Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Life Throws Lots of
Curve Balls.
God’s Light Still Shines
On Us.
Psalms 84:2
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Matthew 18:20
For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
Words of Grace For Today
Devastation.
Unjust wars taking foreign lands, causing millions exile and thousands death.
Extreme heat, storms, rains and floods, droughts, earthquakes, and you name the new extremes of climate change.
Illnesses old returning in force, new ones racing through the 7 billion people plus on earth.
Corruption in courts, cops, and councils.
Violence next door and at home.
Lack of housing, clean water, food security, adequate clothing, employment opportunities.
Selfish and destructive strivings, yearnings, and desires.
The world is going to ‘hell in a hand basket’ quickly enough. Why do we have to help it along it’s way so effectively?
How are we to deal with all this?
We need to understand the root causes and work to end or at least mitigate them!
We need to work to mitigate the ‘downstream’ effects on so many lives as much as we can.
We need to get our own ‘houses’ in order, our own hearts, minds, and souls in order, except that is impossible without God cleaning, organizing, and renewing us from the inside out.
This God does through Jesus, the Christ, moving us from thinking we can earn our way forward, to relying wholly on God’s grace each day anew. God heals our weary, embattled souls.
For this we give God thanks, as we gather, knowing God is present with us always, also where we gather. God listens, so we beg and pray for help and healing and resolution and mitigations, and freedom from destruction from without and from within.
Because God not only promises us exactly that healing, but also pours it over us prodigiously each day, we return God thanks in our songs of joy.
The world may be going to hell in a hand basket quickly enough. We do our part to impede this progress as we are able and we trust God that Evil and Hell will not triumph in the end; not in our lifetimes, and not in the time of humans in the universe.
On with the day’s work that promises to be enough or more for the precious time given to us.