Friday, June 17, 2022
I’m not sure the purpose in all that cow crap and straw piled in the barnyard was,
But now it makes for fast-growing tall weeds
that take a lot energy to mow down.
Psalm 104:1-2
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters,
you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind,
you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.
1 Peter 2:9
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Words of Grace For Today
What is it for?
The grass gets long, so that I can mow it?
The bugs are ferocious, so I can wear a head net to protect myself?
The wind blows, to knock down weak-rooted trees to provide material to build a shelter?
The trees fall too far away to haul in by hand, so the straps hold them behind the truck in low 4×4 pulling them in?
The sun shines brightly and hot in the window so the shade is drawn to keep it cool in here and I do not see intruders invading the yard to steal firewood?
The medicine that I need to live without pain and eventually cancer is not covered by Seniors Blue Cross, and even though the medicine I need has been approved twice before and fully covered by Alberta Income Support, this time requires yet another doctor’s letter costing up to $150 (when that’s all I have for groceries and gas each month). There is no possible purpose this has happened. It’s wasting my life, my limited finances, my time and a lot of government time and money to go through this approval now for the third time and worse to not approve the medicine, making an appeal necessary and emergency funding requests in the interim … unless of course I want to risk developing throat cancer and living in great pain in the meanwhile and risking that my back and other muscles will spasm with the least provocation, disabling me wherever I happen to be, including out in the freezing temperatures of winter emptying the ashes from the stove (as it did last time, and I barely made it back to the shelter where it was warm) or out in the bugs that would eat me alive slowly until I wasn’t any more.
The courts and the witnesses, including RCMP, lie, so that … opps, that one is hard to come up with a purpose for … maybe so that we eagerly await God’s judgment?
All these things have some truth in them.
The one truth that is not lost by human deceit and greed is that God is clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. God stretches out the heavens like a tent, God sets the beams of your chambers on the waters, God rides the clouds as chariot, God flies on the wings of the wind, God makes the winds God’s messengers, fire and flame God’s ministers.
So what are we humans purposed for?
God makes us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that we may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Not bad of a bunch of rag-tag sinners.
Of course only sinners can proclaim the mighty acts of God, because the greatest, mightiest, and most wondrous act of God is …
when God forgives us miserable sinners our sins. Actually we are really good sinners, which makes us miserable people.
We are forgiven, not to save our sorry little butts, but rather so that the world has something to see: God saving the worst, the least deserving, the most hardhearted, stiff-necked people the earth has to offer.
We may wish God chose us because of our great personalities and wondrous things we do, but that just ain’t so.
God’s people have a history, a real ugly history. Only God’s intervention makes it somewhat tolerable to start to tell or hear.
God’s miracle of saving such people as us, makes our stories (God’s story) the greatest story every told or heard.
What part are you playing in that story today, before God saves our sorry little butts, or after?
Your choice.
God’s delight, no matter what you choose.