Category: Summer

Peace for All

Monday, August 1, 2022

What Carries Us Around Threats to Safe Waters,

to Days

and Nights

of Peace?

Isaiah 57:19

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

Romans 15:33

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

Words of Grace For Today

How Good it is to live, to live well!

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

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

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

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

How Good it is to live, to live well!

Except …

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

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

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

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

How Good it is to live, to live well!

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

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

How Good it is to live, to live well!

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

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

How Good it is to live, to live well!

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

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

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

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

Clarity, Energy, and Relief!

Friday, July 29, 2022

Relief!

Proverbs 4:18

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

1 John 3:2

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

Words of Grace For Today

The path …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deceit and Mischief – Healed, Giving Thanks

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Is That a Barrier in Our Day,

OR

A Gift of Heat

for the Coldest of Days

Soon Coming?

Psalm 36:3-4

The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit; they have ceased to act wisely and do good. They plot mischief while on their beds; they are set on a way that is not good; they do not reject evil.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

Fools are too easy to find. People with mouths filled only with mischief and deceit are around every corner, if that far away. Actions of wisdom and goodness have long since faded from our landscape. The worries of the night when sleep evades them are filled with scheming how to do even more devious and evil deeds to try to achieve their own place in life. Evil is at their finger tips, pouring from the hearts and minds as readily as if they were the Devil himself.

Then … when one was about to drop dead from despair at the preponderance of evil all around with at least the hope that Jesus has prepared a room for us forever there … a stranger, a foreigner, a believer in other things, comes along, cured by Jesus, healed back to the fullness of life abundant and giving God thanks like we all ought to each day.

Which will we live out this day: out of the overwhelming deceit and evil that pours forth so freely from so many,

or

from the thanks and joy of one healed by Jesus’ Word?

We are, when we take care to look in a mirror of truth and wisdom, as much the producers of evil as any other.

We are, when we take care to look in a mirror of truth and wisdom, as much healed and capable of giving God thanks as any stranger.

So which will we embrace to start this day? And again throughout the day? And as we lay ourselves to rest for the coming night?

Feared Creator? Beloved Saviour!

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

The Fog Melds With the Clouds,

Bringing Heaven to Earth

for Precious Moments

Isaiah 12:4

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.

Revelation 14:6-7

Then I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation and tribe and language and people. He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’

Words of Grace For Today

It’s one of those nearly perfect mornings. After weeks of too much heat, it’s cooled off, and then this night brings quiet rains, fog lifting after sunrise, drips of the past rain everywhere off the camp and then leaves, and a quiet-stillness broken only by a few birds singing. A small sparrow hunts in the meadow grass, a robin listens and hops and listens and pecks out a worm and flies away to share the morning food.

A morning survey places in wait the pieces of a project that will be a huge step forward in security blocking possible CO out and capturing heat to warm the water hose so that water can run during the coldest days. A fire resistant, air tight membrane will arrive to move everything to the next steps. With tape measure in hand the next posts for a new wind-snow shield for preparing fire wood are measured out from the wood available. Plans move forward a step for work for today. Mouse traps are gathered readied to be baited and set out to ensure the mice of the meadow stay in the meadow and out of the camp.

Water is set to boil for coffee and washing, not in the camper where I will write and work today, which will help keep it cool through the day. The sun is already intense. The thermometer in the sun registers 24⁰ even though it’s a good 10⁰ cooler in the shade.

The wine (grape juice, since I cannot afford wine) and bread (crackers, since I can afford those, sort of) are set ready and the day begins:

With thanks for all that keeps me alive, the daily bread and the wonders of this place, and the amazing works of God walk with me each day.

With a petition for a young man suffering so much pain from small accumulative injuries from skate boarding that he can barely move.

With a petition for all the men who are abused, that God would make his presence obvious to them with kindness and love, giving them courage and protection, and a view to reality beyond their abusers.

With a petition of thanks that I am alive in spite of so many people’s unwarranted efforts to kill me.

The Eucharist celebrated, in Luther’s language, and the morning meal that sustains my body: creamy, smooth, sweet and bitter, cool and hot; all signs of the breadth of life that God intends for us each.

This is a morning to stand in awe at God’s wondrous works, evident in nature, in the wilderness, and in God’s sustaining life on planet earth despite our sustained attacks on it. We excuse ourselves saying it is progress, it is profit, it is energy, it is growth, it is a global economy. Still the attack is relentless and the planet becomes more angry, more wild, more extreme even beyond our own abilities to survive it’s wrath.

Are we to fear God?

Definitely, or we are patent fools!

In other words we would be airheads, birdbrains, blockheads, or dodos, dolts, donkeys, dopes, dorks, dumbbells, dummies, dunces, fatheads, ganders, goons, idiots, ignorami, imbeciles, know-nothings, knuckleheads, morons, numbskulls, pinheads, schlubs, schlumps, schnooks, stocks, featherbrains, scatterbrains, butts, dupes, laughingstocks, mockeries, monkeys, chumps, losers, schlemiels, crackbrains, crackpots, cranks, kooks, oddballs, screwballs, weirdos …

That should give at least an idea of who we would be.

If we only fear God, then we would be patent fools and … (same list.)

For God did not create all the wonders of the universe to create us who would fear our creator. God created the universe and holds it’s rhythm and rhyme together with divine love, so that we creatures could also participate in planting, growing, and producing love in every corner of this small planet earth.

To this end God created and gave to us such mornings as this!

To this end God created and gave to us such mornings as this, that in loving creation and creatures we might at least momentarily be the progenitors of wisdom, a counterpoint to our usual foolishness. As we fear and love God, God gifts us with the ability to be seers, mentors, and teachers who spread God’s steadfast love in kindness, listening, and healing.

From all these good works of God in us springs up in and among us the one thing that gives us breath: faith, hope and love.

[I know we usually count those three things, though here they constitute one. It’s math like Luther’s and the Trinity.]

What happened to your morning and the wonders that hold the universe together? Did you see God again? Right there … to be feared and loved?

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

Monday, July 25, 2022

So Many Storms Threaten,

So We Pray,

Save Us!

Increase Our Faith!

1 Samuel 30:6

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

Luke 17:5

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

Words of Grace For Today

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

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

And God answers.

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

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

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

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

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

As The Morning Dawns

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Morning Again

Can We Make It

Through

All The Brambles

Psalm 46:5-6

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

Revelation 21:3

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

Words of Grace For Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I command …! What?

Saturday, July 23, 2022

When We Face

‘The Dark Woods’,

We Can Be Courageous,

For

God Walks With Us

Joshua 1:9

I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

2 Corinthians 12:10

Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Words of Grace For Today

Joshua’s words are a great example why military leaders are not great inspirational speakers: he can command all he likes, but deciding to be strong and courageous, not frightened or dismayed is a whole lot short of actually being, doing, speaking, thinking that way.

The gap is what most humans have trouble with. Filling the gap between deciding to be courageous and being courageous with commands does not work, not at all. In fact I’m not sure if I know one thing that does work.

Paul’s approach is confusing and maybe inspiring. It’s just saying when you are weak you are strong doesn’t say a lot. The rest of Paul’s writing fills it in better. When Paul is weak, his witness to Christ’s strength is most obvious, and in what Christ does for him Paul is strong. Borrowed strength as it were.

Joshua may not give great motivational speeches, but his ending or stated cause for our being courageous carries the day, the year, the millennium and really all time for all life: God is with us.

We can be courageous, not because we are strong, but because Christ is strong, and that strength never wavers. Christ is always with us so we can endure many hardships … and still live joyful lives.

This is a day to thank God, and dance on with a good life … good because God dances with us..

Remember and Be Confounded, and Never …

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Remember Simple Tornadoes

and God’s Promise;

Listen Up!

Be Alert!

Ezekiel 6:62-63

I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God.

2 Corinthians 7:10

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.

Words of Grace For Today

God establishes a covenant with us, since ages ago.

God does this so that we may remember all our sins, and then be confounded and shamed into silence, awestruck at what God does for us, forgiving us all our sins.

Does God forgive us our attack on the planet which is responding with extreme weather, in a phrase climate change?

There are numerous people caught in worldly grief for all that we now suffer across the angry planet as a result of our huge contributions to climate change. It does no good. It brings us close to, and into death.

What God provides is a reminder of our true sins, true repentance, and all sorts of ways to change what lays ahead of us in the next decade, in the next half century and all time after (if we survive as a species that long!) God’s promises are trustworthy; those baptized will see their salvation, and be welcomed home to new life after leaving this life on this planet. Salvation is not the question. Our species survival as well as the survival of life on earth are very much in question.

So what shall we do this day?

We shall pray for the Holy Spirit to continue to guide us that what we do will be according to God’s will and love for all people and all creation.

We shall get busy listening to the Holy Spirit, doing what we can to reduce if not remove our carbon footprint from our lives on this good earth, and bringing God’s mercy, love and hope to other people … so that more and more people will listen

to

God’s

Good Word

and live, guided by the Holy Spirit!

Taste and See … Yuck!

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

That’s Real, Up Close and Real, Down Low and Real;

Not-People Up-Close Are Everything But Real

Psalm 34:8

O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Acts 12:7

Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.

Words of Grace For Today

O taste and see that the Lord is good!

Yes!

But in life for us there is so much that does not taste good, or right, or real.

Since I cannot eat meat anymore as my body deteriorates with age and needs special attention to continue on, at the food bank they keep giving me ‘interesting’ food. Most of it is harmless if useless when it comes to nutrition. I’ve long since given up on food needing to taste even good. I just watch for nourishing and helpful for a few more years, so anything in the Mediterranean diet always sounds good.

Last time I has handed a pack of frozen burgers, ‘no meat so they’ll be good for you.’ I couldn’t say no.

I fried them up the other day. They don’t really have any protein in them, just wheat and palm oil and spices and oils and things I can’t pronounce or remember. And they taste like … well I can’t afford to throw out food, but I stopped eating that meal before I was half-full. Couldn’t swallow any more of those not-burgers. It’s never happened to me before: I started to gag on each bite.

As at the times in my life when I’ve cooked for myself I eat lots of tofu, lots of beans, peas, vegetables, fruits. I like fish, though I’m not partial to other kinds of seafood that are, shall we say, slimy or gooey. I particularly like refried beans. I don’t need to eat vegetarian but I like it.

What I can’t stand is when food tries to be something it is not. Not-burgers are like not-people; you wish you’d never seen them. I don’t mean any disrespect, but there are people, too, who try to be something they are not. Along the way they forget truth and honesty, justice and mercy, love and hope. Instead they try to make up for losing these with fake charms, broken promises, and chemically induced happiness. They just are not authentic at all any more. Everything they say and do is based on lies. And you can smell trouble coming behind them.

I’ve met drug dealers, murderers, and thieves, all who have said up front exactly who they were and what they did. Can’t say I liked what they did, but they were not trying to manipulate or con or dishonour everyone in their wake. Not-people leave nearly everyone in their wake wondering what happened and who did it to them. When you figure out who’s been conning everyone it’s usually too late and most people do not want to admit they’ve been played, so there’s little help fixing anything, if anything could be made right.

Not-burgers are like that. They promise the world and then they taste terrible going down, they mess with your system going through, and they pass with a vengeance as if they had something to prove to the world.

The most destructive kind of not-people are those that cloak themselves in religion. They promise and pretend to be oh, so good, when really they are oh, so unbelievably evil.

…

We need angels to come and knock the chains off our wrists, minds, and hearts so that we can, all of us, taste and see the goodness of God’s truth for all creation. We need not try to be what we are not, or try to force others to what they are not or lie about others so that the world thinks they are other than they are.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Monday, July 18, 2022

The New Kind of Storm,

The Backside is

More Tumultuous

Than the Front

Jeremiah 8:21.22

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?

Luke 10:8-9

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

Words of Grace For Today

God has a plan.

The world is crazy with falsehoods, driven into so many corners and minds that many believe them to be truth, which is a danger to the survival of our species.

God has a plan for that, though.

The people hurt, God hurts, and other people are responsible, directly and indirectly, for the hurt and worse for the death of so many people.

God has a plan for that, too!

Our health care systems, as we are so privileged to have, are overrun and ground into near uselessness, by a virus, a pandemic, but most of all by the falsehoods that so many propagate, so much so it is difficult to imagine how this is. The effect is that across the globe the virus is levelling the ‘playing’ field, and our expectations of whether we will live another 5 years or not!

God has a plan for exactly that.

God’s plan is that the workers for God’s Kingdom spread across the globe entering every village and remote place where people live, to eat what is locally provided, to cure the sick, and to proclaim simply that ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ And to bring, share, and leave God’s peace everywhere.

So what is your day going to look like?

God has a plan for that,

and it is that you will be one of the workers for God’s Kingdom, ready or not!

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