Where Do You Put Your Heart?

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Looking Up,

Do You See the Trees,

Or

the Heavens Above?

…

The Forest or the View to God’s Grace?

Zephaniah 3:16-17

On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Ephesians 2:19

You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

Words of Grace For Today

What do we need today,

a warrior who gives us victory over our enemies?

Or

to be renewed in God’s love?

There is, among all the things that occupy us in this life, only one thing that counts: our relationship with God.

Those that lie to the courts which have acted unjustly on their lies will have their lies turn back on them. There will be no escape for those that live by the lie, and try to kill by the lie.

Those that fear and love God, know God and God’s presence every day.

We are no longer strangers and aliens in God’s Kingdom. We are citizens with all the other God-made saints of all times, together children of God, members of God’s house.

Here we live.

Here our enemies’ lies have no meaning …

Here our enemies’ use of the unjust courts have no meaning, except

…

except their lies and perverse use of the unjust courts define them as God’s enemies.

That is no place to be on this planet, for there is no escape from God and God’s justice.

For us, there is home, always home in God’s blessed care.

Therefore we do not fear, no matter what lies our enemies threaten us with.

For we are God’s own people, God’s own blessed people, God’s own holy people.

Idols OR Love

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Idols cannot create this beauty,

Only God’s Pure Love

Creates this kind of Pure Love.

Deuteronomy 29:17

You have seen their detestable things, the filthy idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that were among them.

1 Thessalonians 3:12

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many idols. These used to be made of wood and stone, sliver and gold. They are also made of things that build perverse hopes, perverse power, perverse wealth, perverse status, perverse lies, and … all kinds of perverse things.

There are so many kinds of love, so many ways that it holds us, supports us, gives us life … makes things as God created them to be in so many ways.

In each moment we get to choose to worship our idols, our perverse idols that rob us and others of life.

OR

In each moment we get to choose to receive and give love that is able to create life for us and for others.

This choice is not something we can choose by ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us and inspire us, and help us to choose what is good and right.

In this moment how will we choose?

In this moment how will you choose?

About to Go Hungry …

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

God Places Pathways Before Us

That Will Return Us to Grace

and the Feast for All People,

If We But Only Look to See,

A Little Further to the Left.

Hosea 14:4

I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

John 21:3-4

Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

When our efforts come up empty, failed, and we are about to go hungry …

When we have turned from God, served other gods, and ourselves as godlets, chased after futile dreams, and knowingly made deals with the Devil to achieve our selfish goals (even those we see as ‘trickling down’ benefits to others!) …

When we have known God’s Grace, lost sight of God walking with us, and turned back to our old self-sustaining, self-serving, self-centred ways …

What is a person to do after all, when God disappears on us, when the promises God makes are slow in being fulfilled, when enemies are knocking at our doors, or have us in custody already, or are in our heads and hearts creating intolerable anxiety? Should we not head out on our own in this beautiful, wonderful creation to make our own way, to provide for ourselves reaping bountiful rewards for our own efforts, enabling ourselves to escape the daily struggles to survive, to enjoy the comforts and luxuries we’ve earned (at others’ expense, even at the expense of other’s lives, even those who loved us!), and to gain status among the people?

When we return to our selfish, self-centred ways, we turn our back on God, God’s promises, and the Grace that saves us from our own sin giving us renewed life at Jesus’ expense. We ask, as if to justify what we know is wrong, what is a person to do? Surely we can be our own godlets, determine our own lives, and make a future for ourselves and our offspring for generations to come.

Then the cost for our selfish, self-centred ways becomes apparent and no denial of the cost is believable by any sane person any more. Nature rebels, angrily kicking up more and more extreme storms, fires, floods, eruptions, and mudslides. Our self-made security dissolves before our eyes, and often our loved ones, our offspring, with it.

How does God react to our rebellious, self-centred, selfish, destructive ways?

God is faithful.

God is faithful to God’s promises.

God is faithful to God’s promises and God heals our every illness.

God is faithful to God’s promises and God stands at the edge of un-creation that could easily consume us, or from which we could gather live-sustaining food for so many bodies, minds, and hearts.

God heals us, and guides us to fish the bounty of God’s blessings for all that we require to live and to live truly abundantly (not over-consuming luxuries while others starve, not resting in comfort when their is Christ’ work for us to do, nor building our hopeless securities that always fail falling around our ears.)

God does not disappear on us, ever. Our vision fails to see God when we turn in on ourselves and forget to see Christ in every person we meet.

God does not disappear on us, ever.

As God promises us, God does not disappear on us, ever.

The Devil’s Coming!

Monday, November 22, 2021

‘The Devil’s coming!’

says one loon to the other.

‘The Devil’s always coming.

Keep swimming. We have fish to catch.’

the other answers.

Nahum 2:1

A shatterer has come up against you. Guard the ramparts; watch the road; gird your loins; collect all your strength.

2 Corinthians 5:18

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Words of Grace For Today

How do we see the world? How do you see the world?

How one sees the world makes all the difference for life, whether one scrambles to possess, connive to have more, and manipulate others to help you get more, whether that is more power, more wealth, more possessions, more pleasure, more control, more of anything or even of people.

The Devil takes no pause in attacking in the daylight, with an incomparable force, with incomparable soldiers (people as pawns), and with shock and terror to strike fear into every heart.

The Devil also takes no pause in working in the shadows, in the hearts of people driven to have more, in the minds of even those who think they are doing the best they can do (and those who know they are doing the worst things, just because they can and it serves their wishes.)

However the Devil attacks, the only thing that is sure is that the Devil has always, does always, and will always attack at every possible moment.

So …

If you think you need to protect yourself from the Devil, and you work your lifelong trying to defeat the Devil’s ability to control, dominate, and use you to destroy and de-story others, well … well then you will always lose out to the Devil, even when you think that you have won. Your life will become (has long since already become) a shamble of self-deceit and arrogance, and you, long ago, have become a danger to everyone around you.

This is the cry to stations: A shatterer has come up against you. Guard the ramparts; watch the road; gird your loins; collect all your strength.

…

If on the other hand you know that you will always lose to the Devil and the Great Deceiver’s attacks on your body, mind and soul …

and you know that the only defence against the Devil is the one Jesus provides, the promise given at our baptisms, that God will walk with us and always protect us from the Devil … If we trust God alone to defend us from the Devil’s attacks …

and as the cry to battle stations is sounded again and again, we know that we are already working out God’s Grace in our lives, bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; comforting all who mourn.

We can do this even while those around attempt to defend themselves from the Devil’s attacks with all their hearts, minds and strength, because we trust the gifts and promise given to us in our baptisms and that all this is from God, who reconciled us to Godself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Instead of trying to defend ourselves, which is an effort doomed to fail, and effort that is needless, we live abundantly, living out Christ’ reconciliation for all people.

It’s not easy.

It’s not futile like fighting against the Devil.

It is the best life we can ever imagine.

Seeing With God’s Vision

Sunday, November 21, 2021

We may not see anything clearly

Doch

God Gives Us Vision to See

God’s Grace

For All

Proverbs 21:2

All deeds are right in the sight of the doer, but the Lord weighs the heart.

Romans 16:19

For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good, and guileless in what is evil.

Words of Grace For Today

When we commit ourselves to an action, hopefully we know that it is a good and right thing to do. Sometimes we may be totally wrong, and our own blindness makes us think that we are right when we are actually fully wrong.

God knows.

God knows if we are doing something right or something very wrong.

When we do something that we know is terribly wrong and we do it anyway, then … well … then we serve the devil in all the devil’s horrendous and terrible ways.

Since we so often think that our terrible actions are as great as anything, we can hardly decide how to proceed in our lives doing only God’s will. In fact we never know how to evaluate what we plan to do, whether it is good or bad.

We can only confess our sins every day as a start, and then trust that God will both forgive us, and renew life in us so that we can answer God’s call, to be God’s grace in every day for everyone we meet.

We can pray that we will be wise, knowing how to be bearers of joy for ourselves and for other people, filled with gratitude for all that God provides for us, for all that is good that God brings out of us each day.

What is a Person to Do

Saturday, November 20, 2021

When Scapegoating Destorys One

Leaving One In Poverty and

All Goodness in One’s Accusers

Goes Up In Smoke

What is a Person to Do?

Proverbs 3:27

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.

2 Thessalonians 3:13

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

Words of Grace For Today

What is a person to do?

A megalomaniac hired me to fly and do ministry to native people (as we honourably referred to them back then), and because some in the ministry looked to change the direction from the paternalistic method the megalomaniac had developed (supported by ensuring chaos reigned among all those working for him so that he could dictate whatever he wanted to) to a ministry which was responsive to the people’s direction. I followed their direction and worked to develop relationships that would support that ministry. Progress was slow. It did not take the megalomaniac long to figure out he’d lost control of my ministry and that he was incapable of raising enough money to support the ministry even if I had followed his patronizing methods of ministry. I was fired. That was not enough. He and those that supported him had to grab a rumour going around the congregation where I worked 1/4 time (along with a full time senior pastor) that the pastor was gay. Mid 1980’s and that would spell the end of anyone’s career as a pastor. They applied the rumour to me, along with many people in the congregation. That was not enough. As I had tried to make sense of the chaos that the megalomaniac created I spent hours tracking his communications and directions and all else that he produced. None of it made sense, unless one allowed that he was trying to create chaos. That was more evil than I was able to imagine back then, fresh out of seminary as I was, so the time I spent was attributed to me having gone crazy. This is a common method for those who try to use chaos in order to gain and maintain control: they blame good, honest, honourable people with insanity. From his position of power in that organization there was little anyone could do to defend me, and no one stepped up to try in the face of the charge that I was both gay and crazy.

What is a good person to do?

A good person could try to fight back. A good person, other than me, could have stood up to defend me, knowing it would have cost them their job with the organization. A good bishop could have sent someone to defend me, but that didn’t happen. I did not even realize what I was being accused of until long after it was all done.

Then came truth came out: the senior pastor was discovered, murdered, naked along with a male prostitute in the city. The congregational president, whose gay brother had recently died in Vancouver of AIDS, quickly sold his car dealership and moved far away. I was on a trip for the church in Europe and found out about this over the following months.

None of the truth made any difference. I was supposedly gay. I was supposedly crazy of some kind. Every congregation I served as a pastor would have some kind of power issue among themselves and they’d scapegoat me to resolve their conflict with each other, using the rumours against me. I thought there was something wrong with the way I did ministry. There wasn’t unless one counts that as a pastor one has to be more than good, honest, gracious, and capable of sharing God’s Word in all one does. One has to be complicit, scheming, devious, and manipulative of the people with power in the congregation to keep them from using you as a scapegoat for their own sinful issues with each other. And one needs to be fortunate to have people of power willing to step up to protect one, so that one can continue in ministry.

What is a good, honest, gracious, and very capable person to do?

Some say: get one’s vengeance. Destroy those who would destroy you.

Others say: make sure you have more power than anyone else.

Others say: just give up and let the false accusations happen. Find other work. Move to some other town. Eventually the rumours will die out.

Jesus calls us to something different. As the passages today remind us, in the face of evil what a person is called to do is not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it, and do not be weary in doing what is right.

People still make those false accusations about me, that I am gay or that I am crazy.

The people who do so reveal themselves as working for the Devil. They are the people and pastors and bishops, congregational leaders, cops, ex, step children, lawyers, and plenty of judges and justices who are not good, kind, gracious, nor honest.

What is a person to do?

What a person is to do is to continue to do good, speak the truth, receive all people with kindness, and pray that God will soon bring the scapegoating to an end.

What is a person to do? God will do enough, soon enough.

Shattering Enemy Heads

Friday, November 19, 2021

Our Imaginations of God’s Justice

Are Darkened by Our Own Sin

And Wish to De-story Others.

Psalm 68:21

God will shatter the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways.

1 Thessalonians 4:14

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

Words of Grace For Today

Scriptures teach what everyone knows: God does great and mighty things, awesome things, wondrous and frightening things, life- and hope- creating things.

Life after the end of life, after death, seems a thing far fetched (to some if not many people.) Christians are not the only faithful people who embrace it as the hope of all hopes, grounded firmly in the centre of our faith, namely that Jesus was crucified for crimes and sins he did not commit and that three days later God rose him back to life. By this God demonstrated clearly that evil and death itself are not more powerful than God. By this God teaches that scapegoating (the killing of an innocent person in order to ‘pay’ or cover for one’s own sins) is not something favours. Rather God prohibits it just as God prohibits killing, sacrifice of people, especially children, and a host of other acts all too common among people, acts which all destroy other people, good people, by robbing them of life abundant.

Even though God prohibits these sinful, life destroying, de-storying actions, humans still commit them profusely. The hope in life after death includes the promise that in our new life, sins will be dealt with justly and with grace, and all will be free from oppression, abuse, and de-storying. The Pslamist puts this image graphically: God will shatter the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways.

There are few people, other than those who know they qualify for such an end, who would not hope that their enemies would cease to be.

God’s grace is more complete: God promises that God’s and our enemies will definitely cease to be … to be our enemies, for God will save them and convert them. They will sit with us among the children of God.

We pray: come soon, Lord Jesus, that our enemies will be defeated and we will live in peace. And they will know your peace, freeing them from their obsessions to de-story other people.

This is our story …. Let it be known far and wide.

Living Water

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Sometimes water reflects the glory of God,

the Light of the World,

and

what great things we get to see and experience!

Psalm 42:2

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

Revelation 21:6

Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.’

Words of Grace For Today

Thirsting.

Thirsting for water.

Thirsting for water to drink …

and to wash with …

and to clean with.

…

There is power in water, great power.

Water in such great abundance, not something that we thirst for can …

Well it can take us by surprise and wash us away …

just ask anyone who has experienced the power of a flood,

like the people in BC this past week.

Many on the roads were surprised by mudslides, made possible by the frozen ground, clear cutting forests on mountain sides and wildfires that left mountain sides bare and unsupported, and then rain like a river from heaven that poured heavier than heavy and did not stop.

Then they were trapped by a mudslide in front of them and a mudslide behind them, if they were lucky. If they were not lucky, well some were hit by a mudslide and buried or washed down the mountain. Or they who were really not lucky were trapped and watched as, or found out that, all their loved ones were either killed or left to die a slow and painful death.

God does not promise us just life or just water. God promises us water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

This water of life does not take life, it gives life … even to those who are stranded by mudslides.

That is the promise that the Alpha and the Omega provides for us … and it is done.

It is done for us by the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, of everything that is and everything that can be … even time.

Like air that gives life to the blood that flows through our arteries and veins to everything in us, so God brings us breath that brings us life in all creation … and profound joy as we live fully alive as we are created to live.

Now we come to behold the face of God, not in some miracle or mountain top breaking in on us by a Deity so far and away from us until then. Rather we come to behold the face of God (as sacramental mystics have always) in the mundane, obvious things, creatures and events of our daily lives.

Water, living water.

We have plenty pure, clean water, a gift from God, to clean with, to wash with, and to drink our fill from. Like all mundane things, this water came from the systems used to provide water to many communities, from the water pump station that serves as a water fill station for tanks on trailers and in trucks, and as trucks to fill up and then distribute the water to cisterns and tanks where so many people live.

Water, living water.

The Sun Goes Down

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

The Light of Christ

Shines in Every Darkness.

Isaiah 50:10

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God?

2 Peter 1:19

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

While most people make their way through life quite sure that they live and work in the light, how is it possible for those who live blessed by the Light of Christ to know that they live in the dark, and yet they fear God and trust God, and rely fully on God?

There is something about this passage from Isaiah that is odd: that God’s people, God’s servants, God’s God-made saints can live in the darkness.

Yet anyone who follows Christ, who lives as God’s servant, who lives as a God-made saint can tell us, there are plenty of moments when, even with the Light of Christ shining bright in our lives, it seems that the darkness has won the day and we will never find the Light again.

There is, though, always a light shining in the darkness, even if the flame is feeble and distant, there is always at least a glimmer of reality, a glimmer of light, a glimmer of hope that Christ will make the world right: dark will be dark, light will be light, sin will be eradicated, justice will be true, and love will be everything, and everything will indeed be made of Grace.

It is those dark days that we live through without dwelling there. Instead as we move on we wait for the day to dawn and the morning star to rise in our hearts,

for we are God-made saints (not self made at all). We are the people who fear the Lord, and more we fear and love God with all our heart, mind, and strength.

Hey, You! Ya, You!

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

God Calls,

As Distinctly

As Venus in the Western Sky.

(Listen Up!)

1 Samuel 3:9

Therefore Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” ’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Acts 16:14

A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.

Words of Grace For Today

God speaks.

Some of us are taught, moved, or inspired to listen … and we know the rest of those stories, right!

Samuel hears a voice calling and since he is Eli’s apprentice he assumes his master calls him and he obediently goes to the aide of his master. But Eli has not called him.

Now the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread, as it is today where sacramental mystics are rare, very rare. So Samuel and even Eli do not catch on to what really happens; that God calls to Samuel. It takes three times that Samuel runs to Eli to answer the call. Then Eli understands that Samuel is not making it up, nor is Eli so forgetful he’s forgotten that he’s called Samuel, nor is someone playing tricks on the two of them, living as they are in the temple. Eli directs Samuel to answer the call, to know that it is God calling.

How many times does God call to us and we miss out because we simply fail to recognize that God calls to us. God works in many and various ways, so we’d do well to be prepared and alert or at least that someone we trust will be able to tell us how to listen to God’s voice.

One complaint that antivaxxers come up with is that they need to be faithful to God and not put their trust in ‘untrustworthy’ science by getting vaccinated – which studies show is a very effective way to reduce the likelihood one will get infected, and if one is infected that one will land in the hospital, and if one lands in the hospital that one will need an ICU bed, and if one needs an ICU bed one that one will die. Kind of a nice reduction by anyone’s standards (unless one does not want to live.) The other very significant reduction is that if one is vaccinated and then still becomes infected, one is much less likely to pass it on to other people (especially if one wears a good mask, properly well fit over one’s nose, not a bandana or neck tube or a mask that leaves one’s nose breathing out the virus!) This is significant because then getting vaccinated is not a matter of one’s own freewill and choice. It is about being responsible for the health of other people that one shares indoor space with (even hours after one is in the space others can breath in the virus that hangs on aerosols in the air like smoke or smells wafting from a kitchen!)

God calls for us all to be responsible for others, and unless our health does not allow us to get vaccinations, to get the Covid vaccination, soon if not already!

That’s where the message about Lydia comes in to the conversation. Lydia hears the Word of Christ from Paul and God moves her to respond: she becomes a major supporter of Paul’s ministry with the resources that her trade in purple cloth has netted her.

So also, God has moved many people with many resources, and people need to encourage more people of resources, to advocate for all people to listen to God’s Word: a simple Word that is spoken through the science (after all science had it’s birth in the church and remains possible only because people believe there is an order in creation that can be studied, discovered, organized, and utilized to heal people and make tremendous differences in our lives -for good and unfortunately often also for bad!)

The Word of God is rarely heard in these days, there are seldom if ever visions of God, and yet sacramental mystics among many others can tell you God speaks all the time in so many marvellous and unexpected ways.

We need to learn or be inspired to answer: Here we are, God.

The rest of our lives will be filled with stories that have been and will be told through the generations, stories of God-made saints living out of and being God’s love, nurture, and grace for other people.

Return to your day. Be ready the next time you hear the voice calling and answer: Here I am, God.

And then hang on to your hat!