See Reality, Choose, and Do
Open water is nice.
Canoe come ply the deep and shallow alike.
Drat that buzzing buggy mosquito, and that and millions more
sent to feed the birds, and eat my blood, leaving a terrible reaction
that sends my eyes, nose, and throat into conniptions.
Oh give me ice, that would be nice!
Touched with scrambled ice left overs
Our World – Our Tracks – Beautiful
God’s Light on God’s World – Wonderful
God’s Light on Our Tracks – Awesome
Psalms 107:2 & 8
Let the redeemed of the Lord, … those he redeemed from trouble … thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.
Luke 14:22-23
The slave said, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.
Words of Grace For Today
How wonderful, awesome (the real meaning of awesome is: profound awe at the ‘out of this world’, divine presence encountered in the mundane),
How awesome it is to have these two verses side by side.
First we, the redeemed from trouble …
And OH how the trouble is that we’ve been in! Our enemies (if we’ve lived a life worth something we’ve made plenty of enemies) have done us in … or if they have not we’ve done them in. Either way, how we’ve treated our enemies, and/or how they have treated us is nothing to be proud of in the presence of God! No hiding, no lies, no messing the truth with spin. We’ve been in great trouble, most everyday a little bit. And in lives where we’ve stood for something honourable, then we’ve been in a lot of trouble at different times. The evil in humanity cannot stand someone being honourable. It puts a spotlight on the evil, the spotlight of Christ’s light of truth.
And when we’ve been in trouble, done in by our enemies, or worse that we’ve treated our enemies with anything less than the grace of God, God has paid a terrible price to redeem us!
So …
First we, the redeemed from trouble, thank the Lord …
Now that’s a wonderful response to God’s awesome intervention in the messes of trouble that we get into! We turn into vessels overflowing with gratitude, spilling it across our paths as we proceed through the day.
We leave a trail of awesome gratitude and witness to God’s great mercy and grace! That’s what we spill out into the world – even if we also spew out sin, evil and a deadly virus.
We overflow with thanks for all God has done, out of love. This is thanks not just for God’s acting for us, but God acting for all humanity! No one is left out of God’s Grace and Love!
Then in the second verse, we read how when Jesus puts on a feast of celebration, and there are empty seats …
Don’t we know empty seats in our churches today as we put on feasts of Christ’s Body and Blood!
When there are empty seats, Jesus, our redeemer and saviour, sends us faithful servants out into the world around us to invite in everyone found in the lanes and alleys … the street people, the disadvantaged, the outcasts, … in other words all the people who need a good hot meal, all the people the world has turned against, all the people who’ve been left on the way side to suffer while others have trampled on to riches undeserved, on the backs of so many.
These are the people we, the redeemed, turn to in order to fulfill our Lord and Master’s command: Compel them to come!
Well, we are not to kidnap or force, but we have the words of Grace and Love of God to share with all those who are outcast, disadvantaged, suffering and could use a good, honourable, glorious feast! The words of Grace that we have … especially as Lutherans (though we’ve no copyright on them, they are for all Christians to embrace), that Jesus came into the world not to condemn but to save all people! … The words of Grace we have reach deep in the heart and soul of each person who will listen. We’ve experienced it ourselves and seen it in countless people. …
So we, who God has redeemed and saved from the trouble we are in, as we give undying thanks to God, turn as Jesus commands us, to invite the outcast, those whom Jesus also redeems, into a feast of celebrating.
The feast is Jesus last meal, the Eucharist, to sustain the soul. The feast is more. It’s a hot meal to sustain the body. It’s a gathering of redeemed people, overflowing with thanks, which sustains the heart and mind.
Except we cannot gather with more than 15 people, and not with anyone outside our core family, or maybe our ‘cohort’ family. Thanks Covid 19! [emoji of disgust.]
But we’ve been redeemed! We overflow with gratitude!
Certainly we can figure out how to share this feast of Christ’s Eucharist and Hot and Cold food, and of sharing each other’s presence, so that we can follow Jesus’ command to compel people from the roads and lanes to come. It may take a football stadium size area. Maybe an 80 acre farm so that no street person or family is closer than 8 metres to any other person or family.
That might take a bit of government approval, a careful plan for serving, and a few extra dollars … but in this time surely someone could put all that together!
Or on a smaller scale, any of us could invite an online meeting of families and street people to join together for the Eucharist and a real home cooked meal! Why not?
Do we or do we not overflow with gratitude?!
Or on an individual scale, we can always call others on the phone! And when needed deliver a home-cooked meal. Why not?
Balance is not easy to find.
Beauty and Peace are as difficult.
God guides us to both, as gift and blessing unearned.
2 Samuel 2:26
Then Abner called to Joab, ‘Is the sword to keep devouring for ever? Do you not know that the end will be bitter? How long will it be before you order your people to turn from the pursuit of their kinsmen?’
1 Corinthians 7:15
But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you.
Words of Grace For Today
God calls us to peace.
Peace between nations, between people, between spouses, and peace within ourselves.
Peace is much more than the absence of conflict.
Given merely the absence of conflict we humans always find our way into open conflict quite easily. It is because everyone is wrong about something, and they still think they are right. [Except of course me. I’m always right. Right?]
Girard provides that it is more complex than that, involving mimetic desires that lead to competition, which is ‘resolved’ through scapegoating. We compete with each other for what we see as limited resources/things. Aware we cannot afford open conflict with our closest friends we project our conflict on to some innocent, vulnerable bystander. Seeing that innocent as the source of our problem we destroy that person. Our urge to compete and destroy is ‘satisfied’, the thing we competed for becomes insignificant, and we are able to return to a ‘peaceful’ co-existence.
Except for the innocent person we’ve gaslit, attacked, destroyed and most often exiled or killed.
And except that, since we are not entirely oblivious to reality, we know we are now guilty of ruining an innocent person, of not working out our conflict with each other, and the root cause of that conflict is not addressed. It just goes underground in both of us, in our relationship, only to re-emerge at a later date. Then it will be an even less comprehensible conflict, which we will ‘resolve’ by destroying yet another innocent bystander.
Peace must be diligently sought anew each hour of each day, or it is lost. And it is lost long before anyone notices any conflict arising.
Peace is lost when we no longer see the souls of other people, for whom Jesus died, as the most important part of our own lives, when we no longer give everything we are to provide care for those in our daily lives, or when we no longer work to meet the needs and satisfy the yearnings of those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Peace is a marvellous way of being. It is fragile and can disappear in an instant with a [wrong] word or deed. It is threatened most by an errant thought.
God gives us peace. We can treasure it, with our hearts, minds, and strength.
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Out of Darkness
Jesus saves us
so that we can contribute to the Kingdom
sacrificing ourselves that others may live abundantly.
Psalms 51:13
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Colossians 1:3.13
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son
Words of Grace For Today
Rescued from the darkness
It was cold and dark. Dangerously dark, though not even winter cold, yet. Spending the night in the woods miles from anywhere was not the plan.
It was just a hike on a trail being developed, this portion already well planned, if not clearly marked. We arrived climbing up the side of the huge rock to our right, on to the second level of that rock as it overlooked a small lake below. The trail seemed to peter out across the gentle downward slope of the rock face toward the lake and further to the right around that side of the lake.
But then there was just a sheer drop of a few metres into the lake, or the effectively solid wall of trees to the right barring any progress on that side of the lake. There were no signs of a trail around the left side of the lake either and other large rocks jutted out over the lake around that side.
The danger from the dark was not that it was pitch black. It was already dusk and we had miles to go. I was experienced outdoors, but the three with me were not and two were young children. Dark, the real dark that was coming, meant stumbling lost all night, or bedding down in the wet and cold. It had just started to rain as I searched for the trail forward from that rock we ended up on.
Finally I came up with a plan. I’d walk back two miles to where the trail took a turn and was well marked. With flashlight in hand I would retrace our steps.
Huffing, tired, and being spit on from above, cold, I trudged back step by step through the miles, and then returned. Nothing. The obvious trail had no other possible turns as it joined a creek that ran into the lake we had stopped at. As the hard face of that huge rock came up to shoulder height I saw to the left the creek water through the underbrush. It was maybe, yes, it was sort of a path, and then there on the tree on the left side of the trail was a trail-marker arrow. A turn back to the left and quickly down, with a quick switchback to the right and one arrived at a bridge of two logs over the creek.
I lifted my feet as my spirits were lifted. We were not lost. I found the others on the rock overlooking the lake, huddled together for warmth under a rain poncho to keep themselves dry.
We worked our way, sometimes with flashlights down over the creek and up high on the huge rocks along the lake and back down near the wet outflow on the far side of that lake, and onward over roots, and around huge 5 foot diameter trees, through the rain forest, back to the vehicle we’d parked near northwest edge of the small town we called home.
A hot shower, prayers of thanks.
We were rescued, once again, from the darkness by the Grace of God.
It is as easy to lose ourselves in the forest of challenges presented to us, now also because of Covid 19. It is easy to miss an obvious turn because we’ve lost ourselves in the darkness of despair or exhaustion or laziness or disorientation.
Always, God sends us others, or sometimes a clear plan, to help us find our way forward, so that we are there for others as well tomorrow.
Friday, May 1, 2020
never got any good result.
Looking at things from God’s perspective always does
net us truth.
Numbers 11:23
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’
Matthew 6:28-29.31
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”
Words of Grace For Today
Part of the human condition, built in for survival, is that we can worry, or anticipate with concern, dangers that we may face. And we can do this in such an engaging way that we do something about the danger.
In the summer, there is little pressing reason to make warm clothes. When the bitter winds blow the light blizzardy snow over the thick lake ice set by weeks of -35⁰ and colder temperatures, then the need for warm clothes is clear!
Worry, or being able to anticipate with fully engaging concern, helps us get on with the hard work in the warm weather of making warm clothes for our family for the winter. And for those who cannot make clothes for themselves.
Jump ahead a few eons, and we just need to have a job that pays well enough so that we can go to the store where warm clothes are offered for sale, because someone else has made them, someone else transported them, and someone else has put them in the store for sale.
Now our worry or anticipatory concern drives us to have a job that pays enough so that we can afford warm clothes. Note that our ‘worry’ drive becomes more and more disconnected from our real needs as we face real dangers in the cold winters.
So why does Jesus teach that we should not worry. God clothes the birds of the air and flowers in the field with great beauty. God will also clothe us. Will God? Can we just quit our jobs and go to the store and get the clothes we need for the winter come October? Simply put no.
God provides. God provides everything we need. God provides the drive to be concerned before a danger presents itself. God also provides enough rational capabilities for us to sort out how our drives are disconnected from our real needs and real dangers.
But we are lazy. Part of the human condition so that we do not waste limited energy on useless activities. Thinking clearly is hard work. We like to not think about what is going to happen and just let our God given ‘instinctual’ drives run us. We like to give in to the easy temptations the Devil offers, and instead of using our instinctual drives according to some clearly thought out value system, an ethic, we just let it all happen to us and we take no responsibility. Meanwhile the Devil builds up a perverted rationalization in our minds as to how and why we do what we do. Easy sins are easy to rationalize.
And all hell breaks loose in our lives, because the disconnect between our drive, the dangers we face, and the anticipatory concern to address the dangers are so distantly disconnected that our ‘worry’ now drives us to do all sorts of foolish things, things that rob us and others of life.
We develop, instead of utilitarian answers to our needs for life, an adornment on top of our needs that encroaches on the utilitarian value of the things that meet our needs … and it spirals out of control until, instead of utilitarian things, we acquire pure aesthetics that do not meet our need at all. Our real needs are not met. Our ‘worry’ spirals up, we acquire more things that also do not meet the real needs we have. More and more until we cannot even see the real needs as they are covered by ‘fictionalized needs’ that must be met.
We worry ourselves sick about ‘meeting’ these ‘needs’.
These are the worries that Jesus advises we leave behind, and trust that God will clothe us, as God does the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
God will clothe us by reconnecting our real anticipatory concerns, and drive thereof, to meet our real needs.
Throw into that mix, since we’ve escaped into aesthetics instead of utilitarian things, that we actually do need to create, enjoy, and admire beauty, both naturally occurring and human created. The first reflects God’s Spirit showing itself for us to marvel at. The later reflects the human spirit, given to us by God, that can overcome otherwise insurmountable dangers and challenges.
Simply put, art and beauty (not necessarily the same, but they can overlap) direct our minds and spirits to connect with people out of the past. Connected to the past we can see the present more clearly, more profoundly. And then we are equipped to ‘see’ the future as it is. It is in God’s hands. We can approach each day with hope.
God’s work will come about. We need not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” Instead we can lighten our minds to see the real challenges and expend our energies to meet them. Sometimes that will mean working hard to provide food, drink, or clothing.
Always that will mean giving God thanks for all that is possible each day.
The worry that Jesus directs us away from is the destructive, downward-spiralling negative thought patterns aimed at things we really can do nothing about, or things around which we’d be better off if we actually did what we can to mitigate the challenges ahead.
Regardless, God will do as God promises. We are God’s, God is with us.
Covid 19: there are many things we can do. Hand washing and physical distancing and Staying the Blazes home and thinking clearly how we acquire things, or touch things that could have the virus on them, and self-isolating and quarantining if we show even small symptoms … these are only some of the basic and smart things we can do to mitigate the risk to ourselves and everyone around us. We can also help others do these things. Sometimes we need to figure out how to inspire others to do these things.
Then our lives are all about caring for ourselves and others, physically (to social distance ourselves from the fridge, but climb those stairs 10 to 100 times a day), spiritually (setting a specific time to read, pray, and sing each day), and mentally (get a few old fashion games going – even if that is like chess over the phone, or four-way board game, all by telephone – it goes slow, but then we’ve got time, right! OK, parents with children maybe not a second, but get the children playing with friends over the phone. Let them be creative, constructive, and helpful to others.)
And get on the phone: make a call list of people who could use a good word, and call them once a week or so. Model it for children. Do it for your elders. Take care of the vulnerable.
We can STOP worrying, by getting on with what we actually can do.