Events – Page 4

Without Trembling, With Thanks …

Sunday, March 20, 2022

The Path May Seem Difficult and Long …

Psalm 56:9

Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shortage of destruction by evil working through people, directed against other people, seeking to destroy and destory others in order to work some supposed ‘advantage’ in their lives, their ‘world’.

The question is who do we, the ones pursued to be destroyed and destoried, who do we choose to be?

The lies told about us do not determine who we are, even if they can determine a whole lot of shtako that we will experience like jail, being shunned, outcast, left to die, and actively killed … all in an effort to take the truth of who we are and what our lives have been and destroy our stories of truth.

The lies told about us never become the truth. It does not matter how many lies are piled together. It does not matter how often or for how long those lies are repeated or by whom they are repeated. It does not matter how many police create more lies about us. It does not matter how many lawyers and prosecutors create more lies about us. It certainly does not matter how many courts repeat all those lies and how many more lies the courts create on their own about us. None of the lies ever become the truth, not ever. Their lies do not determine who we are, no matter how hard they try to make it so. Their lies reveal so much of who the liars are. Their lies belie them as agents of evil in our midst, agents who undermine everything good about civilization. They cause chaos to flow permeating everywhere in society. In that chaos they try to establish a new ‘truth’, a ‘truth’ that they can control, or at least benefit from. They may seem to benefit from it, but the chaos corrodes civil society leaving it vulnerable to barbarism, and that barbarism knows no favourites: it consumes everyone in its path, from within and with external destructive forces. The lies are in fact the tip of barbarism eating away at everyone, the liars first, the people they lie about, and all sorts of those caught in the wake of the lies.

Truth is truth forever.

So who do we, the victims of these lies, want to be?

The victims are so many: from our local towns and cities, to the outcasts in our country, to the indigenous and Metis most would rather not remember, to those similarly lied about in every country, to those left to die of preventable illnesses, to those killed by unjust military assaults – like in the Ukraine, though that is only one of many unjust military actions now across the globe – to those murdered in cold blood each day.

Who do we want to be?

We can be victims. That’s easy. That’s obvious. That’s hard to not be. But can we be someone else rather than victims?

Lots of tales from history recount how people have ‘pulled themselves by their bootstraps’ and overcome the assault on their lives and on their stories. Those stories are unbelievable; there are no ‘bootstraps’ by which to pull oneself up out of such attacks, not that will work for other people.

The only sure survival is to surrender, not to one’s enemies, but to God’s Will. Even then not all of us will survive in this life, though some have survived, like Jeremiah (until he did not), Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, St. Paul (until he did not), Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Sarah Collins Rudolph, Freddie Knoller, Toby Biber, Premsyl Dobias, Maria Ossowski, Albin (Alex) Ossowski, Daniel Falkner, Magdalena Kusserow Reuter, and the list could go on.

More than those who survive are those who are jailed and killed or just killed. That list seems not to find an end. Remember Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhöffer, Socrates, Jesus, Stephan, Bishop Juan Gerardi, and Archbishop Oscar Romero?

Who do we want to be? Who do we want to be like?

The question is pertinent every day, but more pertinent is how God answers: what does God want from us? Are we the people God created us to be?

How can we be as God created us to be, after some one agent of evil or so many agents of evil (who appear to be ordinary people at first) have sought (and still are seeking) to kill us?

We surrender to God’s Will, and pray we will say truthfully to God:

Und reichst du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern
des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand,
so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern
aus deiner guten und geliebten Hand.

(And may you offer the heavy bitter cup
of grief, filled to the very rim
We´ll take it thankfully without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.)

For we know that those who mourn will be comforted, even our loved ones. We trust fully that God is with us and our enemies can do no other than retreat when facing God. They will be undone as God puts the truth before them, and before all people. The truth will be known.

So come what may we can thankfully and without trembling face each new day.

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

Ich Wunsche Dir Zeit

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Zeit (Time)

As the Sun Sets Spreading Colours Across the Sky and Land

How Much More Will God Gift To Our Enemies?

How Much To Us?

Deuteronomy 8:2

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.

Matthew 11:29

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

To experience that time when we find rest for our souls … rest for our souls, what a promise,

and a blessing so familiar

and so impossible to achieve for ourselves.

Time.

Time is precious.

Ich wunsche dir Zeit … (I wish you the time …)

and God provides us the time …

All kinds of time.

Time in the wilderness, so that God can humble us,

time filled with wonder, so that we can know God’s presence,

time filled with love, so that we fulfill God’s purpose for us.

So much of our time we walk with a different yoke taking our efforts and making something other than God’s will to be.

Patient, kind, and loving still, always Jesus calls us to take his yoke of being God’s unconditional love for others, for this is Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, guiding us to live

exactly as God created us to live,

with time,

all kinds of time,

time to remember,

time to celebrate,

and time to hope for those who are beyond hope.

From Siegfried Feitz aus dem Stephansdom in Wien

Ich wünsche dir Zeit

Elli Michler

Ich wünsche dir nicht alle möglichen Gaben.
Ich wünsche dir nur, was die meisten nicht haben:
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, dich zu freun und zu lachen,
und wenn du sie nützt, kannst du etwas draus machen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit für dein Tun und dein Denken,
nicht nur für dich selbst, sondern auch zum Verschenken.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht zum Hasten und Rennen,
sondern die Zeit zum Zufriedenseinkönnen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht nur so zum Vertreiben.
Ich wünsche, sie möge dir übrig bleiben
als Zeit für das Staunen und Zeit für Vertraun,
anstatt nach der Zeit auf der Uhr nur zu schaun.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, nach den Sternen zu greifen,
und Zeit, um zu wachsen, das heißt, um zu reifen.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, neu zu hoffen, zu lieben.
Es hat keinen Sinn, diese Zeit zu verschieben.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, zu dir selber zu finden,
jeden Tag, jede Stunde als Glück zu empfinden.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, auch um Schuld zu vergeben.
Ich wünsche dir: Zeit zu haben zum Leben!

Aus: Elli Michler – Dir zugedacht -Don Bosco Verlag, München, © DonBosco Medien

I Wish You The Time

I don’t wish you all kinds of gifts.
I only wish you what most don’t have:
I wish you time to be happy and to laugh,
and if you use it, you can make something of it.

I wish you time for your actions and your thoughts,
not only for yourself, but also as a gift.
I wish you time – not to rush and run,
but the time to be content.

I wish you time – not just to drive away.
I wish it may be left to you
as a time for wonder and a time for trust,
instead of just checking the time on the clock.

I wish you time to reach for the stars
and time to grow, that is, to mature.
I wish you time to hope again, to love.
There is no point in delaying this time.

I wish you time to find yourself
feel every day, every hour as happiness.
I wish you time to forgive guilt.
I wish you: to have time to live!

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.

Coming in First

Sunday, March 13, 2022

We spend so much energy trying to find the light of life.

Doch God gives it to us, freely and generously.

Psalm 33:16

A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

Mark 10:31

But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Words of Grace For Today

When Solomon raced, he gave it his all. He was naturally fast. It was in his jeans. On the soccer pitch he had that full awareness and predictive vision which allowed him to know where everyone else was, was going, and when they would get there. He was also unnaturally competitive and disciplined, able to push his thin body to produce results that were amazing, on the oval track running, through the woods on cross-country races, and on the soccer pitch.

It was marvellous to watch him run. Everyone threw accolades at him for his winning.

Life, at first, appears to so many to be exactly this kind of event, a competition where the most gifted, wealthy, powerful, and famous people pit their wits against others in order to gain even more. The one with the most wins. Unfortunately, so many people live and die believing this, whether they are the ‘winners’ or the ‘losers’ in this frantic take on life.

God intends something entirely different for us. Ever since creation right through to the morning sunrise today, bright and brilliant that gave way to clouds and snow (again …) God intends for us a completely different measure of who wins and who loses, what it takes to win, and precisely what the ‘game’ or ‘competition’ actually is.

Not only are the first (according to the human ‘game’) actually last, and the last first, the ‘game’ is not to see who can get, have, and keep the most. God’s intention for us is to see how many people can actually live, live well, and living well be God’s instruments for bringing life, life abundant, to other people.

A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

We, each and every one of us, is saved only by God’s grace, by God’s free gifts that forgive us, renew us, and send us out equipped to be God’s grace for others … not through ‘winning’ but actually through ‘losing’, through self-sacrifice, always pointing to truth, love, and hope.

I, too, was proud of Solomon, but not as much for winning as for competing as he did, knowing how much he gave of himself to run as fast as he did, how hard he worked and pushed himself, and how little he received where it really counted for him.

The discipline of competing that we learn from life God uses (when we surrender to God’s Will) as a self-discipline to not be deterred, no matter the costs, from speaking the truth, loving the undeserving, and hoping for the hopeless.

Breath

Saturday, March 12, 2022

All Things Living

Breathe

As God Breathes in and through Them

Psalm 33:6

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.

Acts 17:25

Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

Words of Grace For Today

Poor Delilah. A middle child and ignored by her parents before and after her mother drover her father to kill himself, she came to worse and worse experiences, though she could barely measure them.

Her step-father, honest and kind, was her refuge for a few short years before everything began to fall apart around her.

Manipulated by her older sister and mother, she was driven to report the sexual contact her mother had with her. But she lied. She told teachers, friends, and eventually police that it was her step-father. When the police pursued him, recruiting and creating more and more lies about her step-father she was lost, so lost. When her older sister and mother paid more and more attention to her, when the school councillors spent more and more time with her to help her through her abuse, and when the prosecutor against her step-father paid more and more attention to her, she finally felt she was someone, someone important enough to be noticed and cared about. It did not compute for her as she watched the courts send her loving step-father to jail for crimes he did not commit, based on the lies told by her mother and herself. She had trouble sleeping. The counsellor at school, and the therapist paid for by her mother spent more time with her. Her mother, with her millions, rewarded her with a brand new iPhone, and then a new MacBook, and new clothes and all the cosmetics she wanted.

Yet the breath she had spent to lie could not be taken back, could not be inhaled, could not ever be denied in her heart of hearts. And her breath became short, her mind frazzled out on her more often than not, and her body grew as she tried to fill the emptiness at her core with food.

Breath, once wasted on lies, especially lies that destroy other people, never is found again, until God forgives, one accepts the forgiveness and confesses one’s terrible sins.

God, the one who spoke a word to create the universe, whose breath created all living things, who needs nothing of service from humans … though God craves people to love, to love one another, and to love God … this God does not leave any of us without forgiveness, unconditional love and God’s full attention. God offered this to Delilah, as God offers this to each of us.

With a word, a word of truth, God renewed Delilah, and Delilah set the record straight, though too late for her step-father, who died in poverty, it set the record straight and exposed the police, the lawyers, and the courts who used her lies and so many other people’s lies to destroy people, almost as a past-time. For the amount of destruction Putin barely registers in comparision.

So God breathes … for each of us, for each of the Ukrainians and Russians, and all the others met by Putin’s unjust, cruel invasions, and for each person destroyed by a word that is a lie, breathed which spreads and corrupts the basis of life.

So God breathes … and so we live, as a gift, undeserved and abundantly blessed.

So we breathe so that others may live, making our words count.

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.

Do Not Leave Me Defenceless

Friday, March 4, 2022

It is one thing to have the time of age lean in on one, as death looms.

It is an entirely other thing to have other people work to advance the arrival of one’s death.

God save us from such people.

Psalm 141:8

My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.

John 14:19

In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of people are dying from ‘natural’ causes, some of the ‘natural’ causes are induced by other people, so the causes are not that natural, rather homicidal. Lots of other people are trying to kill even more people, forget about inducing natural causes, these efforts run the gamut from open violence to secretive schemes, and all of them are the work of the Devil and people cooperating with the Devil. Lots of people will die because others are trying to kill them. Lots of people die because of the Devil and his followers.

That’s the way with humans. It’s terrible. It’s worse if you are one of the people induced or openly or secretively sought to be killed by others, the Devil’s sacrifices in an attempt to supplant God’s rule over all creation and all beyond the universe we know or imagine.

So we, the people who others seek to kill … we pray: My eyes are turned towards you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; do not leave me defenceless.

We trust, no matter whether we live or whether we die, whether by natural or very not natural causes, we live and we die with Christ at our side.

As Jesus lives, even though Rome crucified him at the behest of his own religions leaders, so also we, no matter who seeks our deaths or how, we too shall live, and not just another day or week or year, but for all eternity.

The truths that guided our living will live into eternity.

The lies told by those that seek to kill us, will be remembered as lies for all of eternity.

We are not defenceless, though we die. For our God is our rock and our shield, a mighty fortress against all the works of the Devil.

So we sing: In Him there is no darkness at all, The night and the day are both alike.

And

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen, erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.

(Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers We look forward confidently to what may come.
God is with us in the evening and in the morning and surely on every new day.)

Among the Lions

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Deeper Than the Extreme Snows of Winter

(which will be next year’s normal)

God’s Blessings Pour Down Over

Us God-Made Saints

and even over God’s and our enemies alike.

God’s Gift to Us is That We Notice

and Share Blessings with All.

Psalm 57:4

I lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords.

Acts 14:17

God has not left Godself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.

Words of Grace For Today

There are signs everywhere, signs of God’s good blessings pouring over us,

if we only open our eyes and

ears and

hearts

to see, hear and know.

Even as our enemies drive us into the wilderness where we must sleep among all that is there and we must lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords …

even then the goodness of God surrounds us, for there are many witnesses of God’s people, accompanied by God, who have been fed to the lions, and

…

the lions became docile, uninterested in devouring God along with God’s people.

Such works of God’s great works are not just the stories of our ancestors,

these stories are our stories, for

again and again God has delivered us from our enemies so

that we have lived yet another day, and

another week, and

another year,

…

while God’s blessings pour down over us.

Thanks be to God.

Blessings That Overtake and Overwhelm Us

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Road Blocks

Heat

For Cold

Winter Days

and Nights?

Deuteronomy 28:2-3

All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.

Luke 11:28

A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Jesus, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Words of Grace For Today

Blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. Wonderful, or scary?

Blessed by the the mother or blessed be the one who hears and obeys?

As if obeying got us anywhere, since we always fail at doing what we ought, in some manner or another at each step through life.

The image that amazes is of being overtaken, overwhelmed, drowned in blessings.

Blessings indeed pour over us, so that we have plenty to share with others … if we only really knew, if we only would realize how blessed we are … and how much others need the blessings that we have and can share with them!

So God walks with us, eh? Not really that big a deal, right!?

Well, really, God walking with us, blessing us with God’s presence in all we do and every step and turn we make, that is so wondrous it is on the edge of being comprehensible, almost beyond imagination … except

except it is our daily lives, seen, heard, and believed to be as God guides us to be ….

Thanks to God is the beginning of an appropriate response … thanks that is active with words and deeds of sharing with others what God has given us, blessed us with, overwhelmed us with.

There’s always more than enough to go around, so help it go around.

Sun rises. Sun sets. Another blessed day.