Mountains – Page 4

Mags and Hagar

Sunday, April 3, 2022

No Matter the Wilderness We Find Ourselves In

God is There with Us.

Genesis 21:17-18

God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’

Hebrews 12:12-13

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Words of Grace For Today

Mags met Silvia at one of her first DNA and nanobot treatments. ‘Met’ is a bit much. Mags saw Silvia laying unconscious, her treatment almost done. Mags was next. Margaret was her real name, but that’s what they called her grandmother, and Maggie was her aunt, so she’d been tagged as Mags since she could remember.

Mags and Silvia had little in common. Where Silvia was single, Mags was married with three kids just pushing into teenage traumas. Where Silvia had years of treatments behind her, this was Mags first round of cancer. Where Silvia worked with refugees, Mags stayed home with the kids and volunteered at her church as the secretary, in the office two mornings and one afternoon a week and working from home the rest of the week.

Where Silvia doubted God more than trusted God, Mags was faithful in everything. She trusted God, thanked God for her blessings, her three kids and a wonderful husband.

Mags knew the Bible pretty well, and certainly the stories of Sarah and Abraham, and the ugliness of their stories, especially what they did to Hagar and her son. She could not imagine how anyone God chose could do such a thing to another person. Yet she trusted that God would do for many, many people what God did for Hagar and Ishmael; God encouraged them, strengthened them, guided them, and saved them. Mags trusted that God would continue to save her and her family. She had almost died as a teenager, stupid as she had been playing with dangerous drugs for the thrill of it. She hoped that her lesson would be clearly remembered by her kids.

A month ago her last physical showed something wrong in her blood, and the follow up was a chance discovery: even though she did not feel it, she was terribly sick, with less than a few months to live as cancer ran rampant through her blood, bones, nerves, muscles and all her connecting tissue. She’d been a bit tired, and then this news ran her into the ground. The treatments started, her Mondays and Tuesdays disappeared and she woke up in her bed on Wednesdays, unable to move even if she’d wanted to.

The day after Silvia received her shocking and wonderful ‘miracle’ news, the doctor sat next to Mags’ stretcher and explained that the treatments were working for her, but her body was falling apart faster than the treatments could rebuild it. He told her she might have a few more weeks. Certainly not more.

A few hours later Mags sat up to talk with her kids and her husband. Why not sit up, it would make no difference anyway. She encouraged her kids to trust God in everything, and to pray constantly. Her suffering from cancer would be short, her death quick. They planned her funeral together to be a simple worship service streamed and recorded for the congregation to take part in online. Her burial would be simple, since most of her organs and limbs were going to be used in science research for how the DNA manipulation and nanobots had worked and not worked for her. The little part of her body that was not taken would be cremated. They picked out a simple urn for her ashes. They bought a cemetery plot online. They would dig the little grave together. All ten family members would gather as their pastor led them in a short service of thanks.

When the kids were about to head off to bed after the funeral planning, she reminded them of Hagar and Ishmael’s story. If God could take care of those two in the dessert, certainly God would guide, provide for, and save them as well … after she was gone.

Only What We Have Seen and Heard

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Coals That Bring Warmth to Hearts and Minds

Blessed by God!

Numbers 23:12

He answered, ‘Must I not take care to say what the Lord puts into my mouth?’

Acts 4:20

We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.

Words of Grace For Today

Balak and Balaam: it’s quite the story. Look back a bit into Numbers 22: Now Balak son of Zippor was king of Moab at that time. He sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor at Pethor, which is on the Euphrates, in the land of Amaw, to summon him, saying, ‘A people has come out of Egypt; they have spread over the face of the earth, and they have settled next to me. Come now, curse this people for me, since they are stronger than I; perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land; for I know that whomsoever you bless is blessed, and whomsoever you curse is cursed.’

Balaam repeats what God provides as God’s Word for Balak. It is not a curse, but a blessing of Isreal, the people who have come out of Egypt and spread, strong and mighty, over the face of the earth. Three times Balak tries to bring Balaam to curse Israel and three times Balaam repeats the word that God provides: Israel is blessed.

Waking to 10⁰ in the shelter, 11⁰ at the bed, and the propane furnace kicking in and then off before it’s 13⁰ at bed level tends to put a chill on things that reaches into one’s heart slowing down to a crawl in reverse any emerging eagerness to enter the day with hope.

…

Sliding back away from the urgencies of cold mornings … that bone chilling reality sits there a bit until one’s toes and lips crack from impending frostbite,

Forcing one to dress in a rush before arthritic joints freeze up one last time … and then venture out to the stove.

…

A bit of wood is shoved from the frosty, icy pile into the monster’s pie hole (though no pies but dried cow pies pass its lips). Ashes get dumped. Bits and pieces of leftovers of logs get whittled in beside the wood and miraculously there’s combustion, the chemical reaction of fuel, air and heat producing, unfortunately, more smoke than heat.

Then one retreats in haste back to the dream world’s place holder beneath the down duvet where one reads, waits, observes the thermometer and waits for a pressing reason or freedom to emerge again into the reality that awaits.

The wondrous miracle emerges eventually: 67⁰ is recorded in the shelter above the fire, some of it reaches to near the bed so that one’s arms stop aching on top the covers, and one’s heart starts to thaw along with one’s lips and toes, and one’s brain starts to complete a few wayward synapse firings. One starts to think …

To think sporadically wild and incomplete thoughts like the day ahead may give some basis for getting out of bed and hoping to ….

Hoping to eat and drink, and have a future of eating and drinking for a few more years.

Marvellous what a little heat can do. 19⁰ at the bed. Warm enough to get sleepy as the sun rises and hides beyond the clouds threatening to drop frosty snow and ice everywhere.

Then it all vanishes into vivid dreams of a fantastic life in a warm (bug free) and perfect paradise….

Until reality once again demands attention be paid… lest the stove, so nicely heated will otherwise then overheat and burn everything to the ground.

…

Just another typical day in God’s country begins beautifully blessed.

Like Balak my enemies have gathered many times to bring a curse on me, and failed. They have, with lies and corruption beyond most people’s imaginations, stripped me of every penny and driven me into debt from which I will likely never emerge. They have left me homeless. They have left me dependent on the food bank and government supports for those in poverty. They have spread false rumours about me, and left me isolated from my friends and my church. They have maintained their churches, their wealth, their position, and their smug self-righteousness, justifying their evil by pointing to records filled with lies.

Yet, I remain blessed, for what is any person of God, who brings God’s Word to the ears of others, to say, when God has spoken a blessing eternal upon me?

And how shall I respond?

How shall anyone respond?

What else would we say, other than to join the writer of Acts: We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.

For we have seen through the lies and corruption.

For we have heard God’s Word, and seen the results of God’s mighty acts of unconditional love, mercy, renewal, and provision for daily life, for daily life that is blessed by God’s presence.

So this day, what else shall we do other than speak of what we’ve seen and heard of God’s mighty works, in our midst, across the earth, and from the beginning of time?

So this day, what else shall we do other than be God’s Grace for others?

So this day, what else shall we do other than give God thanks for God’s blessings, beginning with the warmth of a wood stove, a mind that can think, and hearts that God has filled with faith, love and hope!

Augmented and Corrected Vision of God’s Works

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Fishing for Food,

Fishing for Souls,

Fishing with Generations To Come

Psalm 143:5

I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.

Luke 1:54-55

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

Wisely said often is that if we do not learn from history, we will repeat its mistakes.

More wisely said is that whether we learn from history or not, we will repeat its mistakes.

Huh! …

Honesty!

Clarity!

And hotly avoided or outright denied by so many, for it sets us up to know ourselves as fools and hopelessly forging ahead into the abyss that we ourselves create for others (and we get caught in the abyss, often before anyone else!)

How does remembering the past help with the future?

The first quote assumes that if we learn of the past, and learn from other’s mistakes in the past, even our own mistakes in the past, we can then avoid making those same mistakes.

This would make the world a wonderful place, since after so many generations the mistakes we humans make are never new or unique. They’ve been made so many, so many times in the past, often by even ourselves!

The second quote belies the flaw in human freewill: that given freewill by God so that we can freely choose to love, we do choose love, sometimes. But we are able, and so much more often we do, choose to hate instead. Sometimes we do this stupidly without noticing what we are doing. Most often we make the choice to hate and we deceive ourselves (with the help of the Great Deceiver) that we really are not choosing to hate, or only a little bit, so that our actions will not really cost us (too much) and they will cost others only what they deserve to pay for their sins against us or against others. The worst repeated piece from our histories is that even when we know and acknowledge that we are choosing to hate and that it will cost us and others tremendously, we forge ahead, full of hate and determination to take our revenge on others (which is really to take our revenge out on ourselves!)

Why bother with history then?

Why bother knowing of things of old, of anything at all, besides how to get ahead, in this time and place, whatever the cost?!

Remember …

Remember how God acted with our ancestors from of old, how God responded to their repeated choices to turn from love and choose to hate (and all the destruction that comes with hate.) God did not desert our ancestors of old, nor of recent time. Nor does God desert us to our choices to hate.

God acts.

God acts decisively.

God acts powerfully … with Grace, unconditional love, and freely giving us renewed life and purpose to hope for a future of peace, contentment, and thankful joy.

Looking out across the ice covered lake, the generator from the oil processing plant only a half mile away, drowning out all other sounds with its old and poor provisions for electric generation, it is not hard to be aware of the oil industries’ hugely destructive impact on this once ‘pristine’ land and waterways through the marshes and muskeg that so cleanse water to serve all life so well. That’s the fracking results that have forced all living here to haul water for the wells are contaminated and unpredictably flow with raw natural gas, even very deadly sour gas. In the land of some of the greatest fresh water on earth, we have poisoned huge tracts of it, and simply do not know how far our ‘poisoning the water’ has or will spread!

Taking a set of binoculars in hand one can then see the fishers minding their lines that sit below the ice to harvest food for their families. If you are so fortunate when those binoculars are to your eyes, you will also see a man, obviously old from his stilted and pained gait, obviously so content from his gentle movements with his young grandchildren, each with a hole, a line, and a hope that they will catch a fish. Looking closely you will see the love and care of the grandfather fisher, imparting knowledge of fishing to the youngest generation, as he kneels beside each one in turn, demonstrating and then encouraging, and proudly patting each on the back before moving on.

Looking at our past can be like the wide view of the oil industries’ destruction of precious resources, showing clearly the destruction of humans’ efforts to control their own lives through might and hate and revenge and greed and ….

Looking at the past through the eyes of Christ we can see the wondrous, loving view of the saints handing on the Grace of God, the mission to share Grace with others, and the love, faith, and hope that makes life in all its minutiae so precious, and so hope-filled.

On our own we will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past again and again.

With God’s Grace and Spirit healing and guiding us we can look to the past and say with the Psalmist: I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.

And we can thankfully share all we are and have so that the youngest generation will know God’s Grace from our lives … and first hand, as we demonstrate, encourage and proudly pat them on the back before moving on … with thankful and joyful contentment, come what may.

‘Reframability’ & Possibility

Monday, March 21, 2022

Shadows Point to The Light

Each Morning, Noon, and Night

Psalm 143:8

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

1 Timothy 6:6-7

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.

Words of Grace For Today

While many strive to gain comforts, privileges, and securities (of many kinds, all futile), we seek the only gain that is sure: that God provides us love and faith (by Grace, ie as free gifts) and contentment in our lives, for while we come into life with nothing and we can take nothing with us, we do leave behind our own story.

What will that story be?

Will others gain faith from our stories? Or will they only learn to chase after what cannot offer them life?

It is not insignificant what story others have from us (as opposed to the stories that are untrue that many tell about us – those untrue stories work against the liars who create them and tell and retell them). It is not insignificant what story others have from us because each day, we humans are privileged to be able to ‘reframe’ our new day with how we think about life past, present and future.

That is: we are not written in stone from one day to the next. Some take this as opportunity to lie about their past and to scheme to ‘improve’ their future with more lies. Oh, what a waste that brings misery and despair to so many people, those liars and so many impacted by their lies.

God provides this opportunity to us each day (actually every minute), so that we can repent, that is so that we can turn our lives around, reframe them according to God’s Grace, Love and Hope for us (demonstrated in Jesus’ story), and proceed to be more of who God created us to be!

So we pray with the Psalmist: Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

It is not that we have never heard of God’s steadfast love, or that we do not know God’s way for us, or that our lives are in ruin and need to be rescued from the hand of the Devil, the Great Deceiver (though too often that is the case). It is simply that since we get to reframe our lives, we also must reframe our lives. If we do not turn to God to receive the Word that will reframe our lives according to God’s steadfast love for us, the Devil will certainly provide all sorts of words, lies always, that will draw us in, slowly turn us away from God, and consume us, until we are nothing like the creatures of steadfast love that God created us to be.

So what do we want to be today?

What word will reframe your day, this morning?

May God save us from the Deceiver’s tempting words that suck us in to the downward spiral away from life itself.

May God provide wondrous words to communicate God’s steadfast love, grace, and hope for us.

In a Word, we pray (it is not too much to ask, and it is everything so we beg):

May we see Jesus each morning!

Boldly Going Where …?

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Head for the Light?!?

It’s Not the Light at the End of the Tunnel (a train coming at us!)

It’s a Full Moon Setting at Dawn.

Jonah 2:7

As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

2 Timothy 2:19

But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’, and, ‘Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.’

Words of Grace For Today

Of course, it is a common story: A person has had no place for God in their life …

until …

until everything goes wrong …

health-wise …

and …

death comes knocking.

Suddenly everything is about ‘God’ …

And ‘God blessing and saving the person who has ignored God lifelong!’

…

The old thought always comes back: the way one lives lifelong has to mean something in the end, right. So there really is not last minute salvation. There really is no last hour baptism to guarantee one’s salvation. We are judged by God by our full record!

That’s right, isn’t it? It has to be! Otherwise why did I try so hard to do the right things all my life, giving up all the opportunities that would have benefited me greatly though they would have compromised my soul!?

Ah, were it so simple, so that we could judge who is God’s and who is not God’s; who has been good enough, and who has not been good enough.

Or rather, thank God it is not so simple, so that humans can actually judge each other … because, well, humans have a really bad track record of getting everything wrong and really messing things up, royally!

What we can trust fully is that God knows! God knows who are God’s and who are not.

By Grace God gives those who are not, another breath, and another, and another ad nauseam, all so that they have another and another, and another ad nauseam opportunity to repent and convert, and to learn what we who are God’s have learned and relearn again and again, namely that

We are saved only by God’s Grace (God’s choice) through faith (given to us as a free gift, though we do not deserve it at all.)

So we go into each new day, boldly going where all humans have gone before, into the fray of returning lies with truth, hate with love, despair with hope … as God makes us able.

The Same Moon Casting (Faint) Shadows

Where, Oh Where … !?!

Friday, March 18, 2022

Where Is God?

Down This Path?

On This Mountain?

Beside This Lake?

In The Crowded Cities?

God Save Us, Now!

Psalm 10:1

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Mark 4:38

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

Words of Grace For Today

I flew out in the fall to a remote fire tower to make a pastoral visit to the crew there. There was no way to announce my visit. I just took off, navigated by dead reckoning, and landed at the small grass clearing that served as a air strip. I’d circled over the tower and taken in the paths through the bush that wound the kilometre or so between it and the air strip. Airplane secured, I set off and …

hours later I was deep in the bush with no way of finding the tower in time to spend even a minute with the crew and still find my way back to the air strip before dark, and before dark I needed, most desperately needed to be in the air. There was no way a take off in the dark in an unknown airstrip was something I was even considering as doable. And anything not doable was certainly not ‘well, let’s see if it’s possible!’ So I oriented myself by the sun low in the sky back towards the plane.

As I came to a junction of paths in the bush, both directions on the new path hidden from view until I stepped into the junction, I got the scare of my life, or one of many.

There, not more than six feet to my right (the direction I needed to turn) was a calf and her mama, a cow moose. The calf was half size and still looked down at me. I froze. Moose have a pea size brain, and they survive only because they are bigger, tougher, and faster than most any predator.

Encounters with humans are so dangerous because, being so … well stupid … they are totally unpredictable and usually they charge, especially when their young are threatened! The results are usually -10 for the human and no effect on the moose.

Where was God!? How could this be happening to me? Why was this happening?

Always the photographer I reached for my camera hung on my shoulder, slapping my backpack with every step until I froze in my tracks. Why not document this so that if I did not make it someone would know how I came to my demise (or at least the last few seconds?) If I’d had a rifle, that would have been a smarter option, but useless as well, given the moose’s speed.

Before my hand was on the camera, mama and calf were well on their way across my path and down the to the left.

I breathed, settling the adrenaline rush to tolerable, and marched on. By the time I reached the plane all that adrenaline was gone. The take off was in the shadows, the sun just below the horizon, and my way home full of wonder.

God sometimes does save us from our own stupidity, from terrible circumstances, and from sure death. Other times we join the Psalmist’ and the disciples’ desperate plea: God where are you!? Do you not care what happens to us?!?

…

Only with time, and sometimes not even then, do we gain the insight to see and know … and trust that God walks with us, and suffers with us everything we suffer, and provides life abundant in every hour with every breath we breathe on this gift of creation God has brought us to live in.

So we pray, with full trust (or maybe barely any trust) that God hears us, for ourselves and for all other people faced with disaster, illness, and death this day, this week, this year: God be not stern with us, but gently save us and help us live each minute you gift us.

Trying to Contain God?

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

The Glory of God Is Everywhere

To Be Noticed,

No Finding Needed,

It Found Us

Ages Ago!

1 Chronicles 28:9

And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.

Hebrews 3:20-21

Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

How do you tell the successor to the kingdom on earth that he has nothing at all to do with whether or not God blesses him and the kingdom?

How do you tell your successor that when you yourself are famous for taking charge and making the kingdom great?!?

How do you tell your successor to the kingdom you have built that he must surrender his will to God’s will, and trust that God will guide him, even in ways that he may not understand or willingly follow, especially when you are infamous for taking your own will into your own hands in order to build this kingdom that your son will inherit from you?

How can you tell your son to submit to God’s will when you are about to instruct your son to build God a temple, which, in the middle of your eager plans to start construction of a magnificent temple, God has told you that God does not need or want any kind of temple?

(David is and remains blessed by God, not because David earns it, but because God so chooses.)

David, faced with these challenges, does not instruct Solomon to submit to God’s will. Instead David reverts to a simple and common perversion of God’s will for us humans: If Solomon does right, then God will bless him. If Solomon does not do right then God will forsake him forever. Solomon must then find and follow God.

But that is not possible because God’s Kingdom does not work this way, though there are plenty of humans to tell you it does, and plenty of humans live that way on earth their entire lives.

God’s Kingdom rather begins with love, ends with love, and everything inbetween is God graciously forgiving, renewing and equipping us to be God’s loving grace for all other people. We earn nothing. We keep nothing. We give God everything. And we live lives abundant … in God’s Kingdom.

This is Jesus’ story for us: God comes and gives everything to save us, forgive us, renew life in us, and send us out into the world to follow Jesus’ example: surrendering everything we are and have so that God can work through us to bless other people.

And that is to live a blessed life, as one of the God-made saints.

No need to find God! God is right there with you! No need to earn God’s Grace, it’s long ago been enacted for you, for each day and each moment of your life.

Breathe

Sing

Dance

and Love Unconditionally.

A Voice That Cannot Be Taken From Us!

Monday, March 14, 2022

Even Those Clouds Know the Voice That Calls Us,

And Sends Us Out in Joy!

Isaiah 55:12

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

John 10:3

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Words of Grace For Today

When we give up trying to come in first in the ‘game’ of life, and we allow God to come in first, then we find life is full of celebrations, little ones each day as God wins (bringing grace to bear on our lives) and big celebrations less often as God wins again (bringing grace to bear on our enemies’ lives).

Whether we live or whether we die is not so important. What is important is how we live and who we follow.

When Jesus calls, we like even stupid sheep, know how to follow Jesus’ voice, for Jesus calls us by name and leads us out …

out into a world that cannot accept Jesus’ way, God’s forgiveness (for that requires admitting one needs forgiveness!), and the wonderful life we have as the Spirit guides us each year, day and moment, to be less for ourselves and more for God.

We do not celebrate alone, for the saints in light who have gone before us, are over joyed at our following their footsteps as they followed Christ. Even the hills and mountains, the clouds and the birds, the fish and the whales, the planets and stars, sing and rejoice with us, for we are a small part of the universe,

and the universe is all God’s.

Nothing Else

Thursday, March 10, 2022

The Dark Powers Of Deception and The Devil’s Minions

Cannot Conquer or Stop the Light Of Christ In Creation

and

In Us

Isaiah 51:16

I have put my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand, stretching out the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’

Revelation 3:8

I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

Words of Grace For Today

God creates all people. In us all God sees that we have little real power in creation (despite our great efforts to take dominion over it all, which lead to our own ruin.)

Yet in us God gives us God’s own words in our mouths, minds and hearts, hides us in the shadow of God’s own hand, and claims us as God’s own people.

We, with great hubris, have claimed that our powers are without limit, or nearly so; that we have wisdom like none other in the universe, unless we at times imagine a more ‘advanced’ alien species; that we protect ourselves from all dangers, until the danger takes us down and then we blame others or God or whatever we can imagine; and that we are special, better, more ‘advanced’ among all people since God claims us as God’s own people, until others use this argument for ethnic cleansing and genocide like the Nazis and so many others, so that we have to tone down our claims to be more worthwhile as a peculiar race, colour, creed, etc. of humans.

More destructive than anything else to life for ourselves and those around us, around the world, and for those generations to come is our claim that we are own ‘god’, godlets of dubious power, potential and knowledge (yet alone wisdom, grace, and love.)

All that we can actually claim is that we … well, we can claim next to nothing on our own. We receive forgiveness by God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace. We receive renewed life, though we deserve anything but. We receive a mission – not to conquer or dominate or power our way forward through time but – to be the vessels of God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace for other people. This is the open door that God sets before us, a door that no one can close, not even the Devil.

In this mission to which God sends us out into our daily lives, we remain hidden in the shadow of God’s hand, God’s loving hand, God’s hand of Grace, God’s unconditional loving hand.

So we live, by grace alone … and need nothing else. Our enemies are in for surprise after surprise at the power of God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace given to us.

So we live, by grace alone … and need nothing else.

Nothing else indeed.

In Him There Is No Darkness At All

Monday, February 28, 2022

Awesome In Splendour

…

Everyday

Exodus 15:11

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?

1 John 1:2

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

Words of Grace For Today

To see what God reveals as the Light of the World, to look into God’s eyes to see all creation reflected with beauty, to touch God’s hand and feel the power of self-sacrificial love overwhelming the universe, to hear God speaking and understand the Word of Life …

to know that there is no other god, except God, Three in One, Parent, Son, Holy Spirit, all and each Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier …

to be re-created, redeemed, and sanctified … and sent out into the world to share all we have received …

This is to have our joy complete,

and to know

in him there is no darkness at all.

So we sing the words Kathleen Thomerson wrote for us:

I want to walk as a child of the light
I want to follow Jesus
God sent the stars to give light to the world
The star of my life is Jesus

In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The Lamb is the light of the city of God
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

I want to see the brightness of God
I want to look at Jesus
Clear sun of righteousness, shine on my path
And show me the way to the Father

In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The Lamb is the light of the city of God
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

I’m looking for the coming of Christ
I want to be with Jesus
When we have run with patience the race
We shall know the joy of Jesus

In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The Lamb is the light of the city of God
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

…

Who Else could possibly move us to know you, God, so well?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?

…. To sing along Concordia College Choir, Moorhead MN