What Do, What Can We Delight In?

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

W hen the Evening Closes In

And The Dark is At Our Door

God’s Steadfast Love

Carries Us

For God Delights In Us.

Jeremiah 9:22-23

Speak! Thus says the Lord: ‘Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them.’ Thus says the Lord: “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight”, says the Lord.

Luke 9:25

What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?

Words of Grace For Today

What are the things that we delight in?

Many of us work for profit, a little more than we have, “Just a little more, please,” we beg God. “Make our lives just a little easier, a little more secure, a little more hopeful! Give us enough that the challenges we face are overcome, our enemies defeated, and so that we know that our futures are secured.”

So we, the wise, boast quietly about our wisdom, trusting that our wisdom will deliver us into a good future. So we, the mighty, boast quietly about our might, trusting that our might will deliver us into a good future. So we, the wealthy, boast quietly about our wealth, trusting that our wealth will deliver us into a good future. Or whoever we are, with whatever we have, we use it all to try to ensure our good futures. It is not actually boasting, we say. But we rely on ourselves and our own.

What are the things that God delights in? It is as God acts, with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

These things, by God’s Grace alone, are what can secure us a future that is worth living. Everything else leads to living in futility, struggling on our own to secure our futures, when the whole time we waste the little time we have on earth.

Each days challenges, our enemies’ evil actions, and the unknown in our futures are exactly the opportunities God uses to demonstrate that God walks with us, right with us, no matter what. We can rightfully boast only in God’s gracious love for us. We need nothing more than God’s gracious love to know that our futures, whatever comes, are fully secured in every way that they need to be, in order for us to live life fully as we are created to live it.

As the evening closes in on us and the skies darken, we pray in thanks for all the blessings God provides to us, starting with our daily food, and that we are able to breath, the good work we are able to engage in, and more than anything else we include thanks for all the people we love and who love us.

We lay down to sleep trusting that all is in God’s hands, God is with us, and the morning will come with new opportunities for God to show us and all people God’s steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

We strive to make life a little better for ourselves, and all the people around us. We willingly give up the little that is our lives in order to give others the basics of life and to demonstrate to them God’s steadfast love that accompanies us each day. Life is a miracle, a miracle that surprises us each day. Each morning we trust that the coming evening will provide rest after good work of the day, followed by another marvellous morning, or we will wake with God at home with Jesus and all the saints in light.

Not bad for our options, eh?!

Itchy Ears and God’s Truth

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Help Us

To Not Be Lost

In The Woods

Confused by the Devil’s Wiles and Smoke

That Obscures Your Light.

Psalm 119:43

Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

Words of Grace For Today

The time is coming, or it has arrived already, when society will fail, because “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Of course this was said by Socrates who lived from 470 to 399 BC, more than just a few generations ago … and it has been true in many generations (among the privileged of the world) ever since.

The time is coming ….

In every generation about many and various failings of humans it is repeatedly said (as if it were said for the first time) For the time is coming when people will [and then fill in the sinful thing of humans since the beginning of time.]

Some people of all generations have always refused to put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and have turned away from listening to the truth and wandered away to myths.

The truth has always been knowable if one would humbly listen to God’s Word, provided to us in many and various ways, and most clearly in the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

The danger in life is that one not only refuses to acknowledge that disaster has been part of human history since forever, but one builds up habits of denying reality (when reality is something one does not want to deal with.) The danger of this refusal is that one chooses to remain ignorant about what history can teach us, and ignorant one acts stupidly and often dangerously for oneself and those effected by one’s actions (which can be those distant in place and in time!) The danger of denying reality when one does not want to deal with it is that one ‘allows the lion’ to consume one’s family and oneself, and more significantly, one loses the ability to see God’s reality: that God created everything and everyone, oneself included. With that one loses the ability to know anything real of God, and anything real about oneself. One is truly lost in the clutches of the Devil’s hell on earth.

One is then not only a danger to oneself, but to everyone!

So we pray: Do not take the word of truth utterly out of our mouths, for our hope is in your Word. Save us from seeking comfort for our itchy ears in myths and falsehoods. According to your promises to us, guide us and use us as vessels of your truth and grace which brings life to all people.

All by Grace …

Monday, August 16, 2021

No Matter

How Grand Our Accomplishments Appear to Us

They are Only Like Weeds

That Blossom When Watered and Given Sun

By God’s Good Grace

Psalm 115:1

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

Romans 12:3

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Words of Grace For Today

I woke to mow back the weeds and grass to keep down the mosquitoes and give fewer places for wasps to hide and surprise me when I’m out walking and working.

Do I get credit for putting in the sweat time, going back and forth across and up and down the hill? Why not? After all I was the one up before 6 am to be out before the hot sun heated the meadow and hillside to over 30⁰C when mowing risks heat stroke, swarming by black flies and an unwanted encounter with wasps.

George lived his whole live long working hard ‘in the trenches’, sometimes literally, for the city. He started out as a labourer and ended up a labourer who knew more about the infrastructure of the small city he lived in (especially what was where underground) than any other person alive. Others could access the plans and records. George had been there to install, upgrade or repair almost every bit of what lay underground. Even in his 70’s George was exceptionally strong, stronger than four or five men his size and he was not short at 5’11”.

Does George (like other hard manual labourers in the world) get the credit for a life of good, honest, hard work providing services to people who knew little of his work or how it provided them water, sewer, electricity and gas into their homes and business?

Sue raised two sons and two daughters in some of the roughest conditions possible, moving from the wilderness of northern Minnesota, to the heat of Arizona, to the wild temperate climate of a very rural part of Alaska sort of near Anchorage. Her children all married, became productive contributors to society, and had their own children. Sue travelled back to Minnesota to care for her elderly and aging mother, to her children spread across the west, and provided a home for her husband, most often with a gentle and firm honest kindness. Does Sue like so many mothers and fathers actively raising children get the credit for the goodness in her children and the kindness she provides to so many people?

The world would answer these questions of credit and say of course! Each person gets the credit for the good they do … and the bad they don’t do. And likewise those who do evil things get the discredit for their deeds. It is simple to measure a person’s goodness or evil by what they have accomplished.

This measure is not God’s, and God’s answer to who gets the credit for all these good things done over different lifetimes is not the person who lived the life. The credit goes to God and God alone for creating, forgiving, sanctifying (making holy, into saints), and renewing life in these people so that they would not be caught as prisoners of their own sins, instead they are freed to do good things in God’s creation.

For by the grace given to us we know that it is not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

Giving God an Earful, and Then …

Sunday, August 15, 2021

In God’s Creation

God’s Glory Is Always Grand

And

Our Place is Always

Quite Humble

Job 40:3-4

Then Job answered the Lord: ‘See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.’

1 Corinthians 15:9-10

For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Words of Grace For Today

Job answers God, ‘I lay my hand on my mouth.’

Anyone who has read Job even a bit knows that Job does not ‘lay his hand on his mouth.’ Quite the opposite. Job is an example of one who speaks clearly, desperately and angrily at God. A good example Job is, too, in this way; an example that shows we can throw everything at God, everything that is in our hearts and on our minds, no matter how desperate or angry it may be.

The second half of that lesson is in the verses above. After Job has thrown everything at God, Job is more than ready to listen to God. Job does keep quiet. And God gives him an earful (which is more like a whole body-ful and a lifetime-full.)

Job knows God is the One great enough to handle all his pain, all his suffering, all his anger, all his frustrations. Remember Job has, through no fault of his own (though his enemies and even friends continually tell him it must be his fault – not really good friends) Job has lost all his livestock, his workers, his home, his wife, and his children. Job has lost everything and his health is failing. He is very near slipping into his grave. To put it in perspective, the view of how most people viewed misfortune was that when someone suffered a loss of any kind, it was because that person or that person’s parents had sinned. Job’s losses are so great that it seems so obvious to people that Job must have sinned greatly. The book of Job, in part, is the story that corrects that view. Just because one suffers, does not mean that one has sinned in a way to deserve that suffering.

The story of Job and that lesson needs to be repeated often, for the lesson is hard to learn and even harder to remember. Even in Jesus day (John 9:2) the disciples ask Jesus ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ And in our day, we so often dismiss the poor, the disadvantaged, the outcasts, alcoholics, addicts and co-addicts, the falsely accused and convicted because we think in some way or another or even directly, they have reaped the rewards from their own sinful living.

In this way we try in vain to build some protection for ourselves, some false barrier between us and the disasters that have taken these people down. Truth is, though, we could all be taken down. When an innocent person like myself can be falsely accused, the police invite so many people to make false reports, the lay pastor and church leaders create false scenarios and make false reports, even banning me from church, the lawyers invite false testimony, plenty of people provide outright lies under oath, and even the judges lie about the evidence in order to convict me (and the judges did not lie about peripheral things, they lied about the key evidence that exonerated me, and created false evidence needed to convict me) … when all this happens to an innocent person, then the truth is simple: there is no justice available to anyone (not even my false accusers) and anyone can be convicted of anything at any time. We live in a country where the courts are easily able to be no less than barbaric and cruel. It is one of the signs that our societal contract is shredded at it’s core. There is no protection for anyone, and all continues on it’s merry way as if the justice system were actually just because we are all too afraid (rightfully so) to admit that there is no justice system, there is only an institutionalized system of bullying people, whether they have broken the law or not.

Like Job, we need to take this to God, in all the horror that it is for us all, and then listen to God’s response.

Paul provides us an example of how we prepare to listen to God’s response. Though he writes and is listened to by many people as an authority, a messenger from God, Paul does not become a bully over others. He remains humble, knowing his place and knowing God’s place in his life. God walks with him. He remembers always that though he worked harder than any of [the other apostles] … it was not [Paul who did this blessed work of sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love], but the grace of God that is with [him]. Paul remembers clearly the days when he persecuted the followers of Jesus, and even organized the stoning of Stephen.

Paul knows his place. Paul knows God’s place. Paul counts on God to keep God’s promise to walk with him, no matter the suffering that comes his way, .. and the suffering comes in spades.

Paul and Job are examples for us, to bring everything to God, and to count on God to keep God’s promise to walk with us, no matter what.

Job recovered, and regained more than he had lost. It rarely works that way in life. More often we come to the end of our suffering by the release of death, and being called home – as Paul was, like so many other martyrs for Christ.

God’s Law; God’s Love

Saturday, August 14, 2021

My Enemies Full of Lies, Hate, and Injustice

Exiled Me to the Wilderness.

They Did Not Realize That

This is God’s Promised Land,

Where I Live as a Holy Hermit

With My Joy Complete.

Psalm 119:52

When I think of your ordinances from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.

1 John 1:1-4

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a fine line between living fully alive and appearing to live though one is in all ultimate matters dead.

It is the line between a) giving God control of all that we are and have, or b) taking (well, assuming one is taking) control of what is God’s.

The Psalmist takes comfort in God’s ordinances from of old. All good and well, except the Psalmist takes comfort not because they are a gift from God or God has guided one’s life to goodness or that God has convinced the Psalmist of his/her own sins and with mercy saved her/him from those sins. No, the Psalmist, with as much arrogance as one can have, takes comfort in God’s law because the Psalmist claims to have kept them all and has the audacity to burn hot with indignation at the wicked who do not keep God’s law!

That’s faith based on hate for others, a total miscomprehension of one’s own place among the worst of sinners, and an attempt to take on God’s role as judge – and turning that role into one of condemning others! Hate-based faith is widespread, unfortunately. It has fuelled, does and always will fuel strife, conflict, and outright wars … and it has nothing to do with God’s communication of reality in many and various ways, and most clearly through Jesus, the Christ’s story, the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

The writer of 1 John puts it more correctly, more life-giving, and without a hate base, if confusedly with so much Johannine imagery of life, light, Word, beginning of time, abiding, revelation, eternal life, fellowship, and complete joy.

How else do we humans speak about that which exceeds our language and our knowing and anything that is of our comprehension?

The meaning of life is simple, using Johannine imagery: it is to live in complete joy, given to us by God, and brought full circle by us sharing it with others. It is to live in fellowship with Jesus, the Light of the World from before time to beyond time. It is to live eternal life now, sharing that life with all other people. It is to recognize one’s place as God’s humble creatures, given the gift of eternal life that is only a gift for us if we share it, testify to it, and include others in that gift.

The meaning of life has nothing to do with judging others, or claiming one’s ability to follow rules, laws or ordinances. The meaning of life is to recognize God’s truth in all things: Grace and Love make life possible. Hot indignation consumes life … for all people.

God, we pray, save us from hot indignation and the arrogance that would have us claim we are better than others, especially our enemies.

Give us the wisdom and patience, the courage and character, and the love and hope instead to endure the injustices that our evil enemies work against us … so that one day they may encounter your truth in our testimony about your Grace: the old, old story of Jesus and his love. On that day our joy will indeed be complete.

Glory

Friday, August 13, 2021

Large or Small

God is Present Always

Everywhere With Wondrous Things

Job 19:25

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

John 12:28

[Jesus, knowing what death he faced, said] ‘Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’

Words of Grace For Today

The hope of every age is to know that our Redeemer lives, that our Redeemer stands on earth, and that, instead of the evil that destroys life, God’s name is glorified by blessing us with peace and a solace. A solace in knowing that, though our enemies still live, the sacrifice that we will be called to make, and great it will be, will be one that will give life to many people …

and that for all our days on earth we will enjoy an abundant life.

God makes many things, many very wondrous, miraculous things happen each day.

God uses many and various means to spread the news that God is gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Each time God’s name is glorified.

When God sends us to share this good news, though it may cost us what we might think may have been ours or due us (so we think we might have sacrificed something), in fact God takes nothing from us that God has not already given to us in the first place. Always God continues to walk with us, guide us, and give us hope.

It’s in the little things that God blesses us. It’s in the little things that we find our hope renewed. It is in the little things that God teaches us how to move through each day, no matter what comes our way, good or evil, joyous or despairing.

God’s name is glorified again and again, and we get to live this life abundant with God walking beside us, blessed.

Perishing and Surviving (for real!)

Thursday, August 12, 2021

We can arm ourselves

as much as we wish.

Only God’s Blessings

Can Save Us From the Real Enemy.

Psalm 9:3

My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.

Ephesians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Words of Grace For Today

There are wonderful words to be able to speak about the challenges of life and the enemies that would do us in, such as:

My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.

Or even less concrete, though much more valuable:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

We need more than enemies that stumble and perish, we need more than the physical results of force that cost our enemies their lives. We need … well we need God on our side, or rather we need some hope that we can be seen by God to be on God’s size. Well, more than seen … we need to know that God has us on God’s side.

What we know, in our honest moments, is that there is no way on this blessed earth that we even know how to be on God’s side all the time, or even sometimes for more than a moment or two, if that.

So how can we even hope that God will ensure we are on God’s side?

We have only God’s word, God’s promises, and Jesus’ story, which is as much as we will get, and

…

more than we need.

God walks with us. We are not doing what God wants us to do all the time. God ensures we do God’s will as much as God can guide us to do so, sometimes in spite of us or what seems to be by accident by us. God certainly does get wondrous works out of us saints.

The greatest work begins as we confess and give God thanks that Jesus has brought God’s grace to bear on us. This great work is oft repeated, as many times as we stray from God’s will for us, which is so many times we cannot count them even those in one of our days. This work is completed when we show God’s grace to others so that they may know God as the One who walks with them, graciously bringing them to abundant life.

When we do that we know once again without a doubt that God

has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

and God has blessed us in Christ with every creaturely blessing in the concrete earthly places that God gives us to walk in and through for our days in God’s blessed creation.

The world is after all God’s and God blesses us to live in it, to life abundantly in it, as God’s Grace-made saints.

The Music We Dance To

Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Like Bush and Trees

Standing Between Us and the Light

So Life Will Always

Challenge Us with

Trials and Tribulations.

Always,

Though,

God’s Light Shines

into Us.

1 Samuel 26:24

As your life was precious today in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he rescue me from all tribulation.

Acts 23:11

That night the Lord stood near him and said, ‘Keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.’

Words of Grace For Today

Paul, arrested by the Roman Tribunal (one man, not three), is released to stand with the chief priests and council (who had attacked him to kill him because he taught against their religious rules, faith and power). After Paul tells his story of conversion to follow Jesus and bring the Good News of God’s Grace for all people, the crowd seeks to attack him, so the the Tribunal arrests Paul again, and binds him to lash him. Paul protests that he is a Roman citizen and cannot be mistreated if he is not convicted by a Roman trial. Forty (or more than enough) Jews give themselves to not eat until they have killed Paul. They ask the chief priests and council to ask to question Paul again. They will kill him en route to them. The Tribunal hears of it from a relative of Paul’s and he is shipped off to Caesarea, the Roman capital for the region. That night, as the travel plans are put in place, and Paul waits for what will come next the Lord stood near him and said, ‘Keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.’

Dangerous times, dangerous message, dangerous travels on foot and sea, dangerous trials: the bring Paul to Rome. That’s the last we hear of Paul.

Yet Paul, imprisoned often for his sharing the Gospel of Jesus’ love, God’s Grace for all people, takes every opportunity to share what he has experienced and then studied to understand: God is gracious to all people. All people can be children of God. All people can follow Jesus’ Way.

…

David has angered Saul, the anointed King of God’s people. Saul has sought David’s death. David has run for his life. Saul has pursued him.

At night David and Abishai sneak under cover of night into Saul’s camp, and instead of killing God’s anointed (and suffer the real guilt that would bring on him) David takes Saul’s spear and water jug as proof that he was there and could have killed Saul, but choose not to.

The next day David yells into Saul’s camp, disclosing that he has spared Saul’s life. Saul relents, admits he has done wrong, and gives up his pursuit to kill David.

Then David utters to Saul these words: As your life was precious today in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he rescue me from all tribulation.

Mercy on David’s part gives David courage to beg God for mercy; that God would find David’s life precious and that God would rescue David from all tribulation.

Doch

God does not find David precious because of the mercy David has shown Saul. God finds David precious in spite of all the shenanigans and wrong and utter evil David does. God does protect David from some tribulation perhaps, but David brings all sorts of tribulation down on his own head. Such is the consequence of a thieving, conniving, murderous life that David chooses at times to pursue for his own benefit. It does not produce benefit, but great tribulation for David and his family … and God’s people.

Still God finds David precious. We remember him as a broken, sinful, God-made saint and leader. David’s story says less about David’s goodness, and so much about God’s grace, mercy and steadfast love toward David and all of God’s people.

If God can use David to bring this message to us, certainly God will use any and all of us to bring a message of God’s Grace told so well in Jesus’ story.

The price for us is not nothing.

Like Paul (once Saul who pursued, persecuted and killed followers of Jesus) and like David, we will suffer trials and tribulations, even at times unspeakable.

Yet always God will declare to all that God finds us precious, that God has adopted us as God’s own children, that we are blessed beyond all imagination with abundant life. Always God will walk with us.

We get to live filled with gratitude, humbly confessing our sins, courageously sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love for all people, and responding to all evil done against us and around us with grace. We get to live, walking through life’s trials and tribulations, like a graceful dancer, to the music of God’s steadfast love.

There is no other music so beautiful and inspiring to be able to dance to!

Septic Truth; Glorious Blessings

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Like Flower in the Grass

We Are Here Today and Gone Tomorrow

On Our Own We Are No More Than Weeds

In God’s Gracious Light We Become Beautiful

As We Turn Our Lives Towards God

Job 21:22

Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those that are on high?

Romans 12:16

Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.

Words of Grace For Today

The beginning of wisdom is the fear and love of the Lord.

The critical piece in fearing and loving God is that one has then identified one’s place in creation, in the universe, and among God’s people.

Some have said (and said rightly) that the original sin (the one that leads to all others, the first sin, the one portrayed in Eve and Adam eating the fruit of the forbidden tree and getting kicked out of the garden of paradise) is pride or arrogance, that is hubris. It is to place oneself incorrectly in creation and among God’s creatures. It is to place oneself above what one is not above. It is to claim one is wiser, purer, better, more powerful, etc., etc. than one actually is. It is to forget that one is God’s creature, and a miserable sinful one at that.

This misplacement of oneself is often borne of and supported by luxuries that one enjoys (that others cannot) leading one to think one has ‘earned them’ when they are only gifts given by God, and then abused as trophies reflecting one’s supposed station high above others. In fact one, with this false pretense of status, has actually placed oneself on the lowest rung of sinners, those that delude themselves with falsehoods about their own worth.

So we see that money corrupts, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The danger in being one to speak about these corrupting self-image sins is that one participates more fully in them; the only difference is that the ‘luxury’ that one touts as a marker of one’s ‘better status’ in creation is a supposed wisdom, one about other people’s sins. Wisdom about other’s sin and a blindness to one’s own sins is a powerful tool of the devil to win hearts and souls. With the goodness of God (wisdom in this case) claimed as one’s own, one has misplaced oneself in creation, supposedly better than all those miserable rich, powerful, famous sinners. In fact one actually marks oneself therewith as right in the pack of miserable sinners who think they are above others in God’s creation.

Ahh, what is one to do? Should one pretend to know nothing? Should one abandon one’s calling and consecration to bring God’s Word to all people? No, one simply need return to remembering that all people sin, oneself as well. That everyday is a sinners path for every person, oneself included. That only by Grace is one able to be a saint, a God-made saint. One humbly prays for forgiveness, trusts that it is given even before one asks, and proceed humbly through the day, as one of God’s lowly creatures, called to speak truth, even though one is at ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth.

One will then have no trouble associating with the lowly, providing comfort to the lonely and distressed, aiding the helpless and hapless alike, freeing the prisoners, and acting for justice for all people … all in Jesus’ name. One lives filled with gratitude, giving God credit for anything good one is able to do, proclaiming from ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth how great God is to bless such a miserable sinner as oneself, a sign that God does bless any and all who will receive the blessing even as they fear and love God from ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth.

Dumbstruck

Monday, August 9, 2021

Winter, Spring, Summer, or Autumn

God’s Gracious Wisdom

Leaves Us All in Awe,

Dumbstruck.

Isaiah 11:2

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Luke 20:26

They were not able in the presence of the people to trap him by what he said; and being amazed by his answer, they became silent.

Words of Grace For Today

God blesses us all with gifts. Most often we ignore them as gifts, assuming we have full title to them and all they can bring to us.

God blesses some of us, it seems very few of us, with amazing gifts of the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Quite understandably when those who claw their way on their own efforts to positions of power and status, at others’ expense and lives, encounter the one so blessed they attack to undo what is foreign to them and therefore a threat to their fragile ‘house of cards’: simple goodness and kindness.

The encounter rarely goes as they planned or hoped and if …

if they are at all honest or honourable, they will quickly realize that this person embodies for God the reality of God’s rule over all, which their lives so contradict, and yet which is what they seek to achieve on their own …

and

they are dumbstruck, with awe

and

with fear.

Such is the encounter with God’s blessings that are not denied or rejected by the person receiving them.

The world needs more such blessed, holy saints … those who God chooses as God’s own children, who do not pervert or attempt to control God’s blessings. The world needs saints to embody God’s will for all on earth, namely that we live for each other, simply, gently, kindly, and graciously.

The wasps built another new nest, since I did not eliminate their queen with the second nest destroyed. That nest was eliminated last night, for the wasps are so plentiful that they make simple tasks a huge risk, as they buzz my face without notice if I am outside working or walking.

To have a safe place where I can live the wasps need to be reduced in number so that this space is rarely prowled by wasps. Thus the nest must go and all in them. So last night at 1:20 the new nest was saturated and the wasps all eliminated, queen and all in the nest.

This is not how God calls us to live with other people, no matter how threatening their prowling is in our lives, no matter how many times they have ‘stung’ us leaving us incapacitated for days, weeks, years.

It is not difficult to image how much better life would be if one’s enemies and their ‘nests’ could be eliminated.

God chooses that even our enemies receive grace, and the time for the amendment of their lives. Better a convert (a grace-made saint-sinner) than a dead wretchedly evil sinner.

The sun rises. The sun sets. Another day in God’s creation as a blessed grace-made saint-sinner. When we recover from encountering God’s awe-fully wonderful and gracious wisdom our prayer is the same: God bless all goodness, leave sinners dumbstruck at your gracious wisdom, and eliminate all evil … in us sinners, all (also in our enemies.)