I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a brand snatched from the fire; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.
2 Timothy 2:13
Even if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.
Words of Grace For Today
God works in all sorts of ways to bring us to participate in creation the way God created us to fit into creation.
We seldom cooperate, so driven are we to get somewhere in life. We turn what is good and blessed into trouble upon trouble for ourselves. We build castles and kingdoms, enslaving others to produce bread and wine for us.
God takes our castles and kingdoms, and our schemes of enslaving God’s people and overthrows them, so that we have nothing left. In that nothingness God demonstrates to us how much God has given us. God takes our self-assuredness and faithlessness to God and offers us a new beginning. Always God remains faithful to us, to what we need in life.
God’s faithfulness is the one sure thing in life, and most of us wave it off as easily as waving away a beggar or a homeless family or a refugee.
As sure as a day’s worth of steady spring snow covers everything with a fresh and pristine blanket that glistens in the next day’s sun, so God spreads blessings to everyone.
The faithful are those who notice, and share the blessings with others. The rest melt in the brilliant light of Christ faster than the snow on a warm spring day.
When the fires we create would consume us quicker than a dry log in the hot coals of a wood stove, Christ reaches in and delivers us, renews us, refreshes us with clear water, and sends us out to share the cooling water of life.
And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.
Hebrews 3:20-21
Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
How do you tell the successor to the kingdom on earth that he has nothing at all to do with whether or not God blesses him and the kingdom?
How do you tell your successor that when you yourself are famous for taking charge and making the kingdom great?!?
How do you tell your successor to the kingdom you have built that he must surrender his will to God’s will, and trust that God will guide him, even in ways that he may not understand or willingly follow, especially when you are infamous for taking your own will into your own hands in order to build this kingdom that your son will inherit from you?
How can you tell your son to submit to God’s will when you are about to instruct your son to build God a temple, which, in the middle of your eager plans to start construction of a magnificent temple, God has told you that God does not need or want any kind of temple?
(David is and remains blessed by God, not because David earns it, but because God so chooses.)
David, faced with these challenges, does not instruct Solomon to submit to God’s will. Instead David reverts to a simple and common perversion of God’s will for us humans: If Solomon does right, then God will bless him. If Solomon does not do right then God will forsake him forever. Solomon must then find and follow God.
But that is not possible because God’s Kingdom does not work this way, though there are plenty of humans to tell you it does, and plenty of humans live that way on earth their entire lives.
God’s Kingdom rather begins with love, ends with love, and everything inbetween is God graciously forgiving, renewing and equipping us to be God’s loving grace for all other people. We earn nothing. We keep nothing. We give God everything. And we live lives abundant … in God’s Kingdom.
This is Jesus’ story for us: God comes and gives everything to save us, forgive us, renew life in us, and send us out into the world to follow Jesus’ example: surrendering everything we are and have so that God can work through us to bless other people.
And that is to live a blessed life, as one of the God-made saints.
No need to find God! God is right there with you! No need to earn God’s Grace, it’s long ago been enacted for you, for each day and each moment of your life.
It is one thing to have the time of age lean in on one, as death looms.
It is an entirely other thing to have other people work to advance the arrival of one’s death.
God save us from such people.
Psalm 141:8
My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.
John 14:19
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
Words of Grace For Today
Lots of people are dying from ‘natural’ causes, some of the ‘natural’ causes are induced by other people, so the causes are not that natural, rather homicidal. Lots of other people are trying to kill even more people, forget about inducing natural causes, these efforts run the gamut from open violence to secretive schemes, and all of them are the work of the Devil and people cooperating with the Devil. Lots of people will die because others are trying to kill them. Lots of people die because of the Devil and his followers.
That’s the way with humans. It’s terrible. It’s worse if you are one of the people induced or openly or secretively sought to be killed by others, the Devil’s sacrifices in an attempt to supplant God’s rule over all creation and all beyond the universe we know or imagine.
So we, the people who others seek to kill … we pray: My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.
We trust, no matter whether we live or whether we die, whether by natural or very not natural causes, we live and we die with Christ at our side.
As Jesus lives, even though Rome crucified him at the behest of his own religions leaders, so also we, no matter who seeks our deaths or how, we too shall live, and not just another day or week or year, but for all eternity.
The truths that guided our living will live into eternity.
The lies told by those that seek to kill us, will be remembered as lies for all of eternity.
We are not defenceless, though we die. For our God is our rock and our shield, a mighty fortress against all the works of the Devil.
So we sing: In Him there is no darkness at all, The night and the day are both alike.
And
Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen, erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag. Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.
(Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers We look forward confidently to what may come. God is with us in the evening and in the morning and surely on every new day.)
Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Colossians 2:10
You have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.
Words of Grace For Today
Headstrong as we all are, we need some rigorous interruption to our daily routine, to the expected, to the unrighteousness of our lives that we’ve come to rely on in order to make our way forward.
That’s what the suffering servant, and many who have followed who have sacrificed themselves to give others life, and what God in the life of Jesus has done for all: they have interrupted the usual and expected flow of selfishness with their own sacrifice that gives others life. Their sacrifice is simple to describe. They put themselves in the way of corrupt people and powers who seek a scapegoat for their own corruption, lies, and destruction of others … and all manner of sins that clog up the flow of life with their own shtako. These corrupt people easily lie about an innocent person in order to gain some catharsis for the strain the overflow and damming (and damning) their own sins spew across their own lives.
Then as the innocent person is destroyed, the strain of the shtako in their own lives seems to be relieved. Yet it is not at all, not at all. In fact it deepens the clogged up piles that impede life, honest life, blessed life as God created us to live it. … until another innocent scapegoat is slammed into jail or poverty or derision and eventually death.
This seems to be the regular rhythm and rhyme of life … over and over again … and no one seems to care or notice that the innocent are some of the best people alive … until they are no longer.
When God sacrificed life in the death of God-Jesus, God sent a clear message: NO FURTHER SCAPEGOATS ARE REQUIRED for life to flow onward, for the goodness of life to be lived, for the overwhelming, clogging and damning sins of so many to be forgiven.
God dies.
God dies to interrupt our usual.
God dies to interrupt our usual scapegoating to save us from our sins, and to save all those we would scapegoat.
And yet so many people simply cannot bear the thought that God knows their sins, so they keep scapegoating innocent people, and innocent people are jailed, slammed into poverty and derision, and eventually killed … all for nothing more than a temporary cathartic relief of actual, overwhelming, damning and destructive guilt.
Woe to those who continue to scapegoat the innocent!
But for those who have ears, for those who have eyes, for those who have hearts …
ears to hear God’s Word,
eyes to see Christ’s Light,
hearts to receive and live out God’s unconditional love for us all …
For those who the Holy Spirit has given ears, eyes and hearts to receive God, God blesses us with God’s presence each day, each moment … no matter the false convictions, poverty, derisions, or death wishes aimed at us …
and we live lives as God intended us to live them: honest, grateful, generous, forgiving, and steadfast … and as required, self-sacrificial.
Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.
1 Timothy 6:12
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Words of Grace For Today
To fight.
To fight usually involves things like fists, rifles, drones and bombs.
Or at least it usually involves scheming, manoeuvring, ruining the other, driving them out of here into exile, leaving them homeless and landless, or setting them up to die an early death.
To fight.
To fight the good fight of the faith to which we are called …
well that is an entirely different kind of fight.
It is a battle again evil.
It is a battle against evil first of all in ourselves, and then in those around us.
It is a battle that we can barely begin to fight … unless ….
Unless God brings us to be holy…
holy saints,
holy saints equipped to bring Grace to bear on condemnation, bold forgiveness to douse reproach and destorying, kindness to undo all violence, and truth to outshine all deceits.
This is the battle of the universe, of which God created us, for which God created us, not that we might die in the battle or bear the burden of the war, doch …
doch (rather) that we might be vessels carrying hearts transformed to know God’s presence with us, God’s righteousness permeating us, no matter what may come.
Shine, Jesus Shine.
Otherwise it is so dark in here!
Shine, with all the candle power the universe has ever known,
Shine in this darkness, and transform those who would destory and destroy us.
Shine, Jesus, Shine!
Sing, Children of God, Sing!
Let there be Light, and let there be jubilation, in every corner of creation, in every darkness of evil, and in every heart.
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.
Matthew 9:36
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Words of Grace For Today
The great masses of humanity have always lived subjected to those with power and the ability to lord it over them. There’s never been a shortage of those lining up to take on the place of power and privilege and comfort … and lording it over others to have all that.
Jesus, God’s story of God’s amazing unconditional love for all people -especially the poor and the outcasts – sees the crowds gathered to hear the Good News that he preaches, the healing that he administers and he knows their plight.
God has walked with God’s people in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes. God knows everything. God knows the plight of the great majority of humans who have ever lived. God knows the corruption of those who lord it over them. God has, seemingly, abandoned God’s people at many and various times to the clutches of those oppressing, persecuting, and driving masses into poverty. God has always walked, into those times of apparent abandonment, with God’s people. And God has walked God’s people out of those times as well.
God sends the Law, the Prophets, and the Good Shepherd to guide the people out of those times that are like hell. Today God continues to send God-made saints to walk with people in all circumstances, to help them reconnect with the promises of God and to live (even in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes) abundantly. So it is when we live aware that God walks with us.
There is nothing in life that is more blessed, more secure, and more rich than God’s presence and God’s promises that we, too, shall once again walk among God’s people, no longer shunned and falsely accused, but exonerated and honoured.
And those who lord it over others, driving them to poverty, into oppression, into persecution and out into exile homeless … those who lord it over others and live in comfort will face God’s judgment. Whether they too will receive God’s Grace is not for us to say. It is God’s will, which will be done. For now the ‘lords’ breathe only as a gift from God, giving them time for the amendment of life.
For the rest of us, God has compassion and demonstrates it day after day, in the simplest and most profound ways.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Luke 4:40
As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.
Words of Grace For Today
God knows we know what it is like
to have darkness overtake us,
and
to have the light disappear on us while we progress through our work that requires light to finish.
We are thankful that for God there is no darkness that is dark. For God the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
God does not need night vision googles to deal with what we experience as darkness, for even as the sun sets, and even as we succumb to illness God sees clearly what we need to be healthy. God sees perfectly, and
through the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
God gives us sight to see what is hidden by the darkness of sin and evil, and to be the ones who bring Christ’ balm to heal any who [are] sick with various kinds of diseases.
So we can rest assured, even as the darkness grows around us and envelops us, that God sees all that we need to live, and to live abundant lives.
Made All That More Visible by the Wonderful Light,
So May the Light of Christ Make Obvious
the Fog of Evil and False Convictions
That Abound, Also Here!
Psalm 126:3
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Words of Grace For Today
Every day the only way to survive, after the evil that has been focused on me to bring about my undeserved destruction, is to remember that the Lord has done great things for me, and I rejoice!
Fridays, we remember all those people who are falsely accused, harassed by the police soliciting false reports about them, fabricating evidence, and falsely convicted by judges who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20) We especially pray for men who are falsely accused by their spouse or partner, for there seems to be no end to the false charges and convictions based on obvious lies by women about good, honest men.
We pray that the Light of Christ will come to bear on each false conviction and those that brought it to be, that God’s justice will come to be for the falsely convicted and come down on all those that contributed to the false conviction and the destruction of their lives.
We pray, that as it is for me it will be for all those falsely convicted: that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And that those heavenly places will be where we are now on this planet earth.
Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your words, and destroy the work of your hands?
Colossians 2:18
Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.
Words of Grace For Today
Sunday rest.
Monday work and remember the children.
Tuesday work and remember all the men who are abused by women.
Oh, you say, that is not how the world is. Men abuse women and kill them.
Yes, we’ve come a long way recognizing how some men, very few men, abuse women with violence that eventually and inevitably leads to the man violently killing the woman, or psychological demeaning until the woman feels so worthless that she kills herself. And we have recognized the signs, and coaxed and coached abuse women away from their abuser (which is very hard to do since the abuser’s abuse captures and makes the abused think she needs the abuser’s presence and approval), and provided safe places for abused women to recover their sense of self, their voice, and their assurance of their own worth … and a vision of life without the abuser.
And many women and men have gone beyond that to assume and punish all men for the abuse done by a few, which only turns the tables on the men. Now the women and men become ardent, unrelenting, unabashed misandrists, theirs is the destruction of innocent, good people (men), and the lies that are told about innocent men mushroom into a cloud over society from which no one can escape.
Meanwhile many men are caught in their abuser’s trap, just as women are also. They have lost their voice, their woman has robbed them of their sense of self, of all their friends, of all contact with reality as they are blamed for so many things each day, small at first, the huge things, that the man has had nothing to do with. And the end is the same as for women: some women abusers are violent and they eventually, inevitably kill the abused man who is so worthless she sees him as not even human. More women psychologically beat the voice, worth, and hope right out of the man until he withers into self-loathing and finds no way to go on, so he kills himself. Men with a even a small tendency for violence use a gun, those with none use other means like poison.
When the courts are involved, like the rest of society, there are precious few who even think it’s possible for a woman to abuse a man if the woman is not beating the living daylights out of the man, and even then they are more likely to charge and convict the man – even though it is the woman violently beating up the man, and the man only tries to save his life. When the abuse is psychologial the courts most likely convict the man of come kind of harassment or psychological abuse (even though it’s the woman who is the abuser, if they would only open their eyes to the possibility!)
The rest of society is not unlike the courts, blaming the man for being abused: ‘what kind of a man are you to let a woman treat you like that!’ ‘No real man could ever be abused by a woman. Look at her. She’s half a foot shorter, and 50 pounds lighter (though so much stronger physically, if they’d only look.)’ ‘You’re not a real human if you let her treat you like that. You must have it coming. You’ve done something terrible to her.’ ‘Hey, man, it’s your fault for staying with her. Anyone with sense would have left long ago.’ And so go the blaming of the man for the woman’s abuse.
In the end everyone loses, no one more than the children, who learn to lie to protect themselves, who learn that courts and cops and church people are all corrupt, who learn never to tell the real truth about who is doing what to whom, because they will be made to pay if they do.
So we remember Tuesdays all the men abused by women.
And we pray that we will not be led astray by our words or others’ words of deceit.
And we pray that we will not be caught up in the ‘human way of thinking’ so that we ignore men who are suffering, and whose suffering will always end in death … unless someone or some miracle intervenes.
The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people.
Jude 1:22
Have mercy on those who doubt.
Words of Grace For Today
The last day of the year
leaves us to ask (as so many media do for us in various ways):
Where has this year taken us?
Where will this next year bring us?
Will we have any choices that will make a difference, a real difference, for ourselves and all living on the earth, and for the course of human history?
We, if we were here at the beginning of the year and if we are here at the end of the year, have survived.
What have we survived besides merely to live on? Our enemies have sought and continue to seek to kill us by whatever means they can use (trying not to get caught of course or pay any price for their efforts.) We have survived all the attacks of our enemies. Our enemies have built up a collection of lies about us, which has next to nothing to do with us (except … well read on) and which clearly defines who they are, what kind of people they are … and as humans have been wont since the beginning of time their lies reflect rather clearly exactly what they have done. They have lied that instead of them being the ones doing terrible things, they have names us as the perpetrators of their great evil. Which we have survived, though … the consequences of their lies are that more and more people believe their lies, and more and more people join their efforts to kill us, slowly or more quickly. And still we have survived.
We have survived not because we are so strong, no, we are old and weak. We have survived not because we are so rich and influential, no, we are caught deep in the grips of poverty from which we likely will never emerge and most of our friends we used to have, have deserted us, afraid of being associated with one who is attacked so ferociously. They do not want to become collateral damage. We have survived only by the Grace of God, and by many and various miracles that God has worked to keep us alive.
We have survived, though it has appeared at many times that we would not, could not, simply because even in those darkest moments of doubt, God has made us able to remain grateful of all God does for us and for our enemies, offering us forgiveness and renewed life. With grateful hearts more and more miracles have sprinkled our path, been noticed, convinced us that God walks with us making us saints and this has given us hope … and hope has carried us through the darkness to the light of day, to the Light of Christ.
We are thus quite able to trust that this coming year will be more of the same: God walking with us, miracles in abundance, hope carrying us always into the Light.
Our choices? Well our choices will be as always, the best we can make at the time, and even then always imperfect, yet made perfect by the Grace of God alone.
And that same Grace, as only God’s Grace can, will make a difference, a real difference, for ourselves and all living on the earth, and for the course of human history.
So Moses prayed for the sinful people, and God continued to write God’s story with the lives of God’s people, bringing us to each new day, as a miracle-gift, for each of us.
No New Year resolution will carry us to a better life. Only God’s resolution, covenant, promise will carry us, as it has, into the best life ever, the life of God’s own children, God-made saints, given breath and time … to be God’s Grace for others, especially our cruel enemies.
