Friday, June 12, 2020
West
The Sun Sets in the
West
God decided that’s best.
Jeremiah 12:3
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
Words of Grace For Today
We all have enemies. You may call them adversaries.
Maybe you’ve lived so as to win every conflicted encounter and you’ve left destroyed people in your wake as you’ve moved forward, progressing, you’ve called it, in you life … accumulating power, and/or wealth, and/or fame … and you’ve done this not so outrageously that people have stood against you with all their might, so that in your bubble of life you may not be aware of all your enemies. But you have earned your enemies by being against many people. Whether they count you as their enemy or themselves as your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived like that and accumulated great power, wealth and/or fame and many people would tear you apart if they could, because you have destroyed so many people along the way to your ‘top’, which is really the bottom of a pit of … what to call it other than evil. They know you are their enemy, and whether they are your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived just struggling to get by and you’ve not had the wherewithal to notice who stood against you or how. It was simply always something that took everything from you and gave so little back: an employer who took advantage of you and underpaid you for years, a colleague or boss up the ladder who took all the credit for your work and left you in the dregs, or ….
Maybe you did yourself in with self destructive choices. Or your ill-health took the focus of your life away. Or someone else, a friend or person of trust gaslit you until you thought you were the problem. Or maybe you just never had a chance to be anything the world values.
Maybe you’ve lived as I did, always taking it on the cheek, turning aside from destructive people and allowing them to have their way, just trying to ‘duck’ so as not to be caught so much by them.
Just maybe there are a few people, who like me, while ducking from the blasts of evil, we’ve done our best to provide for ourselves and our families AND we’ve sought to give as generously as possible our time, skills, compassion, kindness, wisdom, and/or resources to anyone who crossed our paths. We work to sow truth and peace wherever we are. Perhaps you started out as a pacifist, or ended up that way simply out of practice being at peace with all you were allowed to be or as God blesses you to be.
As sure as the rise of the sun is in the east, and the setting in the west, our enemies gaslighting us and their evil behaviours toward us, do not define us.
Their gaslighting, lies, and working in the shadows define them, each of them, no matter their position, power or wealth. They are defined as corrupt. They become a poison to the world around them. Things that could have been good decay from the inside. Their worlds rot like ant eaten tress under the pressure of the sins, and their turning from God to serve the Evil One. When the wind of even a small storm blows, they fall, shattering as they hit the ground. So much that could have been … is lost.
As the Psalmist writes: But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you.
Then comes what seems like the good part (though it is not)
Biblical Rache, revenge.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Revenge is hardly where I go with that at all. I do have to bind the sins of all those who contributed to the gaslighting, the lying, and the work in the shadows to do what cannot survive in the light of day. I’m not bothered to keep track of who did exactly what; God will deal with them. I will not prejudge them as ‘sheep to be slaughtered’ even if I am sure they have earned that. I will give them time for the amendment of their lives, time to set right what they have done.
Why not ask God to set them apart for the day of slaughter? Because we all rely solely on the Grace of God to breathe, live and hope. Maybe God will be gracious and forgive these people and doers of evil deeds. I cannot know. I move on, not forgetting, working to stop this kind of injustice, but re-engaging in God’s good creation that I still have time to enjoy.
So all that evil bears down on each day, not countered by a wish to do in one’s enemies, and still life is blessed. Even my life is blessed, relegated as the old hermit in the woods living on $40/month. My life is blessed, not because it is easy or comfortable or secure.
My life is blessed because it is as God chooses, and as I trust God makes it.
My life is beautiful, wonderful, and it is ‘cool!’
I encounter it in the oddest ways at the most unexpected times. God breaks in on my life, wonderfully so. So I wrote a few days ago as I settle in for the night:
It is cool.
It is cool,
7⁰C out, and 17⁰C in
It is cool,
A fire laid for the morning.
It is cool,
Hot water on demand and washcloths and towels aplenty to clean up well.
It is cool,
How I’ve been able to clean up and distance long grass and buggies from here.
It is cool,
How after pressing so hard for days my body just insists and gets a nap and takes 3 hours.
It is cool,
The view as the sun has set.
It is cool how the process and checklist for restarting worship in person are coming along.
It is cool,
The fresh air here.
It is cool
The connected-to-the-saints solitude here.
It is cool,
To have hard physical work and challenging creative writing to do.
It is cool,
The song birds and water fowl fill the air at times with music and noise.
It is cool,
The technology that makes so much possible.
It is cool.
The Peace that carries us in the face of enemies onslaughts.
It is cool.
It is
God, 3in1, all
Breaking always in
to our finite bubbles.
Cool.
May God break into your awareness this day and fill you with awe, wonder and peace, as you abide in God’s love.