Snow – Page 4

I Hear You, I See You, I Know You

Monday, November 8, 2021

God Knows Every Blade of Grass

Whether Buried by Snow or Standing in the Chilly Air.

So Also God Knows Every Last Minutia of Us,

And …

Psalm 63:7

You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a terrible thing to not be seen at all, to have others look right past you and never notice that you exist. It is a terrible thing to be reduced to a thing that can be manipulated and used, everything extracted from and then tossed out with the garbage (as has been done to me). It is a terrible thing to go asking for help from those certified and paid to help, and to be ignored, as if it were okay that one be left to die unnoticed (as the doctors, nurses, and staff have done to me with lies about what I supposedly did to justify their lies and abuse.) It is more horrendous to be the ones who abdicate their privilege and responsibility to provide help, to see and to work to heal. For by choosing to refuse help and care to those in need, they become instead of privileged, they become cursed by their own lies and hard hearts. While there is a cure for many diseases and ailments, and while God promises to heal us of every disease of our hearts, minds and strength; there is no cure for these kinds of lies and hard hearts, not without God intervening … but they refuse to hear God’s promises and they refuse to acknowledge their lies and hard hearts, and in so doing they refuse the only help that could save them, God’s Grace.

To be seen, to be helped, to help others, and to heal one another in body, mind and heart; this is what God created us for. This is a marvellous way to live; being saved and forgiven and healed by God so that we can be that same Grace for others.

It is a terrible thing to be silenced (as I have been), told you are someone you are not (as I have been) and told you have done things you did not do (as I have been). It is to be gaslit, and then silenced, to have your reality and voice stolen from you (as was done to me – by so many people including the courts – and most of the people who did this to me did not do it by accident or negligence or by error – they did it with eyes wide open intention). While it is horrendous for the person silenced, it is long term more devastating for the people who gaslight and silence others, for their reality is based on lies, a whole pack of lies, and they will never escape the horrors they create for themselves until they seek, find, and admit the truth of what they have done … and that is so unlikely to happen. Instead they create more and more lies, creating a bubble of completely falsehoods from the bottom, to the top, to all sides around them. They separate themselves from reality and reality is not for them, but against them in every way.

Those who are silenced know well what the Psalmist writes of ‘You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy’ for God comes to help us, save us, and give us new life.

Those who gaslight and silence others cannot know God’s saving hand, can they! God reaches out to them, promises them forgiveness (as God does for all people), yet they refuse to acknowledge their lies and in refusing to recognize what they do they refuse God’s promises, help, forgiveness, and renewed life. What a waste of life!

To be heard: that is a precious thing. To be able to speak the truth and have people listen and respond: this is what God gave us eats, minds, and tongues for.

To be un-seen, and un-heard are terrible things.

To be seen and heard is precious and needed for life.

To be known … that is yet another infinite degree of precious, for it is beyond most people’s ability to know others well and even less so to know themselves. Paul describes this inability we share as ‘seeing dimly through a mirror’ and a very imperfect, misty mirror at that. But for another to know us, down to the last detail … and to love us in spite of it all … well that is something that only God can do.

And knowing that God promises to know us, all our past, present and future, the good, bad and the ugly about us, … and for God to promise to still forgive us, heal and renew us, and to send us out into the world to be that same forgiveness, healing, and renewing for others … well there is nothing so spectacular in all the universe and …

and this is the life God created us to live!

Our Too Simple Fix & God’s Solution

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

By Fire …

And By Ice …

God Cleanses Creation

and Us

(with the Law to Expose Our Sins

and the Gospel of Our Sins Forgiven)

Jeremiah 31:34

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Acts 10:43

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Words of Grace For Today

That day when all will know God, and no one will need to teach about God or learn about God will be the day

we hope

when all sin will disappear, when humans will no longer sin.

God has a different plan.

If sin disappears we will have lost our freedom to choose and with that our ability to love,

for love entails the commitment of self to another person, a commitment made as a free choice. Otherwise it is not love.

As our ability to choose to love persists, then we must (a priori) have the choice not to love, which is to sin.

As long as love exists, sin exists.

God does not end sin … and therefore love.

God allows us to love and to sin … and

God deals with our sins by forgiving them, exactly when we do not deserve that forgiveness.

This is Jesus’ story: that God so loved the world that God gave his only son that all who believe in him should be saved. This believing is not something we accomplish other than by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Jesus saves us by grace alone.

Each day we breathe we have choices, and when we choose to love we, they people we love, and all of creation benefits. This is how God created us to live.

If we choose to not love, then God offers us forgiveness, free forgiveness and renewed life, renewed so that we can again choose to love … or not.

God’s love for us and mercy is unending. God continues to offer us forgiveness as long as we breathe.

…

And for now we need to use that breathe to learn and teach one another of God’s Grace, for it is a lesson we never quite retain.

All In God’s Image

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

God Created

All People

To Share the Wonders of Life on This Planet

Through the Lens of Love

Genesis 1:27

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

1 Corinthians 11:11-12

Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.

Words of Grace For Today

Humans are not totally depraved. We are capable of doing good things, and even loving truly. That requires that God gave us freedom to choose to love … which means we also can choose to do evil things and even things that destroy love with hate. We like to think well of ourselves, that we most often choose to do good, to love truly all that God has given us. Most of us think better of ourselves than is the reality. Part of thinking better of ourselves is that we all look at each situation and try to not find blame with ourselves, but with others. We most easily choose a stranger or someone who is different than us to blame for terrible things we cannot find the cause of, so that we are not blamed for them.

All of us do this blaming. Through all human history because men and woman are identifiably different from each other, the other gender has always been a too common ‘other’ to blame for our own shortcomings. It is so common yet we want to avoid acknowledging it that we have names for it that mislead us from seeing what we are doing to each other. We call it the ‘battle of the sexes’ or the ‘age old competition between men and women.’ It is in fact our sin of blaming others for our own sin at work.

This is not how God created us to be. God created us to live at peace with each other, with equal respect for each other, and with appreciation for each others gifts given by God as gifts for all to benefit from. God intended us also in couples to live in love with each other.

To live, loving others, to live in love with one other person, and to be at peace with one’s own sin, is the most rewarding, purpose giving manner to live; it is how God created us, male and female, to live with each other.

It is the perverted and truly depraved who believe and live as if ‘others’ are all terrible and they and those like them are without fault. It is a terrible thing when men abuse women and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity. It is no fix for this, as is too often done today, when women rise up to abuse men and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity.

It is the mentally ill who blame others, to the extreme, for all their own sins to avoid all culpability, no matter how clear it is that they themselves are truly at fault.

God created people to be able to love.

To sustain the species, as with many other species, God created us male and female. This is a blessing. This does not mean that every man was created to procreated with a woman in love with her so that the children would grow up in a family built on love, or that every woman was created to procreate with a man in love with him so that the children would grow up in a family built on love.

By design, when the population flourishes and procreation is not in the best interests of the species or the planet, some men were created to love only other men, some women to love only women, and many more men and women were created to love either the opposite or the same gender. When the pressures of overpopulation increase, and the luxuries of civilization increase, human history shows that those who choose the same gender as their partners increases … by design, so that the population may decrease. Somehow, so eager to blame others who are different, and so eager to be able to condemn others who are different from us (or so much the same as us, filled with shame condemning them instead of ourselves,) we fail to appreciate that God provides ways for us to love and live fully and for the population to decrease to where the planet can survive us humans.

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God created us in God’s image, capable of love. It is in loving that life has meaning. It is in loving others that we are made able to give all that we are so that others can live, and live abundantly. It is in loving that we can share God’s greatest blessing: to love unconditionally.

All by Grace …

Monday, August 16, 2021

No Matter

How Grand Our Accomplishments Appear to Us

They are Only Like Weeds

That Blossom When Watered and Given Sun

By God’s Good Grace

Psalm 115:1

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

Romans 12:3

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Words of Grace For Today

I woke to mow back the weeds and grass to keep down the mosquitoes and give fewer places for wasps to hide and surprise me when I’m out walking and working.

Do I get credit for putting in the sweat time, going back and forth across and up and down the hill? Why not? After all I was the one up before 6 am to be out before the hot sun heated the meadow and hillside to over 30⁰C when mowing risks heat stroke, swarming by black flies and an unwanted encounter with wasps.

George lived his whole live long working hard ‘in the trenches’, sometimes literally, for the city. He started out as a labourer and ended up a labourer who knew more about the infrastructure of the small city he lived in (especially what was where underground) than any other person alive. Others could access the plans and records. George had been there to install, upgrade or repair almost every bit of what lay underground. Even in his 70’s George was exceptionally strong, stronger than four or five men his size and he was not short at 5’11”.

Does George (like other hard manual labourers in the world) get the credit for a life of good, honest, hard work providing services to people who knew little of his work or how it provided them water, sewer, electricity and gas into their homes and business?

Sue raised two sons and two daughters in some of the roughest conditions possible, moving from the wilderness of northern Minnesota, to the heat of Arizona, to the wild temperate climate of a very rural part of Alaska sort of near Anchorage. Her children all married, became productive contributors to society, and had their own children. Sue travelled back to Minnesota to care for her elderly and aging mother, to her children spread across the west, and provided a home for her husband, most often with a gentle and firm honest kindness. Does Sue like so many mothers and fathers actively raising children get the credit for the goodness in her children and the kindness she provides to so many people?

The world would answer these questions of credit and say of course! Each person gets the credit for the good they do … and the bad they don’t do. And likewise those who do evil things get the discredit for their deeds. It is simple to measure a person’s goodness or evil by what they have accomplished.

This measure is not God’s, and God’s answer to who gets the credit for all these good things done over different lifetimes is not the person who lived the life. The credit goes to God and God alone for creating, forgiving, sanctifying (making holy, into saints), and renewing life in these people so that they would not be caught as prisoners of their own sins, instead they are freed to do good things in God’s creation.

For by the grace given to us we know that it is not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

Septic Truth; Glorious Blessings

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Like Flower in the Grass

We Are Here Today and Gone Tomorrow

On Our Own We Are No More Than Weeds

In God’s Gracious Light We Become Beautiful

As We Turn Our Lives Towards God

Job 21:22

Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those that are on high?

Romans 12:16

Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.

Words of Grace For Today

The beginning of wisdom is the fear and love of the Lord.

The critical piece in fearing and loving God is that one has then identified one’s place in creation, in the universe, and among God’s people.

Some have said (and said rightly) that the original sin (the one that leads to all others, the first sin, the one portrayed in Eve and Adam eating the fruit of the forbidden tree and getting kicked out of the garden of paradise) is pride or arrogance, that is hubris. It is to place oneself incorrectly in creation and among God’s creatures. It is to place oneself above what one is not above. It is to claim one is wiser, purer, better, more powerful, etc., etc. than one actually is. It is to forget that one is God’s creature, and a miserable sinful one at that.

This misplacement of oneself is often borne of and supported by luxuries that one enjoys (that others cannot) leading one to think one has ‘earned them’ when they are only gifts given by God, and then abused as trophies reflecting one’s supposed station high above others. In fact one, with this false pretense of status, has actually placed oneself on the lowest rung of sinners, those that delude themselves with falsehoods about their own worth.

So we see that money corrupts, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The danger in being one to speak about these corrupting self-image sins is that one participates more fully in them; the only difference is that the ‘luxury’ that one touts as a marker of one’s ‘better status’ in creation is a supposed wisdom, one about other people’s sins. Wisdom about other’s sin and a blindness to one’s own sins is a powerful tool of the devil to win hearts and souls. With the goodness of God (wisdom in this case) claimed as one’s own, one has misplaced oneself in creation, supposedly better than all those miserable rich, powerful, famous sinners. In fact one actually marks oneself therewith as right in the pack of miserable sinners who think they are above others in God’s creation.

Ahh, what is one to do? Should one pretend to know nothing? Should one abandon one’s calling and consecration to bring God’s Word to all people? No, one simply need return to remembering that all people sin, oneself as well. That everyday is a sinners path for every person, oneself included. That only by Grace is one able to be a saint, a God-made saint. One humbly prays for forgiveness, trusts that it is given even before one asks, and proceed humbly through the day, as one of God’s lowly creatures, called to speak truth, even though one is at ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth.

One will then have no trouble associating with the lowly, providing comfort to the lonely and distressed, aiding the helpless and hapless alike, freeing the prisoners, and acting for justice for all people … all in Jesus’ name. One lives filled with gratitude, giving God credit for anything good one is able to do, proclaiming from ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth how great God is to bless such a miserable sinner as oneself, a sign that God does bless any and all who will receive the blessing even as they fear and love God from ‘the bottom of the cesspool of sinners’ on earth.

Giving Freely, or Taking and Destroying

Saturday, August 7, 2021

The Greatest Gift Given:

To Share the Beauty Evident Everywhere

Even in a Simple Blade of Grass

At Sunset.

1 Chronicles 29:5

Who then will offer willingly, consecrating themselves today to the Lord?

2 Corinthians 9:7

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Words of Grace For Today

Arnold began life in poverty in a dictator run country, occupied by the Soviet Union, the son of a pastor, who served a number of small community parishes. That position came with a parsonage and large parcel of land. It was the pastor responsibility to provide care for all the people in the parish and to care for the land and the parsonage … and all the churches he served.

That meant that the ‘poverty’ that Arnold grew up with was relatively luxurious. He enjoyed running water and a toilet that flushed. Apartment complexes had toilets at one end of the building, the excrement falling in a large pipe from each floor to the bottom. There was no running water, just a high trafficked ‘outhouse’. Coal provided heat though it meant gathering it, carrying up the stairs, starting and stoking the fire for cooking, warmth and hot water. The smell of coal smoke was everywhere. Out in the country in the parsonage with it’s land the smell was barely noticed. Where many had not place to run and play, the parsonage land provided all sorts of places to play and find solitude with birds and animals the only noise to be heard.

In the world of adults, though, the secret service police recruited so many informants that one never knew who was watching and who would inform on you, even if it was not the truth. Arnold learned well from the secret police how to observe others and to make the best of their weaknesses for one’s own good.

Arnold lived his whole life vowing never to be one of the people others took advantage of. He would be the one to enjoy the best luxuries of life, whatever that cost other people around him.

Arnold was a ‘taker’ and a destroyer, an accomplished fabricator of lies to cover his own weaknesses and to destroy others who threatened him, most of all those who knew his weaknesses. Being a destroyer and a taker has it’s high cost … of guilt or psychotic oblivion to others or dread of being discovered. Arnold suffered terror jags every day, as most destroyers do knowing well that ‘what goes around eventually will come around.’ Hiding the truth costs more and more lies, until one cannot tell what is true anymore, not at all. The terror becomes inexplicable and inescapable.

Tina grew up a missionary kid in Africa, then in Minnesota. Her parents were medical missionaries, ones who brought caring and curing as the reality of Jesus’ old, old story in this world. Their actions spoke God’s love. They gave up lucrative careers in Minnesota to serve in Africa. When a tropical disease almost killed and fully disabled her mother, they returned to Minnesota to serve as medical ‘missionaries’ even there, giving all they had to provide care for many children and patients and people in the community.

Tina learned early that no matter what happened, the measure of life was certainly not money nor luxuries nor privileges enjoyed. The measure of a good life was in giving what one had. In all she did, she worked hard, listened to people, provided good words, assisted people further in their own lives, and never developed any idea that she had to acquire or possess or earn property, things, wealth, position, status or power. Serving was it’s own reward. Life would take care of itself, or rather God would provide what was needed in life.

Tina was a giver, a self-denier in order to provide for others. Tina enjoyed what she did, even when Arnold took her to the cleaners, ran her through the courts and into prison for crimes she had not committed, and left her destitute, so far in debt she would never be out of debt in this lifetime, barring a miracle of money. Even destitute Tina gave and gave and gave, even when all she had was a funny word, an encouraging word, or just a smile. Long ago Tina offered herself, being ordained as a pastor, dedicating her life to sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love, not merely with words but also with actions of caring for all people and all creation.

These passages have long been used to encourage people to give generously to their congregation’s coffers to cover the costs of churches equal or greater in majesty than the wealthiest in their communities. Sometimes, well rarely, the pastor was compensated well. More likely the parish saw it as their duty to keep the pastor in poverty so that she or he would not sin with the evil’s of money, which really was the parishioners’ sins of greed and coveting the education of the pastor (well what used to be the good education of the pastors. Now that education of pastors is watered down to only the basics of learning how to do whatever will keep parishes alive, serving whatever passes for faith – which is more likely corrupt power. Forget any integrity in caring God’s Word or the traditions and heritage of the church alive in the parishes. So dishonest pastors flourish, corrupt parishes thrive, and the rest suffer. Nothing new for the Devil has always worked best in churches.)

These passages speak to a much more profound part of life. It is not the offering plate or the volunteering in the parish that is so crucial. These are of minor importance in God’s Kingdom. These passages address our attitude of being grateful for everything we are and have at our disposal – our gratitude for God providing all that is needed and more, our gratitude that when we were and are still wretched sinners, God chose and chooses to love and forgive and give renewed life and walk with us.

Giving to God flows freely and cannot be forced, or it corrupts those who force and those who give. It also corrupts those who try to force others and those who do not give, but take everything they can get from life.

The crucial matter is how we make up our minds to give what we give. Do we decide to give so that it makes up for the ‘taking’ we do in the rest of our lives? Are we like Arnold, takers and destroyers, giving only to cover up our greed, hatred of others, and our scrapping to have everything we can get? Or do we decide to give because God has given us everything? Are we like Tina, givers and bearers of Jesus’ love that brings life to others? Do we share, knowing that what we share never was ours anyway? It is all on loan from God for the purpose of sharing it with all other people, in Jesus’ name and as signs of God’s love for all people?

Choose we do, each time we make a decision: do we serve God or do we serve own ‘interests’?

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Us-Them, We(eds), or All Together.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Whether we see others as ‘weeds’ in our lawn of life

God sees us each as precious and

God shines Light on each of us,

the light of love and life.

Isaiah 56:7

These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Colossians 3:11

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Words of Grace For Today

We humans keep building walls, us and them.

God keeps telling us and showing us that God is for all people, without any us or them.

Christ is all and in all … and for all peoples!

…

Christ is even for me, and for you, sinners though we be, God has claimed us a God’s children and made us saints, able to share God’s light with all people …

without any ‘us’ or ‘them’

walls

judgments

condemnations,

…

just

Grace for all.

It’s a wonderful dance of love, this life is (at least as God intends for us, and makes possible for us to live it.)

Ready or not here it comes, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time … one decision at a time.

Set a place for Elijah, keep an eye for the poor at your gate, invite in the homeless …

This is God’s day, and out day to give everything back to God, one decision in one minute at a time.

Giving Thanks to God ….. not to godlets.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Life is A Maze

an Amazing Maze of Wonders,

Gifts from God.

God is All Amazing.

No need to make small godlets.

Psalm 106:1

Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever.

Colossians 3:17

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Words of Grace For Today

Giving God thanks surely involves using our voices and God’s name, though when we use God’s name constantly in our communication with other people it is a grand misuse of God’s name, grace, and steadfast love.

Truly, in word and deed, doing everything in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God is so much more than mere words of thanks, or constant mention of God’s name.

Giving God thanks is an attitude towards life that brings us to reflect God’s grace towards others.

It is to give of one’s self so that others will live, whether they accept and practice faith in Jesus Christ, or not, for all people are God’s creatures, God’s precious people, people God forgives.

Giving God thanks is to extend to all others the same grace that God first has given (and continually gives) to us.

More often than not it is to do it anonymously, so our names are not known or remembered, so that our God’s name is not known or remembered … rather that God’s grace towards us is experienced as God’s grace towards other people. We certainly are not to bring people to worship or adore us for our good deeds and gracious words. We certainly are not sent out into the world to bring people to worship a ‘small god’, a godlet of any kind even one they name Jesus.

There are enough people worshipping a godlet of some kind or another, and too often they call that godlet ‘Jesus’. It certainly is not.

The past president of Tanzania is one very visible example: Covid 19 hit and shut down country after country in Africa with restrictions and precautions. What did this ‘Lutheran Christian’ do? He prayed. Certainly good. Then he announced to the country that his ‘godlet’ ‘Jesus’ had cured all Tanzanians of Covid 19. There was to be no mention of any respiratory illness as Covid 19, though there were thousands of cases everywhere. His godlet Jesus caused the avoidable death and long term disability through Covid 19 (and long Covid 19) of thousands of Tanzanians. That kind of godlet, no matter what it is called, is certainly not the Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, healer of our every ill, the creator, redeemer and sanctifier of the universe and all people in it.

Small gods, godlets, are made up every day by so many people looking for a way through life’s challenges.

God walks with us, seeing all we do, and still God’s steadfast love endures for ever for us and all people.

Because God is gracious to us, therefore we can be gracious with all the deadly covidiots out there, and all the abusers, and all those with power who abuse it, and all those who thought (and those that still think) residential schools were acceptable, … and all the enemies of life abundant for all.

Treating the enemies of life abundant for all is how we give thanks to God, for God’s grace worked first for us.

…

Happy 90^th Birthday Celebration Dort!

Very sorry we cannot cross the border to be there to celebrate with you.

Whether We Are On or Off, God’s Love Is Always On!

Saturday, May 29, 2021

The First Wondrous View Each Sunny Morning.

Wonders Never Cease

Whether We Notice God’s Miracles

Each Day Determines Much of Our Lives

Psalm 48:9

We ponder your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.

Ephesians 2:22

In Christ Jesus you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

Words of Grace For Today

God’s temple, that temple built by humans, is a great place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works.

God’s temple, that temple built by God – that is all of creation and especially the wildernesses untouched by human ‘domination’, development, and destruction – is the place to contemplate and ponder God’s great works visible and obvious before one’s eyes, if one will open them and notice what is there.

God’s temple, that temple, the body that God dwells in, in each of us provides no end of cause to pause, contemplate, and ponder all of God’s great works that give us breath and life, re-newed life, and hope.

God’s temple, that temple, the body of Christ made up of all the followers of Jesus the Christ, through all time and in all places, is the most remarkable opportunity to contemplate and ponder the great works of God, for in the gathering of Christ’s followers (not at all the greatest people ever) the evidence of God’s Grace is blatant to even the casual observer. Here, in those Christians alive now, great sinners we each and all are and by Grace God-made saints we each and all are, along with the sinner-saints of all times and place, give ample witness to God’s greatest work; that by Grace God claims us, walks with us (even when we sin, trying to ‘run from’ God), forgives us, renews us, and sets us free (sin-free, though we always choose otherwise) to live each day again. That marvellous Grace, for each of us, and that marvellous Grace among us, holds us alive, in body, mind, and spirit. That Grace does not cease when we try for the million-times-millionth time to ‘run from God.’ God’s Grace, miraculously accompanies us through all our lives and into eternity.

If the trees create remarkable shadows on the ‘dark side’ of the sun’s light, we humans cast a shadow far more obvious with our ‘trying to run from God’ efforts. The Grace of God, in the Light of Christ, does not fail to shine even on the cloudiest of days or the darkest moonless nights. Our sins make God’s Grace as blatantly obvious as the trees’ shadows on the dew lit grass of the early morning sun.

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love.

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you (no matter what you have done ‘running from God’, or how desperate your enemies are that attack you, or how lost in it all you may find yourself!)

This Grace is God’s love, God’s steadfast love, also for you, this day, this night, and your every tomorrow.

This is worth pondering, and being awestruck by once again.

Melodies Disparate and Haunting

Friday, May 21, 2021

Woods, Meadow, Mountains or Plain

We are Always Hungry in the Wilderness

Nehemiah 1:6

Lord, may your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned.

James 5:16

Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Words of Grace For Today

The smoke at first curls and twists around and down to the ground as the fire starts to burn. The song birds’ melodies from the woods mix with the loon wails across the water. A distant dog barks always hungry that one. Then as the fire develops coals the hotter smoke, still grey and white, takes a straighter path upwards and away. Seagulls in a flock scream and screech across the meadow. The distant dog barks always hungry that one. Two solo geese fly over honking, their mate on the nest keeping an egg, maybe two or more, warm in the sub-zero pre-sunrise cold. Without notice or care the smoke turns transparent, so hot the smoke particles become invisible, until six feet up from the homemade chimney rain cap it cools to become visible grey again. In the distance the dog still barks, always hungry that one.

Our voices rise to God, sometimes in melodies sweet with praise, sometimes sorrowful wails, sometimes honking, calling attention to ourselves (at our best it is not just hubris but to provide a tiny bit of safety for the vulnerable, as the parent ducks and geese do), sometimes in screams and screeches desperate it seems though it too often is not so, and sometimes like smoke our voices rise to God full of all that our lives have consumed, too cool to rise, hot and clouded, or searing hot and invisible.

Always our voices rise to God because we are hungry, always hungry … for the bread of life, the living water, the light of the universe … for love

…

and we do not understand how to receive all that is already provided to us

…

so we are always hungry.

Then without notice or care God’s Grace permeates our living, we see the awesome wonders of God’s Love and will for us and all creation and

…

we are exposed,

so exposed,

exposed

as the sinners, the unfit creatures in a marvellous creation, that we are.

Our response can only be to lift our voices to God with Nehemiah:

Lord, may your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants the people of [fill in your people], confessing the sins of the people of [fill in your people], which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned.

We cannot confess other’s sins. We confess the sins in which we have participated with others and benefited from, namely the sins of our people of [fill in your people]. We acknowledge our shared sins, and our family sins … and our own personal sins.

This is the first step of becoming aware of God, yet once again, as we traverse our days on the side of God’s holy mountains, in God’s holy plains, and in God’s holy woods and wildernesses.

Confession brings healing so that we then are ready to do what we are called to do,

God’s work bringing abundant life to all people.

And our voices rise to God once again in melodies disparate and haunting … in profound thanks

for all God has provided for us.