Month: March 2022

‘Reframability’ & Possibility

Monday, March 21, 2022

Shadows Point to The Light

Each Morning, Noon, and Night

Psalm 143:8

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

1 Timothy 6:6-7

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.

Words of Grace For Today

While many strive to gain comforts, privileges, and securities (of many kinds, all futile), we seek the only gain that is sure: that God provides us love and faith (by Grace, ie as free gifts) and contentment in our lives, for while we come into life with nothing and we can take nothing with us, we do leave behind our own story.

What will that story be?

Will others gain faith from our stories? Or will they only learn to chase after what cannot offer them life?

It is not insignificant what story others have from us (as opposed to the stories that are untrue that many tell about us – those untrue stories work against the liars who create them and tell and retell them). It is not insignificant what story others have from us because each day, we humans are privileged to be able to ‘reframe’ our new day with how we think about life past, present and future.

That is: we are not written in stone from one day to the next. Some take this as opportunity to lie about their past and to scheme to ‘improve’ their future with more lies. Oh, what a waste that brings misery and despair to so many people, those liars and so many impacted by their lies.

God provides this opportunity to us each day (actually every minute), so that we can repent, that is so that we can turn our lives around, reframe them according to God’s Grace, Love and Hope for us (demonstrated in Jesus’ story), and proceed to be more of who God created us to be!

So we pray with the Psalmist: Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

It is not that we have never heard of God’s steadfast love, or that we do not know God’s way for us, or that our lives are in ruin and need to be rescued from the hand of the Devil, the Great Deceiver (though too often that is the case). It is simply that since we get to reframe our lives, we also must reframe our lives. If we do not turn to God to receive the Word that will reframe our lives according to God’s steadfast love for us, the Devil will certainly provide all sorts of words, lies always, that will draw us in, slowly turn us away from God, and consume us, until we are nothing like the creatures of steadfast love that God created us to be.

So what do we want to be today?

What word will reframe your day, this morning?

May God save us from the Deceiver’s tempting words that suck us in to the downward spiral away from life itself.

May God provide wondrous words to communicate God’s steadfast love, grace, and hope for us.

In a Word, we pray (it is not too much to ask, and it is everything so we beg):

May we see Jesus each morning!

Without Trembling, With Thanks …

Sunday, March 20, 2022

The Path May Seem Difficult and Long …

Psalm 56:9

Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shortage of destruction by evil working through people, directed against other people, seeking to destroy and destory others in order to work some supposed ‘advantage’ in their lives, their ‘world’.

The question is who do we, the ones pursued to be destroyed and destoried, who do we choose to be?

The lies told about us do not determine who we are, even if they can determine a whole lot of shtako that we will experience like jail, being shunned, outcast, left to die, and actively killed … all in an effort to take the truth of who we are and what our lives have been and destroy our stories of truth.

The lies told about us never become the truth. It does not matter how many lies are piled together. It does not matter how often or for how long those lies are repeated or by whom they are repeated. It does not matter how many police create more lies about us. It does not matter how many lawyers and prosecutors create more lies about us. It certainly does not matter how many courts repeat all those lies and how many more lies the courts create on their own about us. None of the lies ever become the truth, not ever. Their lies do not determine who we are, no matter how hard they try to make it so. Their lies reveal so much of who the liars are. Their lies belie them as agents of evil in our midst, agents who undermine everything good about civilization. They cause chaos to flow permeating everywhere in society. In that chaos they try to establish a new ‘truth’, a ‘truth’ that they can control, or at least benefit from. They may seem to benefit from it, but the chaos corrodes civil society leaving it vulnerable to barbarism, and that barbarism knows no favourites: it consumes everyone in its path, from within and with external destructive forces. The lies are in fact the tip of barbarism eating away at everyone, the liars first, the people they lie about, and all sorts of those caught in the wake of the lies.

Truth is truth forever.

So who do we, the victims of these lies, want to be?

The victims are so many: from our local towns and cities, to the outcasts in our country, to the indigenous and Metis most would rather not remember, to those similarly lied about in every country, to those left to die of preventable illnesses, to those killed by unjust military assaults – like in the Ukraine, though that is only one of many unjust military actions now across the globe – to those murdered in cold blood each day.

Who do we want to be?

We can be victims. That’s easy. That’s obvious. That’s hard to not be. But can we be someone else rather than victims?

Lots of tales from history recount how people have ‘pulled themselves by their bootstraps’ and overcome the assault on their lives and on their stories. Those stories are unbelievable; there are no ‘bootstraps’ by which to pull oneself up out of such attacks, not that will work for other people.

The only sure survival is to surrender, not to one’s enemies, but to God’s Will. Even then not all of us will survive in this life, though some have survived, like Jeremiah (until he did not), Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, St. Paul (until he did not), Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Sarah Collins Rudolph, Freddie Knoller, Toby Biber, Premsyl Dobias, Maria Ossowski, Albin (Alex) Ossowski, Daniel Falkner, Magdalena Kusserow Reuter, and the list could go on.

More than those who survive are those who are jailed and killed or just killed. That list seems not to find an end. Remember Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhöffer, Socrates, Jesus, Stephan, Bishop Juan Gerardi, and Archbishop Oscar Romero?

Who do we want to be? Who do we want to be like?

The question is pertinent every day, but more pertinent is how God answers: what does God want from us? Are we the people God created us to be?

How can we be as God created us to be, after some one agent of evil or so many agents of evil (who appear to be ordinary people at first) have sought (and still are seeking) to kill us?

We surrender to God’s Will, and pray we will say truthfully to God:

Und reichst du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern
des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand,
so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern
aus deiner guten und geliebten Hand.

(And may you offer the heavy bitter cup
of grief, filled to the very rim
We´ll take it thankfully without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.)

For we know that those who mourn will be comforted, even our loved ones. We trust fully that God is with us and our enemies can do no other than retreat when facing God. They will be undone as God puts the truth before them, and before all people. The truth will be known.

So come what may we can thankfully and without trembling face each new day.

Boldly Going Where …?

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Head for the Light?!?

It’s Not the Light at the End of the Tunnel (a train coming at us!)

It’s a Full Moon Setting at Dawn.

Jonah 2:7

As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

2 Timothy 2:19

But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’, and, ‘Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.’

Words of Grace For Today

Of course, it is a common story: A person has had no place for God in their life …

until …

until everything goes wrong …

health-wise …

and …

death comes knocking.

Suddenly everything is about ‘God’ …

And ‘God blessing and saving the person who has ignored God lifelong!’

…

The old thought always comes back: the way one lives lifelong has to mean something in the end, right. So there really is not last minute salvation. There really is no last hour baptism to guarantee one’s salvation. We are judged by God by our full record!

That’s right, isn’t it? It has to be! Otherwise why did I try so hard to do the right things all my life, giving up all the opportunities that would have benefited me greatly though they would have compromised my soul!?

Ah, were it so simple, so that we could judge who is God’s and who is not God’s; who has been good enough, and who has not been good enough.

Or rather, thank God it is not so simple, so that humans can actually judge each other … because, well, humans have a really bad track record of getting everything wrong and really messing things up, royally!

What we can trust fully is that God knows! God knows who are God’s and who are not.

By Grace God gives those who are not, another breath, and another, and another ad nauseam, all so that they have another and another, and another ad nauseam opportunity to repent and convert, and to learn what we who are God’s have learned and relearn again and again, namely that

We are saved only by God’s Grace (God’s choice) through faith (given to us as a free gift, though we do not deserve it at all.)

So we go into each new day, boldly going where all humans have gone before, into the fray of returning lies with truth, hate with love, despair with hope … as God makes us able.

The Same Moon Casting (Faint) Shadows

Where, Oh Where … !?!

Friday, March 18, 2022

Where Is God?

Down This Path?

On This Mountain?

Beside This Lake?

In The Crowded Cities?

God Save Us, Now!

Psalm 10:1

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Mark 4:38

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

Words of Grace For Today

I flew out in the fall to a remote fire tower to make a pastoral visit to the crew there. There was no way to announce my visit. I just took off, navigated by dead reckoning, and landed at the small grass clearing that served as a air strip. I’d circled over the tower and taken in the paths through the bush that wound the kilometre or so between it and the air strip. Airplane secured, I set off and …

hours later I was deep in the bush with no way of finding the tower in time to spend even a minute with the crew and still find my way back to the air strip before dark, and before dark I needed, most desperately needed to be in the air. There was no way a take off in the dark in an unknown airstrip was something I was even considering as doable. And anything not doable was certainly not ‘well, let’s see if it’s possible!’ So I oriented myself by the sun low in the sky back towards the plane.

As I came to a junction of paths in the bush, both directions on the new path hidden from view until I stepped into the junction, I got the scare of my life, or one of many.

There, not more than six feet to my right (the direction I needed to turn) was a calf and her mama, a cow moose. The calf was half size and still looked down at me. I froze. Moose have a pea size brain, and they survive only because they are bigger, tougher, and faster than most any predator.

Encounters with humans are so dangerous because, being so … well stupid … they are totally unpredictable and usually they charge, especially when their young are threatened! The results are usually -10 for the human and no effect on the moose.

Where was God!? How could this be happening to me? Why was this happening?

Always the photographer I reached for my camera hung on my shoulder, slapping my backpack with every step until I froze in my tracks. Why not document this so that if I did not make it someone would know how I came to my demise (or at least the last few seconds?) If I’d had a rifle, that would have been a smarter option, but useless as well, given the moose’s speed.

Before my hand was on the camera, mama and calf were well on their way across my path and down the to the left.

I breathed, settling the adrenaline rush to tolerable, and marched on. By the time I reached the plane all that adrenaline was gone. The take off was in the shadows, the sun just below the horizon, and my way home full of wonder.

God sometimes does save us from our own stupidity, from terrible circumstances, and from sure death. Other times we join the Psalmist’ and the disciples’ desperate plea: God where are you!? Do you not care what happens to us?!?

…

Only with time, and sometimes not even then, do we gain the insight to see and know … and trust that God walks with us, and suffers with us everything we suffer, and provides life abundant in every hour with every breath we breathe on this gift of creation God has brought us to live in.

So we pray, with full trust (or maybe barely any trust) that God hears us, for ourselves and for all other people faced with disaster, illness, and death this day, this week, this year: God be not stern with us, but gently save us and help us live each minute you gift us.

Ich Wunsche Dir Zeit

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Zeit (Time)

As the Sun Sets Spreading Colours Across the Sky and Land

How Much More Will God Gift To Our Enemies?

How Much To Us?

Deuteronomy 8:2

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.

Matthew 11:29

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

To experience that time when we find rest for our souls … rest for our souls, what a promise,

and a blessing so familiar

and so impossible to achieve for ourselves.

Time.

Time is precious.

Ich wunsche dir Zeit … (I wish you the time …)

and God provides us the time …

All kinds of time.

Time in the wilderness, so that God can humble us,

time filled with wonder, so that we can know God’s presence,

time filled with love, so that we fulfill God’s purpose for us.

So much of our time we walk with a different yoke taking our efforts and making something other than God’s will to be.

Patient, kind, and loving still, always Jesus calls us to take his yoke of being God’s unconditional love for others, for this is Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, guiding us to live

exactly as God created us to live,

with time,

all kinds of time,

time to remember,

time to celebrate,

and time to hope for those who are beyond hope.

From Siegfried Feitz aus dem Stephansdom in Wien

Ich wünsche dir Zeit

Elli Michler

Ich wünsche dir nicht alle möglichen Gaben.
Ich wünsche dir nur, was die meisten nicht haben:
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, dich zu freun und zu lachen,
und wenn du sie nützt, kannst du etwas draus machen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit für dein Tun und dein Denken,
nicht nur für dich selbst, sondern auch zum Verschenken.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht zum Hasten und Rennen,
sondern die Zeit zum Zufriedenseinkönnen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht nur so zum Vertreiben.
Ich wünsche, sie möge dir übrig bleiben
als Zeit für das Staunen und Zeit für Vertraun,
anstatt nach der Zeit auf der Uhr nur zu schaun.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, nach den Sternen zu greifen,
und Zeit, um zu wachsen, das heißt, um zu reifen.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, neu zu hoffen, zu lieben.
Es hat keinen Sinn, diese Zeit zu verschieben.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, zu dir selber zu finden,
jeden Tag, jede Stunde als Glück zu empfinden.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, auch um Schuld zu vergeben.
Ich wünsche dir: Zeit zu haben zum Leben!

Aus: Elli Michler – Dir zugedacht -Don Bosco Verlag, München, © DonBosco Medien

I Wish You The Time

I don’t wish you all kinds of gifts.
I only wish you what most don’t have:
I wish you time to be happy and to laugh,
and if you use it, you can make something of it.

I wish you time for your actions and your thoughts,
not only for yourself, but also as a gift.
I wish you time – not to rush and run,
but the time to be content.

I wish you time – not just to drive away.
I wish it may be left to you
as a time for wonder and a time for trust,
instead of just checking the time on the clock.

I wish you time to reach for the stars
and time to grow, that is, to mature.
I wish you time to hope again, to love.
There is no point in delaying this time.

I wish you time to find yourself
feel every day, every hour as happiness.
I wish you time to forgive guilt.
I wish you: to have time to live!

Trying to Contain God?

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

The Glory of God Is Everywhere

To Be Noticed,

No Finding Needed,

It Found Us

Ages Ago!

1 Chronicles 28:9

And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.

Hebrews 3:20-21

Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

How do you tell the successor to the kingdom on earth that he has nothing at all to do with whether or not God blesses him and the kingdom?

How do you tell your successor that when you yourself are famous for taking charge and making the kingdom great?!?

How do you tell your successor to the kingdom you have built that he must surrender his will to God’s will, and trust that God will guide him, even in ways that he may not understand or willingly follow, especially when you are infamous for taking your own will into your own hands in order to build this kingdom that your son will inherit from you?

How can you tell your son to submit to God’s will when you are about to instruct your son to build God a temple, which, in the middle of your eager plans to start construction of a magnificent temple, God has told you that God does not need or want any kind of temple?

(David is and remains blessed by God, not because David earns it, but because God so chooses.)

David, faced with these challenges, does not instruct Solomon to submit to God’s will. Instead David reverts to a simple and common perversion of God’s will for us humans: If Solomon does right, then God will bless him. If Solomon does not do right then God will forsake him forever. Solomon must then find and follow God.

But that is not possible because God’s Kingdom does not work this way, though there are plenty of humans to tell you it does, and plenty of humans live that way on earth their entire lives.

God’s Kingdom rather begins with love, ends with love, and everything inbetween is God graciously forgiving, renewing and equipping us to be God’s loving grace for all other people. We earn nothing. We keep nothing. We give God everything. And we live lives abundant … in God’s Kingdom.

This is Jesus’ story for us: God comes and gives everything to save us, forgive us, renew life in us, and send us out into the world to follow Jesus’ example: surrendering everything we are and have so that God can work through us to bless other people.

And that is to live a blessed life, as one of the God-made saints.

No need to find God! God is right there with you! No need to earn God’s Grace, it’s long ago been enacted for you, for each day and each moment of your life.

Breathe

Sing

Dance

and Love Unconditionally.

Selling Out Our Future, Or Trusting God’s Future For Us?

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

We May Pray for Warmth,

Yet New Beginnings,

Like Young Seedlings,

Require the Water of Winter Snows

to Prosper

in Christ’s Light.

2 Kings 20:1-2 4-8

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. …

Before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of your ancestor David: ‘I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’” Then Isaiah said, ‘Bring a lump of figs. Let them take it and apply it to the boil, so that he may recover.’

Matthew 7:7

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

Words of Grace For Today

Hezekiah received 15 years added to his life, deliverance from Assyria and … Then when the Babylonians arrived he showed off all his treasure, which Isaiah predicted rightly the Babylonians would return and take back to Babylon with them, and Hezekiah is pleased for there will be peace and security during his lifetime.

Like many people, politicians in office most tragically, Hezekiah’s concern is not for the long-term well being for all the people. Instead those in power sell out the future for short-term peace and security while they are yet in office, while they are yet alive. All that sacrified for their present power, comforts, and questionable security.

It is very doubtful that many Ukrainians would agree that God is honouring Jesus’ promise: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

What are we to make of this?

The passage from Matthew is not preceeded by some context that makes is more believable, such as if we ask for what is God’s will for us. In fact the passage continues and makes it even more unbelievable for those in desperate straights, fearing for their country, their cities, their friends, their families:

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

There are many attempts to explain Evil’s destruction, especially to such great swaths of humans so undeserving of the what they face; and to explain how a loving, caring, attentive, protecting God can allow such things to happen. None of them will ever suffice for those facing their own death or the death of loved ones, and the death of their reasonably peaceful way of life.

The only one that I have for my own situation (my enemies seek my death trying to achieve it within the ‘legal’ framework possible in this country) is that God suffers with us, even dies again and again with us. First though God created humans in order that we would love one another, God and all creation. In order that we are capable of loving, God gives us all the prerequisites, including freewill, that is the choice to love or not to love. After all, love that is not freely chosen is not love. Love is the free choice to give the best of life to another.

So we humans have freewill and can choose to love, or not to love. And as we so often choose not to love, those choices are evil in themselves and lead to even greater and greater evils, which always lead to the destruction and death of other people, creation, and our foolish attempts to deny and put God to death, once and for all.

Bleak.

Until we remember Jesus’ story: God always brings life out of death. God always responds to evil with Grace, Love, and Forgiveness … which offers people renewed life, and freedom from their past choices to not love, freedom from the evil that ensnares their hearts, minds and strengths. God always responds to our bleak present with a future of hope, peace, security, and joy fearing, loving, and serving God, and God alone.

We do receive all that we ask for. Most of the time on the other side of death, as God brings us to new life after death, life in the city of God where we all freely choose all the time to love.

Ask and we will receive … according to God’s timeline.

A Voice That Cannot Be Taken From Us!

Monday, March 14, 2022

Even Those Clouds Know the Voice That Calls Us,

And Sends Us Out in Joy!

Isaiah 55:12

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

John 10:3

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Words of Grace For Today

When we give up trying to come in first in the ‘game’ of life, and we allow God to come in first, then we find life is full of celebrations, little ones each day as God wins (bringing grace to bear on our lives) and big celebrations less often as God wins again (bringing grace to bear on our enemies’ lives).

Whether we live or whether we die is not so important. What is important is how we live and who we follow.

When Jesus calls, we like even stupid sheep, know how to follow Jesus’ voice, for Jesus calls us by name and leads us out …

out into a world that cannot accept Jesus’ way, God’s forgiveness (for that requires admitting one needs forgiveness!), and the wonderful life we have as the Spirit guides us each year, day and moment, to be less for ourselves and more for God.

We do not celebrate alone, for the saints in light who have gone before us, are over joyed at our following their footsteps as they followed Christ. Even the hills and mountains, the clouds and the birds, the fish and the whales, the planets and stars, sing and rejoice with us, for we are a small part of the universe,

and the universe is all God’s.

Coming in First

Sunday, March 13, 2022

We spend so much energy trying to find the light of life.

Doch God gives it to us, freely and generously.

Psalm 33:16

A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

Mark 10:31

But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Words of Grace For Today

When Solomon raced, he gave it his all. He was naturally fast. It was in his jeans. On the soccer pitch he had that full awareness and predictive vision which allowed him to know where everyone else was, was going, and when they would get there. He was also unnaturally competitive and disciplined, able to push his thin body to produce results that were amazing, on the oval track running, through the woods on cross-country races, and on the soccer pitch.

It was marvellous to watch him run. Everyone threw accolades at him for his winning.

Life, at first, appears to so many to be exactly this kind of event, a competition where the most gifted, wealthy, powerful, and famous people pit their wits against others in order to gain even more. The one with the most wins. Unfortunately, so many people live and die believing this, whether they are the ‘winners’ or the ‘losers’ in this frantic take on life.

God intends something entirely different for us. Ever since creation right through to the morning sunrise today, bright and brilliant that gave way to clouds and snow (again …) God intends for us a completely different measure of who wins and who loses, what it takes to win, and precisely what the ‘game’ or ‘competition’ actually is.

Not only are the first (according to the human ‘game’) actually last, and the last first, the ‘game’ is not to see who can get, have, and keep the most. God’s intention for us is to see how many people can actually live, live well, and living well be God’s instruments for bringing life, life abundant, to other people.

A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

We, each and every one of us, is saved only by God’s grace, by God’s free gifts that forgive us, renew us, and send us out equipped to be God’s grace for others … not through ‘winning’ but actually through ‘losing’, through self-sacrifice, always pointing to truth, love, and hope.

I, too, was proud of Solomon, but not as much for winning as for competing as he did, knowing how much he gave of himself to run as fast as he did, how hard he worked and pushed himself, and how little he received where it really counted for him.

The discipline of competing that we learn from life God uses (when we surrender to God’s Will) as a self-discipline to not be deterred, no matter the costs, from speaking the truth, loving the undeserving, and hoping for the hopeless.

Breath

Saturday, March 12, 2022

All Things Living

Breathe

As God Breathes in and through Them

Psalm 33:6

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.

Acts 17:25

Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

Words of Grace For Today

Poor Delilah. A middle child and ignored by her parents before and after her mother drover her father to kill himself, she came to worse and worse experiences, though she could barely measure them.

Her step-father, honest and kind, was her refuge for a few short years before everything began to fall apart around her.

Manipulated by her older sister and mother, she was driven to report the sexual contact her mother had with her. But she lied. She told teachers, friends, and eventually police that it was her step-father. When the police pursued him, recruiting and creating more and more lies about her step-father she was lost, so lost. When her older sister and mother paid more and more attention to her, when the school councillors spent more and more time with her to help her through her abuse, and when the prosecutor against her step-father paid more and more attention to her, she finally felt she was someone, someone important enough to be noticed and cared about. It did not compute for her as she watched the courts send her loving step-father to jail for crimes he did not commit, based on the lies told by her mother and herself. She had trouble sleeping. The counsellor at school, and the therapist paid for by her mother spent more time with her. Her mother, with her millions, rewarded her with a brand new iPhone, and then a new MacBook, and new clothes and all the cosmetics she wanted.

Yet the breath she had spent to lie could not be taken back, could not be inhaled, could not ever be denied in her heart of hearts. And her breath became short, her mind frazzled out on her more often than not, and her body grew as she tried to fill the emptiness at her core with food.

Breath, once wasted on lies, especially lies that destroy other people, never is found again, until God forgives, one accepts the forgiveness and confesses one’s terrible sins.

God, the one who spoke a word to create the universe, whose breath created all living things, who needs nothing of service from humans … though God craves people to love, to love one another, and to love God … this God does not leave any of us without forgiveness, unconditional love and God’s full attention. God offered this to Delilah, as God offers this to each of us.

With a word, a word of truth, God renewed Delilah, and Delilah set the record straight, though too late for her step-father, who died in poverty, it set the record straight and exposed the police, the lawyers, and the courts who used her lies and so many other people’s lies to destroy people, almost as a past-time. For the amount of destruction Putin barely registers in comparision.

So God breathes … for each of us, for each of the Ukrainians and Russians, and all the others met by Putin’s unjust, cruel invasions, and for each person destroyed by a word that is a lie, breathed which spreads and corrupts the basis of life.

So God breathes … and so we live, as a gift, undeserved and abundantly blessed.

So we breathe so that others may live, making our words count.