I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God.
2 Corinthians 7:10
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.
Words of Grace For Today
God establishes a covenant with us, since ages ago.
God does this so that we may remember all our sins, and then be confounded and shamed into silence, awestruck at what God does for us, forgiving us all our sins.
Does God forgive us our attack on the planet which is responding with extreme weather, in a phrase climate change?
There are numerous people caught in worldly grief for all that we now suffer across the angry planet as a result of our huge contributions to climate change. It does no good. It brings us close to, and into death.
What God provides is a reminder of our true sins, true repentance, and all sorts of ways to change what lays ahead of us in the next decade, in the next half century and all time after (if we survive as a species that long!) God’s promises are trustworthy; those baptized will see their salvation, and be welcomed home to new life after leaving this life on this planet. Salvation is not the question. Our species survival as well as the survival of life on earth are very much in question.
So what shall we do this day?
We shall pray for the Holy Spirit to continue to guide us that what we do will be according to God’s will and love for all people and all creation.
We shall get busy listening to the Holy Spirit, doing what we can to reduce if not remove our carbon footprint from our lives on this good earth, and bringing God’s mercy, love and hope to other people … so that more and more people will listen
Psalm 119:114 You are my hiding-place and my shield; I hope in your word.
Matthew 8:8 The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.’
Words of Grace For Today Can we hope at all?
This from the CBC MorningBrief Newsletter yesterday:
Europe is living in a disaster movie. Unprecedented temperatures — 47 C in Portugal over the weekend; nearly 40 C in parts of Britain on Monday — have killed 1,000 people. Roads in France are under threat of literally melting. Rail lines are in danger of buckling. Runways at airports are forced to shut down. Wildfires are spreading across several countries as thousands evacuate their homes. ‘In some southwestern areas, it will be a heat apocalypse,’ meteorologist Francois Gourand told the news agency AFP about the heat wave in France. At one time, this may have sounded like hyperbole, but the fact is every year countries around the world break long-standing temperature records — as was seen in B.C. last year — and then thousands die. All of this should come as a shock to no one. Climatologists have been sounding the alarm for decades, warning of the increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves and droughts. When asked if this type of heat wave comes as a surprise to him, climatologist Michael Mann said in an email: ‘Sadly, not. We have seen a recurring pattern of a very wavy jet stream this summer. That pattern is associated with the extreme events we’re seeing right now in the U.S. and Europe.’ When the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released in 1990, it addressed the potential increase in heat waves, stating: ‘Some scientists believe that in a warmer climate the earth can be expected to experience more variable weather than now, with a likelihood of more floods and drought, more intense hurricanes or typhoons, and more heat waves.’ There have been four more assessment reports since then, with the language growing stronger and stronger about how the world needs to limit warming to 1.5 C above the pre-industrial average or it will face dire consequences. But those reports aren’t just talking about the future — at roughly 1.2 C of warming right now, we’re already seeing the effects of climate change, particularly in the summer months. The worst part, Mann said, is that climatologists may have underestimated the long-term predictions of heat waves.
Lordy, Lordy, what have we done!!?
It is one thing to hope in God’s Word, and hide under the shield of God, and to call on Jesus to but speak a word and we will be healed, but …
but we’re not listening! We have not worked to change. We have barely begun to speak correctly, sort of acknowledging what we’ve done. It’s harder and harder to find reasonable people who deny that climate change is a result of our own actions as humans on earth … and still it is not impossible to find those crooked-thinker (Querdenkers) in one’s own backyard.
Actually it’s real easy to find those people in my ‘backyard’ since they congregate here for relief from the heat and burn their gratuitous campfires all evening and night, and run their generators for hours and hours each day to supply electricity to their air conditioners, TV’s, microwaves, and who knows what else?
We complain mightily when it climbs above 25⁰ or 30⁰ or heaven helps us 35⁰ during the day and stays above 15⁰ at night. We are hard pressed to find our comfort. Oh, man save us we cry if it gets above 40⁰ and stays there for a few days! Here we are next to a cool lake. What are people able to do in the concrete-paved-over-barely-green-anywhere-tall-buildings cities?
Lordy, Lordy, what have we done!!?
So we cry: Oh, God, can you even save us? Save us now if you can!! Listen though! God has for decades sent us word, word about how we are bringing climate change with it’s new extremes and more ferocious storms each year and how we can stop it. God has sent us clear warning in the past five years of obvious, undeniable new extremes and extreme weather to warn us to stop our CO emissions (along with lots of other fossil-fueled-industrial activities.)
How many of us have really listened and then acted to change our lives? Well now it’s changing our lives, and not for the better. Will we start to change in good ways?
History repeats the answer to that question asked of every generation, ‘What? We don’t understand, so no.’
God help us!
God help us this day to do everything we can to learn what we must do to do our part!
That’s Real, Up Close and Real, Down Low and Real;
Not-People Up-Close Are Everything But Real
Psalm 34:8
O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.
Acts 12:7
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.
Words of Grace For Today
O taste and see that the Lord is good!
Yes!
But in life for us there is so much that does not taste good, or right, or real.
Since I cannot eat meat anymore as my body deteriorates with age and needs special attention to continue on, at the food bank they keep giving me ‘interesting’ food. Most of it is harmless if useless when it comes to nutrition. I’ve long since given up on food needing to taste even good. I just watch for nourishing and helpful for a few more years, so anything in the Mediterranean diet always sounds good.
Last time I has handed a pack of frozen burgers, ‘no meat so they’ll be good for you.’ I couldn’t say no.
I fried them up the other day. They don’t really have any protein in them, just wheat and palm oil and spices and oils and things I can’t pronounce or remember. And they taste like … well I can’t afford to throw out food, but I stopped eating that meal before I was half-full. Couldn’t swallow any more of those not-burgers. It’s never happened to me before: I started to gag on each bite.
As at the times in my life when I’ve cooked for myself I eat lots of tofu, lots of beans, peas, vegetables, fruits. I like fish, though I’m not partial to other kinds of seafood that are, shall we say, slimy or gooey. I particularly like refried beans. I don’t need to eat vegetarian but I like it.
What I can’t stand is when food tries to be something it is not. Not-burgers are like not-people; you wish you’d never seen them. I don’t mean any disrespect, but there are people, too, who try to be something they are not. Along the way they forget truth and honesty, justice and mercy, love and hope. Instead they try to make up for losing these with fake charms, broken promises, and chemically induced happiness. They just are not authentic at all any more. Everything they say and do is based on lies. And you can smell trouble coming behind them.
I’ve met drug dealers, murderers, and thieves, all who have said up front exactly who they were and what they did. Can’t say I liked what they did, but they were not trying to manipulate or con or dishonour everyone in their wake. Not-people leave nearly everyone in their wake wondering what happened and who did it to them. When you figure out who’s been conning everyone it’s usually too late and most people do not want to admit they’ve been played, so there’s little help fixing anything, if anything could be made right.
Not-burgers are like that. They promise the world and then they taste terrible going down, they mess with your system going through, and they pass with a vengeance as if they had something to prove to the world.
The most destructive kind of not-people are those that cloak themselves in religion. They promise and pretend to be oh, so good, when really they are oh, so unbelievably evil.
…
We need angels to come and knock the chains off our wrists, minds, and hearts so that we can, all of us, taste and see the goodness of God’s truth for all creation. We need not try to be what we are not, or try to force others to what they are not or lie about others so that the world thinks they are other than they are.
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!
Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.
Ephesians 4:29
Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.
Words of Grace For Today
The mouth, the tongue, the lips and one’s breath create words spoken or shouted, and
The fingers on keyboards or holding a pen or pencil create words written and published easily today for the world to read, and
There has never before been so much evidence that ‘it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles’ Matt 15:11b and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, as social media create so many falsehoods so widely and quickly propagated to be amplified and further perversions broadcast in a rolling ocean of waves of shtako … so much so that truth is a rare entity to encounter.
While it may be easy, as it always has been, to point to others’ efforts to destroy truth with their broad side attacks, one need be wise and ask for protection, for no one is immune from the disease of arrogance and self-righteousness that leads to one attacking truth with shtako, so we pray:
Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.
This day, let us give thought and action to preserving truth, and to creating words that are useful for building up, as there is need, ensuring that our words may give grace to all those who hear and read them.
Another day, full of opportunity, and words. Let them be blessed.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.
2 Corinthians 6:4
As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities.
Words of Grace For Today
To commend is to to entrust for care or preservation.
So how can we entrust ourselves to others for care or preservation.
Paul faced the hatred of Jewish leaders and communities (because he clearly threatened their power and control of their faith – Christianity being a new alternative away from and out of Judaism), but more so the Roman authorities who responded to the complaints of the people under their jurisdiction.
So Paul, needed funding and protection from hostile elements and authorities, entrusted himself to the various congregations he helped start, the one in Corinth included.
In this verse Paul commends himself not by proper teaching, or life saving teaching, or bringing Jesus’ Word to the people. He commends himself through his endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities …. And at that point one realizes one needs the larger context of what Paul wrote, for this is not quite right for Paul. So:
As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.
So Paul uses his ‘track record’ of enduring great tribulations to seek the open hearts of the Corinthians. Not only his tribulations, though. The list is long on the work of the Spirit in Paul beginning with
purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God
and ending with
We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Few have it as rough as Paul did, but many have had congregations like the Corinthians, or worse. Do everything and anything for them, caring for them, loving them, burying the dead and celebrating life with them, and they still come back at you to drive you to your grave … as if it is their God-given task to kill pastors (and lay leaders).
It is a great surprise that the RCMP, the lawyers, and the courts have tried their best to kill me as well, all without any cause that I can find … though the court records are full of reasons none of them are actually true, and it’s not difficult to know that.
Pests abound as well: mosquitoes, wasps, and the two legged kind who keep intruding past barriers and gates, stealing valuables and essentials for my survival, and with unnecessary noise pestering the peace, solitude, and holiness of this place.
To that I respond God help them, and for me I still live well, for
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, God preserves me against the wrath of my enemies; God stretches out her-his hand, and her-his right hand delivers me.
With thanks I begin each day, as you can, too, for all God does to provide life abundant, and safety from one’s enemies, and peace from pests.
Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of their many transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, so that those who love your name may exult in you.
Romans 5:1
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
This Psalm sits in stark contrast to yesterday’s reading from Matthew. Love your enemy!
So which is it?
Life is filled with challenges.
In the winter the thermometer reads below zero. Not a problem really if one is prepared to create and retain as much heat as possible … and there is enough wood (or fuel).
In the summer the thermometer reads above zero. Not a problem really if one is prepared, one has sought to repel and shed heat in many and various ways and there is plenty of shade, wind, ways to endure the inevitable hottest times of the day.
But when the thermometer registers outside the 40⁰’s plus or minus, then preparation is essential, but no preparation is sufficient, unless one is rich and willing to expend huge amounts of fossil fuels and other resources to secure one’s own comfort at the cost of others’ lives (if not immediately then eventually as climate change makes the plus minus challenges reach outside the plus minus 50⁰.)
As if meeting one’s own challenges, and guaranteeing one’s own comfort were all that life is about, we plow a head and … Life Just Gets Harder for Everyone … and more people die, directly or indirectly from our luxurious expenditures (which we may even measure as necessary!)
There is only one way to meet the challenges of each day, of climate, of extremes, or lacking life necessities, of greed (ours and others’), of … well of every kind of challenge. And that is to begin each day remembering what God has done for us:
That we are justified by faith, and therefore we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
When we know that we have peace with God, we need not panic, nor go to destructive lengths to ‘save our own skins’
firstly because we are not afraid, and not even afraid to ‘meet our maker’ (actually that will be a marvellous day!) nor
secondly because we remain thoughtful and actively engaged helping others meet the challenges of their days, and therefore we remain aware of the cost our efforts to ‘save our own skins’ has for other people, and we gladly forego our security for their having the basics of life …
and thirdly because, at peace with God, we see security in a completely different light. Security in this life is nothing other than knowing God walks with us. More is futile, frantic, and destructive efforts to ‘outsmart’ God.
Let us simply take refuge in God’s presence, always joyful, always grateful, always singing and dancing – even as we face the challenges of extreme days.
The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
Matthew 5:43-45
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
Words of Grace For Today
Oh so glorious it is … to see finally poetic justice and real justice play out. A 23 year old American and his family decided that their hike up Mount Vesuvius should include a peak over the lip of the volcano with selfies to document their adventure … even though the trail was a prohibited area.
While taking the selfie, the young man’s cell phone fell over the lip into the crater. While reaching into the crater the young man slipped and fell down the crater.
Now one would think that that could well have been the end of him, but God is good and gracious, to this young man also that day. His fall ended about 50 feet into the crater, not all the way to the bottom 300 metres down, where he would have been toast. And …
And at the time four volcano guides were on the other side of the crater, saw the man fall, and rushed to his rescue. They lowered a team member down on a rope to retrieve the bruised and scraped up man
and waited with him (and his group) to be treated by the ambulance that arrived, and then to be taken eventually to the police station to be arrested and charged.
Meanwhile in Sri Lanka 62,000 people are in immediate life threatening danger and 6 million soon will be after the country no longer has money to import the necessities of life like food and cooking oil. This, it is said, is a result of fraud and mishandling of the country’s finances by the ousted president. Of course he could not have done it alone (if he was a player in creating the problem at all.) What is clear is that people will die because of other people’s greed.
So it is everywhere, and poignantly also here, where indigenous peoples, and people of ‘other’ races, creeds, and orientations are taken advantage of, and where the courts demonstrate a brash bias for the wealthy and privileged … routinely as if no one cared or noticed … or as if there were no consequences.
An American had money to travel to Italy, to hike to the lip of the volcano, and try to take a selfie there, to show off his exploits. Thousands of people slip on the verge of death because of greed and fraud.
And God is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
We are to Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be children of our Father in heaven; for God makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
It makes you want to protest and cry out at God for justice.
That is why Jesus had to make sure we heard clearly that we are to love our enemies, for God created and provides for them as well.
Makes us scratch our heads all too often.
Until we realize that trying to enact justice for God is impossible to get right and doing so destroys more of us and them than we can afford.
So we pray, Lord save those facing injustice and death because of greed and fraud, especially as it is done on our behalf … and save us from ignorance of your good creation and apathy to the troubles that so many people, creatures and your entire planet earth face this day. And we give God thanks that our troubles remain challenges that we can (so far, with care, skill, planning, and lots of hard work) be overcome.
It’s hotter at 9 am today than the hottest moment yesterday,
Climate change in a day (yesterday’s extreme is today’s normal),
So maybe it’ll help orient us if we get reminded
that winter is coming and it’ll be blessed cold.
Isaiah 66:19
I will set a sign among them. From them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Put, and Lud—which draw the bow—to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations.
Mark 16:15
And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.
Words of Grace For Today
So many people want to stay in their own little bubble of the world, safe, comfortable and sure of what will come tomorrow – and if what comes tomorrow is something different then they have great ability to lie to themselves and others to day what happened is not different, but it is still what they know how to handle.
So the people are done with Covid before the third wave, and now we face the seventh wave. Covid is not done with us. So many people may refuse to behave responsibly, protecting others by wearing masks, keeping physical distance, and providing ventilation indoors. We all may want to be done with Covid. It’s just that might just kill us, and if it will not kill exactly the fools that indiscriminately get infected and share that everywhere they go, it’ll kill so many of us, even us who are wise about our exposure and protection.
To be other than wise about Covid requires that one live in a bubble of foolish denial of reality. And that’s where so many people live, about Covid, about their rights and others’ rights, about justice and truth, about climate change, about God’s blessings and their obligations to the strangers.
God knew this would be so, and in every generation has sent faithful, wise people out into the world to be remnants, giving witness to God’s good creation, truth, and the challenges we actually face, living on this planet.
So which are you going to be today: a comfort seeking, reality denying, self-protecting-other-endangering, bubble living parasite,
or
one of the remnant of witnesses who remember and preserve the truth of God’s good works in every generation, as well as the honest reality of life on planet earth?
Today, in small ways we each will choose, though God will do everything to guide us
God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.
1 Timothy 4:10
For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe.
Words of Grace For Today
A saviour of all people!
A saviour especially of those who believe, but not only for those who believe!
How often we in the church have claimed salvation only for ourselves. Ah, so wrong we can be about the most important things!
The blessing, for us who believe, is that we know we have strength given to us far beyond anything the world can throw at us. So we say with Habakkuk that God makes our feet like that of the deer and makes us tread even on the heights.
In old age as my feet move more slowly and climbing to any height gets more dangerous, I’m sure that I cannot say this with much literal meaning, but that figurative meaning is even more valuable.
Or at least that’s what one has left to say when one gets older, eh?
Today, we toil and struggle, as people have in every generation. We get to do so with great hope that God walks with us through it all, no matter how deep the shtako gets.
So onward, one step at a time. Clean up before sleeping, and then it starts all over. What a blessed life! This God provides even for those who do not believe. Now that is a miracle, a wonder, an inexplicable reality of God’s good creation.
