Winter – Page 3

Augmented and Corrected Vision of God’s Works

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Fishing for Food,

Fishing for Souls,

Fishing with Generations To Come

Psalm 143:5

I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.

Luke 1:54-55

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

Wisely said often is that if we do not learn from history, we will repeat its mistakes.

More wisely said is that whether we learn from history or not, we will repeat its mistakes.

Huh! …

Honesty!

Clarity!

And hotly avoided or outright denied by so many, for it sets us up to know ourselves as fools and hopelessly forging ahead into the abyss that we ourselves create for others (and we get caught in the abyss, often before anyone else!)

How does remembering the past help with the future?

The first quote assumes that if we learn of the past, and learn from other’s mistakes in the past, even our own mistakes in the past, we can then avoid making those same mistakes.

This would make the world a wonderful place, since after so many generations the mistakes we humans make are never new or unique. They’ve been made so many, so many times in the past, often by even ourselves!

The second quote belies the flaw in human freewill: that given freewill by God so that we can freely choose to love, we do choose love, sometimes. But we are able, and so much more often we do, choose to hate instead. Sometimes we do this stupidly without noticing what we are doing. Most often we make the choice to hate and we deceive ourselves (with the help of the Great Deceiver) that we really are not choosing to hate, or only a little bit, so that our actions will not really cost us (too much) and they will cost others only what they deserve to pay for their sins against us or against others. The worst repeated piece from our histories is that even when we know and acknowledge that we are choosing to hate and that it will cost us and others tremendously, we forge ahead, full of hate and determination to take our revenge on others (which is really to take our revenge out on ourselves!)

Why bother with history then?

Why bother knowing of things of old, of anything at all, besides how to get ahead, in this time and place, whatever the cost?!

Remember …

Remember how God acted with our ancestors from of old, how God responded to their repeated choices to turn from love and choose to hate (and all the destruction that comes with hate.) God did not desert our ancestors of old, nor of recent time. Nor does God desert us to our choices to hate.

God acts.

God acts decisively.

God acts powerfully … with Grace, unconditional love, and freely giving us renewed life and purpose to hope for a future of peace, contentment, and thankful joy.

Looking out across the ice covered lake, the generator from the oil processing plant only a half mile away, drowning out all other sounds with its old and poor provisions for electric generation, it is not hard to be aware of the oil industries’ hugely destructive impact on this once ‘pristine’ land and waterways through the marshes and muskeg that so cleanse water to serve all life so well. That’s the fracking results that have forced all living here to haul water for the wells are contaminated and unpredictably flow with raw natural gas, even very deadly sour gas. In the land of some of the greatest fresh water on earth, we have poisoned huge tracts of it, and simply do not know how far our ‘poisoning the water’ has or will spread!

Taking a set of binoculars in hand one can then see the fishers minding their lines that sit below the ice to harvest food for their families. If you are so fortunate when those binoculars are to your eyes, you will also see a man, obviously old from his stilted and pained gait, obviously so content from his gentle movements with his young grandchildren, each with a hole, a line, and a hope that they will catch a fish. Looking closely you will see the love and care of the grandfather fisher, imparting knowledge of fishing to the youngest generation, as he kneels beside each one in turn, demonstrating and then encouraging, and proudly patting each on the back before moving on.

Looking at our past can be like the wide view of the oil industries’ destruction of precious resources, showing clearly the destruction of humans’ efforts to control their own lives through might and hate and revenge and greed and ….

Looking at the past through the eyes of Christ we can see the wondrous, loving view of the saints handing on the Grace of God, the mission to share Grace with others, and the love, faith, and hope that makes life in all its minutiae so precious, and so hope-filled.

On our own we will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past again and again.

With God’s Grace and Spirit healing and guiding us we can look to the past and say with the Psalmist: I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.

And we can thankfully share all we are and have so that the youngest generation will know God’s Grace from our lives … and first hand, as we demonstrate, encourage and proudly pat them on the back before moving on … with thankful and joyful contentment, come what may.

Seeing ‘Airplanes’, Seeing Jesus

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

The Marvels

Of Airplanes

Fishers,

and God’s Creation

Are Everywhere to Be Seen

And Recognized

Psalm 118:24

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Luke 19:5-6

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

Words of Grace For Today

What do you see?

How do you see?

Can you see more if you look more closely?

Can you see better if you remember … well for instance if you remember how kind someone was to you when you most needed someone to see you and respond with kindness?

When I flew all those years as an oil pipeline patrol pilot, ‘100 mph 100 feet off the ground, bored spitless for hours always 30 seconds from death’ (as I used to say, though it was really 110 mph and often 50 feet or even 25 feet above the ground – so 5 seconds from death-, and sometimes between fields a relaxing 500 feet) we pilots knew that in an emergency landing on a busy road was a terrible option. Roads always presented a danger of an unseen power line crossing the road (and if you hit it that would ruin your day for the last time), of a big pothole (a nuisance to road vehicles, but a day-ender for the planes we flew), or a whole host of other ‘challenges’ (like bicyclists, pedestrians, wild animals or pets or livestock, or – the worst to imagine – children).

All that was scary enough so that when we did land on roads which was quite often, for bodily needs (we were in the air for 4 to 12 hours otherwise) we were very alert with wide vision before landing, and we chose remote roads, though that meant gravel and gravel can be slick as ice and snow can be in the winter.

Then when we made it safely down onto the road we knew that the greatest danger was still always immanent. You might think we could relax once the wheels were down and, better, stopped on the road, but NO! That’s when the danger was even higher yet … because if a moving vehicle encountered the plane moving on the road, or even parked on the road, the driver would not likely recognize what was in front of him or her.

When the brain receives information from any of the senses, eyes included, it takes shortcuts, built from experiences, so that it can process quickly how to respond. Seeing a plane on the road is not an experience that any driver is likely to have had even once, yet alone often enough for the brain to build a path for that information coming into the brain to result in a quick enough reaction. Worse, the brain will most likely choose one or more familiar pathways with the result that the driver will not get the impulse to react until more information pours into the brain to even more slowly dislodge the already processed results in the brain and force a new take on the data that is there.

Instead of a plane the driver bearing down on the plane may well ‘see’ a ghost, or a large animal, or a plane in the sky instead of on the road, or tractor or a car or truck, or shimmering reflections of clouds or … the sky is the limit of the possibilities. The brain simply ‘runs back to mama’ to make sense of the extra-ordinary data the eyes have sent it.

By the time the brain has run down a few memory lanes and then finally been jolted back to reprocess from scratch the information still pouring in from the eyes, so much time passes that it is unlikely that the driver will react quickly enough to avoid hitting the plane.

So the newspaper will report: “Safely landed plane smashed to bits by a pickup truck. Pilot dead in the pilot’s seat. Truck totalled when the propeller cuts into it and it’s occupants. Crash discovered hours later by farmer ….”

The planes we flew at 100×100 were marvels of technology, most of it more than 50 years old. The planes were sufficient for the job, but not at all built to hit things, or be hit by things. In that regard they were rather ‘fragile’, shall we say. Still the planes were quite wondrous for all the things we got them to do. There were no pilots among us that were not highly skilled, the top 1% of pilots … or you would get yourself killed in so many ways that did not involve vehicles hitting the plane!

God created the universe. It is more wondrous than any airplane, or any of the marvellous things we did with them, no matter how wondrous the planes may be or the skills with which we flew them. God created all the wonders of the universe, including humans, most of whom are more skilled and wondrous than God’s other creatures.

The question is: how come we humans keep trying to ‘land on busy roadways’ with our lives in this wondrous universe?

The question is: how come we humans keep missing out on seeing ‘the airplanes on the road’, i.e. the wonders of God’s creation before us?

It takes training for the brain to process what the eyes actually see. One has to practice ‘seeing Jesus’ each day. God’s gift to us all is that there are so many opportunities to practice (like pilot training, really) seeing Jesus, when our lives are not on the line. When we practice, then when the real emergencies of life come at us, we will still be able to ‘see the airplane on the road’ for what it is, and we will be able to respond as God designed us to respond. We will be able to ‘fly’. We will be able to respond with Grace.

When we do that then we easily say with the Psalmist: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

When we’ve gone down roads so often, roads where we destroy and destory other people to make our way taking their lives for our own gain (driving ‘fortified Hummers’ to take on even ‘moose in our way’ without damage to ourselves), like Zacchaeus the tax collector had, we pray and beg that we will ‘see Jesus’ and know what we are looking at soon enough to ‘climb a tree for a better view’.

What we can count on is that Jesus will always respond to us with grace, and say to us: hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.

For then we can surely say: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

‘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

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!

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.

Nothing Else

Thursday, March 10, 2022

The Dark Powers Of Deception and The Devil’s Minions

Cannot Conquer or Stop the Light Of Christ In Creation

and

In Us

Isaiah 51:16

I have put my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand, stretching out the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’

Revelation 3:8

I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

Words of Grace For Today

God creates all people. In us all God sees that we have little real power in creation (despite our great efforts to take dominion over it all, which lead to our own ruin.)

Yet in us God gives us God’s own words in our mouths, minds and hearts, hides us in the shadow of God’s own hand, and claims us as God’s own people.

We, with great hubris, have claimed that our powers are without limit, or nearly so; that we have wisdom like none other in the universe, unless we at times imagine a more ‘advanced’ alien species; that we protect ourselves from all dangers, until the danger takes us down and then we blame others or God or whatever we can imagine; and that we are special, better, more ‘advanced’ among all people since God claims us as God’s own people, until others use this argument for ethnic cleansing and genocide like the Nazis and so many others, so that we have to tone down our claims to be more worthwhile as a peculiar race, colour, creed, etc. of humans.

More destructive than anything else to life for ourselves and those around us, around the world, and for those generations to come is our claim that we are own ‘god’, godlets of dubious power, potential and knowledge (yet alone wisdom, grace, and love.)

All that we can actually claim is that we … well, we can claim next to nothing on our own. We receive forgiveness by God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace. We receive renewed life, though we deserve anything but. We receive a mission – not to conquer or dominate or power our way forward through time but – to be the vessels of God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace for other people. This is the open door that God sets before us, a door that no one can close, not even the Devil.

In this mission to which God sends us out into our daily lives, we remain hidden in the shadow of God’s hand, God’s loving hand, God’s hand of Grace, God’s unconditional loving hand.

So we live, by grace alone … and need nothing else. Our enemies are in for surprise after surprise at the power of God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace given to us.

So we live, by grace alone … and need nothing else.

Nothing else indeed.