Category: Daylight

Miracles Cure Wickedness?

Friday, August 12, 2022

There’s Always Enough To Go Around,

Both Thorns and Berries,

If We Overcome Our Fears.

Psalm 146:7b-9

The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

Mark 8:6

Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd.

Words of Grace For Today

The prisoners, the blind, those bowed down, the righteous, the strangers (you know the ones who are different than us, by colour, posture, or due to neurodiversity), the orphan, the widow… all these get special mention as those that God favours and blesses, exactly because the world generally denigrates, casts out, and ignores them as real people.

The more complete view is Jesus. It always is. This here today is Jesus teaching and healing the huge crowd gathered out away from any village or city. It’s been a long day. The disciples are hungry. And they, like many are afraid. They have enough for themselves, but they do not have enough to feed this huge crowd. Jesus is not afraid. He sits the crowd down, takes what the disciples have to eat and shares it with the crowd. And…

Yesterday, a regular summer ‘visitor’ showed up again, this time riding on a noisy quad, accompanied by an even noisier side by side with two older people in it. The man, slender and unpredictable, has arrived each summer to claim ownership of a camper left by a man who has disappeared. He and his buddies, one and sometimes two, rifled through the camp, took out a great metal tripod to hang a cook pot over an open fire, and who knows what all else. It was set up in a camp nearby for a month or so and then it all disappeared. Each summer he’s said he’d move ‘his’ motor van camper out in a few weeks.

The camper still sits there.

This time he arrived and claimed to own this piece of land that I am renting. His way of denying that I am renting the land. Well it’s an agreement between the actual owner and myself. He and others can deny it to be true, but that does not change the truth. His claiming to be the owner, for two weeks, sounded ridiculous. And it turned out to be just that. More lies claiming ownership of what is not his.

He also claimed ownership of the 45 foot camper bus that showed up months ago, parked behind the abandoned camper van.

He also told me to take down a barrier that keeps quads, side by sides, snowmobiles and vehicles of all kinds from running into the edge of the meadow. He had arrived on a road that has a barb wire gate across it. They had taken it down to get through and left it in the woods when they left. They also took a piece of firewood used to hold up the bottom wire.

Unpredictable. Liar. Thief.

People like this are as they appear, and as dangerous as they can be, they are not as dangerous and destructive as people who behave civilized and appear somewhat intelligent. They do not make claims to own what is not theirs. They work greater evil to take what they want so that it is legally theirs. They do not lie about what can easily be proven to be false. They lie with unprovable lies that destroy lives. They exercise power with wealth, political sway, and smooth talk, and they exercise it for their own benefit, damned be who it hurts, takes life from, or destroys.

These are the people and their ways that the Psalmist gives quick shrift: the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

Except, the way of the wicked seems to continue, to prevail, and to destroy generation after generation. It is the hope that this would end, but (naive me for thinking I would be exempt from suffering at the wrong end of this wickedness!) it goes on and on, so commonly that most people hardly blink when they hear it is their own backyard. It’s as if they say, ah dahh! Why do you think we bow to the evil ones, and keep our heads down so as not to attract attention, and why do you think we do not listen to those the evil ones destroy?

Jesus says no such thing. In the crowd are certainly evil ones, like the unpredictable summer visitor liar thief, like the civilized destroyers, like the selfish power people, and like the ones who duck (which is it’s own kind of evil.) Jesus then takes what is his and the disciples for their meal, breaks it and blesses it and shares it with all. It’s a few baskets filled with bread and fish.

This miracle is it is enough to feed a crowd of over 5000. Some say that Jesus had the bread multiply in the baskets against all the laws of physics. Not impossible. That would indeed be a miracle. The greater miracle is what likely happened: as the crowd saw that food was shared for all, they pulled out their meagre portions, took what they needed from them and from the baskets passed along, and added back into the baskets what they did not need. Thus all the people ate. The good prisoners, the blind, those bowed down, the righteous, the strangers (you know the ones who are different than us, by colour, posture, or due to neurodiversity), the orphan, the widow as well as all the evil and wicked ones in the crowd receive their fill of nourishment.

The greatest miracle is that Jesus overcomes the people’s fears, and inspires them to generosity with each other.

Now that would be one way to put the wicked ways to rest.

What does God have in store for us this fine summer day, when the temperatures are forecast to rise beyond comfortable levels, but not into the dangerous levels? How can we be the ones to continue Jesus’ miracle of helping people overcome their fears and inspire them to generosity, especially with those the ‘civilized’ people would rather forget because the outcasts suffer because of their ‘civilized’ wicked ways?

Maybe today in a small way we can, by Grace, help even one such doer of wickedness to convert to Jesus’ generosity.

Bloody Messes

Monday, August 8, 2022

At Day’s End

Is It A Bloody Mess

Or

God’s Glorious Light Show?

Isaiah 9:5

For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

1 John 4:16

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Words of Grace For Today

Boots of tramping warriors and clothes soaked in blood … all of it burned as fuel in fires.

And God loves us, is love, abides in us, and we in God as love.

Two stark images/concepts.

Does God’s love lead to the burning of soldiers’ tramping boots with blood soaked clothes?

The basic truth is life is a mess, a bloody mess, if not literally then figuratively. The only way for it not to be is to deny reality. Some do that by escaping through drugs, through great activities like high risk outdoor skiing, paragliding, bungy jumping (or you name it), or through addictions to work, through accumulations of power and wealth and … But that denying and escaping does not change reality. It only isolates one from reality.

God’s love embraces all that, the bloody reality and the escaping and denying reality, and all the good actions of people set on living well.

The real challenge in life is to face reality, bloody mess as it is, and still wake up each day and go to bed each day loving God, one’s own self, all others, and all creation.

That’s the miracle that God works in us, by Grace (in other words we do not deserve it at all, but God does it for us freely and free of cost), and with loving kindness.

Today is another day, a bloody mess for sure, and a day to love the ‘bloody mess’ out of every person and event, so that God’s good Grace prevails, if only for a short moment … for therefore we can hope and hoping we can overcome the ‘bloody messes’ and be as God intended us to be, overflowing with love.

Or we can do as most and as we usually do and self destruct in some small or large way as we try to make sense of the senselessness of the ‘bloody messes’ we encounter.

It’s harder to choose Grace. But then one lives well. And that no ‘bloody mess makers’ can take from us.

Another day? Which will it be for us? God promises Grace, always.

Gotta love that!

Pray That It May Be Berry Good

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Among the Weeds In Life,

One Finds Blossoms

of Royal Beauty

2 Kings 19:14-16

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; then Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said: ‘O Lord the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.

Philippians 4:6

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Words of Grace For Today

Sennacherib sends Hezekiah, King of Judah, a threat, that Judah will be conquered and her God will be forgotten in time like so many others already are forgotten. Hezekiah turns to Isaiah, and then he turns to God in prayer. We know how that history turns out. Judah falls but not to Assyria. Sennacherib is defeated and returns to Assyria to be killed in his own land. Judah is spared. But other more powerful foreign powers will come and Judah will fall.

The question is not if, but only when.

It is as with death. The question is not if we will die. It is when.

The more significant question is how.

I suppose how one will die is somewhat interesting or distressing. The much more significant question is, since we’ve once again acknowledged that we will all die, how will we live!? And it starts this day. How will we live this day?

Last evening a man advocated on the radio in an interview for terminally ill people to have psychedelic drugs made available to them. His argument was emphatic. Diagnosed with stage four cancer he claimed that the existential stress was debilitating. While other treatments dulled his anxiety they also dulled all his positive emotions, and assisted dying was a bit too final for him. Psychedelic drugs made it possible for him to enjoy his life with his family in the time he had left.

You know, maybe, just maybe, it’s the answer. But the argument is specious. Every human at birth faces inevitable death. What was this man doing the rest of his life to prepare himself for the inevitable coming of death. Why was this existential stress too much for him to bear? Why? Why? Why?

Today, since we know we are going to die, if we have not already, then it’s time to get ready to die. And when we’ve faced that inevitable end, we will be ready to start living, however life develops for us. No matter what comes our way we will be ready to live, to live well, and to live grateful for all we can enjoy. Psychedelic drugs are not needed, are they really, to live hiding from the reality of life. And who says they dull just the negative stressors. They create fake positives as well. They are by definition mind altering. What’s the matter with the facing the reality God provides for us, the actual life with all it’s joys and pains and …. all of it.

Prayer or drugs.

Which do we choose as our way of facing reality? (Drugs really are not ‘facing’ reality, but escaping reality, but they are still many people’s choice. Whowoodathunk?)

Small things make the difference each day, like flowers in bloom, or fresh strawberries from the food bank. Not something I can normally afford or the expected fare at the food bank, and extraordinary wonderful just because life is so.

So drugs …

OR

prayer, blossoms, berries and wonder.

Every day we make choices. Every day God renews life through forgiveness and love. What will we make of it.

Berry Good

Hearts and All.

Crackers or Crud?

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Can You Tell Whether It’s Crackers or Crud?

Who’d Listen?

Malachi 2:10

Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?

Philippians 2:3

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.

Words of Grace For Today

A mess grows on the ground where I split wood all winter long, and then stack the split logs with other pieces of wood that can be burned without splitting them. Every spring or summer I get around to raking it clean, down to the original ground. Shovelful after shovelful gets loaded up and carried away to a place where the inevitable ant farms will not matter, nor will the decaying wood cause trouble with the camp.

For lunch I often finish off with a few crackers. I cannot eat bread without suffering digestive distress until it passes. I seem to get away with eating a few crackers. Same kind of grains. Crackers are probably less nutritious with all the additional ingredients and processing. Doesn’t make sense that my system will tolerate the thing that is worse for me and reject the thing that would be healthier for me (if the bread is not also highly processed – not the kind of bread I would eat anyway, not after discovering and enjoying real good and hearty breads in Germany so many decades ago.)

Crackers or bread, they come from the same things, right?

And that crud leftover under the wood splitting pile, if one subtracts the inevitable dirt that gets mixed in, it too comes from the same thing, since it grows from the ground, right?

Yes. All grow from the same earth. Yet they are certainly not equal, not in so many ways and certainly not when one considers what to put in one’s belly for food.

Are all people equal, having come from the same creator, even having descended from the same father, Noah, maybe even the same father Abraham? Well, not so you would notice.

It’s not that people are unequal based on colour, creed, gender, slave or free, rich or poor, powerful or not. People are not equal because, well:

It’s that some people are through and through kind. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are honest. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are generous. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are forgiving. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are at peace with themselves, other people, and the world. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are grateful. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are loving, giving of themselves so that others will live well. Most people are not.

It’s that some people are hopeful. Most people are not.

By what measure then are we going to agree with Paul and in humility treat others as better than ourselves?

And there is the key; how do we treat others? It is not that when we are kind, honest, generous, forgiving, at peace, grateful, loving and hopeful we are less than all the people who are not. We do live better. (Not with more wealth, privileges, or comforts, but we live better in all the ways God intended us to live well.)

It is that when we are kind, honest, generous, forgiving, at peace, grateful, loving and hopeful we need not judge who is and who is not as good as us. We hope that all people are as good, and can live as well. We know that most people are not, but nothing in our lives stands or falls on us asserting how good we are. Well, actually if we assert how good we judge ourselves to be, as better than others, a lot of our kindness, honestly, forgiving attitude, being at peace, being grateful, loving and hopeful disappears like the breath of a dinosaur on a cold winter day.

When we are kind, honest, generous, forgiving, at peace, grateful, loving and hopeful we can and do treat others as better than ourselves, hoping that they might be or will be.

And no matter how kind, honest, generous, forgiving, at peace, grateful, loving and hopeful we are, we are still members of the broken and sinful human race, incapable of freeing ourselves from our sin. Only God can make us kind, honest, generous, forgiving, at peace, grateful, loving and hopeful, so we have no right to claim to be better than others. All our goodness is reckoned to us, not earned by us, by God’s kindness, honesty, generosity, forgiveness, peace, gratefulness, love and hope (hope that we might catch on someday, somehow to how ambition and deceit destroy us), and God wishes us life, and life lived well. An abundant live.

Crackers, Bread, or Crud. Those we better judge well which is which. People bad, good, better. That we get to leave up to our merciful God.

Can you taste the difference?

Why would you try?

Peace for All

Monday, August 1, 2022

What Carries Us Around Threats to Safe Waters,

to Days

and Nights

of Peace?

Isaiah 57:19

Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord; and I will heal them.

Romans 15:33

The God of peace be with all of you. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Yet how many and powerful are the forces seen and unseen that would drive us from living well and from life itself.

In this piece of wilderness, which is hardly really wilderness as it is merely a lake surrounded by Crown land leased for grazing, leased for oil extraction, and private lands used and abused by hoards of intruders with noisy machines and …

and in the middle of it access is given to the public freely and without cost,

which is a bountiful wonder, especially for those too poor to be able to pay to camp in one of the many (ever fewer) campsites around the beautiful lakes in the area.

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Except …

Except here those people come who live in poverty, irresponsibly, ignorantly, destructively, to party and lose their minds in drugs, alcohol and who knows what all else.

Except here those people come who know not of respect for the land or the laws that would guide us to provide at least some care, so that their excrement and garbage litter the woods, their huge campers sit for months on end, destroying the ground under and around them, and their powerful, rugged treaded trucks grind away at the earth on the trails to and fro as they travel in and out each day.

Except here those people come who know only their own pleasure in camping within a few feet of the water and are oblivious to the law that prohibits camping anywhere within 30 metres of a body of water and apathetic to the destruction camping so close brings to the ground and and the water so that the lake will die faster, and not be a place to retreat to for future generations, and perhaps not even us in a few years.

Except here those people come who ply the water with gas engines streaming effluent and oils behind them in and on the water.

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Yet to live well is not to ‘steal’ the wonders of creation from others, present and future!

In Europe, as around the world, so many people suffer inflation to the point of struggling to remain alive. Around the globe in war zones and disaster areas, in drought, wildfire, flood, storm areas, and everywhere where people take the plenty available to all and keep it for themselves alone, people struggle to remain alive, yet alone know anything about abundance.

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Yet living well is not to ‘steal’ life from others, present and future!

Peace, we pray for peace in a world where so much un-Peace prevails.

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Yet living well is not to ‘steal’ peace from others, present and future!

How can we live, and live well, so as to bring others to respect and preserve all that God provides for us as for past generations, and for future generations? On our own we simply cannot.

Lord, you have given us bread from heaven to strengthen us.

By Grace through your Word, you enable us to live, and live well, now, as in the past, so that others will know your Word into the future, so that your Peace will prevail for all people.

Clarity, Energy, and Relief!

Friday, July 29, 2022

Relief!

Proverbs 4:18

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

1 John 3:2

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

Words of Grace For Today

The path …

I’m not so sure anyone really knows what any ‘path’ looks like, until they have travelled it and since no human can travel the path of righteousness (righteousness is reckoned to us by God, as a gift, unearned, untraveled, perhaps hoped for).

We wish we could. We pretend we have. We write about it as if we have. We try to inspire others to choose to travel the path that we have not travelled.

We should instead inspire people to trust God to reckon righteousness to us, and to be alert to the path that God provides for us. Though we do not travel it, God hauls us on that path in spite of us and our constant rebelling, and false, arrogant claims that we, oh yes, we have and do travel the path of righteousness. That is like most of our human powered efforts: it’s bunk. Or as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, it’s all vanity.

Theologians and writers who claim to know how we will be like Jesus, and what Jesus will be like upon his return speak that same language of over-exuberance at least and often pure arrogance and goal of controlling other people, even though they can control so little of themselves and their own life.

Humility is our beginning point, our mid-point, and our reality all the way to the end. The only thing we can ‘boast’ of is God’s good work in us, and in all creation.

Like the sun rising, with the most beautiful light, until it rises clear of the horizon and burns heat and energy down on the day-lit-earth. From that we have learned to create solar electricity. And from that energy plants through photosynthesis live and thrive … unless and until the heat and energy from the sun becomes too much and they wilt, burned out of life by the very energy that gave them life.

So it is for us. We need the sun to live, vitamin D being the least of it. Until the sun becomes too hot, too intense, too powerful an energy that it burns life up around us, and us with it.

Today it will burn hot in the meadow, with a forecast 30⁰ it will climb to at least 35⁰ and likely 40⁰ or more as the heat gets trapped in the meadow.

Thankfully the evening comes and cools it right off, usually 5⁰ cooler than elsewhere. A regenerating time, not just for sleep but recovery from the intense heat.

What do people do without that relief? They suffer. They die.

What do people do without the energy (Love) of God entering their lives with the great relief from the evils of the world to revive them (Grace). They suffer. They die.

We pray that today God will exercise Love and Grace abundantly for us and make us clearly aware of God’s work for us, as clear as the noonday sun, with relief from the cool water of life in the shade of the tall and healthy tree canopy, where so many of God’s creatures know to find relief from the heat.

They Are Out to Get Even You, David and You, …

Monday, July 25, 2022

So Many Storms Threaten,

So We Pray,

Save Us!

Increase Our Faith!

1 Samuel 30:6

David was in great danger; for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in spirit for their sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

Luke 17:5

The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’

Words of Grace For Today

There are times when all we know to do is to beg that our faith be increased for we cannot see our way clear of what others try to do to us and what the future certainly holds for us.

So we cry for more faith. Really we want God to stop our enemies from attacking us, and bring us a future full of promise, and justice and truth out of our past, and clarity for our children and communities and church, and those who have done this to us to have the light of Christ shone clearly on their deeds and for restitution to be made to those who have been made to so inexcusably suffer, most of all the children. That is the prayer for years, and less and less of that seems possible, so instead we pray for more faith.

And God answers.

David leads 600 soldiers against an enemy raiding the land. On finding the whole city of Ziklag burned and the women and children taken, the people are ready to string David up for not protecting them. Who said people are clear-headed about who to blame for what.

David, warrior king that he is, pursues the Amalekites, with the help of one of them left behind because he was sick. Given food and drink and promised safety he helps David find the Amalekites. And find them they do, celebrating their successful raids. David kills them all, except 400 young men who escape on camels, and he recovers everything that was taken, including two of his wives.

Well now there is some kind of justice, a kind that even to this day results in those 400 escaped young men growing up to return to exact justice on David and his people, and then David and his warriors will …. round and round and round goes the violence until there are not enough people to continue it.

We do not hope for such justice. We want truth to be told and known, and for God to win converts from among those who have done such terrible injustices so easily that one is sure they do it regularly to many, many innocent people. To wait is difficult. To hope for so long when it only gets worse is difficult. They are still out to get us, but paranoia gets nothing good of each day.

So we know the disciples’ prayer very well: Lord, increase our faith!

As The Morning Dawns

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Morning Again

Can We Make It

Through

All The Brambles

Psalm 46:5-6

God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

Revelation 21:3

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them’

Words of Grace For Today

God, almighty, melts the earth with a word, if God chooses.

God, almighty, melts our hard hearts and thick heads, if God chooses.

God dwells with us, and goes well with us, if God chooses.

God watches as kingdoms (and our small worlds) totter and fall, as hearts shrivel up and harden against all that attacks them and everything else as well, and as minds close down to consider only what fits so easily with a preconceived and shrunken concept of reality (though it may indeed be so far from reality.)

God is right there with us, and because God chooses, God does not abandon us to our tottering, hardening, closed down limits to life.

God strengthens our tottering worlds (oh in so many ways the world around us totters and falls into ashes and dust) so that they stand, not on our strength, but on God’s strength.

God melts the hardening of our hearts so that we can love again, so that they provide life for us and for all those we encounter.

God lifts the lids on our minds to let in the fresh air of hope so that we can see again beyond the horizons that were so close, so that we can see our neighbours’ needs and our abundance.

With that abundance, which God gives us and renews constantly, God showers the world around us with security for this day and all our days to come, security in God’s presence; God showers every heart around us with love, life-giving love; God showers our minds with curiosity and hope so that our horizons are beyond even our imaginations capabilities,

Because God so chooses, and choose again as each new morning dawns.

Taste and See … Yuck!

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

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.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Monday, July 18, 2022

The New Kind of Storm,

The Backside is

More Tumultuous

Than the Front

Jeremiah 8:21.22

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!

Just saying, it’s another day for the saints.