Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.
Matthew 16:18
I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
Words of Grace For Today
Life is fragile, so eat dessert first.
The value reflected in this humour is that pleasure is all life has to offer, and life is going to end at any time, unpredictably, so grab all the pleasure you can while you still can.
God acts to free God’s people from slavery in Egypt, delivering them to 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Wilderness is not plentiful with the necessities of life, and even here God has been with the people, walking with them, and providing all the people need. They have lacked nothing.
God sends Jesus to be a living human, in the most understandable language for us humans. Jesus story is to teach and guide us to live lives worthy of God’s blessing given to us. Even as Jesus offers himself (in order to demonstrate God’s power in weakness, in forgiveness {not vengeance}, and God’s enduring unconditional love that graciously forgives us all our sins), and will no longer be present to the disciples as he has been, Jesus does not desert the disciples. He provides the Holy Spirit to guide them, and takes their ‘rock’, Peter (the one so zealous yet foolish and full of faults), and builds on that a church that will last and not succumb even to the power of the Devil.
How do we respond?
The popular concept that comes the closest to simply explain our appropriate response is ‘pay it forward.’ That is, give to others what God has given to us, namely abundant life (through gracious forgiveness and the renewal of life).
Pay it forward.
A concept that is easy to understand, and very exactly when we try to exercise it fully … since God has given us so, so, so much!
God’s value for our lives would have the humorous saying go like this:
Life is fragile, so give it to others while you still can.
Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.
Titus 2:14
He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Words of Grace For Today
There is no shame in admitting one’s own sins, and the sins of one’s ancestors.
To face reality, especially the dark reality of one’s own sins is not easy or common or even possible …
unless first one know that God has, even before time, known we and our ancestors would sin, and God has not ever abandoned us to our sin. God has planned even before time how God would respond to our sins by redeeming us with God’s own son’s life as the model of how to live: sacrificing in order to unconditionally love those least deserving of love, in order that they will know God’s generous and gracious forgiveness.
So we have the story of Jesus, living as one of us, giving his life to teach, heal and guide and in the end to offer himself to be crucified, so that we would see that we need not sacrifice people, we need not scapegoat people, we need not work (futilely and destructively) to free ourselves; God has done all that is required.
We have the story of Jesus’ love for all people, especially the outcasts, the ill and ‘ill-fated’, those forced into and captive to poverty, the corrupt, the arrogant, and even the unjust.
We receive renewed life so that we can be the instruments of Jesus love for those in our time and place.
Thanks be to God, for though we are wretched sinners all, we are God-made saints, called to bring God’s justice and grace to bear on the world we live in.
Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
Luke 18:7
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
Words of Grace For Today
Words of hope fill scriptures: God will come to the aid of those downtrodden, those driven into poverty, those dealt injustice and abuse, and those ostracized with lies and gaslighting.
These are not events that happen elsewhere or at other times. These evil things done to good people take place in this place and time. Corrupt individuals (some known as the wealthiest community leaders) are recruited by corrupt police to file false reports about situations they create in order to lie and denigrate good people. Corrupt police lie about what they have reported to them in order to make good people look guilty. Corrupt pastors cooperate in creating false reports about honest, innocent and good people in order to gain favour with corrupt church and community leaders. Corrupt lawyers pretend to defend the innocent, though they do just enough to make it look like a plausible defence while leaving room for false convictions of their innocent clients, from whom they take tens of thousands of dollars in fees – all to ‘throw them under the bus’, the financial ruin part and parcel of the means used to ruin innocent, honest people.
Even though the evidence does not make out the charges, corrupt judges abound in the courts, and testimony that exonerates the accused is removed from the transcripts (as judges are allowed to edit the court transcripts), and even then testimony is falsified in their judgments at crucial points in order to make convictions possible.
In a word, barbarism rules! Here and now barbarism rules!
Because the courts command armed police and sheriffs and the entire penal system, which is staffed for the most part by bullies and more than a few totally corrupt guards and staff, most people either are naively and intentionally unaware of the injustices done to so many innocent people. Or people who are fully aware of the injustice, keep quiet so as not to attract attention to themselves, hoping not to be the next victim of the barbarism.
…
God’s chosen people have no such choice.
And God does not abandon God’s chosen people. God comes to our rescue soon and very soon. God brings us out of the land of this barbarism and establishes justice here and now for all people, by the work of God’s chosen, the many good, honest, and outspoken people who dedicate their lives to bringing justice and truth to bear on this barbarism that corrupts not just individuals, but the very foundation of civilization.
Soon and very soon.
Yes, soon and very soon, those who are so corrupt, who habitually undermine true justice, our enemies will be exposed and removed, so that God’s will may be done among us, through us.
But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.
Acts 5:29
But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’
Words of Grace For Today
But …
For humans there is an obligation to obey as they are commanded by other humans.
When humans choose not to do so for good reasons the consequences are usually dire, whether it is the state funded police and courts (rightly or corruptly, as it is in all places through all of history, especially here in Alberta) or criminal violence or psychological attacks on one’s well-being. This is what forms the obligation. Do or die (or at least have a chunk of one’s life is taken away.)
God always commands other than corrupt police, courts, kings, and religious authorities. God’s commands do not carry an obligation to obey them like human commands. Contravening human commands results in consequences that rob one of physical life. Obeying human commands may provide a small reward, even if it appears huge it is still small, for humans have little to offer, even if it is large sums of money, power, or fame.
Contravening God’s commands results in the consequence of one’s own choosing, that is one separates oneself from God. This does not ‘rob’ one of physical life. Being separated from God is in itself the definition of having no life, not of any kind. Obeying God’s commands provides the greatest reward, even if it appears small it is still without limit, for one chooses to walk with God, which is itself definition of an abundant life.
When we choose to ignore human authorities in order to obey God, there is a small ‘but’ after the demands of human authority and before our actions that contravene human authority and fulfill God’s will for us and for all people.
When God intervenes in our lives, showing us how small the tempting rewards of corrupt human wealth, power, and fame are, our sinful actions are not followed by a simple little ‘but’. They are followed by a universe changing statement, one like the German ‘Doch’. Then follows a statement that re-orients us back to God’s will for us and all people.
Pharaoh ordered the baby be put to death but the midwives allowed the baby to live.
Pharaoh did not care what God willed, DOCH Moses would live, grow up in Pharaoh’s house, run for his life after killing an abusive overseer, and, after years in the wilderness regaining his understanding of God’s world and God’s will, he would return to lead the people to freedom from slavery, into the wilderness, where the people would learn, and fail to learn, to hear and follow God’s commands.
Likewise Peter and the disciples choose to obey God’s will and not human authorities. They would go on to form the beginnings of the Christian faith and spread it to churches around the Mediterranean, from where through the successive generations, others would carry the faith across the whole earth. We have thus received our faith because of Moses and Peter and many other people’s following God’s will when it contravened human authority.
If we so comfortably think that we can please human authority and follow God’s will, we are naively corrupted to ignore God’s will. We either do not know God’s will, or we refuse to see how corrupt human authority is in all places and all times, even now here in Alberta. In either case there are still many whose stories can only be told with a ‘but’. And always God’s story about us contains many many ‘Doch’, as God rescues us from our sins, over and over again.
We pray for just government, church leaders, a business leaders, and leaders in all aspects of life. Doch God calls us to pray that God’s will may be done, also in and among us, for human authority always corrupts itself, ignoring God’s will and leading people to try to live apart from God. Or worse, corrupt religious leaders lead many, many people to follow false godlets, even when the call their godlets by God’s own name.
So we ought to pray that God would bring yet again a ‘Doch’ into our life stories, guide us back to God’s will, and use us to bring God’s will (which is to love, forgive, and share life abundant with all) to all people … starting with ourselves and our own people.
He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
Matthew 6:25
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Words of Grace For Today
What is it to worry?
What would it be like to have no concern for drink, food, or clothing? Would we survive? … Well not in most of the world no we would not.
So is there something other than ‘worry’ for our drink, food and clothing, and having no concern for our drink, food, and clothing?
The question is not if there is something between these two extremes. The question is how do we consider our needs? Do we consider these first from our needs’ demands on our time and energy … or do we consider everything first from God’s great generosity with us, and God’s abiding presence in the world?
If we start every calculation from God’s grace and love for us, it makes no sense to be worried about our daily needs, for all that we need for life is already given to us. We only need to remember how filled the earth is with God’s steadfast love.
Then we can get on with life. The purpose of our lives is no longer trying to get for ourselves. Rather we have the greatest purpose in sharing all that we can, with everyone, especially those who do not have enough to provide for their and their family’s basic needs.
What a life! A life of plenty!
With every opportunity to share everything with those most in need.
It does not get better.
…
So why do so many people think they have to take as much as they can get from others, just to meet their daily needs?!
Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.
Philippians 1:9-10a
This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.
Words of Grace For Today
Each day we make choices of how to proceed through our day.
Sometimes our choices are simple: Do I kill the ant crawling on the window? Yes. Do I kill the wasp buzzing around my head? No. Do I share food with the young camper who, for some reason, camps for months and has no way to provide for himself, except an relative who shows up occasionally (or not) with supports of various kinds? Yes. Do I mow the grass to keep the mosquitoes down? Yes.
Sometimes our choices are more complicated: Do I help the yelling young parent with a screaming child running around the grocery store? Maybe yes. That can be a situation where a moment’s intervention can break the stress for both parent and child and allow them both to proceed in a better space. But maybe no. Intervening in a family situation may be taken the wrong way and all the pent up anger can be focused on the person who intervenes, either immediately or at some later date. Do I sign a mortgage to buy property even though I know my job is not secure for the length of the mortgage? Maybe yes, since my family needs a home. Maybe no, because we may have a home for only a year or so before we lose it and then we will have even less resources for a home. Given that pressure do I take the management job offered with another company that pays much better, but has a reputation for skirting the law and abusing it’s employees? I need the money, but do I want to become one who abuses employees?
Sometimes our choices appear to be simple but they turn out to have consequences that we did not see, either good or bad. What are we to do?
Paul, writing one of his most loving and affectionate letters (to the church in Philippi) prays for them: This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.
We would wish this for ourselves, and for other people.
This wisdom is a God given gift. It is not handed out in a day, but grows over a lifetime of living wisely, and that life begins with the fear of the Lord, As the psalmist wrote in many and various ways: Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.
Help us God, we pray each day, to fear and love you that we may be blessed with the wisdom which guides us to choose the best for all people in each of our choices we make.
Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
John 16:23
On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
Words of Grace For Today
Arnold sat with his head in his hands, wondering how it had come to such an impossible state. Determined to make everything out of his life that he could, he had lied, cheated, manipulated people, used people and always kept people at a distance, so they could not see what he was really like.
He’d driven his first wife to kill herself, making sure that she made all the right decisions, and if she made a wrong decision, he stepped in to make sure she changed her mind, until she made the right decision at the right time (when two life insurance policies overlapped by two weeks) to kill herself. That made things difficult taking care of the children, and he scrambled to make things work at his wife’s store, at work, and getting someone to take care of things at home. The payoff was worth it though as the community chipped in with money, lots of money, and great sympathy and support, never suspecting that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.
When the insurance companies paid out he was a millionaire. Within a year he was out of debt with mortgages paid off, business debts paid completely, and he was clearing $30k a month after all expenses. Life was great, except the volunteers for the children decided to stop helping out. He’d come home after the kids were in bed, a long hard process for the volunteers, and once too often while the volunteer was still there, woken the kids and let them run free in the house and outside.
Newly arrived in town and unaware of the previous volunteers’ work and troubles, Tina volunteered to help with the kids. He eagerly accepted her help, and started the process of winning her away from her husband. It worked and within a few months she was living with him, taking care of the children, and helping out in so many ways. Her help at home and soon at the store meant he could focus on making money at the store. When she changed her life insurance policy to name him as the beneficiary, he seized the opportunity he’d been preparing for; he drove her to kill herself. Except she did not die. It was nothing but trouble after that. A second suicide attempt was almost always successful, but no matter what he did he could not get her to try again.
So he’d set her up for criminal charges, lied to the community, the church and the police. He coerced his kids to lie as well, making Tina out to be a sexual predator, even though he was the one sleeping with the kids and having sex with them. He lied in court, the lawyers lied, even Tina’s lawyers helped set her up to be convicted. When that was not enough to be able to convict Tina, the judges lied about what was in the court record in order to convict her. She went to jail for months. She came out and was homeless. Still she just would not move away or die.
Now her sentence was completed and people were asking what really happened. If the truth came to light, Arnold could go to jail for years, lose the store, the home, and the kids. He would be homeless. All the sympathy the community and church had given him through the years would be replaced with anger at him for his lying to them. He’d be ostracized and ruined. There would be no recovery. His friends and sex partners would desert him. He would be alone.
How had it come to this?
Arnold kept blaming others, looking for someone else, someone new to blame, anyone to blame. Deep down he knew he’d been lying to himself all his life and now people were going to find out.
Tina, homeless, captive in poverty she’d never get out of, living alone, but blessed in so many ways prayed in Jesus name Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Save me from the lies of my enemies, (for there were so many supposedly respectable people including the pastor and church leaders who had lied for and along with Arnold), let the beauty of life be visible and available to me everyday.
Tina trusted Jesus’ words: Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. It was clear God was providing an abundant life for Tina.
Arnold still thought he could make his own life, and in so believing he cut himself off from God’s blessings. No matter how much money he had, he would always suffer the terror jags that completely disabled him for minutes to hours. He would always dread being found out. The only thing that could set him free was the truth, but he had run from the truth his whole life. He was still running as hard as he could. The only thing that could turn him around was God’s grace, and Arnold insisted on making his own way, with his own money, and with his lies.
…
We pray: God help us know your truth and grace, that we too may pray in your name to be delivered from our enemies, that we not sink in the mire of deceit and greed, and that we can be your beloved people sharing your grace with all people.
Or Greedy Human Ambition That Will Only Destroy Us?
Jeremiah 32:42
For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.
1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Words of Grace For Today
Today we exercise our human capacities to accomplish work that we endeavour to complete. It is often work that puts us one step closer to a goal, towards a future that we see possible for ourselves or for other people. Some goals are little more than our survival, or others’ survival. Most often even those are some variation of survival plus a better life. It is honourable to wish others to have more than the bare minimum to survive, to enjoy life abundant as God promises us all people can have. It is honourable to strive to have life abundant ourselves, to have a measure of security against those things that endanger our survival. These are the blessings of God for us that we can give them to others.
We create real evil for ourselves and many other people when we try to create securities that protect us from what we cannot protect ourselves, for then there is no end to what we take out of life for ourselves, and we inevitably take it from others at others’ expense (sometimes even their lives) and we find ourselves incapable of giving to others that which we’ve taken from others. We hoard it for ourselves.
This is all about freewill. God gave humans freewill, and we certainly exercise it, both in the beauty of love for others and all of creation … BUT also in the ugly greed and avarice that robs others and all creation of life itself.
Jeremiah expresses an ancient view of freewill. We may think we have freewill, but God at least partially intervenes and brings woe as punishment for sin and blessings as reward for righteousness to God’s people.
The Vikings TV show portrays the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok and his contemporaries (dramatized beyond what we know of that time from the available historical accounts.) The Norse gods and the Christian God play a large part in the lives of all the people, from the leaders driven to conquer and rule more territory, to the warrior and soldiers who fight for leaders, sometimes this one, other times that one, and the peasants and farmers who provide for their leaders generously and sometimes enough for their own families. The interplay provides one overriding truth (chosen by the writers and creators), which is that the gods and God are used to further the aspirations of the most ambitious, to ameliorate those who receive no advantage, and to explain everything as ‘the will of the gods’ or as it is ordained by God.
Fate. These statements undercut human freewill and responsibility.
The most ambitious and destructive individuals see all this and use this ‘religious’ excuse in every way possible to further their own ambitions … which inevitably costs many other people their lives! The freewill of these people is to use the mass acceptance of Fate as an explanation for the course of life to hide their own sins so freely done.
It is a horrible and accurate portrayal of what the human heart is capable of. Let no one today be so foolish to think this does not continue, and will continue as long as humans survive. So how are we to respond to the pervasive sin and evil wrought so freely by humans?
We cannot declare with any honesty that we are entirely free of such sin and evil. There is no one that qualifies for that purity, no one except Jesus, the Christ … who was God.
The Way of life that Jesus lead his followers to pursue, to endeavor to accomplish each day in their lives (and we in our lives) is to accept first one’s own sinfulness from which one cannot be free, to then trust God’s promise to love and forgive us even though we cannot deserve such love, to accept and trust that while we remain yet sinners God also makes us into saints who are capable of doing God’s work on earth. We remain able to choose to love God, all people, and all creation, even though we cannot help ourselves from choosing to turn from loving God, all people and all creation.
What this makes of our lives is not pre-determined by God. Our eternal end is offered to us by God, which is that we are God’s own children and God will bring us home, even as God will accompany us each day, each moment of our lives. As Christ is more and more revealed to us in our short lives and through all of history, so we will be more and more like him, for he has claimed us for God to be adopted as God’s own children.
What difference does this make for us and our endeavours each day?
We can trust that we can choose to bring life abundant to others with all God has provided us. This is the simple purpose of our lives. This is how our freewill can be directed by fearing and loving God above all else, loving all other people as (well as) ourselves, and even our enemies.
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Ephesians 5:13
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness … Everything exposed by the light becomes visible
Words of Grace For Today
The evil that fills the world comes from the hearts of humans.
As the heart chooses to turn from God, so the heart thinks it can hide such a choice from God, which multiples the sins and the evil that is wrought.
Always, sinful humans think they can hide from God, even though God has made them. They can hide nothing from God. No one can.
The light of Christ will shine always into every dark corner that we think we can hide in.
God sees everything that is us, that is a part of our lives: everything we think, everything we say and write, and everything we do.
This is the promise that undoes all evil and sets us free, for God knows us completely, good and evil that we are. Yet God loves us, all of us, and rescues us from sin, forgives us, and renews life in us.
Therefore, thus says the Lord: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.
John 14:23
Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’
Words of Grace For Today
“If you turn back …”
“Those who love me …”
Everything in these phrases are turned on the view of God and humans that God demands of humans that we do what pleases God, and then, and only then, God will be pleased enough to love us and to give us worth by serving God.
This is a long and dangerous tradition that in history has proved to be so attractive and so destructive to both Christians and those they named as their enemies. And as far as that goes, for all other religions which have embraced such thinking.
Because humans are not capable of pleasing God enough to earn God’s favour enough to sustain life through all it’s challenges and temptations.
God is, on the other hand, very capable of loving humans, even when we do not deserve it. If this were not true God would never have loved any human.
…
What is true in all these words of Jeremiah and John is that God loves us.
God loves us enough to call us to turn back from our sinful ways, to return to God’s embrace, to allow God to be at home with us, so that we can keep God’s Word and so that we can speak God’s Word to all who will hear.
This begins with God’s promise to us to forgive us.
It continues despite what we do, with God renewing life in us.
Then God sends us out to exercise the same grace for all people.
Only then does our freedom come into play, our freedom to respond to God’s great mercy by confessing our sins and surrendering to God’s mercy, by extending that same mercy to others.
This is the Word that is so precious.
This is the Word that gives life abundant to us, and to all people who hear, believe, and receive God’s mercy willingly.
God’s way with humans is to rule always, yet to give us freedom to choose to love or to not love. No matter what we choose God promises to be faithful, to always love and forgive us, and to give us opportunities to return to God’s way of love and mercy.
God’s way with humans is not:
if we, then God.
God’s way with humans is:
Because God loves us when we do not deserve it at all, not at all,
Therefore we are free to choose to respond and be God’s mouthpiece, God’s doer of love in this world.
There is no surer promise nor hope of life abundant, than what God promises us.
