God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.
Revelation 21:3
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them’
Words of Grace For Today
God, almighty, melts the earth with a word, if God chooses.
God, almighty, melts our hard hearts and thick heads, if God chooses.
God dwells with us, and goes well with us, if God chooses.
God watches as kingdoms (and our small worlds) totter and fall, as hearts shrivel up and harden against all that attacks them and everything else as well, and as minds close down to consider only what fits so easily with a preconceived and shrunken concept of reality (though it may indeed be so far from reality.)
God is right there with us, and because God chooses, God does not abandon us to our tottering, hardening, closed down limits to life.
God strengthens our tottering worlds (oh in so many ways the world around us totters and falls into ashes and dust) so that they stand, not on our strength, but on God’s strength.
God melts the hardening of our hearts so that we can love again, so that they provide life for us and for all those we encounter.
God lifts the lids on our minds to let in the fresh air of hope so that we can see again beyond the horizons that were so close, so that we can see our neighbours’ needs and our abundance.
With that abundance, which God gives us and renews constantly, God showers the world around us with security for this day and all our days to come, security in God’s presence; God showers every heart around us with love, life-giving love; God showers our minds with curiosity and hope so that our horizons are beyond even our imaginations capabilities,
Because God so chooses, and choose again as each new morning dawns.
As the Sun Does Each Night, and Sometimes the Moon
1 Kings 8:56
Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke through his servant Moses.
Hebrews 4:9
So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God.
Words of Grace For Today
Rest.
One is at rest when one is not in motion.
Rest.
When one eats leftovers, one has rests.
And the cook did not have to cook to produce the food. Well maybe not, some cooks cook leftovers and call it rests.
Rest.
Rest is when one does not work to eat, survive, produce, profit, or gain in some way. One is a body at rest, without motion. Though for some people rest can also include some activities that are not part of their daily grind to ensure they can eat, survive, produce, profit, or gain in some way. A hike in the woods, if they still exist, i.e. not burned to the ground or brown with decay from drought and pestilence.
Rest.
When one’s soul is normally so worked up by the demands of one’s daily grind, a rest is needed to remind one that one is supposed to have a soul, a spirit, a life beyond the physical existence … and it should be a good life, though there are no guarantees.
Rest.
Rest is what those caught in battle wish for and rarely can afford.
Rest is what the burned out worker needs and even when motion stops cannot achieve.
Rest is God’s gift, a seventh day, a regular time to rest and to remember life is good.
Rest.
Today it’s time to take a bit of a rest, for as one gets older one’s body will not stay in motion all day without hurting and pinching and swelling and aching, so one’s body demands a rest. It’s good for the spirit, too.
Rest.
Today begins the Sabbath.
Today rest.
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The Rest.
Rest.
Rest is what’s left over when one does division, for example 12÷10 gives us 1 remainder 2. The two is what is left over. It’s the rest. While fractions can be important, and likewise results on the right side of the decimal point, a remainder, or what’s left, is sometimes more informative and exact. Take 4÷3 which produces 1.33333 to infinity or 5÷3 which produces 1.66666 to infinity. Where as 1 plus the rest, which is 1 or 2, is simple and to the point. Sometimes, as we live in God’s good creation, simple is the most accurate, the most honest, and the most truthful.
God keeps God’s promise that we shall have rest. God promises this each week. God promises this at the end of life. And that rest is not a number that can be reduced to a fraction or to a decimal at all, not at all.
Rest.
Rest is what a healthy body will have one way or another after a good day’s work. And even bodies that are ill will take rest sooner or later. We call it sleep and it is the best healthy maintainer we can avail ourselves of. With enough sleep, which varies from body to body (usually somewhere between 7 and 9 hours, though I seem to have known many people who actually needed only 5 or 6. There are many more who thought they needed much less than 7, and then they ‘paid the piper’, so to speak, with a heart attack or other grand illness or massive organ and body failure.)
Let us rest then, this night at least 7 hours, if God will grant it. And if not let us inquire of the information out there what we may be doing to interfere with our bodies getting what they need. Perhaps one needs to get out first thing in the morning into daylight for at least 15 minutes, or one needs to regularize one’s waking hour, eating hours, and sleeping hours to set one’ circadian rhythm, or give up on the stimulants like caffeine, tobacco, and drugs as well as the ‘downers’ like alcohol, pills, and trying to live with borderline personality disordered persons.
I’ve met more than my share of people who lived on meth for days, weeks, and months at different times in their lives. They cheated their body of the ‘need’ to sleep, staying awake and more than fully energized for days and weeks on end. Since meth hyped their bodies out of it’s normal ability to provide for itself, it literally ate at everything it could, starting with bones and teeth, in order to keep itself going through the abuse it was suffering. The meth-heads all had dentures, frail bones, and looked 30 to 50 years older than their years on earth would indicate, but all of them were knocking on death’s door rather emphatically. The rest for them was a measure of what was left, was their any ‘rest’ to their bodies and their lives.
Rest.
What do the rest of us have to do, to experience, to enjoy, to suffer, to endure, before God provides us rest from the wickedness of the ‘crazies’? We get to …
We get to rest.
We get to deal with the remainder of our days, the rest of them with gratitude and humility.
We get to hear and trust God’s promise that we will rest.
We get to take one day at a time, one night at a time, and one opportunity at a time to pray to God in thanks, and to work for God to bring life abundant to more and more people. The rest ….
Well, like Paul Harvey said too many times, ‘the rest of the story’ is what God promises all of creation: rest and life abundant.
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
Luke 10:8-9
Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Words of Grace For Today
God has a plan.
The world is crazy with falsehoods, driven into so many corners and minds that many believe them to be truth, which is a danger to the survival of our species.
God has a plan for that, though.
The people hurt, God hurts, and other people are responsible, directly and indirectly, for the hurt and worse for the death of so many people.
God has a plan for that, too!
Our health care systems, as we are so privileged to have, are overrun and ground into near uselessness, by a virus, a pandemic, but most of all by the falsehoods that so many propagate, so much so it is difficult to imagine how this is. The effect is that across the globe the virus is levelling the ‘playing’ field, and our expectations of whether we will live another 5 years or not!
God has a plan for exactly that.
God’s plan is that the workers for God’s Kingdom spread across the globe entering every village and remote place where people live, to eat what is locally provided, to cure the sick, and to proclaim simply that ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ And to bring, share, and leave God’s peace everywhere.
So what is your day going to look like?
God has a plan for that,
and it is that you will be one of the workers for God’s Kingdom, ready or not!
The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Words of Grace For Today
It sounds like an apocalyptic movie: the sun shall no longer be your light by day, and the moon will not give you light by night. Polar darkness, for ever.
Then comes our salvation: the Lord will be our everlasting light, and our God will be our glory.
John puts the words there that seal the deal for us: God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Thank God, because it was beginning to look like the darkness had taken a firm grip our our world leaving us just a short time before we would plunge into eternal darkness.
January 10, 2022 I wake to a rustle followed by a huge bang. Then more rustling of tarps and more bangs, loud, crisp, close and … the ground shakes. I reach for the light to switch it on, and nothing. The batteries are dead as a 100 year old mummy, and as cold as if the mummy were uncovered from melting polar ice. That’s not right, I remember thinking. The fire should still be quite warm. I try to see what the thermometer reads but cannot see. I zip open the door and wind blows in my face crisp and instantly freezing cold. That’s not right, there was a fire in the fire box sheltered from the wind by a frame hung with insulated tarps. I cannot see anything. I feel for something, anything. But there is nothing. I stumble around pulling on a parka, pants, boots, gloves. I step out to where there had been a wood stove when I went to bed just a few hours ago. I thought I’d stoke it, but it’s not there.
I walk a few steps and the piercing cold bites deep into me, so much so that as I turn I lose my bearings, I flounder around a bit. Trying to work this out, I take one step and feel in a circle. I take a step back and then one more back and feel in a circle. Then I step in each side direction. Nothing. So I repeat the search this time taking two steps. This time my hand brushes against something. I take one more step towards it, trying to ensure I know the direction I’ve come from. It’s the zipper door flapping in the wind. I crawl back into the tent.
A loud to no one I say in a prayer: Would You Hand Me a Light!
As I reach to climb into bed my hand brushes something hard, a flashlight.
I have a light. I turn it on and realize in my restless sleep I’ve turned myself all around so that I have gone out the ‘back’ door of the tent. I look through the zipper of the front door and there is the shelter and fire, dwindling to almost no heat.
I get dressed again and go out to stoke it, lay myself back down to sleep again, and thank God
… for being the Light of my Life.
Or I could have panicked and never found my way back in the tent.
In the morning I see evidence that a bear has taken on a tree not 5 feet from my tent, and the tree lost. It was left banging against the tree next to it. My night of banging waking me turned around. Thankfully God got me straightened around.
God leads us and lights our ways in so many and various ways, but always God lights our ways, even on this day to come.
For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?
Matthew 9:22
Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well.
Words of Grace For Today
Life is full of challenges, suffering, and grief.
Life is full of memories for which we can give thanks, and praise God for God’s abundant goodness … even for us undeserving sinners.
Life is full of illnesses that divert all our energies from living fully, to trying to cope with this painful moment or that overwhelming demand on us, a demand we must meet if we want to survive.
God knows this. God knew this before God began to create the universe, and us in it.
God sends Jesus, and Jesus’ followers, to heal us, not just in body, but also in our minds and spirits, so that our faith will make us well.
Jesus and Jesus’ followers save us from death and from the places where/when we have no memories of God’s great works for us and our ancestors.
Like the woman, pushing through the crowd to get close to Jesus, to just ‘touch’ his garment, we often find ourselves pushing against the crowds of people that think they know all that is to be known about life and that they have the ‘keys to the cities’ or to the counties or countrysides (or as it is: municipal districts) in which we live. Then, when we finally reach through the mass of discontent and querdenkers and bullies, we feel the goodness and life-giving healing power of Jesus’ Word and Being.
We are instantly made well. Or sometimes over months or years we are made well. Or sometimes we get to go home to the dwelling Jesus has prepared for us, where no one forgets to give thanks and praise to God for all God’s goodness, grace, love, and mercy.
It’s a dance, to a lovely melody, with great harmonies in all the parts, with a great partner, with pauses when we get tired or stiff from arthritis, or simply tired of the foolishness of other people in this good creation.
So today, we dance on, to the beat of Jesus’ drum. (Some used to call it Thor’s hammer.)
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
John 17:3
[Referring to himself in the third person, Jesus prays:] Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Words of Grace For Today
Sophie was old and tired, worn right out, leaking where leaking definitely should not happen. Through the years so many different people had taken her out to the most remote places, far away places, beautiful places in the wonderful creation of God, and used her and abused her, and then dragged her back home and left her and ignored her until the next time they wanted to drag her out again. Then she would be sold to others who would do the same to her, over and over. She could barely stand up right anymore. It’s as if someone had taken her spring right out of her step, if she had had a step left at all. While she had been all cut up to fit someone’s fantasy, it had not worked too well. Most of all that pesty leak grew into a big leak, and a second started, and her pretty skin started to turn black, oozing with stink.
Gillis was smaller than Sophie, but his history was pretty much the same, though more extreme. He’d been jacked all around, dragged through all kinds of mud, out into the boonies far from civilization, and there used and abused, smeared with mud, gunk, and all kinds of unspeakables. Lucky for Gillis, though he too was worn right out and had started to leak where leaks should not happen, his did not progress to the stinking, oozing stage that Sophie’s had.
Both Gillis and Sophie came to the hermitage in the meadow, bought to give them their freedom, to be fixed up well for their last years. In the peaceful surroundings, with much time, soothing talk, hard work using the tools of a counsellor and healer-fixer-whatnot, at least Gillis became something. First his leak was dealt with, cured and healed with barely a scar left. Then he was treated and cured and fixed up from the inside out, given a new look, if not new, at least respectable. Even his water works were fixed and started to flow as they should.
Sophie sat, waiting her turn, her leaks bandaged up for the time being, the black oozing stopped so that more damage would not take her down. Some of her parts that she could not use were transplanted into Gillis to give him new life. When her time came, she would get brand new organs, parts and pieces until she, too, could go out, if not new, then respectably providing for at least a few people.
Moses puts before the people, after reminding them of the wondrous works of God to bring them to where they are, alive and free, ready to enter the Promised Land, that they have a choice: to serve God who has provided for them and their ancestors following God’s Law provided to them, or to turn to other gods, and other ways of living, cursed ways. They get to choose: blessings or curses.
We, too, even today, are free to choose to either serve God and enjoy blessings unending or to turn to other gods and to serve the Devil in all his many guises, bringing curses down upon us and ours.
We have free choice.
Jesus comes to save us from our choices to turn from God, to renew for us the possiblities to choose God, and to follow God’s Law, updated as it needed to be, from the many hundreds of thousand of words to a concise comprehensible ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself, loving especially your enemy.’ Of course this Law, Jesus’ law taking into it all the Law of Moses and all the commentaries and guides provided to it, is just as impossible for us to keep.
We with free choice, can only ‘choose’ to serve God and keep God’s Law, when the Holy Spirit brings us to so choose and live. A bit of a paradox: free but not able to be free. Martin Luther held it to be single predestination: We can fully choose to turn from God, but only God can and does save us.
This is life, and we have, by the blessing poured over us by the Holy Spirit and the gift of renewed free choice, the ability to choose to ‘try’ to serve God.
Sophie and Gillis, part of God’s good creation and having brought great joy to so many people, now entering their last years of useful life, have no such choice. They are, as one might suspect, merely recreational vehicles, camper trailers, small campers 14’ and 12’ respectively, both built in the 70’s and now near 50 years old. People have used and abused them to camp in. Some with some respect for the camper and creation that the camper made them able to visit and overnight in, some not with tremendous abuse of camper and creation.
Let us give God thanks, this day again, for all that God has made us to be, even if we are old and worn and have sprung leaks and, and, and ….
It’s another day in God’s Promised Land, the wonders always before us, the blessings flowing freely over us, the work never ending.
You shall worship the Lord your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you.
Matthew 6:31-32
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
Words of Grace For Today
Quite sure sickness is rampant among us. Coming out the back end of the Covid pandemic, and it’s not done with us yet by any means, is anyone ready to say that as we worship God our food and bread is blessed and we have all sickness taken away from among us? Covid is simply so contagious that measures to stop it are useless (well not really but people are no longer willing to pay the small price of wearing masks and keeping physical distance and restricting their social interactions to a small group of people so … well so measures are not kept and therefore governments are giving up on keeping them). The greatest sickness is exemplified by the guy who says Covid was a big hoax. Tell that to the families of all the people who died!
I’m sure that if I do not work hard for wood to heat with in the winter, and persist to find money to buy groceries with and show up at the food bank to supplement the ever smaller amount of groceries I can afford, and, and, and … I am sure if I do not strive heftily, I will meet my physical death.
So these passages are difficult to hear.
The truth of the matter is, when we worry about food and water, rather than actually working to ensure we have them, our worry sucks the life right out of us.
The truth of the matter is, sickness will never be wiped out from among us, not completely, and when we either think that it can be and behave like it has been or we ignore that sickness is part of life, we endanger ourselves and so many people around us.
The truth of the matter is that God created the world and said it was good! Hunger, poverty, drought, thirst, illness and death are part and parcel of our being able to choose to either love God or not.
Today is another day of opportunity: to ruin our days with worry and denials of sicknesses and death OR to enjoy our days with thanks for everything God gives us, and appropriate work to secure our daily needs and have enough to share with those without enough, and to live sensibly and cautiously so as to foster our own health and the health of those around us.
Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save.’
John 12:26
Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
Words of Grace For Today
You have done all this evil!
That is usually preceded by a long list of horrendous things we have done, some are well known and many we have hidden so others would not find out about them, but then someone did. Everything eventually sees the light of day!
You have done all this evil!
That is usually followed by a stiff condemnation and a listing of the ways we will be punished, which hardly ever is exactly proportional to the horrendous things we have done. We would like to say that crime and evil do not pay, but they do. We would like to believe that innocent people are not punished for things they did not do, but there is more evil done punishing innocent people than the evil that innocent people are punished for. It’s just how we ‘get it out of our system’. We humans are always up for a good scapegoating to relieve the pent up pressure on our own guilty consciences. Girard had that right!
You have done all this evil!
Then Samuel plays out for the people God’s grace. There is no punishment list.
There is in the prior verses much more: Samuel, old in age, has come before ‘all of Israel’ and asked them to judge him if he is guilty of any offence, and they have declared that he is not guilty of anything.
Samuel goes on to recount their history, from their cries in Egypt that God answers by sending Moses and Aaron to bring them to the Promised Land, to their wayward worship of and serving other gods, Baal and Astartes, God’s punishments as foreign powers conquered them, and then their request for a king to lead them against their enemies. This is counted by all as a sin, one terrible sin on top of all the others.
Still Samuel tells them that all can be well: if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.
It’s not a simple day of reckoning for Samuel. The people are still called to account, so Samuel demonstrates God’s power: Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord, that he may send thunder and rain; and you shall know and see that the wickedness that you have done in the sight of the Lord is great in demanding a king for yourselves.’ So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.
The people, rightly notice God’s power and wrath against them and pray for their lives, not to God, but they ask Samuel to pray for them: All the people said to Samuel, ‘Pray to the Lord your God for your servants, so that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.’
This is where the verse above fits. Samuel begins by telling them not to be afraid. He just struck the fear of God into their hearts and now he tells them not to be afraid. They should serve their God alone, and all will be well, if they and their king serve God alone. Samuel tells them God has an interest in them, so God will not too quickly kill off the sinful people for all their sins, the last being asking for a king to lead them against their enemies.
For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.
To their request that Samuel pray for them, Samuel puts it simply:
Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.
And what is that instruction, as if the passages have not been spilling it out in abundance: Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.
And it they do not, well then there will be, as they feared, the punishment that they already deserve: But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.
So is God merciful?
Is Samuel right to strike the fear of God into their hearts with rain and thunder on their wheat crops?
…
The whole scenario plays out that we can avoid God’s wrath by serving God alone. Yet like the Israelis we turn from God in so many ways each day.
God does honour those who serve him.
Thankfully God is merciful to all people who ever lived and will ever live, for we have all at some time in some way turned from serving God alone. Scapegoating innocent people to relieve the conflict in our lives we have created is just one of the ongoing, horrendous sins that is our turning from our God, who has sent us the Spirit of truth, to guide us in all truth.
Ah, but we choose to hide our evil deeds, and our hearts from the truth, for we think we cannot bear the punishment that will follow.
Thankfully God is merciful to all.
Now for today: how can we choose to serve God alone! Well then … on with it!
The VIN of the Lost/Stolen/Misplaced and Unlicensed Motor Home
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
Romans 8:23-24
Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?
Words of Grace For Today
There is every cause to groan at the developments of the previous days …
besides the reasons of every day: death is a’coming as our bodies give up life; we may be adopted and redeemed, but our bodies still have so many demands and limits and … well life, as one gets older and older, does not seem to get better, in fact, quite the opposite. Our bodies are not the only things that wear out. Machines that we rely on do as well. While our bodies are covered under the provincial health care plan, and we may have supplementary insurance, our machines cost lots of money to have someone qualified fix them.
So our machines get cobbled back together again and again, and pretty soon it’s a marvel that they work at all.
Our bodies get health care, such as it is, if a doctor will even care at all about you. All of that costs lots of money that comes out of our pockets as taxes, supposedly more if we have and make more money, though it seems not to work out that way. Even with the best health care, though, our bodies still slowly and sometimes quite quickly decay as if pulled back to be dust.
We can rejoice that with all this decay, God is our strength and portion forever, and that even our bodies will be adopted fully and redeemed fully and renewed, better than in our first life. We wait. We wait for God to keep the promise that our bodies will be redeemed and renewed. There is no proof available that this redemption and renewal will happen. So much of what we observe and experience points in exactly the opposite direction. So we are given hope. Hope alone. Hope in what is not obvious or not seen or sometimes apparently simply not possible.
Hope is hope when it anticipates what is not seen or proven or provable.
God gives us plenty, even when in the previous days someone parks a 40 foot old motor home in my yard from across our campers where I live. This motor home has no license plate, is a mess inside as much as is obvious through the door’s window. It has all the signs of being stolen and dumped here, out of sight and in my way. The yard is used as a dumping ground.
Now that stupidity is a cause for so much groaning. When will it stop!
God gives us hope that even things like this will be resolved, since redeemed is a bit much to hope for.
‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!
1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Words of Grace For Today
David built himself a fine palace. He wanted more. He wanted to build God a temple, God’s own house on earth. That would demonstrate to all that David served God … well, really it would demonstrate that God served David, so God says no.
Solomon moves ahead with David’s plan to build God a home, a temple on earth, even though Solomon is wise enough to know that God cannot be contained by … well, God cannot be contained by anything! Solomon builds the temple so the people have a place to go to pray to God and know that God hears them. Of course God hears us wherever we pray, but sometimes we people want more. We want to be convinced by mind games others play on us, that God is with us.
It’s hardly ever enough for us humans to know that God is with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us. We want more.
The verse from 1 John points to how we frail humans can fully know that God is with us. When God’s love is perfected in us as we love one another, then, though no one can ever see God, we can know that God lives in us.
True: God lives in us. True: when we love one another it is God in us that makes that possible. False: then we must work to love one another to convince ourselves that God lives in us. Nope, doesn’t work like that.
Start with God. Continue with God is for us. Then on to trusting that God lives with us and hears us and guides us … and suffers with us.
And we want more.
So we go off on all sorts of quests to achieve the unachievable in order to fully live life, leaving behind us in our dust the only thing that gives us life at all, and full life at that: that God lives in us.
There is no more. From that we can be more than we can imagine, bringing God’s love and grace to other people.
Still we want more.
So we pray: God save us … and give us more.
That’s what the Devil plays with, and it is that which brings so much suffering to us, other people, and to God who lives with us.
If we could only admit that we see God every day, in the most ordinary and the most extraordinary things and events. We would know that life on this planet earth is everything because God lives in us, walks with us, hears us, and guides us through every day.
Oh well, today like every day, we will do the best we can to reflect God’s love to all people and creation!
… the rest we trust God will somehow forgive, mend, and renew.
