guidance is misunderstood and following it gets us further from a good life than we were earlier. Mostly God’s precepts teach us how to live well, bring joy to our hearts, and clarity to our eyes and minds.

Still we must often ask: Lord what then must we do?

The beginning of enjoying a good life is to learn to share everything and whatever little one has, trusting that others will share with you when you are in need.

Life rarely works out that way, but being those who gladly, generously, and readily give to others in need starts by making one’s own life closer to what God intended, and it provides to others so that they can live. It’s hard to live well if you cannot even live.

And that’s the point. There’s always enough for everyone to live well, as long as those with more than enough are more than ready to share.

Which we humans rarely are.

So God keeps reminding us, that’s the purpose of life.

Today’s just another opportunity to learn how good it is to live in God’s purpose for life.

Adversity and Gladness?

Thursday, June 23, 2022

There is always a way

past the trees and one’s adversaries,

that brings one to the Living Water.

Jeremiah 31:7

For thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.’

Acts 4:29

And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness.

Words of Grace For Today

The people are just returned from exile and Jeremiah wants them to sing with loud gladness, to give praise as they beg God to save the remnant, what little remained after yet another attempt to wipe out God’s people.

Wiping out peoples is as old as it gets. Erase them. Eradicated them. Burn them to the ground. Be rid of them.

Not hard to feel that way. I get that way about wasps that are so plentiful out my door that it’s hard to get anything done. Let them be no more! All of them, Gone!

God does not guide us, God’s people, to be so with our enemies. Instead, God calls us to extend God’s mercy even to them.

That’s a bold move in a world that eats you alive when you are merciful. That’s as old as it gets, too.

So we pray often, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness.

The courage to know that grace is the only way to live a life that is abundant as God created us to live, even when that may well mean the backlash is enough to wipe one out.

To have that courage requires that one know how, when one has almost been wiped off the face of the earth, to give God praise and thanks with great gladness.

To whom else are we going to turn for life abundant?

How else are we going to enjoy it, if not celebrating in the face of adversity?

Today is another one of those days: lots of challenges, many from our enemies; lots of cause for thanks and praise given to God, and overwhelming joy.

Be glad. We have another day.

Keep and Bee

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

There are Many Storms of Fire and Light

Comin’ Our Way

We Can Stop None of Them by

Keeping Anything or Being Anything.

Proverbs 7:2

Keep my commandments and live, keep my teachings as the apple of your eye.

James 3:13

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

Words of Grace For Today

When religion is reduced to us doing the good things, then religion is nothing more than the rest of life, dressed up to be nice or good or respectable. We do this because we recognize that we certainly are not nice or good or respectable. We are good at one thing, and that is being sinners.

Religion that is used to tell other people that they ought to live nice or good or respectable lives is an often apparently successful project, which fails at anyone living nice or good or respectable. It just controls people and makes everyone hide the truth about their lives being anything but nice or good or respectable.

By all means, go for it: keep and be: keep God’s commandments as the apple of your eye. Be wise and understanding and show by your life that your works are born of wisdom. If you can. But nobody can Keep and Be!. That’s the honest bare truth about humans.

So why all this posturing as if telling others to be nice and good and respectable by being wise and understanding and keeping God’s commandments?

Yes, why? Why these marching orders to Keep and Be?

Because facing the fact that telling others how to be better is futile means having to face the fact that trying to be better oneself is also futile.

Yes, why admit that? That might lead to total despair which might drive us back to rely solely on God for anything good to come out of us or for anything worthwhile to come of us.

Then solely relying on God for everything good, we might just beg God for forgiveness and mercy and another chance at life and the wisdom to know how to let God be God and us to be humans.

God saw all that coming and sent the patriarchs and matriarchs (cannot leave them out) and the prophets and warrior-kings, and wise-kings, and then Jesus to show us how to live in creation as creatures full of gratitude for life itself, and for a model on how to share life with others, generously, prodigiously, extravagantly even!

Relying solely on God for anything and everything good, we might just start to keep the Law, love the Lord your God with all you heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbour as yourself, especially your enemy. And that might be the wisest thing we ever accomplish in life.

The source of keeping the Law and being wise is not that we decide to so keep or be. It is only in that we surrender any illusions we have that these things might be within our grasp by our volition. Instead they are gifts from God, flowing freely over us, available to us if we simply surrender to God’s good mercy and unconditional love for us and all people.

Keep and be: might be better now days if we would just keep bees.

The Kids …

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Today,

the Light Shines Bright and Long

on All That Was Once

Hidden

in Darkness

Psalm 8:1-4

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Matthew 21:15-16

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’

Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself”?’

Words of Grace For Today

Thieves struck.

Simple deception taking things that can be fenced for money for drugs, and

I am left without essential tools and money that I am so short of: my life is not threatened, but bankruptcy moves closer and closer, which may lead to my death, if it is not brought on sooner by other dark powers.

More, I am betrayed yet again.

When Jesus does the amazing things of healing people of all kinds of illnesses, or bringing people together to share, trusting each other, the leaders know that Jesus is undermining the very reality that their power over the people thrives on and requires: fear. Fear of each other. Fear of those in power. Fear of those who speak the truth. Fear of anything and everything. Fear fuels greed. Greed makes people predictable and easily manipulated.

When Jesus does these amazing things, the children (and with this term is meant also the simple people in the temple) sing out his praise, honouring him as the descendant of David that he is. Jesus has calmed their fears so that they can see clearly the world they live in.

They see Jesus and know him to be the Son of David, the one promised and hoped for for generations.

They see the leaders in the temple, and know the corruption that guides their leading the people, not in the people’s best interest, but to the leaders’ advantages.

They see the poverty they are caught in, the forces that keep them down, and the promise that they will have life abundant even today. They have begun to realize the blessings of life are not given nor taken by possessing power, riches, and reputation.

Looking at the world around them, they see the wonders that God has created and rightly ask how it is that God cares a wit at all about humans, so small we are in the universe. They see clearly that though humans are so small in the universe, though they are so small in their own world, God cares most about them, and showers blessings on them each day, blessings that others toss aside as if they were mere trifles.

Today, the summer solstice, a 50th birthday, a day of light, and the shortest night of the year … even today the children (the simple, honest people blessed by God even if poverty holds them the rest of their lives,myself among them) are able to sing God’s praise with clarity. It is that clarity and truth that threatens corrupt powers, falsely gained riches, and those who parade themselves as leaders. The Light of Christ always shines. Today it shines intensely on the darkness of those who steal by deception, who take from others to feed their addictions and amass their wealth, who claim to lead the people from positions of honour.

Today all glory is God’s as Christ’s Light shines revealing all the dark of human hearts and deeds and the brightness of God’s blessings.