Thursday, January 27, 2022
A Short Section of the Shovelled Portions
After the Daylight is Spent
as Well as My Capacity,
Energy, and
Back
are
Done.
Psalm 103:17-18
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.
Words of Grace For Today
The drive in here, into the meadow in the woods by the lake, from the gravel road that is maintained by the MD is nearly a kilometre long.
Most years the snow and rain make it challenging though not impossible to make the trek when needed to get supplies, food, and water.
Today that seems to have changed and to find out whether that has changed is to risk getting stuck in hard, cold, soft and freezing and hard frozen ice and snow smothered with rain over the last few hours.
Whether I can make transit that fist kilometre or not is entirely up to what I do in preparation. It is at least a two week task to try to shovel the worst parts free and clear down to the hard packed snow-ice that has developed over the last months from November on. There is no need to wish I had shovelled it regularly as the snows fell. First I had lots of other work to do to survive the winter so far, with it’s plentiful snow and it’s deep hard cold for days below -35⁰ and weeks below -25⁰. Second, the task of shovelling that kilometre once would take about a week of constant work, pushing my old body to it’s limits each day. By then the next snow would have fallen and I’d have had to start all over again … meaning I would have been shovelling snow constantly for months now and doing little else … when there is lots that has to be done to survive without a home in the woods next to a lake, even if that is all a huge blessing from God. So no regrets that I drove that kilometre as I could, dragged two logs behind to bounce a bit of the snow to the side and pack the remaining in a hardened roadway that I could drive over.
With the warming to above zero and the accompanying thaw, with the rain that has drenched the snow and with the freeze coming again that will turn it all into slippery ice, that kilometre will not be ‘miraculously’ ‘fahrbar’ (drive-able). The drive-ability of that kilometre depends now almost entirely on how much I shovel, where I shovel, how far down I shovel and if I survive (no heart attack or stroke or back spasms laying me flat in the snow for days while I freeze to death, or any other of a host of ways that shovelling could put me down.)
That’s a reality that is conditional, conditional on what I do.
God’s grace, forgiveness, claim on us, and mission that we are sent back into the world to work at is not conditional at all. God’s blessings and favour are not conditional on anything we do. That God blesses us and favours us is entirely unconditional! It depends only on God’s steadfast, never changing, never failing love and grace.
We humans do not like to be so dependent on any one or thing other than ourselves. So we, along with great words of God’s grace and steadfast love, have repeatedly perverted God’s promises into being conditional on our responses to God’s grace and steadfast love. Thus Psalm that teaches (wrongly) that God’s blessings and favour for us and our children and their children and all people is conditional on us keeping his covenant and remembering to do his commandments.
That condition sets us up to strive to be and do what we cannot be or do: perfect. And it gives control of our lives over to others who interpret our being and doing as sufficiently good enough or not.
God’s grace and steadfast love are not conditional.
God sends us out to be and do that same unconditional grace and love for all people.
Are we up to the mission? It does take every bit of life we have in us, and often more.