Category: Moon

It is Fitting …

Monday, January 17, 2022

Moonset,

Waiting for Sunrise,

Trusting God’s Gifts,

Singing God’s Praise

As It Is Fitting!

Psalm 147:1

Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

Ephesians 5:19

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

Cell phones across the world produce pictures and videos at an astounding rate each day.

From Statista: “In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion….” https://www.statista.com/statistics/245501/multiple-mobile-device-ownership-worldwide/

This means that we have an overwhelming plethora of images of our world, manipulated to look better than reality by software written and rewritten by programmers … so much so that our imagination of what the world is has been bent, skewed, and perverted to such an extent that experiencing the real world has become extra-ordinary. Some find it marvellous to experience the real world. Others (those so disconnected from reality through their reliance on digital ‘connections’) find it outright daunting and even frightening.

The music of the spheres, as it was named centuries ago, plays through the universe, from the deepest points in space to the tiniest piece of creation on earth …

and

we are privileged to be able to sing along

with

wondrous praise

for the Creator of this magnificent creation

in which we were created to live, flourish, love, hope, and find connection with each other and with creation.

A great photo (in comparison to a snapshot or picture or video) uses all the tools at hand (in the camera and available to the photographer) and

imagines

the wonders that can be produced from a particular perspective of creation,

in order to create (as God made us able to be creative, not mere tools manipulated by software)

an image that speaks volumes

(of praise)

about

the Creator, us creatures, and this amazing planet we live on (and some of us are so privileged to have shelter to call home on.)

So we sing songs of praise that are fitting to the gifts God gives us, and we sing and make melody to the Lord in our hearts.

What will we do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will we selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that we can ‘get ahead’ or

will we sing God’s praises?

What will you do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will you selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that you can ‘get ahead’ or

will you sing God’s praises?

Choose as you will, but as for me and mine, we will serve the Lord, and sing and sing and sing God’s praises in our hearts and in all we do each day, as God makes us saints able.

The Way of the World

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

The Sky Remembers

With the Colour of Honour

The Blood of All

The Men Abused

and Many Who Were Killed

Ecclesiastes 5:6

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.

Spoils and Siblings

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Whose Land Is It, Anyway?

It is God’s

Given to Us as Stewards

To Share with Our Siblings.

Deuteronomy 3:7-9

All the livestock and the plunder of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves. So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir).

Mark 3:35

Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Words of Grace For Today

Ancient claims of land belonging to a particular people are seldom anything but a bit hypocritical.

The land claim of Jews in the Middle East is well known to be established on their claim that ‘their land’ was stolen from others and their right to it was that God promised the people land. To this day the displaced Palestinians have legitimate grievances and suffer terribly waiting for the world to provide a reasonable resolution to being displaced since 1947, and earlier.

Indigenous land claims in Canada are based on white people stealing the land, though the indigenous histories are not without similar events through their own histories.

As long as people have lived, the competition for land has been a repeated source of terrible struggles, losses, and long term grievances.

So we, in our history, record that we took land from the Amorites, and kept livestock and plunder from their towns.

We are no better than the worst of all humans.

We are only saved by God’s Grace.

Only if the Holy Spirit inspires goodness in us, inspires us to do God’s will, and inspires us to be saints, are we able to reflect God’s love for us to others.

The Holy Spirit’s work, God’s work (by God’s will) alone determines then who is Jesus’ brother, sister, and mother. God alone makes us children of God, makes us Jesus’ siblings, and brings us to recognize that we are all ‘in this together.’ We are all each others’ siblings.

Land claims are crucial to pay attention to and to honour.

More important is to honour the gifts God gives us, not to try to hoard them for ourselves, and to share them with all those in need.

The Sacrifice OR The Promise.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Like new leaves in Spring,

God restores us to new life,

not as slaves, Doch

as Children and Saints.

Psalm 51:19

Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Luke 15:21

Then the son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Words of Grace For Today

Getting it right before God.

Oh, how we have tried through the generations.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own children, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own goats and lambs, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own cattle, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own birds, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing ourselves, like the so called prodigal son, who really is only prodigal in his waste of life’s limited resources. This son comes and confesses his sins to his father, hoping to get work as a servant or slave, for then at least he will eat well enough to survive. His ‘prodigal’ waste has left him so broke and dishonoured that he cannot even get work that pays enough to provide himself food, even when he feeds other people’s pigs food that is more than he has to eat.

And it’s all wrong, oh we get it wrong.

God uses Abraham to declare that NO God does not want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, not at all.

God uses someone anonymous in history to teach us that God does not want blood sacrifices (or maybe we just got lazy, for this sacrifice is messy and quite wasteful.)

God uses Jesus to teach us that we should not sacrifice other’s well being to make up for out own sins, in other words we should not scapegoat others in order to relieve the stress and conflict in our own lives.

Jesus uses the prodigal son and so many other parables and characters to teach us that we first can hear God’s promises to forgive us and restore us as living saints doing God’s grace for all people, and then we can confess our sins, expecting not to be made slaves or servants. Doch God rather restores us to live as God’s own children.

This God promises us, and tries to teaches us, and forgives us, and tries to restore us to full life … and still we try to make it through life like the prodigiously wasteful son, burning through the limited resources of life available to us and when things go wrong we still scapegoat others, destroy others, and try to make others pay for our own failings.

Well, some or maybe most of us that is. Some of us are blessed to have figured out how not to scapegoat others, or maybe we never learned.

The rest … ah what misery they create for others and themselves!

God have mercy on us, and keep these people far, far, far from us again this day.

God have mercy.

God have mercy on us, and teach these people soon of your promises, forgiveness, and Grace.

God have mercy on us all.

Reality, as History and God’s Word Teach Us

Friday, November 5, 2021

Dark Is Dark

Always Dark

Always Filled with the Light of Christ

even as Aurora Borealis

Isaiah 5:20, 23

Ah, you 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! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

1 Peter 2:21-22

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’

Words of Grace For Today

How is it that given all the literature about the corrupt nature of humans, their deceit, greed, scheming, and wilful destruction of other people … how is it that I lived so many years thinking that we had evolved beyond this and that people were basically honest, kind and good?

There are people who are so and I lived as one of them, assuming that all people live so, or those who did not were a minor exception deviating just for the moment under some temptation or variance of life that dragged them down to a darkness that cannot be survived except were one to be rescued.

How is it that I lived so long assuming that other pastors, bishops, church leaders and people friendly to me were basically good, and not basically corrupt at the core, taking advantage of anyone and any situation possible to advance their own greed, lusts, covetousness, and to fill the void in their pathetic souls?

But I did. Thanks be to God?

A more complete extract from Isaiah tells of the consequences to the corruption so rampant: Ah, you 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! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the instruction … and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

There it is: it is so often a story lived out and told, retold and preserved that we can learn from it … and yet we simply do not! The corrupt continue their corruption and those naive like me continue to live naive until some corrupt, mentally ill, pathological liars use me yet again and scoff at me as if I were the one, and not they, who were so corrupt (as not to supposedly recognize the reality they make up where light is dark, dark light, bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter – which is a definition of hell).

How are we to live then?

The answer is simple and impossible:

We are to live as Jesus the Christ lived: follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ … For to this we have been called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example … of how to live!

Pure and blameless, no sin, no deceit at all. Perhaps those of us so wired as not to be able to be deceitful can approach having no deceit (which is seen as some kind of abnormality! by the world.) DOCH there is not one of us who can be pure and sinless!

So what are we to do!?!

We can only rely on the Grace of God to use Jesus’ record in place of ours when we are judged. Knowing that God exercises exactly this Grace for us, not just at the end judgment but every day, we are free to choose …

And we are then freed to be able to choose … not to deceive others, not to turn reality inside out, not to destroy others, and even not to sin!

We are able to do these not on our own, but only as the Holy Spirit enables us to choose and to do these. We get no credit for living this way. We can only give God thanks and …

We GET to choose to exercise this same Grace for others.

We GET to be the agents of God’s Grace for others.

We GET to be the ones who set others free from their past sins and to live by Grace.

We GET to leave the judging to God, in God’s time, in God’s way.

And We GET to rejoice that God has given us eyes to see evil in and all around us, and to respond with the only response that can change the world back to light being light, dark being dark, bitter being bitter, and sweet being sweet.

We GET to live in God’s reality, in God’s kingdom, by Grace alone.

Dressed for the Day

Thursday, November 4, 2021

A New Day at 6:41

May Look Like All the Brokenness Left from All Our Yesterdays

Doch

God, Robes All the Saints,

In New and Righteous Garments,

So That We Rejoice in God’s Grace That We Get to Share

With Everyone

Isaiah 61:10

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Acts 8:39

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

Words of Grace For Today

As she’d gotten older, year by year, month by month, even week by week, Jill had spent more and more time getting ready for the day. What started as a simple wash and run in her 20’s, by the time she was 50 was a thorough wash, application of 5 different ‘cleansing’ and ‘preserving’ soaps and lotions, followed by a ten minute exercise routine, then three different pills (a medication for GERDS, a vitamin for women 50+, and a glucosamine for arthritis), a breakfast with Omega3 and antioxidants, and a careful dressing for the day to ensure she did not leave something showing that should not be showing, and then when she was in her 60’s each year there was another thing added to the routine, and the medications at night were added and taken away, exercises, added or increased and removed, then added again, then replaced with others, and the arthritis demanded more and more medications (or additives to food, and the simple glucosamine was now a cocktail of additives that relieved the pain for a few hours, and dressing was always painful. Her wardrobe had to change depending on whether she could get her arms into a sweater, or she needed a button or zipper up front, or whether she could bend her legs and hips enough to get into something proper looking or she had to lay down to edge her way into something quite loose and comfortable, but a bit ghastly looking.

When she read the passage from Isaiah she thought about how her clothing had changed, and how getting dressed had become a major production in the last few months, worse than ever before. What a spectacular image: God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

Were getting dressed so easy and simple. Just let God do it. If that were her morning routine then she’d wear her ‘birthday suit’ everyday all day long, and that was not a pretty site anymore if it ever had been.

Still this assurance that God robed her in righteousness struck her to the core, and she involuntarily gave God thanks. Then noticing Isaiah’s words again, she realized that these ancient words from so many generations ago reported the same reaction in the writer. Because of the grace of God the writer greatly rejoiced in the Lord, my whole being exulted in my God.

Sometimes it was the simple ancient words that connect us to all the saints, those who have gone before us, those living now on earth, and all those yet to come in the generations of the future. What we experience, knowing we share so much with all the saints of all time, is what the eunuch experienced after Philip baptized him: as he joined the saints through baptism, and after Philip was there with him no more, he went on his way rejoicing.

So also this day, Jill thought, we saints, all of us, have so many reasons to rejoice, but none is more earth shaking and life altering than that God chooses us and clothes us in garments of salvation, in robes of righteousness.

A World of Deep Darkness … Lit Brightly by Christ

Monday, November 1, 2021

The Darkness and Cold Will Come Soon.

…

So Prepare With Hard Work

and

Trust the Light of Christ

to Guide and Heal Us.

Isaiah 9:2

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. As one who suffers a slight attitude problem with extended darkness (slight SADS) I prepare well, plan to be in the daylight as much as possible, and save for gasoline to run the generator to supply electricity for the many lights set to stun the living daylights back into me. I often unscrew a few bulbs from the set of 8 that shine from each end of my warm space (warm if the furnace is burning hot enough!)

Before I heard about and understood the effect of the lack of sunlight on my mind, I loved to joke about the darkness, and about the light at the end of the tunnel. … I still do, though now the humour is a bit darker, since I know ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ is most likely a freight train of Covid19 delayed goods, running late and fast and long and heavy, coming this way … and we’ve got no where to go to get out of the tunnel, so throwing ourselves between the tracks on the dirty ties, and keeping our heads down is probably the best way to survive what’s coming at us. Except keeping our heads down pretty much means giving up on life until the train leaves us in the tunnel in the dark, marching, marching, marching over the ties to get out of the tunnel. The advice fits well: when you find yourself having/having-been marched into hell, keep moving until you are out!

This is only a caricature of the deep shtako that so many people through history and in so many places have found themselves. It is the deep darkness that Isaiah and many others speak about. It is the darkness that can be forced upon us by our reaction to the dark seasons, by other people’s intent to destroy and de-story us, and by the cascading and accumulating effects of sins massed into evil that simply consumes all life in its wake.

We need the promise that Isaiah and so many others have provided: on them and on us a great light has shined. Even in the darkness consuming us and those around us, there is a light that shines, a great light that shines in every darkness, a light that exposes and overcomes all darkness: every lie, every deceit, every greedy theft, and even death. It is the light of Christ.

This light provides us simple respite from the darkness: we ask. Jesus delivers. We live in the light and are the saints who reflect Christ’s light to all around us.

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. There is a light that overcomes all darkness, and we are God-made saints who get to reflect that light in the darkness to all people around.

Christ has dealt with all our past sins. Christ has overcome all the past evil and darkness. Christ has prepared us and all the saints for every coming darkness no matter how dark it gets.

That’s a promise to live out today! Work hard for the coming winter. Prepare well. And always trust Christ to be with with us, no matter what comes!

Odor or Audor

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Moonlight.

Even in the Dark

God Provides Light for Us

Genesis 8:21

When the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

Titus 2:11-12

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.

Words of Grace For Today

The inclination of our hearts is evil from our youth.

What happens next is … well … our history of destroying one another in the most creative and repetitive ways.

Kind of a mess.

So God decides to fix it all and start over. Come waters all and flood the evil people to death. God plans to start over … so Noah, the righteous man and his family, along with two of every kind of animal on earth are loaded into an ark, that will float out the flood. Noah and company find dry land when the waters recede and they give a wonderful aroma wafting offering as thanks to God.

God is pleased, and promises never to flood away the evil inclinations of all the human hearts, ever again. (Thank God for that, and for Noah for reminding God that we might be worth the bother.)

Bother is what God does, and God sends Jesus to demonstrate clearly the inclination of God’s heart is to be gracious and provide salvation to us all.

A huge bother, costing Jesus his life, though it does actually provide the greatest salvation for us that we could ever imagine.

Worldly passions and all kinds of all impiety do not hold a candle in comparison to God’s gracious gift of salvation for us.

A little gratitude can fill our lives and spill over to many people around us. It’s not the trickle down theory, leaving those under the trickle with less than those on top. It is the overfull blessing that is equally generous to all.

God provides everything we need: promises we can count on, and generosity we can share with everyone.

The Lord Has Anointed Us …

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Sent into the Darkness

To Reflect

Christ’ Light

…

(as a star-planet reflects the sun)

Isaiah 61:1-2

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.

Luke 1:30

The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.’

Words of Grace For Today

To be sent.

To be sent to bring good news.

To be sent to proclaim liberty and release, and the year of the Lord’s favour.

[To be sent to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God. Set this one aside for now.]

To be sent to bind up, and comfort.

…

The first part seems easy enough, just go out and speak loudly. Today that is easy enough with all the social media available to anyone who wishes to pontificate.

There may be some blow back, but that’s social media for you.

The tough part starts to be clear when it’s not just words, it’s actions. Actions that take every ounce of life we have to give to them, actions like binding up the broken-hearted, comforting those who mourn.

If you’ve ever endeavoured to bind up the broken-hearted, you will know it is an impossible task, and one only makes headway through day after day persistently being with the broken-hearted with all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope.

If you’ve ever endeavoured to comfort those who mourn, you will know it is an impossible task and one never makes headway. At best one can be with the person mourning, and sometimes leaving the mourning person alone to grieve in their own way. Grief is what we experience when the foundation of our lives are ripped out from underneath us so that our lives make no sense at all anymore. There is no foundation, no connection with the present since the past is ripped from us, and the future is a hopeless jumble of chaos that threatens to consume us and all we are, or so some say. Grief is actually not definable nor curable. At best one can exercise all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope as a model for how life can be organized into something of meaning for the past, for today, and for the future.

This is what the Saviour is called and sent to do … for the whole universe, and as Christ’s disciples (followers) we are called and sent to do this today for all people, and for creation itself!

Mary is called and sent to bear the Saviour of the universe as her own son. This is more than most get sent to be and do. There is only one way for her not be consumed by fear. There is only one way for us who are sent to be the instruments of Christ in today’s world. This one way is to know and trust that God has chosen us, called us, and sent us as God’s favoured ones. Only protected by God’s favour can we think of doing, yet alone actually do, what God calls and sends us out to do with our lives.

Then there is that last thing: to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.

If we somehow let ourselves be blind to the blow back that will be and is aimed at us, (which is so more than words on social media, it is words and actions meant to destroy us and all we stand for, since what we proclaim and do certainly upsets the status quo of power, privilege, and control exercised in today’s world), then this proclamation ought to make it clear: we stand to proclaim that God will act against also those of power, privilege, and control made possible by the Great Deceiver’s lies.

We bring good news …

Doch the good news will disassemble the status quo of injustice and evil, of everything based on lies and deceptions (which is a huge portion of what humans do to each other!)

The good news is good for the blessed things of God, and terribly bad for the evil things that stand against God.

And that is how we will be dealt with, as the full force of lies and destruction will be aimed at us (as they have been aimed at us) to disrupt the Good News. Only the foolish or stupid would brave such evil at the hands of so many people … or those who know they are sent by God as God’s favoured ones.

So we are called and sent … to be ‘little Christs’ to all people.

Comfort, Comfort

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Looking

To

Each

New Day

Isaiah 40:1

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Luke 9:11

When the crowds found out [that, taking his disciples with him, Jesus had withdrawn privately to a city called Bethsaida], they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shortage of people today who suffer unimaginable pain, hunger, thirst, and torture. Many of the suffer so at the hands of other people.

It has been so through all time.

Many people today suffer diseases, Covid -19 only one of the many that are deadly in horrible ways. Many suffer for lack of care or recklessness of other people. Many in Alberta’s health care sector, overrun and pushed to and over the brink as they are by Covid cases, refer to the fourth wave (the worst of all of them) as the Kenney-wave, since he recklessly pushed his ‘Open for Summer’ program through, which fuelled the fourth wave to be so huge and destructive, and deadly.

Is has been so through all time.

The greatest suffering by far is not measured by physical ailments or torture. The greatest suffering is what we humans experience in our souls, or spirits, or hearts and minds.

In the midst of all kinds of suffering, God is still present providing comfort, healing, and hope.

God’s unconditional love in action provides the most essential element of life for us: hope.

Hope that our yesterdays will be blessed.

Hope that today will be blessed.

Hope that our tomorrows will be blessed.

Hope that tomorrow will be at least in some small way better than the horrific illnesses, injustice, abuse that is today’s offerings for us.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God, and [Jesus] heals those who need to be cured.