Do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof.
James 3:17
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Words of Grace For Today
Wisdom is hard to come by.
For oneself and even harder to find in others, almost impossible to find in others who have power and position. Partiality and hypocrisy run rampant in humans, especially those who live with much whether that is power, position, wealth or possessions.
The wisdom that God would have us live out with our lives is not complicated, nor difficult to find, and it is not even rare to see (at least glimpses of it anyway.)
What is impossible is for us to live by it everyday in all circumstances.
An abundant life includes that we strive to live by this simple wisdom: God loves us, is gracious with us, forgives us, gives us renewed life and sends us to be all that for other people … not once or twice or a hundred or a thousand times, but without end. Because God is gracious to us without end we always have grace to give to others.
Getting to live this simple wisdom does not happen without God disciplining and reproofing us. Getting to live this simple wisdom brings us to receive and give peace, gentleness, mercy, and willingness to yield and to accept and produce good fruits of labour (God’s, God’s people for us, and ours for other people.)
Simple and impossible to live by … yet nothing is impossible for God, and for God to do with us for others.
It’s a wonderful, adventurous, and enthralling life, one that takes all our everything and returns to us more than we thought life could ever possibly provide … except God is the provider and the life is always more than we could imagine.
These are God’s gifts to us, for which we give thanks each morning, and each night.
Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.
1 John 3:21-22
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
Words of Grace For Today
Julie and Greg sought refuge from the heat, well over 35⁰ each day from 8:00 to 20:00 or later making sleeping difficult, and at best restless. The packed up their little camper behind the truck and headed out to a lake more than an hour away, since all the campgrounds at other lake closer were overfilled. There was no proper campground, just crown land where random camping was allowed.
They were hardly the first to arrive, and most of the possible sites were filled and overfilled with others seeking relief from the heat and being cooped up for more than a year with the covid19 restrictions. With luck, or was it a pure blessing, they arrived just minutes after another family left one of the furthest campsites, one set among birch trees on a hill more than 50 feet above the lake. They settled in and carried their canoe down near the four log steps to the water.
For a week they ‘enjoyed’ temperatures that did not climb above 32⁰ and nights that cooled off after sunset at 21:30 to the high teens, making sleeping a wonderful and restful reprieve. The first few days they recovered and found wonder in the relative cool nights, and the canoe outings during the hottest part of the day into the cooler air above the water. They knew that God had delivered them.
Then they became accustom to the reprieve, and noticed the challenges of camping: the swarms of mosquitoes morning and evening made being outside less than comfortable, the flies that chewed small chunks right out of their arms, checks and even eyelids, and the bees and wasps whose stings they were allergic to. Then there were the late night parties from the other parts of the campground that seemed to never end until the sun rose; a downside of uncontrolled camping producing loud music and fireworks at all late hours! The quads, dirt bikes, and side by sides chewed up the dirt right before their camper, blowing exhaust into their camper at any hour. They became complainers instead of giving God thanks.
Saturday afternoon all that complaining ended with a real danger. The emergency broadcast service rang out from their cell phones: a tornado warning! A funnel was sighted moving fast NW just 30 miles away to the SW of their precious campsite. There was no basement or building to hide in against the SW wall. They did what they could. They pulled their hand-made cedar strip canoe high away from the lake and secured it among some strong trees and bush. The parked the truck on the lakeside of the camper, opened it’s windows and all the windows on the camper (to prevent the severe drop and rise in air pressure from blowing up either the truck or camper.) Taking a larger tarp they found where a tree’s roots had been ripped out leaving a depression, laid down the tarp, sat and laid in on it, and covered themselves with the tarp to protect themselves from the rain that pelted sideways at them in the high wind.
The last thing they saw before covering themselves was a funnel approach the other side of the lake, tossing trees out of it’s path like toothpicks, and throwing a great blinding spray of water that hid everything from sight as it came across the lake. The deafening sound grew until it went totally quiet, not from lack of sound but from the pressure built in their eardrums that made hearing anything impossible. In their bones they felt instead of heard the roar, the explosions and earth shaking thuds, and then the stillness ….
When they uncovered themselves all the trees for 100 yards in all directions were gone, in their place were shreds of logs piled in places like matchsticks poured out of their box by a child playing with danger.
They walked back to where they had laid their canoe. Miraculously the trees were gone, but the bush remained covering their untouched, precious canoe. In that same moment they recognized behind a jumble of logs their camper, and then their truck, both untouched by the destruction.
In the rest of the random campground 4 people were killed, 10 others injured, and many vehicles and camping units were damaged or totally destroyed. Some trees, though not many, remained standing as before. The shoreline was hidden beneath a mess of bush, logs, and the remains of boats that had been in the water or on shore. Julie and Greg used their truck to transport 8 people to the hospital and then a second trip with the other 2 less severely injured and 2 bodies they had found.
For weeks after both Julie and Greg, knowing that their sins were many and varied, knew that many days they had done nothing to please God, yet God had delivered them. They were alive. Their precious canoe, truck, and camper were undamaged. They were the only family camping that completely escaped damage or injury of some kind. They did not deserve this, so they gave God thanks, with words each morning and night, and with acts of kindness for others, helping others recover property, and cleaning up the camping area as they could. Somehow the heat that had returned, the mosquitoes, flies, bees and wasps that continued to swarm, and the parties that people somehow continued to hold each evening made little difference.
The goodness of life itself outshone all the challenges, obstacles, and ugliness around them.
Julie and Greg knew that God blessed them not because of what they had done, or not done, but simply because God so chose to bless them. They learned, slowly as the blessed shock of surviving unscathed, how to reflect God’s blessings in their daily lives, how to maintain their gratitude for each breathe and moment of life, and how to shine undeserved grace to other people.
Even scripture, given to humans to write, can be wrong when it somehow conveys that God blesses us because we obey his commandments and do what pleases God.
First God blesses us. Then like Julie and Greg we slowly learn to obey and do what pleases God. And we inevitably revert to our old ways of complaining about life and doing all things only for ourselves, until God surprises us with an undeserved blessing, so that we slowly learn again to obey and do what please God…. Until we inevitably revert to our old ways … and God surprises us again and again with undeserved blessings.
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Colossians 1:14
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Words of Grace For Today
We would like to think and say: happy are they who do not sin …
but there is no one who can not sin, and it would be a hopeless, despairing statement to try to maintain.
We all sin.
We all turn from God.
We all turn against God and all that is good for our own and everyone else’s lives.
…
The only hope for us is that our transgressions are forgiven and our sins covered.
This Jesus does for us.
…
We get to celebrate,
Give God thanks,
and
be Christ’s hands and voice to forgive and cover other people’s sins.
In the Heat of (Climate Change Ever More Extreme) Summer
God Remembers Us
And the Many Paths Our Machines Have Made
In the Cool of Winter.
‘Chill’
God Recommends We
‘Chill.’
2 Samuel 7:22
Therefore you are great, O Lord God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
Revelation 1:17-18
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
Words of Grace For Today
In this rough and wild world of self-interested cheats and liars all, it is good to know one’s friends well and to have friends in high places, very high places.
No better friend than God, for there is no one like God, no god besides God, whether we’ve heard it or not!
The trouble with human friends is that when they get to be in high places, they cannot be trusted not to turn on you for their own interests of staying in high places, or demanding dirty little favours of you to help them stay in high places.
God does no such thing. We need not fear that God will turn on us, or turn us into petty criminals doing God’s dirty work so that God can remain God. God has no such concerns, for God has not stepped up higher than is God’s place (like some friends do, and all people in high places have done!)
God does no such thing. Instead God assures us we need not fear God’s Power and Might. God has turned that all powerful, all-mightyful reality toward resolving all that would destroy us.
God chose to be born as one of us, weak and vulnerable to corrupt powers that pretend to be more than they are, just as many of our judges and police and politicians do today. God suffered a terrible death at their hands, and defied their ‘power’ and the real power of death and evil itself! All so that we can live free of such fears, of petty powers and of real destructive powers of evil and even of death itself.
That’s what a real good friend in the very high places (and the low places and everywhere in between) does for us.
We must be some extraordinary precious!
Breathe in that reality!
We are precious to the Ultimate Most Powerful One!
What a life!
What are we going to do with it, that’s the question for each of us each day!
No Matter What Dark Barriers Block Our Way Towards Grace
God Removes Them
And Sends Us To Remove the Barriers from Others’ Ways Towards Grace.
Psalm 147:3
He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.
Mark 16:2-4
Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.
Words of Grace For Today
There are always obstacles,
waiting for us each day,
stopping us in our tracks if we let them,
obstacles that are so big they defy any expectation that we can deal with them.
We can only continue on if God deals with them,
by sending someone to remove the obstacles from our way forward.
Physical obstacles are one thing.
Obstacles on our hearts and minds, obstacles of our faith or lack thereof, are the kind of obstacles that most severely trap us in places where we cannot live, thinking ways that rob us of life, fearing life and our enemies (most of all our unseen and unknown enemies) with each breath.
…
God heals our broken hearts and minds.
God heals our broken hopes and dreams.
God rises from the dead, laid in a tomb, and is nowhere to be found when we go to move the processes of death one day forward.
God overcomes death, overcomes our brokenness and our sinfulness and our everything that gets in the way of living abundantly for God.
God gives us life, again and again even as we turn from God.
Thanks be to God!
Now it’s our turn to be God’s healers for others’ broken hearts, minds, dreams and hopes.
One May Expect Goodness to Simply Be There Tomorrow
But the Dark Clouds on the Horizon
Bear the Truth of Evil’s Power
It is Always at Work
God still Always
Wins
Psalm 142:6
Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low. Save me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.
Luke 20:38
Now God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.
Words of Grace For Today
When I think of those who have persecuted and falsely prosecuted me, I think of what Martin Luther King Jr. called God’s double victory. Both that our persecutors and evil prosecutors will stop doing the evil they do against us, that God’s justice will be done; and that our persecutors and evil prosecutors will be won over to serve God and live abundantly. Which leads me to think that if God has not ended them yet, and they still continue the evil the do so easily, often and effectively, then it is because God still believes in them. God still believes that they could be converted from enemies of God into children of God.
That’s quite a transformation for my enemies, who are too strong for me! It is almost beyond imagination that those who delighted so in planning their persecution of me (who are recorded in their glee speaking to each other) and told me that they did it just because they could, and who so easily lied and twisted reality into a Kafkaesque nightmare, a twilight zone of their own making … it is hard to imagine that these people could confess, repent (turn about towards doing good), and serve God alone.
Yet this is God’s promise for us all: that God is abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger, and that all people (no matter when or what we or they have done) are still alive!
It is comfort to know that God protects us, no matter how low we are brought by evil, no matter if we think there is no lower we can be forced. God certainly does not protect us from the effects of our enemies sins, nor protect us so that we remain alive on this earth even. God protects us, walks with us, and promises us that we will never be dead to God!
If God is for us so much so that to God we will always be alive, there is nothing that can destroy us or make us fear the power of evil more than we trust the promises of God.
Yet we pray Giveheed to our cries, for we are brought very low. Save us from our persecutors, for they are too strong for us.
God sends help in the most extraordinary and unexpected ways, through the most surprising people. Watch it all with eyes wide, hearts open, and minds a-boggling; yet there is God at work!
Now it’s our turn to be the surprise of God’s good works giving life abundant to others, overcoming the work of evil that destroys.
The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ‘I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” ’
Hebrews 10:36
For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
Words of Grace For Today
Hebrews is a book that often gets it backwards: if we do this then God will reward us with that.
The way God works is as God works for the people following Moses. They are enslaved, they do nothing to deserve their slavery or God’s blessings, yet God leads them (through Moses’ acting as God directs him) through the Red Sea and into the freedom of the wilderness.
Then they complain that they have nothing to drink. Though they show little appreciation for the priceless freedom God has already provided for them (they have not earned more from God at all, not at all!) God provides them with water that flows at the wack of Moses’ staff on a rock! They drink their fill that day and each day of their sojourn in the wilderness.
Then they complain that they have nothing to eat. This ragtag band of free people simply knows nothing about gratitude and everything about being slaves to their own bad attitudes and complaints.
They deserve nothing God has given them again and again, and still God again gives them what they ask for and need: meat at night and bread in the morning!
That’s how God works for us, and always has, and always will.
We screw up royally, and God does for us what we need having done so that we can get on with living life abundant (as God created us to be able to live!) Then we screw up and God continues to save and bless us … and repeat endlessly (ad nauseum!)
We receive from God blessings upon blessing, endurance among them, as we already today receive what God has promised us: an inheritance as God’s children, God’s presence with us each moment of our days, and eternal life that has started already long ago ….
Because God is so generous with God’s Grace for us, we have plenty of Grace to also be overly generous with all other people. That’s part of the abundant life: that we share all God gives us, especially with those who need the basics of life to be able to survive another day and another year, with hope for the future.
The atom bomb can blow the world apart at the atomic level; God’s love and grace puts the world and all that lives on it back together at the super-sub-atomic level, at the level of existence created.
God puts life back together for us, too, no matter how we ‘blow it up’ and apart for ourselves and others around us.
God is the only One who can put life back together again, even when ‘all the king’s men and all the king’s horses could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.’
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.
Galatians 5:1
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Words of Grace For Today
God, why …?
God why is it so hot!
Sweat pours down my back and arms and all over dripping all my work in stinky wet.
My jeans stick to my legs as I try to move. My shirt tugs back at all my efforts to move. It’s hard to get anything done, and when I do I feel like someone has wrung me out like a sopping wet towel and left me still soaking and stinking.
Ok, God, I can get used to the heat, it’s not easy but I’m adapting to it, but
God why are there so many miserable mosquitoes ready to bite me at all hours and at dawn and dusk they swarm so thick it’s hard not to inhale more than a few just walking a few feet from the door. When they bite it hurts, and then goes away, just to come back with a terrible itch that simply will not go away and will not be ignored! What’s that about anyway. If I try to ignore them and merely wash the itch away with ammonia in the glass cleaner, that sort of works until I get itchy all over inside my eyes, my nose, my throat and my ears and I start to have a severe allergic reaction that starts to take my breath away. Really, does it have to be so bad all summer long!? I have to wear long jeans and long sleeves, thick socks and a hat with flaps down my neck and over my ears soaked in DEET to keep them away. Then every night I have to wash all that DEET exposure away before I sleep which takes water which is expensive to haul here to have to wash with. Fortunately I have friends who have loaned me the things needed to shower each night and haul water often enough from town that I can shower on the hot days before sleeping.
So God I guess I can get used to the mosquitoes, but God, I mean really: does there have to be so many black gnats that dive bomb into my face, my eyes and ears and take little chunks away as prizes for their kamikaze efforts, which because they are so many they usually survive better than I. I end up breathing them into my lungs at least once a day. I have to constantly wave my hand in front of my face to keep them away, which sort of works and they only seem to be out in certain places while I am mowing grass. So it’s not all the time, thankfully.
So God I guess I have figured out how to survive even the kamikaze gnats.
But God why are there so many wasps, not just ready to bite me when I try to work on the tarps that shelter me from the cold in winter. They did sting me, hard sending shock waves through my body and brain freezing out all other thoughts or impulses except to run. Not just once, but twice, and they hurt unbearably for hours, then itched and ached for days. The memory returned fresh each time I stepped outside and the sound of a wasp buzz reached my ears. I live in fear everyday of being smashed into panic again. I cannot have that. I cannot work. I have to huddle in fear inside.
That just cannot be. So I’ve made a suit to protect me from head to toe, even a piece of screen left over from repairs to guard my face, all duct taped together with no gaps at all. I’ve read on the internet that dish soap will suffocate wasps. I cannot find any prepared wasp control/killer spray, so I’ve filled a spray bottle with a water soap mix and I’ve destroyed the nest on the tarps, and three in the woods so close they wasps swarm around the camper each day.
So God I guess I’ve figured out how to deal with the fear created by being stung by wasps, and in the fall they will all dies off. Next spring I know what to do to keep them from creating nest here again. It’s simple if I am ready.
But God I really don’t know what to do with the people that gaslight me, that scapegoat me, that bear false witness against me, and the judges that lie about the evidence before them in order to convict me and deny me true justice. How can a society survive such barbarism anyway. It’s like the truth does not count for anything and whatever someone makes up for the courts and whatever the courts want to make up for themselves will be taken in the worse possible way for me, and I’ll pay and pay and pay until I have nothing left and still I’ll be driven into debt, further and further and further, and made to give up even the most common decent truths about myself. I have had to celebrate the Eucharist each day to remember that you too were betrayed and scapegoated and convicted and … well you were crucified. I have not been killed. I have found your blessings in each day in the most profound and simple things, like having enough to eat, and a good cup of coffee with fresh milk in it in the morning, and having medications I need, and having reason and opportunity to work hard to survive, and write and dream and use photography to speak about the wonders of your creation.
So God, I guess I have gotten used to evil all around in the most trusted, honoured places in society in this adopted country of mine. I have to remember how much you forgive me, so that I can remember that you may forgive these people as well, though now I cannot say their sins are forgiven, for they have not admitted they did and still do this same thing to others, and it is horrendous for the children. So I have bound their sins so that they might fear that they will answer to you, though with you I hope for a double victory, now that they provide justice based on truth, and that they join your people in celebrating all your gifts, encouraging others to do the same.
But Lord, it’s so hot, there’s so many mosquitoes and gnats and wasps and so many enemies of goodness, kindness, truth, and love. How can I deal with all of them all the time.
So I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep
and if I die before I wake, least I won’t wonder how much is still at stake
for the dance of life is more than a dance, gracefully, graciously partaken in.
It is also a feast and celebration with you, God, with all your people, in thanks for all you’ve suffered to do good things for us all.
So I guess I can wait for the cold, when the sweat will not run freely, the mosquitoes will be done for another year, the gnats will disappear and I can breathe easy, and the evil people are kept at bay by the cold and snow.
But God why does it have to be so cold and stormy, and why does there have to be so much snow.
I mean I like to have my peace and be able to ski ….
So Lord I pray, give me your peace, in the sleep of the righteous and pure, graciously so made a saint of your light by your own choice and by grace through faith alone.
Another simple normal summer day.
When does autumn start to arrive?
But Lord, why do the bears start to come around in the fall …..?
…
Lord, whatever it is that holds me captive, free me. Whatever it is that blinds me, give me sight. Whatever it is that robs me of joy while serving you and sharing the good news of your Grace with others, take this from me so that
because you give me life
I can be one of the saints who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the broken-hearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.
Help me live in the freedom you have so preciously bought for me; help me not return to the slavery that I know so well and feels so comfortable … until it binds me so close to evil that life starts to shrivel right out of me leaving me alone with my fears.
But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. I cry aloud to the Lord, and God answers me from God’s holy hill. Selah
Luke 1:49
The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.
Words of Grace For Today
God is our shield, our glory, the one who lifts up our heads. We cry aloud to the Lord and God answers us.
God, the Mighty One, has done great things for us.
God’s great work for us give us great hope and sustenance each day.
This is good, for the assurance that God does good things for us begins with a simple word ‘but’, which indicates that it is not so with others.
Others do other with us so that we need God as a shield around us!
Don’t we all know it … if we are paying attention.
Because God hears us, cares for us, shields us, walks with us, and forgives, redeems, and renews us … because God gives us all we need for life …
Therefore we receive all that God has for us, share it with all we can, pursue a life of kindness, and sing thanks with Selah!
The Thorns of Life to the Goodness God Intends for Us All
Genesis 13:8
Then Abram said to Lot, ‘Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred.
Romans 12:10
Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.
Words of Grace For Today
Tim’s father, in the movie About Time, has one line written for him that reflects a simple wisdom that many generations have discovered and passed on (from the umpteenth best man’s toast at Tim and Mary’s wedding):
We’re all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind.
When you marry, or you have relatives you did not choose, or friends you may or may not have chosen most everyone’s flaws and faults can be dealt with graciously … if both people are kind.
This is the quality of a relationship that one person in it cannot make up for in the other. One can try to forgive the lack of kindness, but eventually one will run out of energy and succumb in one way or another.
So the wisdom that Paul knew well and recommended to even strangers in a new (potential) congregation in Rome, and the wisdom that is carried for generations in the Abraham and Sarah stories is quite simple, basic, and essential to living abundantly: be kind.
In other words, show honour to each other, let there be no strife between you and your people and others, love one another with mutual affection.
Simple wisdom that is impossible to achieve at all if one is not well practised in being kind.
Being kind is a matter of choice … for a few times each day, but being kind always in all things to all people is impossible except by Grace the Holy Spirit inspires us to be like Christ for other people.
So we are kind … as we are able … and we pray that God will help us to be kind always …
that it may go well for us and our people in the land that God has promised us …
