Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.
1 Thessalonians 5:9-10
For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.
Words of Grace For Today
Rending one’s clothing was a way of symbolically taking apart the life that had gone wrong, and allowing God to reassemble life in harmony with God’s will.
Like many of our religious practices we have reduced rending of clothing to a superficial act that really has no impact on our actual lives. So Joel calls people to not just rend their clothing, but to rend their hearts, and thereby to allow God to reassemble life to be in harmony with God’s will.
This simple act changes us at our foundations.
Jesus provides us God’s way forward for us: we rely solely on the Grace of Jesus the Christ, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live … and live with him.
Living by Grace alone we have no place for wrath.
We embody God’s Grace. As God is, so God makes us saints gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. This is quite the life, in which rending our hearts is a small and yet complete act of love.
No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Acts 10:43
All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
Words of Grace For Today
That day when all will know God, and no one will need to teach about God or learn about God will be the day
we hope
when all sin will disappear, when humans will no longer sin.
God has a different plan.
If sin disappears we will have lost our freedom to choose and with that our ability to love,
for love entails the commitment of self to another person, a commitment made as a free choice. Otherwise it is not love.
As our ability to choose to love persists, then we must (a priori) have the choice not to love, which is to sin.
As long as love exists, sin exists.
God does not end sin … and therefore love.
God allows us to love and to sin … and
God deals with our sins by forgiving them, exactly when we do not deserve that forgiveness.
This is Jesus’ story: that God so loved the world that God gave his only son that all who believe in him should be saved. This believing is not something we accomplish other than by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Jesus saves us by grace alone.
Each day we breathe we have choices, and when we choose to love we, they people we love, and all of creation benefits. This is how God created us to live.
If we choose to not love, then God offers us forgiveness, free forgiveness and renewed life, renewed so that we can again choose to love … or not.
God’s love for us and mercy is unending. God continues to offer us forgiveness as long as we breathe.
…
And for now we need to use that breathe to learn and teach one another of God’s Grace, for it is a lesson we never quite retain.
They say to a tree, ‘You are my father’, and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their backs to me, and not their faces. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Come and save us!’
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Words of Grace For Today
Trees as fathers, and stones as mothers. That surely is a mixed up version of perverting reality that I have not run into … often.
There are plenty of other versions of perverting reality that I hear of, read of, and encounter in daily life all too often. It starts with some terrible perversion of reality driven by hubris, thinking oneself is so much more than one really is. After a person allows that to happen, there is no telling what will come next. When one thinks one is no longer a creature of God, no longer anything less than a godlet, the mess one creates is pure … pure evil.
That’s how we get a US president like Trump.
That’s how we get so many Covidiots that secure the continuation of the pandemic in stronger and more destructive ‘waves’.
That’s how we get so much fake news, so much that so many people can believe vaccines are dangerous, that climate change is not real, or that truth is only subjective and can be anything we want it to be.
There is nothing more destructive to all life, in us, around us, and through-out the universe.
Even those of us who have resisted the fake news perversion and return of chaos into our lives are caught up by this evil. There is simply no escape.
When we allow this to consume us, then …
Then … we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves or anyone else.
Faith.
Faith is all we have left.
Faith is what gives us hope.
Hope gives us, with no cause at all other than faith, to cry to God for help.
We cry and pray that God will save us.
As God promises in many and various ways, that by Grace salvation is ours, so God forgives us our sin, claims us as God’s own children, and sends us out to be the people who carry God’s Grace to others.
From ‘Trees’ and ‘Stones’ and all kinds of perversions of reality we pray ‘God save us.’
These Trees Will Soon Fall to Erosion by the Lakeshore
Shall We Consume Ourselves in Lament for Them?
Or
Get about Bringing Climate Change to an End?
And Pandemics?
Shall We End Them
Before They End Us?
Jonah 4:10-11
Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’
James 5:11
Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
Words of Grace For Today
We ought to be concerned (as God tells Jonah) not just for our little ‘tree’, our little corner of life. Rather we MUST be concerned for the whole nation, or rather, the whole earth.
Make that we ought to be alarmed in concern for the whole world.
Climate change is still denied by politicians, as if it would go away, as if is somehow not so clear that ‘the planet is angry at us’ as last year’s extremes are this year’s normals, and this year’s extremes are next year’s normals. Soon it will be last month’s extremes become this month’s normals … and on until we will have an impossible task of finding refuge on our own planet, anywhere.
The pandemic, Covid 19 is in it’s fourth wave in North America, and we seem to be preparing to suffer worse pandemics, perhaps even simultaneous pandemics, in the very near future … our future. No more of the ‘one pandemic in a century or so’. And we remain fully unprepared and unwilling to prepare and do what is necessary to prepare. We have leaders who ‘wish’ this Covid-19 away, and in doing so invite an even more brutal wave upon us all.
We can certainly trust that God is compassionate and merciful and we can use Job’s endurance as a role model. Doch! We ought not invite such great need for God’s compassion and mercy, nor for Job-like endurance, down upon so many of the earth’s whopping 7.4 billion and growing population.
We may not have planned this population overburdening of the planet, but we certainly knew it was coming and we collectively did very little about it, least nothing effective!
Sitting ‘where our bush used to give us shade,’ wallowing in our self-pity does no one any good. We need to get up and proclaim the Good News and God’s judgment for ‘Nineveh,’ whatever that will look like for us. We pray that we may see God at work as God worked through Jonah’s speaking to Nineveh!
No one would dare to venture on such a mission, without trusting God’s grace, abundant and endless, flowing for us all.
A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken.
Philemon 1:7
I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.
Words of Grace For Today
We know that good health is boosted by a good disposition and an attitude of gratitude, as is ill-health mitigated and recovery from ill-health aided by a robust spirit of gratefulness.
These are benefits to the individual who embraces God’s promises, summarized by Julian of Norwich as “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”
These benefits multiple when one who sees God’s creation with such confident gratitude also sees others benefiting from embracing God’s promises morning, noon, and night, and can give thanks for those who inspire this assurance.
To know with all one’s heart, mind and spirit that, despite our great sinfulness and destruction we bring on each other, ourselves and the creation that supports our ability to live, that God will bring blessings to us each day, and produce saints out of us wretched, most wretched, most woeful, wretched sinners. To trust that other sinners, as well as ourselves, will be able to bring God’s grace to bear on such profound brokenness of heart, spirit, and world, is to live by Grace.
Why would we choose to live any other way?
Why would we choose to follow any other promise, especially the empty promises of corrupt leaders, fake news makers and spreaders, and other agents of the Great Deceiver?
Why would we seek solace in revenge or further destruction, or satisfaction at other’s misfortunes?
Why?
As the leaves carpet the woods and meadows, the nights reach below zero clearing out the remaining wasps and other flying bugs, and as the days are shorter, fresher, more invigorating (motivating one to prepare for the deep cold that’s coming) …
How can we live except by Grace?
Breathe. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply of God’s goodness all around.
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return here.
Luke 14:16-17
Then Jesus said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.”
Words of Grace For Today
God gathers the people together to come back home after being in exile. The blind, lame, the pregnant, those giving birth, all are invited to come together. All are invited home.
Jesus tells of the wealthy person who invited a great number to a feast, and called them when it was ready. Those who were invited had all sorts of excuses why they would not come. So Jesus tells how the gracious host sends his servants out to invite in people from the streets, the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. When that does not fill the seats at the table the host sends the servants back out to compel anyone and everyone to come and feast with him; except those who are invited are excluded!
How are we in exile today? We (in North America where I live) live in countries that we call home, where health care is provided for everyone (if you can get in to see a doctor, a doctor who is not too exhausted to provide care, an honest doctor who will not lie to be rid of you if you have serious health concerns), where housing is available to protect us from the cold of winter and the heat and beasts of the hot summers (if you have enough money to buy or rent such a home, the rest of us remain in substandard houses or in no houses at all), and where our voices are heard in elections (if we buy into the most popular version of fake news and vote for the corrupt people who create fear in order to convince us to give up our protected freedoms in favour of their ‘dictator like control’ over us.
Are we not in exile in our own countries, where truth was long ago sacrificed, and where the wealthy gain their advantage with lies and deceptions so terrible they cannot admit their own sins?
Where is the feast that we are invited to, as Jesus’ listeners were at the meal hosted by the leader of the Pharisees where Jesus heals on the sabbath, where Jesus teaches them about claiming false honour, and where Jesus warns them about refusing God’s invitation to the great feast?
Some say the feast is the Eucharist hosted by your local church. Others say it is the feast of luxuries and comforts (enjoyed while others are hungry, thirsty, and dying for lack of life’s essentials.) Others say it is the food kitchens and food banks provided for those who are hungry.
What do you bring to the feast, to share, to enjoy, with those from the streets, who are invited and compelled to come and feast? Are we truly the saints who bring God’s Grace to be for all other people?
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
2 Corinthians 5:19
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
Words of Grace For Today
God’s Law is not bendable, not amendable, not sort of obeyable. It is strict, more strict than we imagine … and it is impossible to obey it perfectly. Anything less and we condemn ourselves out of God’s approval, out of heaven on earth, and out of eternal life with Christ.
Our failure to uphold God’s commands does not belong to just some of ‘them’ or ‘to us in the past’. It belongs to each and every one of us each day of our lives, without exception.
So who can stand before God on our own merits? None of us.
And that is the definition of a life of hell each and every day.
Thank God, God works to forgive us, not because we deserve it, but because God wishes to be Gracious to us.
It is God’s choice, God’s will, God’s answer and solution to our inescapable bondage to sin.
As God exercises Grace for us, we get to respond, with the Holy Spirit working in us, to share that same grace with others.
Quite the life we get to live, as God’s adopted children, relying on God’s Grace alone, and enabled to be that Grace for others. Quite the life, indeed, word and in thought.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.
Luke 1:30
The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.’
Words of Grace For Today
To be sent.
To be sent to bring good news.
To be sent to proclaim liberty and release, and the year of the Lord’s favour.
[To be sent to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God. Set this one aside for now.]
To be sent to bind up, and comfort.
…
The first part seems easy enough, just go out and speak loudly. Today that is easy enough with all the social media available to anyone who wishes to pontificate.
There may be some blow back, but that’s social media for you.
The tough part starts to be clear when it’s not just words, it’s actions. Actions that take every ounce of life we have to give to them, actions like binding up the broken-hearted, comforting those who mourn.
If you’ve ever endeavoured to bind up the broken-hearted, you will know it is an impossible task, and one only makes headway through day after day persistently being with the broken-hearted with all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope.
If you’ve ever endeavoured to comfort those who mourn, you will know it is an impossible task and one never makes headway. At best one can be with the person mourning, and sometimes leaving the mourning person alone to grieve in their own way. Grief is what we experience when the foundation of our lives are ripped out from underneath us so that our lives make no sense at all anymore. There is no foundation, no connection with the present since the past is ripped from us, and the future is a hopeless jumble of chaos that threatens to consume us and all we are, or so some say. Grief is actually not definable nor curable. At best one can exercise all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope as a model for how life can be organized into something of meaning for the past, for today, and for the future.
This is what the Saviour is called and sent to do … for the whole universe, and as Christ’s disciples (followers) we are called and sent to do this today for all people, and for creation itself!
Mary is called and sent to bear the Saviour of the universe as her own son. This is more than most get sent to be and do. There is only one way for her not be consumed by fear. There is only one way for us who are sent to be the instruments of Christ in today’s world. This one way is to know and trust that God has chosen us, called us, and sent us as God’s favoured ones. Only protected by God’s favour can we think of doing, yet alone actually do, what God calls and sends us out to do with our lives.
Then there is that last thing: to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.
If we somehow let ourselves be blind to the blow back that will be and is aimed at us, (which is so more than words on social media, it is words and actions meant to destroy us and all we stand for, since what we proclaim and do certainly upsets the status quo of power, privilege, and control exercised in today’s world), then this proclamation ought to make it clear: we stand to proclaim that God will act against also those of power, privilege, and control made possible by the Great Deceiver’s lies.
We bring good news …
Doch the good news will disassemble the status quo of injustice and evil, of everything based on lies and deceptions (which is a huge portion of what humans do to each other!)
The good news is good for the blessed things of God, and terribly bad for the evil things that stand against God.
And that is how we will be dealt with, as the full force of lies and destruction will be aimed at us (as they have been aimed at us) to disrupt the Good News. Only the foolish or stupid would brave such evil at the hands of so many people … or those who know they are sent by God as God’s favoured ones.
So we are called and sent … to be ‘little Christs’ to all people.
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
2 Timothy 1:8b-10
Join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Words of Grace For Today
There is always work to do, to survive, or to prepare to survive … unless of course one has gained privilege and comforts known previously only by kings, pharaohs, and rulers, that is the privilege of having survival needs long since met and one can luxuriate in life. As the dust we are from and to which we will return, when such comforts and privileges are ours, we inevitably consume our hearts and minds with un-graceful things, schemes to gain more at others’ cost, and concerns that have next to nothing to do with being God’s people.
In such positions of privilege we look on the work of the Gospel, the work of being the unconditional love for all others, as if it were such a great sacrifice for us to take on. Reality is that this is nothing more nor less than what we were created to be and do.
Our obsessions with survival, and all it’s replacement-substitutional (ersatz) concerns, is not at all the life we were created to live.
We always find our way into some perversion of the life God intends for us, as we struggle to escape death. We cannot escape it.
That is not our death toll, though. For Jesus has come to defeat death, and offer us life eternal.
The story is simple: provide care for all people, heal all people, love all people unconditionally, and allow (without fear of losing anything) those who would attack and maim you, who ruin your reputation with lies and schemes and scapegoating, and who would kill you to do as they must.
God is with us, always, all ways, and there is not enemy that can take God’s love from us. More we need not expect of life. For our God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.
