Month: April 2022

Hear the Word

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Even In Our Darkest Darkness God’s Light Guides Us, If We But Hear …

God Help Us Hear!

Jeremiah 31:10

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away;
say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.’

John 17:20-21

‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Words of Grace For Today

Humans always have a difficult time hearing God.

Maybe it is primarily because we want to hear something that God does not say.

Or

Because we do not want to hear what God does say.

Or

Because we are so afraid of what we do hear!

Or

Because we’ve let the Devil fill our ears with temptations and promises that actually suck the life right out of us!

God provides lots of guidance, even what we see as punishments (like being exiled from our home lands as Israel has been many times), in order to ‘get through’ our thick skins, stiff necks, and thicker heads what God intends for us, God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, and blessed renewed purposeful life.

God does not merely work to get us to see, hear and trust God. God works so that the whole world will know how God deals with us and all the people of God’s good creation.

God wants us to be as one, without division, without conflict between ourselves, blatant witnesses to God’s good and generous grace, which overcomes all challenges to a blessed life.

Living in community, trying to be guided by the Spirit, is no simple feat, and success is never achieved. It is at best approximated, striven for, and hoped for, as a guiding light in our darkness.

This darkness God works to get through to us, that God walks with us through all of life’s challenges, and that our conflict with one another does nothing for us, that our forgiveness of one another is the key to living well in this God’s good creation.

As we forgive, we stand like bright lights for the world to see: this is how God deals with us, so that likewise, we can deal with others.

Now for this day … what will come our way?

Thirsting for the Light

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Breaking Into Our Darkness God’s Light Invites Us to God’s Feast

of the Bread of Life and the Water of Eternal Life

Which Satisfy Us As We Were Created to Be.

Psalm 143:6

I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah

Revelation 22:17

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

Words of Grace For Today

There are gifts that we give each other, some are things. They bear preciousness less in how much they can be sold for, as they are an object not unlike a savings account.

Though, as an aside, a ‘savings account’ that can be mobile and carried with one as one runs for one’s life, as refugees of many kinds do and as war has forced so many to do … these ‘mobile savings accounts’ can make the difference between life and death. The value therein can be bartered for the necessities of life as one runs … and/or one’s life can be taken by someone who wants to steal the ‘thing of value.’

The gift that God gives freely, generously, prodigiously cannot be taken from us. It is the water of life that satisfies our thirsts.

So we thirst for God.

We thirst for God like people trying to cross a great desert, a great parched land as our lives too often become.

We thirst in the wilderness of our hearts and souls for God.

We thirst from within our parched bodies, hearts and minds for God.

We plead with God to come.

We plead for God to come now and

to make right what is done wrongly to us,

to make right what is done wrongly to others,

to make right what we have done wrongly to ourselves and to others.

And God comes, breaking in on us like the heavens parting to shower light on a darkened world.

God comes, breaking into the cacophony we’ve allowed our lives to become in this noisy, information saturated world … with stillness, with calm, with silence.

God’s silence absorbs the cacophony of drivel and evil and lands us in a peace which is beyond our comprehension abilities.

God invites us to the fountain of the water of life, and says, “Drink and take all that you need.”

The wonders of life well watered can only overwhelm our senses, our thoughts, our histories, our stories, our minds and our hearts.

And we say a quiet thanks, allowing God’s generosity to pour over us on to those around us who are so parched they do not even know they are thirsty.

Into this day we go, swimming in the Light that no one can ignore, even though many deny it, wishing to hide their deceptions, schemes, and destruction of people and God’s creation.

Into this day we go, with a peace that deflects the noise of distraction from life.

Into this day we go, full of wonder and gratitude.

How else could it be, for us, who are so blessed by God’s many gifts?

God Questions, Like: Where is God?

Monday, April 18, 2022

Is God Here With Us, Buried Under the Snow?

…

Is God Out There, Far Beyond Our Horizons?

1 Kings 8:27-31

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! Have regard to your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you said, “My name shall be there”, that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays towards this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling-place; heed and forgive.

John 20:19

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

Words of Grace For Today

Since the beginning of time humans have asked questions about God, and the questions keep coming up again for each generation of people who think and care, and hope.

David wanted to build God a temple, after he’d built himself a palace and a kingdom, by his sword, his wits, his charm and his faith in God (and his trust of God’s faith in him.)

God says no thanks, I do not live contained in a ‘house.’

Solomon inherits the kingdom from his father and commences to build a temple for God and asks the question God had answered for David: Will God live on earth? And he answers the obvious that God is too great to be contained in any temple.

Solomon goes on, in his dedication speech-prayer, to tell the people that the temple is for them (not to contain God). The temple will give them a place, given God’s name, to which they can direct their prayers. Solomon prays-begs God to honour the temple and the prayers given there and in it’s direction; Solomon asks God to hear the prayers,

to hear all the people’s prayers and

to forgive.

Nothing more than forgive.

An old pastor (now I am older than he was when he said it) about to retire said to his friends gathered around at their annual card game and scotch sharing time, ‘I pray that I did not hurt anyone [in doing my ministry – in congregations and in prisons.]’

We begin each service, and each honest prayer to God, by asking for forgiveness.

Why?

Because God is good, and gracious, and generous, and

we are miserable sinners, always no matter what we try to become, we always remain miserable sinners (or actually we are very good at sinning, so maybe we are such good sinners that it makes us miserable people?)

Our relationship to God, God’s good creation, all other people, and even to ourselves, starts there: us miserable sinners, God greater than anything can contain, and we approach God trusting, like David, in God’s faith in us.

That is hardly the end of it.

For Jesus comes to live as one of us, heals and inspires us all, dies for us, swaps out our pasts for his future to give us renewed life, and then

then Jesus sends us out.

Often we become so afraid of the what others will do to us, for we are different. Like the disciples we hide. We may have boldly hoped that God would make our world different, better, just, honourable, livable, and then we run smack dab into the evil of others trying to do us an early death or more. So we hide.

Jesus comes and does not make us safe.

Jesus comes and does not tell us we have no reason to fear.

Jesus comes and does not make us so powerful no one will dare harm us.

Jesus comes and offers us the most precious thing, Peace.

Even caught up in very honest and realistic fears that make us wonder if we will live yet one more day, even there in that turmoil, Jesus comes and offers us Peace.

That’s something, like forgiveness, that given our miserable state of affairs, only God can give to us.

So …

so we humbly accept yet another precious gift from God,

and turn to face another day filled with miserable sin, ours and other’s focused at us, trying to do us in.

We take up the only posture possible: that of the servant, who on Christ’s behalf, serves all people, even our enemies.

Easter Blow-Out Celebrations

Sunday, April 17, 2022

The Glory of God

All Around

In and Through Us, Too?

1 Kings :2:1-3

When David’s time to die drew near, he charged his son Solomon, saying: ‘I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, be courageous, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn.

John 20:21

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’

Words of Grace For Today

The Easter story, like a song for our hearts, reminds us again and again how precious Jesus’ resurrection is for us. In our blow-out celebration ‘Whether we whisper it in prayer before the darkness, or dive in to grasp hold of it and pull it forth like saving a drowning man, we proclaim, Christ is risen!’[Jeffrey A. Merkel, in Homilies for the Christian People, pp. 454-55. reworked TL]

Christ is Risen!

It will be sung, shouted, and

…

hoped for by many, many people today.

It is not that we do not believe Christ is Risen.

We do believe.

We celebrate that Christ is Risen and all that means for us!

…

Yet

Like all seeing, hearing, thinking and loving people, we know

that the world is in such a mess, it is as if Jesus were still dead,

for so many people suffer needlessly, while others fight for supremacy over the mess we’ve made of this planet earth, making the mess even more dangerous for us all and more difficult to contain, and

…

the fighting always costs the poor the most.

There is a wise saying in Africa and Asia, When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that loses.

We are not to let any person be like grass, having the life trampled out of them while the elephants of this world duke it out, and duke it out for what?

Let it not be that people can quote Ghandi saying, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Let it not be that, when asked what people around you think of Christianity, they can only say, ‘It would be great.’

It is one thing to proclaim with empty hearts that Christ is Risen. This has been common for centuries among so many people.

It is another thing to be, by Christ’ resurrection, the ones healed, freed, and sent to serve all people, and in that service make ‘Christ is Risen!’ a reality for more and more people.

We cannot do this on our own, but only as the Holy Spirit works in us.

Ghandi also said much that can to guide every human life and every Christian soul:
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
[Christ commands us to love God above all, our neighbour and ourselves, and our enemies. To be so bold requires that the Holy Spirit give us that courage!]
An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.
[Only by The Holy Spirit can we be that strong.]
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
[That is why forgiveness is how God begins with us, and how we begin with the all people.]
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Today, like every day gifted to us on this good planet earth, let us be the hands and feet of Christ serving others, feeding the hungry, making homes for the refugees, giving voice to the outcasts. Let us be be the music of the soul that reaches those lost beyond hope. Let us be the spice that covers the stink of death and the devil’s evil deeds. Let us be those who live each day as if it were our last day to serve Christ, and let us learn to serve as if we would live forever, for, since Christ is Risen, we have died and will live forever.

In a gentle way, Christ shakes the world through us, a little shake at a time towards the Kingdom of God.

That’s worth a celebration like no other!

Dark, Darker, Darkest Day

Saturday, April 16, 2022

There is no photo of the Darkest Day.

In our dark we sing with the Psalmist,
Psalm 80:19

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

To be able to bear the darkest we remember what is to come,
2 Timothy 1:9b-10

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Words of Grace For Today

Today we sombrely remember the darkest day of all time: Jesus is dead, wrapped in strips of cloth, entombed in a cavern, the entrance sealed by a huge stone.

God has sacrificed everything, the only Son, who is God also and human. God and human in Jesus have died. We can say without hyperbole or irreverence that for these three days, Saturday along with the Friday before and the Sunday following, God is dead.

It is not so now.

We remember that it once was.

We remember the great cost God pays to

show us God’s love,

show us God’s forgiveness,

show us God’s Way,

and to

guide us all our days.

Jesus bending on his knees in front of each disciple to wash their feet like a house servant

shows us God’s Way of power in weakness,

and God’s love unending for us.

But God’s own death!

By this God shows us

that forgiveness

is God’s way to healing, freedom, hope, and renewed life.

We know what is to come, but for now, this is more than we can comprehend, so we wait

in silence,

in prayer,

in thanks

that it does not end here

for Jesus, for God, or for us.

Dead by Divine Choice

Friday, April 15, 2022

The Heavens Darken

At the Hour

That Jesus Dies.

Psalm 119:36

Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.

Philippians 2:8

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

Words of Grace For Today

God choose to sacrifice Jesus, the only son.

God dies.

Time for us to keep silent, and wait, for we know that this is not the last God will do.

Still …

We must keep still as we wait

and

silent.

Blizzard Fools

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Is This the Path, The Life, That Christ Calls Us To?

Where from Comes Our Strength to Carry on

Into the Wilderness?

Only from God Who Walks with Us!

Isaiah 45:23-24

By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.’
Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
shall come to him and be ashamed.

John 6:51

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday the snow started in SE Saskatchewan, cm and cm fell. Then the wind up to 90km/hour blew it around like a chauffeur on meth.

The CBC article was well organized. A truck headed east to Brandon stopped to wait out the storm. Not his life, not his cargo is worth the risk of piling it up in the ditch or worse into other vehicles.

A young couple from Brandon travelled to a concert in Regina and they are on their way back, interviewed at the same spot the trucker has parked his rig, along with a collection of 18-wheelers. Who goes to a concert now in Covid times when all the restrictions are lifted leaving everyone so vulnerably exposed!?! A photo from the RCMP shows the visibility, which is forecast to get worse out of SE Saskatchewan into Manitoba. The road disappears into the white of snow and cloud ahead at 100 feet at most. The young couple says they are going to keep heading east until they come across a barrier across the road, or they simply cannot go further.

RCMP photo near Estevan SK

They are hell bent on getting back home.

What a contrast to the trucker who wisely sits out the danger of killing himself or others.

The arrogant leader portrayed in Isaiah at least knows where from his righteousness and strength come from: it comes from the Lord. I suppose that kind of arrogance could see him head out into a blizzard, ‘knowing’ that God calls him to travel!

But not likely.

For no matter how haughty we humans become, and even foolish, for those who recognize that their only righteousness and strength is not their own but that given as a gift to them by God, do not test fate for little to no reason. Risks are taken only to do God’s work.

So we know, that our lives are not anything, in fact we would not still be breathing, except that God has fed us the bread of life, Christ’ body. In him there is no darkness at all, the night and the day are all alike. In him we do not succumb to the fear of life, the fear of having to make our own way, the fear that we must achieve in order to have value. We know that our value is given in Christ’ body, and no one can take it from us. We are free and forever righteous and full of strength!

Therefore we follow Christ’ example: ministering to the poor, the marginalized, those whose voices have been taken from them. We bring God’s promise of life abundant, in sacrifice, giving life to others.

Come what may, blizzard or heat wave, floods or drought, war or barbarians ruining peace, we know that we live to Christ. We will die to Christ. And then we will live again with Christ.

So now we trust that God walks with us, and rests with us, as we stop to wait out the blizzards of life.

Surrender to Be Reborn

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Cool Fires to Prevent Hot Wildfires

Micah 5:3

Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

John 12:24

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Words of Grace For Today

How is it that we make progress forward, onward in life, by surrendering, even dying, as we wait for a saviour to be born, as we wait for the fruit of our sacrifices to grow among the peoples?

This is an out-of-the-ordinary path to follow, to give up, wait, and then be handed victory.

Or is it?

In wars, the strategies of winners have often been to sacrifice many battles, and many lives, in order to win the war, and, as they always say to justify the sacrifices, to save so many more lives and our ‘freedom’, our way of life (which usually means our people get to be the master who abuse and exploit and leave in poverty the great masses of people for whom the war was supposedly fought.)

In God’s good creation there are examples everywhere of life, of flora and fauna, is ended precisely in order that new life can be born and flourish better than it was before. Seeds are a simple ubiquitous example.

Another pressing example is the use of cool fires, cultural fires, to prevent hot, destructive wildfires. The western world exploits and controls nature to provide energy and progress towards … well towards what. Now we see nature (God’s good creation) boomeranging back on us. We sought to stop all destructive fires, pulled energy out of the ground in the form of coal and oil to do work for us that we simply could not do for ourselves, and used ‘inputs’ into farm land like never before to produce enough food to feed the population growing and doubling in less than 100 years!

‘Mother Nature’, or simple God’s good creation, is struggling to survive this human onslaught. Climates change melting waters from the polar caps that will flood hundreds of the biggest cities in the world and displace 100s of millions of people.

Brisbane Australia 2011 Flooding,

Just One Small Example of Seas Taking Over

Weather patterns change, bring wet climates to previously drier climates and impossibly wet climates and flooding to livable climates … and drought and wildfires to areas previously drier but livable. New deserts are being formed. Wildfires only start by devastating huge areas of land, many larger than a circle taking in Albany NY and Philadelphia PA, or most of England, or about the distance from Athabasca to High River (taking in both Calgary and Edmonton) or more than from Vegreville to Jasper. The smoke from the fires disrupts life down wind for thousands of miles. A wildfire creates its own thunderclouds and lightning, which can start more wildfires. While the land does come back, sometimes, the fires are very hot, very destructive, more so than the flora needs. Fauna can be wiped out not to return.

Seeds must die into the ground to sprout as new life.

Land must burn to rejuvenate some trees and bushes, and to avoid the devastating destruction of wildfires.

Nature responds to unrestrained human exploitation by flooding out the major cities along all coastlines. Fewer humans give the ecosystems of the world a better chance of surviving the human onslaughts. Instead of the human species being extinct or decimated to a few million, a quarter of the present population may survive the next 200 years!

And what of us, now?

As always, God works to bring to an end our hubris and hellbent destruction of ourselves and others around us, by sacrificing Jesus’ life, replacing our terrible records with Jesus’ (forgiving us) so that we might live, renewed and freed from the unbearable burdens of our own sins … so that we might start to live, at least a bit, as God intended us to live: gently gracious, loving and forgiving, trusting and hope-filled for our unsure futures.

Flee From, Flee To!

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Flee From the Darkness,

Come Home into the Light,

The Kingdom of Christ.

Isaiah 48:20

Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, ‘The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!’

Colossians 1:13

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Words of Grace For Today

Usually the cry to ‘get out!’ is made in order to move people away from danger. Isaiah provides it to the people in exile in order to move the people toward their homeland, again. This is the cry that is part of the beginning of the return of Israel. It is still going on today, not just with people returning to Israel, but people left homeless for all sorts of reasons and even more during the Covid pandemic.

Today for many would be the cry “Flee the tent gatherings, the river valley tent cities, the shelters, the wilderness camps, the friends couches, the families basements, the temporary housing places, the foreign cities, and from the refugee escaping lines and the refugee camps! Go out from these places, and come home!”

Home!

That conjures up so many memories, and imaginations for those who’ve never had their own homeland or even a home to call their own. Home is … where family is, where one’s heart is, where one’s heritage is, where one’s culture is, where one’s language is spoken and listened to and understood. Home is where one can love others and be loved by others, safely, without risking one’s reputation and life. Home is where God calls us to be … sometimes that is not a home at all, but a time and place where we can provide for others, a place where we can give our everything to secure health, well-being, and joy for others.

Home!

Come home!

Please, come home!

There is no end to the power of darkness that drives so many of us out of our homes, separating us from our loved ones, our children, spouses, parents, and our being. Of course some homes are not safe at all, filled with that darkness itself, of abuse, lies, false blaming, and treachery. God calls us from those ‘homes’ as well back to, or forward to what we may have never known: a place where we are safe from violence and abuse and belittling and isolation from the rest of our family and friends. It’s not just men that do this to women, its also a lot of women doing it to a lot of men. Abuse by whomever always ends in the death of the abused at the hands (directly or indirectly) of the abuser. So God calls us out of these places of destruction of life, to places where our value is known and named regularly, where our contributions are received with gratitude, where our weaknesses are compensated for, where our faults are forgiven. Home is where we grow, together we grow, and we grow together, through the challenges of life.

There is no end to how the powers of darkness consume us and leave us ragged, spent, depleted and at most half alive. So God calls us and rescues us from the power of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

There we live saved by Grace, and filled with gratitude, equipped and empowered to provide safety, value, and love to those with us, those outside our home, and even our enemies (who are so hungry for love and know not how to find it or live it for others.)

From God to all those in all the corners of the earth: Come Home.

Home.

That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it.

Sweet Swaps

Monday, April 11, 2022

No Matter How Dark It Becomes Christ Brings Light

and Light Burdens

to Our Lives

Psalm 31:24

Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.

Romans 5:1-2

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Waiting in hope, taking courage, having received grace … What is this all about?

Paul N. Hanson provided this snippet as an illustration:

Skip-Bo is a simple game for all ages. A bit simplified: cards are drawn, and unloaded to the discard piles matching a top card by number or colour. Special cards in the deck spice up the play: “Draw 4,” “Skip the next player,” “Trade hands” with another player. You win by emptying your hand. We four parents and four kids sat to play. Then the burdens grew too great for my youngest and his little eyes poured out tears. His small hands could not hold all the cards he was stuck with. The other dad, holding only two cards, drew the “Trade hands” card. He announced he would swap his two cards for my boy’s twenty. Imagine my son’s reaction!

What a sweet exchange! Christ emptied Himself, took our burdens, even our deaths, and gave us renewed life. Christ sets us free! (Luther Seminary God Pause – reworked by TL)

Now that we are free we have lots to be thankful for. We no longer hold the losing hand, so great a hand it is that we cannot even bear to shoulder the burden and make our way through the day. We no longer have to unload some of our guilt and debts on to others.

Jesus takes our burdens from us, not just once, and thereafter we’d better get it together to avoid another losing hand! No! In fact, no matter how hard we try, give anyone of us a little time and we accumulate another burden of shtako so heavy that our lives just stink like hades. Jesus comes and walks with us, and continually offers to swap loads with us, freeing us so that we can offer God’s unending blessings of forgiveness and renewed life to everyone we encounter.

What a sweet exchange! Over and Over and Over again.

We boast, not in how little our burden now is, nor in the loads we’ve been relieved of, but in the Grace of God that is expressed in Jesus continually swapping burdens with us!

What a song we have to sing!

What a story we have to share!