Men – Page 3

Jails for Whom, Anyway?

Thursday, December 30, 2021

In the Light of Christ,

All Crime is Laid Plain for All to See!

Freedom is to Live in the Light of Christ,

As Fishers on the Lake at Sunset.

Psalm 74:16

Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun.

Romans 13:12-13

The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy.

Words of Grace For Today

Knowing from long experience as humans we know that enough people will violate the goodness of social order, so we create laws and police and courts and judges and jails for such people.

What ends up happening is that the laws are written by people who will as readily as anyone violate the goodness of social order to ensure that they stay in power to write the laws, so that they are not held responsible for the evil they do.

The police are more than ready to violate the goodness of social order, justifying their lawlessness for themselves by saying that they must keep order and they are not given enough tools to do so.

The lawyers who work to convict and who work to protect those charges are ready to violate the goodness of social order, justifying their lawlessness to themselves by saying that they must do what is necessary to play their part in keeping good order and they are not given enough tools to do so without cheating the system.

The judges who are supposed to work to ensure that only guilty people are convicted and sentenced are more than ready to violate the goodness of social order, justifying their lawlessness to themselves by saying that they must do what is necessary to play their part in keeping good order and they are the ones who determine what is just and what is not.

What is lost as all these people, supposedly do their part in keeping good order, is simple: truth is lost and with it all possibility of good social order. The real criminals continue to rape society of it’s goodness, it’s wealth, it’s equality for all; and they put others in jail who work at the bottom of their ladder of corruption; the drug dealers, the killers, the violent rapists, at least all those that are not smart enough not to get caught.

So for whom do we build jails? We hope they are for real criminals, and we trust at least some real criminals end up there. But the real criminals are the ones who process other ‘less successful’ people who violate the goodness of social order. There are no jails that can hold these people and keep us all safe from them.

God will judge all people, and these criminals will eventually pay for their crimes against us all.

For God’s is the day and the night. God created all. The darkness of night is passing, and the day of Christ’s light is near.

So we pray God helps us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; help us live honourably as in the day, in the Light of Christ.

Which Is It? Name It!

Sunday, December 12, 2021

No Matter the Dark Obstacles

God’s Love

Holds The Universe Together

Ezekiel 39:7

My holy name I will make known among my people Israel; and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.

John 17:26

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Words of Grace For Today

To know God’s name and to keep it holy is a gift given to us all, though we often, more often than we care to admit, we turn our back on the gifts from God and use God’s name in vain, and more as our own avenue for our own selfish wishes. All in vain.

God in God’s name is what brings us to live with grace and hope.

God in God’s name is what brings us to know the love that holds the universe together.

This is the gift that gives us life.

This is the gift that we turn away from when we follow our own ways, deceits, and greed.

This is the gift that God extends to us again and again, each time we turn away from God.

This day, which will it be for us, to turn from God, or to accept God’s grace bring us to return to God?

It will be both and neither, as God wishes.

So we live in God’s favour, blessed and living as we breathe.

For this we can be thankful.

Blessings, Joy, then Obedience

Monday, November 29, 2021

Because God Blesses Us to Know Beauty

no matter the tangles of life the intrude on our days

Therefore We are Able to Be God’s Blessings for Others

Deuteronomy 28:1-6

If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God:

Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.

Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.

Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-bowl.

Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

Matthew 12:50

For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Words of Grace For Today

Both passages say clearly enough that it is all up to us: if we do the right things, if we obey all God’s commandments, if we do God’s will, then

then we will be blessed in all ways,

then we will be Jesus’ brother, sister or mother.

That certainly is how the world works and how religious authorities have parsed God’s blessings in their attempts to control their followers.

God is not so parsed, not correctly anyway.

God’s blessings are not so parsed, not correctly anyway.

Jesus’ brothers and sisters and mother are not so determined, not correctly anyway.

But this is the way of the world, and it is our self-centred, familiar, assuring and futile way of working God’s will in our world.

Trouble is, it’s not us that works God’s will and this is God’s world.

God’s way, clearly demonstrated in the story of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, is that God blesses us, and we either can surrender to that, or work our way out of the blessings by going our own way. Even then God pursues us, relentlessly, promising to forgive us, give us re-newed lives, and send us out again to be God’s blessings for others.

God’s blessings are not tied to how powerful, wealthy, or famous we are. God’s blessings are contained in the God given ability to be able to love, and love completely and unconditionally. For is love, starting with fear and love for God, and then love for ourselves, our neighbours and our enemies … in love we find life, life’s meaning and purpose and a joy that cannot be marred by circumstances, no matter how bad they may be.

The joy that God gives us is familiar to most people. It is like living life being in love. Some know it as a teenager’s 1st love, or as a young adult knowing this is the one person to marry, or as holding your new born infant, or as guiding children as they grow up, or as playing with grandchildren, or as growing old together and sharing memories as you deal with new challenges.

Most all of us experience that being in love, and loving others, gives us a profound joy.

Being in love with God, fearing and loving God, gives us an even more profound joy. All our times of being in love come to an end. Some endings leave us lost, as if the pathways and walls of life itself have crumbled out from under us.

Being in love and fearing God is markedly different because that love never comes to an end since it is determined not by our capacity to love, but by God’s promises to love us always. God loves us always, no matter the twists and turns we take in life. Trusting that God loves us gives a pervasive joy, a foundational joy.

Today we pray, may we live fearing and loving God as God loves us. May we be God’s love for all other people, so that we do not forget how precious God’s love is.

Shattering Enemy Heads

Friday, November 19, 2021

Our Imaginations of God’s Justice

Are Darkened by Our Own Sin

And Wish to De-story Others.

Psalm 68:21

God will shatter the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways.

1 Thessalonians 4:14

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

Words of Grace For Today

Scriptures teach what everyone knows: God does great and mighty things, awesome things, wondrous and frightening things, life- and hope- creating things.

Life after the end of life, after death, seems a thing far fetched (to some if not many people.) Christians are not the only faithful people who embrace it as the hope of all hopes, grounded firmly in the centre of our faith, namely that Jesus was crucified for crimes and sins he did not commit and that three days later God rose him back to life. By this God demonstrated clearly that evil and death itself are not more powerful than God. By this God teaches that scapegoating (the killing of an innocent person in order to ‘pay’ or cover for one’s own sins) is not something favours. Rather God prohibits it just as God prohibits killing, sacrifice of people, especially children, and a host of other acts all too common among people, acts which all destroy other people, good people, by robbing them of life abundant.

Even though God prohibits these sinful, life destroying, de-storying actions, humans still commit them profusely. The hope in life after death includes the promise that in our new life, sins will be dealt with justly and with grace, and all will be free from oppression, abuse, and de-storying. The Pslamist puts this image graphically: God will shatter the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways.

There are few people, other than those who know they qualify for such an end, who would not hope that their enemies would cease to be.

God’s grace is more complete: God promises that God’s and our enemies will definitely cease to be … to be our enemies, for God will save them and convert them. They will sit with us among the children of God.

We pray: come soon, Lord Jesus, that our enemies will be defeated and we will live in peace. And they will know your peace, freeing them from their obsessions to de-story other people.

This is our story …. Let it be known far and wide.

Living Water

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Sometimes water reflects the glory of God,

the Light of the World,

and

what great things we get to see and experience!

Psalm 42:2

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

Revelation 21:6

Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.’

Words of Grace For Today

Thirsting.

Thirsting for water.

Thirsting for water to drink …

and to wash with …

and to clean with.

…

There is power in water, great power.

Water in such great abundance, not something that we thirst for can …

Well it can take us by surprise and wash us away …

just ask anyone who has experienced the power of a flood,

like the people in BC this past week.

Many on the roads were surprised by mudslides, made possible by the frozen ground, clear cutting forests on mountain sides and wildfires that left mountain sides bare and unsupported, and then rain like a river from heaven that poured heavier than heavy and did not stop.

Then they were trapped by a mudslide in front of them and a mudslide behind them, if they were lucky. If they were not lucky, well some were hit by a mudslide and buried or washed down the mountain. Or they who were really not lucky were trapped and watched as, or found out that, all their loved ones were either killed or left to die a slow and painful death.

God does not promise us just life or just water. God promises us water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

This water of life does not take life, it gives life … even to those who are stranded by mudslides.

That is the promise that the Alpha and the Omega provides for us … and it is done.

It is done for us by the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, of everything that is and everything that can be … even time.

Like air that gives life to the blood that flows through our arteries and veins to everything in us, so God brings us breath that brings us life in all creation … and profound joy as we live fully alive as we are created to live.

Now we come to behold the face of God, not in some miracle or mountain top breaking in on us by a Deity so far and away from us until then. Rather we come to behold the face of God (as sacramental mystics have always) in the mundane, obvious things, creatures and events of our daily lives.

Water, living water.

We have plenty pure, clean water, a gift from God, to clean with, to wash with, and to drink our fill from. Like all mundane things, this water came from the systems used to provide water to many communities, from the water pump station that serves as a water fill station for tanks on trailers and in trucks, and as trucks to fill up and then distribute the water to cisterns and tanks where so many people live.

Water, living water.

Hey, You! Ya, You!

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

God Calls,

As Distinctly

As Venus in the Western Sky.

(Listen Up!)

1 Samuel 3:9

Therefore Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” ’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Acts 16:14

A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.

Words of Grace For Today

God speaks.

Some of us are taught, moved, or inspired to listen … and we know the rest of those stories, right!

Samuel hears a voice calling and since he is Eli’s apprentice he assumes his master calls him and he obediently goes to the aide of his master. But Eli has not called him.

Now the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread, as it is today where sacramental mystics are rare, very rare. So Samuel and even Eli do not catch on to what really happens; that God calls to Samuel. It takes three times that Samuel runs to Eli to answer the call. Then Eli understands that Samuel is not making it up, nor is Eli so forgetful he’s forgotten that he’s called Samuel, nor is someone playing tricks on the two of them, living as they are in the temple. Eli directs Samuel to answer the call, to know that it is God calling.

How many times does God call to us and we miss out because we simply fail to recognize that God calls to us. God works in many and various ways, so we’d do well to be prepared and alert or at least that someone we trust will be able to tell us how to listen to God’s voice.

One complaint that antivaxxers come up with is that they need to be faithful to God and not put their trust in ‘untrustworthy’ science by getting vaccinated – which studies show is a very effective way to reduce the likelihood one will get infected, and if one is infected that one will land in the hospital, and if one lands in the hospital that one will need an ICU bed, and if one needs an ICU bed one that one will die. Kind of a nice reduction by anyone’s standards (unless one does not want to live.) The other very significant reduction is that if one is vaccinated and then still becomes infected, one is much less likely to pass it on to other people (especially if one wears a good mask, properly well fit over one’s nose, not a bandana or neck tube or a mask that leaves one’s nose breathing out the virus!) This is significant because then getting vaccinated is not a matter of one’s own freewill and choice. It is about being responsible for the health of other people that one shares indoor space with (even hours after one is in the space others can breath in the virus that hangs on aerosols in the air like smoke or smells wafting from a kitchen!)

God calls for us all to be responsible for others, and unless our health does not allow us to get vaccinations, to get the Covid vaccination, soon if not already!

That’s where the message about Lydia comes in to the conversation. Lydia hears the Word of Christ from Paul and God moves her to respond: she becomes a major supporter of Paul’s ministry with the resources that her trade in purple cloth has netted her.

So also, God has moved many people with many resources, and people need to encourage more people of resources, to advocate for all people to listen to God’s Word: a simple Word that is spoken through the science (after all science had it’s birth in the church and remains possible only because people believe there is an order in creation that can be studied, discovered, organized, and utilized to heal people and make tremendous differences in our lives -for good and unfortunately often also for bad!)

The Word of God is rarely heard in these days, there are seldom if ever visions of God, and yet sacramental mystics among many others can tell you God speaks all the time in so many marvellous and unexpected ways.

We need to learn or be inspired to answer: Here we are, God.

The rest of our lives will be filled with stories that have been and will be told through the generations, stories of God-made saints living out of and being God’s love, nurture, and grace for other people.

Return to your day. Be ready the next time you hear the voice calling and answer: Here I am, God.

And then hang on to your hat!

God Works. We Have Hope!

Monday, November 15, 2021

As the Snow Covers Everything Announcing Winter’s Dark-Cold’s A’comin’

We Remember God’s Work in Our Past

And Know

That Spring Will Come.

So God Will Melt Our Hard Hearts

To Give Us New Life.

Ezekiel 36:36

Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.

Acts 11:20-21

But among them were some men of Cyprus and Cyrene who, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists also, proclaiming the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

God works.

We work.

When God works we often do not see anything happen.

When we work, especially in committees, we often do not see anything happen.

When I work and I don’t see anything happen as a result, it’s a bad, bad day, because my work is all the about the basics of staying alive: gathering wood, building shelter, building systems to support life, hauling supplies like water and food, cutting and splitting wood, feeding the ‘monster’ wood so it produces heat, repairing systems that support life that will stop supporting life if they are not fixed or already have not only stopped but started to endanger life because they are broken, reading and writing so that my spirit does not succumb to my enemies attacks on me, praying, celebrating, resting and sleeping (though the last are hardly work per se.)

When God works, and we open our eyes, sometimes we see the results: nations are moved, mountains are levelled or reformed, planets and stars are created or destroyed or transformed, hearts are enlivened after being hard as granite, people eat and drink and celebrate who were thirsting and starving to death, people are healed and given new life, saints are called home and given their reward for eternity, and the beauty of creation comes crashing into our minds transforming us from despairing to caught in wonder.

When we work and we see results, our efforts and results are minuscule in comparison. We sell things to people with pets, or without. We buy things that we need or do not need. We use or abuse resources and are renewable or non-renewable. We pollute ourselves to death burning coal and natural gas, consuming disposable plastics, or setting radioactive atoms to react hopefully always in a controlled manner but that is not our record. We set people against people with weapons capable of destroying whole populations and de-storying masses (genocide.) We construct highways and airplanes and rocket-ships that invite people to increase their carbon footprint – because ‘it’s there.’ We build cities that will flood as the planet warms and the oceans rise, a result of our carbon mega-footprints and billions of smaller footprints that add up to more than than our host planet can accommodate without changing even that which we rely on for life. And our ‘marvellous’ accomplishments fill a listing that seems endless … and always has an end that reads ‘which leads to the extinction of humans on planet earth, and before that the cessation of human and animal life as we know it.’

Is there any hope for us?

Is there any hope for planet earth?

Is there any hope?

Thank God, God responds to our destructive, sinful ways of working by promising: I, the Lord, will have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate!

God works … and it is always good.

We work … and it is almost always destructive … unless God directs and we cooperate as the Holy Spirit moves in and through us.

Is there any hope?

Only because of God’s promises to be Gracious with us … again and again and again. And when God works it happens, sometimes from the most surprising corners of the earth as foreigners come to share the Good News with us, we who hunger and thirst to hear and know the old, old story is for us, too.

Self-help OR God’s Help

Sunday, November 14, 2021

God’s Help

Comes

Already

Each Morning, Noon, and Night

Announced by the Son’s Light.

Isaiah 58:1

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

Galatians 4:9

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

Self help gurus and advice abound. Almost all include some kind of self affirmation to promote the ‘best one can be’ to emerge from one’s thoughts, words and deeds.

And it is all futile. Sometimes it produces great results in people who produce great things, BUT it’s all built on a lie and like a house of cards it is always one little whiff of reality, one puff of truth, away from collapsing under it’s own weight of falsehoods.

Some people say that building a life, a ‘successful’ life, is always about overcoming the underlying sense of being a fraud, of ‘learning to fill the shoes’ of those who have done your profession or ‘life’ before you. Some people actually do feel inadequate, or fraudulent, in their work even though they are actually well qualified. That’s a different challenge to overcome. When one builds one’s life on an ever increasing set of lies, one does not meet the qualifications at numerous steps, exams, and milestones towards qualification. Instead one cheats at each step, on many if not all exams, and is a complete fraud at the milestones, presenting oneself to be someone one has never qualified to start being. There are lost of people who do this. My ex never trained as more than a low level nurses’ aide, immigrated to Canada, applied, took the test and qualified (without further training) as a registered nurse. She continues to falsify her yearly continuing ed requirements. So many people know this and allow her to continue because there is a shortage of registered nurses and she works hard. It’s not that she’s not intelligent enough, its that she’s not capable of doing some of the things a registered nurse must be able to do.

How do so many people come to live such fraudulent lives? How do people learn that cheating pays off, that lies work better than real and hard work? How do so many people get away with it? They get away with it and learn this ‘shortcut’ to life from all those who have gone before them, also frauds. Like the STASI in East Germany, who kept files on almost everyone, filled with reports from so many sources, mostly from ordinary citizens, many who used reports to tell lies about their enemies and competitors … and anyone they were angry at. The STASI knew most of it were lies. They created their own false reports aplenty and ruined many, many good, honest people … just because they could.

Which is what Canada’s own RCMP and Justice system does because they can: from the false citizen reports solicited by the RCMP, to false reports created by RCMP, to lawyers who knowingly provide lies to the courts, and on to the many judges who make unsupported decisions and remove exonerating evidence from transcripts and knowingly allow people, even experts, to perjury themselves with impunity. All because ‘they can’.

But they cannot … they cannot just get away with it. Someone always knows, someone always speaks up, and someone always blows a puff of truth on their fraudulent ‘house of cards’ and it all comes tumbling down. Trouble is when it tumbles it takes out a lot of innocent people, even whole societies when the fraudulent systems is allowed to continue so long one cannot remember when or how it did not function fuelled by lies.

Again and again, scriptures calls God’s people to Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

So lift your voice, tell the truth, expose the lies, blow the one card out that you know is a complete fraud, and let the ‘house’ fall before it takes out the whole country.

It is not that anyone of us does not participate in at least some small way to this ‘house of cards’ and for that every single one of us needs to start each day with confession of our sins. Only having confessed our own sin to God, and breathing each moment only because God is gracious to us forgiving us and renewing life in us, are we then able to ‘announce to our people their rebellion and sin against God.

All will not be lost, no matter the challenges our enemies may work against us for telling the truth, for the power [of Christ] at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine … both saving us from our enemies and saving our enemies from their own lies and fraudulent lives.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus and accomplish the work of bringing ordinary citizens, RCMP, lawyers and even judges to speak the truth in the face of so many lies.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus and accomplish this work, so that our whole society does not collapse because of one puff of truth.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus!

Dream, Dream Away

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Dream, Dream

While the Northern Lights Dance

in the Darkness.

God’s Promise for Our Future

Is So Much Greater a Dance

Spectacular!

Isaiah 45:15

Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.

Ephesians 3:20-21

Words of Grace For Today

Be careful what you pray for, and what you wish for;

God has ways of accomplishing more than we can imagine

and calling us to lives that we never imagined possible

working with, for, or because of people we never thought God would make us suffer.

People are full of shtako.

People are full of blessings.

Which will you be today?

Which do you wish or pray for today?

Remember God may fill your wish and a prayer with something more challenging than you can imagine possible!

So are we to simply stop wishing, praying, dreaming, and hoping!?!

Not really, eh!

Just get ready for the ride: living as God’s saints, deliverers and agents of Grace is the wildest ride possible!

Hang on tight to the only thing that is actually secure enough to stand the stresses coming our way: God’s promises, grace, and love.

…

‘Caught’ch’ya dreaming!’

Fresh Wisdom

Friday, November 12, 2021

A blanket pours down in the Darkness

Lit by the Light of Christ.

Isaiah 2:12

For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high.

1 Peter 5:5

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. All of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’

Words of Grace For Today

It is true that God gives grace to the humble, and I am very sure and proud that I can say that God gives grace to the proud.

The Lord of hosts certainly has a day (or eternity one would hope!) against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high. Just so God has a day against every kind of sin, and no one lives without each hour committing a sin that God has a ‘day’ (an eternity) against.

There is order.

There is order that God created in the universe.

There is order that God created in the universe for us to discover, understand, and use … or rather to learn to live in harmony with. As much as we learn to live in harmony with the order God created life is healthier for us and those around us.

I am not so sure that accepting the authority of the elders is exactly the order that God created, for wisdom does not always come with age or authority assumed and exercised, nor does wisdom come with the freshness of youth. Wisdom is a gift that God sprinkles freely and randomly … and somehow some people seem to come up short, and not just short but kind of a vacuum of wisdom, no matter their age or intelligence.

Respecting each other, now that is a must for health.

Elders respecting youth, youth respecting elders. Men respecting women and women respecting men. Respect among and between all races, genders, faiths, and levels of wisdom even; this is how we live in harmony with the diverse universe God created. Respecting an idiot does not mean obeying an idiot. It is to respect that even the greatest, most powerful, most stupid idiot is still one of God’s creatures, and as long as these idiots breathe God is giving them time for the amendment of life, and we can learn to do so as well, and work to contain the effects of their idiocies on the rest of humanity.

God has a day against …

God has a day against all idiocies and sins, against all lies and false witnesses, and against all corrupt judgments and delusions of power. We need not make that day come sooner, nor stop praying that God’s day will come very soon.

Those with any wisdom want God’s day against their own sin to come soon, very soon, for their day before God is determined already as Jesus’ record will be used in place of our own … we will continue to be God’s saints, free then of sin, free to exercise God’s Grace that is so abundantly poured over us, like a fresh white blanket of snow pours over the darkness of the night.