Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Trees Reflecting the Light,
See Through the Trees
to the Living Water
Zechariah 8:19
Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful festivals for the house of Judah: therefore love truth and peace.
John 8:32
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
Words of Grace For Today
When people wish to deceive in order to gain and maintain power, wealth, status, and position, truth becomes relative to one’s perspective, because the actual truth cannot be admitted. If it were all the falsely gained power, wealth, status, and position would be lost.
In war the first victim is truth.
In greedy business practices in a world based on greed there can be no truth except what is made up to be claimed as truth after the fact.
Truth is a double edged sword, it cuts down everyone living out of lies, and on the back swing lays to waste everything built up based on those lies.
I’ve always had a hard time believing people actually expected others to accept as truth the lies and deceptions they practised and presented as truth. Yet not only do they expect, they demand, and even threaten ruin or death to those who do not accept their lies a truth.
From lies comes death to the one who lives by them. First comes death of one’s own soul, for there is no integrity between creation, one’s actual history, and what one claims supposedly happened. The gaps grow and rip apart one’s soul. One walks, breathes, and appears to live, but one has sacrificed the soul of one’s existence, the essence of being alive. One walks through life a shell of a full human, rotten in the core with a thin veneer of life surrounding one’s dead innards.
As one loses one’s soul one loses connection with God’s creation, which as an embodied human, a child of God, is one’s connection to God and to other people, as one of God’s creatures.
Quickly one becomes entrapped by one’s own lies as one caught in quick sand, until eventually the lies rule one’s life, relentlessly and ruthlessly.
….
What is one to do, if one has so died and yet still walks and breathes, or if one’s loved ones have chosen this path of walking dead, serving greed, money, power, or position, instead of acknowledging our place in God’s creation as one of God’s creatures?
The sad truth of human existence is that every person at times and in various ways sinks into living out lies that at first seem to be to our advantage, but then cost us everything good about being human.
How can one be freed from this enslavement to lies and falsehoods, to evil?
The first thing to do is pray.
The second and ongoing thing to do is seek out truth, absolute truth, in God’s Word and among God’s people, good people who strive to live by truth. Seek with all our being the truth of God, and the truth of God’s Grace for us creatures, and the great possibilities for our response to such prodigal dealings with us!
The Truth is that Jesus brought and brings to us, of God’s attitude towards us and all people being fundamentally Grace, bought at God’s Son’s own life. This is an absolute truth. No relative factor applies or can be applied to it. Jesus welcomes us though we do not deserve it at all. Jesus welcomes all people, tax collectors in his time like liars of all times. As Jesus has paid the price for us and all our sins, God frees us from our captivity to all sin, including our lies.
This is true freedom.
Then by Jesus’ invitation we get to be gracious (on behalf of Jesus) with all the people we encounter, especially those we would normally ignore or discredit.
The Truth sets us free, to be the kind of people God created us to be; to be kind people, filled with gratitude and grace for all the people we meet.
When we know this Truth, then even in months of fasting, and doing without, God blesses us and calls us to share the blessings joyfully with others.