Poverty & Homelessness – Page 5

10th Day of …

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Who are you this day,

on the path of life

that is given to you?

Who are any one of us,

If not God’s blessed saints?

Isaiah 58:10

If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

Luke 6:36

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Words of Grace For Today

In history there were many of these people, and today we remember two, one of each:

There was a wealthy person, who had inherited great riches, position, and power. Working hard to manage all that was at her command, she increased her wealth through every means and method available to her. If her choices caused a great number of people misery, despair, or death, she took no notice.

It was her birthright, she claimed. She was going to increase her position for that is what she was born to do, just as her ancestors had done. She did not learn her history, though, and paid little attention to literature of any kind. She was interested in ways and means to increase her wealth, and only that. When something could serve her she researched, brought in expert advisers, and used everything to her own advantage. If something or someone did not serve her advantage she quickly got rid of it or them.

Those who knew of her prayed for her … to stay far away from them.

…

There was another wealthy person, who had inherited great riches, position, and power. Working hard to manage all that was at his command, he increased his wealth wisely.

Aware that his ancestors had worked hard to earn the wealth, position and power that was handed on to him, he learned their history, and as much of history as he could. He accepted that poverty, misery, illness and death would always be part and parcel of life, though he did not ignore the responsibility that was handed on to him, the responsibility to make a difference in many, many people’s lives; a good difference. He understood from his ancestors that all he had was a blessing from God, a blessing that remained a blessing only as long as he ensured it was handed on to others as blessings.

He did not stand in the limelight. Only a handful of people prayed in thanks for him by name. Very few people actually knew that what they received in time of great turmoil, illness or death came through various paths from him. Yet when people received assistance, opportunity or protection, they were also given a word: pay it forward. Because of his work many people prayed prayers of thanks.

With this wisdom this man of great riches, position, and power not only helped people, but what emanated from him was an ever growing web of gratitude and a sense of responsibility to share what one had, so that everyone in need received the help, exactly the kind of help, they needed in order to live thankful lives.

…

In this year 2021, which person would you wish to have living in your community, province, or country?

…

God has given us each great blessings so choose to be that person in your community!

…

Carry on and spread the tradition of immense gratitude for God’s blessings. First among God’s blessings is that Jesus saves us from sin and gives us abundant lives.

8th Day of …

Friday, January 1, 2021

Looking to the Light

As Our Way Forward

Leviticus 19:11

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another.

1 Peter 3:8-9

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called—that you might inherit a blessing.

Words of Grace For Today

There is much that could be done which we know is wrong, and there is much we can do that is right. We pray for the wisdom to know the difference, and the courage to follow our hearts to know what is right. Most of all to forgive ourselves and all other people when what we do is not the best we could have done.

This New Year Day and the 364 days that follow, like all of the years and days before, is an opportunity for us to consider time past, time to come … and

most of all the time that is now, the present.

We take time to make promises to ourselves in the way of New Year Resolutions, which we know …

which we know from lots of experience

we WILL try to keep

and fail to do so

and we WILL try to forget what we know about ourselves,

so that we will be able to fool ourselves in the days ahead about the reality of our own weaknesses

in order that we can on our own make our way forward or pretend to make any progress in our lives on our own.

Happy New Year.

Make the best you can of everything, there is nothing that you can make perfect, yet in trying to make things better than they are, you just might completely miss what is most important: that we are at our best when we know we can at most be humble before God.

God gives us everything we need. So there is so much to do, and so much to be thankful for, and so much to do for others, so that they may live an abundant life.

What a life?

So what are we going to do this new day?

May it be blessed.

2nd Day of 12: Dealing Grace to All Creation

Saturday, December 26, 2020

See the Light!

Carry the Light to Heal All People

and Creation Itself!

Jeremiah 33:6

I am going to bring Jerusalem recovery and healing; I will heal its people and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.

Luke 2:15

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’

Words of Grace For Today

As Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon laid his siege ramps against the walls of Jerusalem to over run it in 589 BCE, and Jeremiah had already prophesied that Jerusalem and Judah would fall to their enemies, King Zedekiah came to him and asked him why he prophesied their demise.

We all know that such proclamations in time of war are dangerous. They can be self-fulfilling by undermining the morale of the people. Jeremiah prophesied as he did, because God called him to; the people had turned from God, become perverse, and it was only a matter of time before their own corruption brought enemies to their walls to conquer them, weak as they had become from within. Few if any heeded Jeremiah’s warnings … and Jerusalem (in 587/6 BCE) and later Judah fell to their enemies … and then other enemies … and more enemies … so that they remained ruled by foreigners when Jesus was born (despite the Maccabean 167-160 BCE and other revolts seeking their independence).

Before Jesus’ birth, more than 500 years since Israel was independent, the people had many stories to remember and to be disappointed in and place their faint hopes in. One such story was of a Messiah who would be born in Bethlehem.

The Shepherds may have known this story, or not. Still, when an angel and then a chorus of angels visit them to give them the news that a saviour is born in the city, they are not fools. They up and head into the city to see the Saviour born and laid in the hay of a cow’s manger.

Why Shepherds? One might surmise that, as ones who lived very rough in the hills as they tended and guarded their sheep, they would not be put off by the poverty into which the Saviour was born.

Yesterday, the Day of Christmas, is the first of twelve days of Christmas. These twelve days give us opportunity to seek out the saviour of the universe – no longer an infant in a cow barn. On our own we will see nothing other than the mundane world, perversions of truth spread to create chaos from hysteria and fear so that evil people can rise to power, … and we will see our only own failures, fears, and dashed dreams.

Guided by the Holy Spirit though we will encounter not only the wonder of God become human, born as an infant Saviour. We will encounter the Saviour, with God’s Grace, healing all people and creation itself, redeeming and renewing them (and indeed us), so that we broken people can be the vessels that carry God’s healing Grace to all in need.

God knows, during this pandemic, there are so many people who need healing, healing from Covid 19 (acute sufferers and long-haulers) from the detrimental effects of physical distancing and isolation, but even more-so from the sickness of the soul that has eaten at the hearts of so many people – long before this pandemic started a year ago. Now the vacuum in the souls of the world is made more obvious.

Pray we encounter the Saviour anew, and that God will make us worthy saints, those who carry the Light of Life to those in need around the earth. May we be those saints who are blessed to bring the Saviour’s healing to all whom we encounter.

Twelve days, a whole hurting creation, and billions who need healing: our work is cut out for us! Thank God it’s God who works through us, healing us as we go!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 14

Monday, December 14, 2020

God Promises and Delivers

Homes For All People

Righteous Homes,

not Windblown Shacks and Outhouses

Isaiah 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

2 Corinthians 9:10

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

As the vaccine is promised ...

Like in every generation before we yearn and hope, sometimes beyond hope. Yet sometimes in despair we give up that last strand of hope …

In the dark of the night, when monsters rear their ugly head occupying all the challenges of our days which we thought we could deal with well enough and those monsters eat at the foundation of the order of our lives amid the chaos …

There is always the darkness, the evil that threatens us.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises to judge all with real justice and grace, out of which will come righteousness for all … whether we experience this righteousness or not God’s promises are the only promises that are sure!

God promises to walk with us, giving seeds that we can sow and harvests abundant that we can gather in, increasing in and around us God’s righteousness – for Christ is come.

God’s Son came, and will come again, to make clear God’s will towards us, namely that God loves us and judges us with mercy and truth. Jesus will judge all for everything they have done.

How can righteousness come out of the evil of all humans, which is so destructive, pervasive and enduring? Jesus offers us his record, pure and sinless, and on that record we are judged. Our records, our sins, the evil we have done to others, and the destruction we have wrought on creation … all this is erased as if it never occurred in all of time at all. So we emerge, all of us, righteous.

We do not get to wait for Christ’s judgment until after we die. Christ judges every day, every hour. Christ renews us as righteous every moment. We still remain sinners, yet always are we fully God-made saints.

So we yearn …

We yearn for judgment …

We yearn deep in our bones for judgment, so that we are made righteous, and those that do us evil will be rescued from their sins and we with them.

Advent is the time we relearn to trust God’s promises, and we live this abundant life waiting, alert, holding to the Promise that draws us onward, and draws from us righteousness we did not know we were capable of.

We are the harvest. We are the labourers in the harvest. The harvest is ready, each day. The harvest is so abundant it cannot be stored in all the earth or even the universe. Such is God’s promise to walk with us and bring us to live life abundantly!

No Covid 19 pandemic can rob us of this abundant life. Not even when our usual Christmas habits are not possible this year while we remain safe for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for all our neighbours.

Life is still abundant. Perhaps just because we must rethink what is essentially Christmas, our celebrations in the future will regain a significance we have not previously known.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises and delivers life over abundant for all!

Let us make it so for all people, also this Christmas!

Take Advent to truly prepare.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 6

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Second Sunday of Advent

Saint Nicholas Day, Remembering the Bringer of Gifts

Like Tracks in the Snow Disappearing Toward the Light,

The Signs and Wonders of God’s Work for Us All

Are All Around Us.

Daniel 4:2

The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.

1 John 1:2

This life [the word of life that Jesus brings to us] 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.

Words of Grace For Today

Signs and wonders … the word of life revealed, eternal life even today for us.

These are everywhere to be encountered, seen, heard, touched, inwardly experienced.

The sun rises in the cold morning, light spreading and pushing back the darkness until a clear burst of light is visible through the trees near the horizon. The Light of the world is here, as a blessed sign that God is with us.

The periodic drone of fisher’s ice augers rumbles like bumble bees across the snow covered lake and through the trees. There are fish in this lake, stocked as it is, which provide food for many, except in the shoulder seasons when the ice forms or melts and is not safe enough to support a fisher. When the water is open boats bring fishers to all corners and bays of this lake. Then the ice is solid, on foot, by quad and side-by-side and snowmobile, or by truck, fishers spread across the lake to harvest for their families sustenance, signs of God’s blessings unceasingly flowing for us all.

After more than seven years with various people seeking my destruction, death and/or exile based on lies and greed, and a mental illness perverted view of life, fuelled by misandry and hate-based, perverted faith, I wake each morning, here, alive, accepting my life as blessed, though I am financially so far in debt I will likely never emerge, though my reputation among corrupt people of power will likely never be restored, though I work desperately hard to survive the challenges of living rough: cold requires lots of work but it is constant and properly conquered with care; moisture, heat, and bugs are the most difficult, fickle, and most dangerous. Each day I still breath is a gift from God, a sign of the wonders God works sustaining my life though it is under constant attack by so many, and so powerful.

This is eternal life, for today. (Yes, eternal life has already begun. We do not wait until after death!) For the Word of life, Jesus Christ, has come, is here, and will return.

Advent, these precious few days of blue hope, suspending us in waiting, holding us alert in watching, guiding us with Light into the darkness of winter … Advent is filled with signs and wonders of God working for us. We only need take a breath, pause, reflect, … and notice all that God does for us each day.

This day there are millions of people who through terrible injustice and cruelty do not have clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter. Many, many people will die this day across the face of the earth … and it need not be so.

So many more millions have those basics of life, but lack the other two that keep us give us resilience to face the challenges and evil that would rob us of our hearts, minds and strength: meaningful labour and love (both being able to love others and to be loved by others).

Facing Covid 19 and our feeble efforts to slow it’s progress through the populations, if we do not have an ever-renewing reserve of resilience, we can lose our hearts, minds and strength to face each day. We can instead forego all precautions and put others at great risk, we can gather as if we thought that would help (participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream), or we can join the insane protests with no masks or physical distance (also participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream).

What will we do this day, if seemingly small, to reach out with the Word of life, to all? What will we do reaching out to others, for therein we build our own resilience?

The Word of Life works signs and wonders for us all.

Stay alert, lest we do not notice, or hear, or see Christ in our midst, calling us to be Christ’s signs and wonders for us all.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 2

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Pyramid Mountain Before Sunrise

God’s promise of a day of renewal

each day,

every day.

Psalm 11:1

In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, ‘Flee like a bird to the mountains.’

John 14:27

Jesus spoke: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Words of Grace For Today

When I am most drained, I head to the mountains. I do not flee. I head there to hike, to camp, to ski, to take photos, to write. The mountains are a place of renewal.

Mountains have long since also been a place where we humans have fled from danger to our lives, for in the mountains we are harder to find, though life there is much more challenging. The world can easily give us more than we can take, where even the renewal of the mountains or the refuge of the mountains is not enough.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

The world, filled with sinful people, gives in lots of horrendous ways.

The world gives Covid 19, generously, killing and maiming millions.

The world gives false security with power, fame, and money, but all of that can evaporate in an instant and become more of a burden than a security for the future or a freedom for one’s todays.

The world gives promises of equality, justice, and opportunity; and then oppresses the masses, knowingly judges and falsely convicts, incarcerates and ruins honest people based on falsehoods and cruelty … The world promises opportunity but offers only opportunity to be enslaved so others can exercise corrupt power.

The world provides the blessings God created it to contain: air, water, food and opportunity to produce and utilize clothing and shelter; but the people in the world ensure they have their own excessive ‘comforts’ and luxuries at the expense of others being robbed of clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing and sufficient shelter.

The world invites the masses to work to make a living possible, and then enslaves the masses at a standard of living that is impossible to call humane.

The world comes at us when we speak out and encourage change, equity, and justice. The world comes at us, condemns us for threatening the powerful people’s privileges in order to bring justice to the masses. The world comes at us to kill us with lies and Gaslighting or drive us into exile.

This is nothing new. It’s been humanity’s inhumane manner of executing injustice from the beginning of time.

God gives in many and various ways, all of which are marvellous.

God created and creates a universe that provides enough to support each and every person’s needs to live, and to live abundantly.

God gives us free choice to love, along with the other option, to choose evil.

God frees us from our inevitable choices that are evil, forgiving us, redeeming us, and renewing us so that we can live free from the sins of our past, present and future.

God gives us abundant life, and inspires, equips and calls us to give life abundant to all those around us.

God promises to walk with us no matter what we encounter in life. God’s Word is absolutely trustworthy. God keeps promises, always.

God sends Jesus, God’s own son, to live as an example of how to live life fully, abundantly; sacrificing oneself to provide life to others, forgiving even our enemies, and fearing and loving God, loving oneself and all other people, especially one’s enemies.

Jesus gives us peace, a peace that no one and nothing can take from us.

Therefore we have no cause to be afraid and our hearts need not be troubled … by any of the chaos that churns the world around us.

We get to be the people at peace, sharing life and peace – graciously – with all.

What a life.

It is the life of living renewed, each day, as if we were in the mountains.

It is a life living as refugees, in God’s arms, protected from all the threats of this world.

What a life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 23

Monday, November 23, 2020

God, High and Mighty, Creator of All

Comes to Be With Us

And Teaches Us Many Things

Isaiah 57:15

For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Mark 6:34

As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

Words of Grace For Today

The world values people that are high and mighty.

God values the contrite and humble. Jesus comes to redeem the world: as a physician comes to heal not the healthy, but those who are ill, Jesus comes to be with sinners, those the world does not value.

Some describe God’s attitude towards people, and towards us, as a preferential option for the poor.

However we describe God’s attitude to us, it is clear that while we favour power, might, wealth, and fame; God favours the outcasts, the marginalized, and the poor.

God works through the power of love, not the power of might, through the power of self sacrifice, not the power of sacrificing others. Instead of asking us to do what needs to be done, God rescues us from what binds us to sin, and enables us to do God’s work in this world for Christ.

The maker of the universe finds us so valuable, that God comes to be with us.

The rest is the old, old story, of Jesus and his love, already present at the beginning of the universe.

What a life God gives us, which through steps and missteps we find filled with love and renewal.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 20

Friday, November 20, 2020

Given this Beauty,

To Claim to be Self-made

to Worship God as the Giver of Everything,

For which do you think God created the universe?

Daniel 2:21

He changes times and seasons, deposes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

Revelation 15:3-4

They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.’

Words of Grace For Today

While it is so easy to proceed through life under the illusion that one has made one’s own success, or to accept that one should have and failed by not making one’s own success; this is the curse of persistent evil from generation to generation. We learn that one must work hard. The modern myth is that everyone is equal and has equal opportunity; thus those that are wealthy, powerful, and famous have done something to make it so for themselves. And everyone else has failed to live life the way it should be lived.

God gives us all sorts of signs, messages, and roadblocks in life to help us see that God alone determines who the powerful are, and which powerful people fall. God alone gives knowledge and wisdom to whom he chooses – though it is not the self-help book kind of pull yourself up and make something of yourself. God alone changes times and seasons

(though one has to wonder if Daylight Savings Time is not the work of the devil to disrupt our lives on such a fundamental basis – all so that the wealthy can become wealthier, at the expense of the safety and sanity of the populous.)

God alone is pure holy. God alone judges the nations. God alone is just and true, always.

Wealth, power, and fame may seem to be attractive, something to strive for, something to covet. Who would not wish that life be at least a bit, if not considerably more comfortable, secure, controlled, and longer. This is not, though, what God created us for.

God created us to worship and praise God, in all we say, do and hope for. God makes it possible for us wretched sinners to do this, by Grace alone, through Jesus’ sacrifice to redeem us and free us from our sins.

So what will you do this day?

Will you strive to make your own way in life? And take the credit for your success … or for your failure to become wealthy, powerful, and/or famous?

Or will you give God thanks and praise for all the life, the gifts, and the wisdom that God pours out on you each day?

The sinner in us will certainly strive to make itself.

The child of God, saint by God’s Grace, will recognize the giver of everything

with a grateful heart

and with a voice, with hands, and with feet that reflect Christ’ Grace to everyone.

We are simultaneous saint and sinner, all the time, everyone of us. We can but beg for God’s mercy, grace and love.

What a beautiful life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 7

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Under the Snow and Ice

Is the Beauty of Creation

Waiting to Blossom,

Also in Our Hearts

Jonah 2:8

Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.

Hebrews 6:12

For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we want each one of you to show the same diligence, so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Words of Grace For Today

While this passage of Hebrews descends again into the If we but do, think, or believe; Then God will reward us kind of thinking that perverts the Gospel of Jesus, namely that God saves us freely, through Grace, though we deserve only condemnation. True to Jesus’ way we hold up always as the measure of all things: Because God saves us, makes us God’s children, and equips us to be Christ’s feet, hands, and voice in the world, Therefore we can be grateful and active every day in every way to be just that.

It is always tempting to revert to IF, THEN theology. It appears to place us in ‘control’, instead of being always ‘beggars’ for God’s Grace and Mercy. It does no such thing for us. It is a deception of the Great Deceiver.

This is one of those vain idols that God’s people so often worship, which corrupts their hearts, minds and strength.

We all turn to worship vain idols, pursue corrupt and futile dreams, and turn from those around us that need our love, empathy and compassionate justice to reflect Christ’s sacrifice to save us all.

God remains true, walks with us even into the Hell that we create for ourselves and those around us, and guides us to keep walking back out into the Light of Christ, once again saving us from perdition.

God is just, merciful, and steadfast in love … for us and all creation. God does not overlook anything. God cannot reward us for the good we do … there is none, not without God being the agent that brings us to do the good that comes out of us poor miserable wretched sinners.

God rewards us for the record that Jesus places before God on our behalf, Jesus’ own unblemished record.

Now that’s some record, and some reward, considering everything about us! Our response, when we realize again what Jesus has done for us, is nothing short of more gratitude than we could have imagined ever possible for anything … and a re-dedication to reflect Christ to each person we deal with each day, and to reach out to and provide the basics of life and God’s Grace to the outcasts, the forgotten, the homeless, the disadvantaged, the ill, especially the mentally ill.

The evils of injustices, abuses, and perversions destroy people constantly everyday.

Our reflecting God’s Grace, love, and compassionate justice make the world a wonderful place to live, for they counter evil at every turn, providing hope based not on our fickle promises and actions, doch on God’s steadfastness.

What a reality to notice everyday! It makes this quite a miraculous place to live!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 6

Friday, November 6, 2020

All Creation bends to honour Christ,

The Light of the World.

It’s there for the seeing!

Isaiah 45:6-7

So that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.

2 Thessalonians 3:5

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

The constant question that a thinking, self-aware, honest, and inquisitive mind asks is what are miracles?

Are they the power of God above all else, to form light and create darkness, or make weal and create woe, making God’s ultimate absolute power over reality known from the rising of the sun and from the west?

Or are miracles the power of God to transform hearts and minds so that we people actually do some good in our small lives?

The question is then also, do miracles happen, or are they just things of the past? Does God exist? or is God dead? or a figment of our imaginations? and are we creatures or mistakes or happenstance in an ever changing universe?

The answer depends much on what one wants in and from life. If one wants to play godlet over others, then God cannot exist or God is just an imagination used to control other people. This manner of living provides great rewards, if one can stomach the dissonance in one’s heart and mind and conscience.

If one wants to be what everyone says what they want; peace, love, happiness and true prosperity, or at least giving lip service to the idea, then one cannot greedily work to secure life and privilege and comfort for oneself. One needs be comfort, compassion, and breath for the most downtrodden, outcasts that the rest of the world would ignore.

One’s experience in life is determined by how we choose to live … at least until we notice God knocking at the door to our hearts, minds and strength … from the inside, asking us, begging us, to open up to the whole of creation.

That’s where true joy is hidden in plain site.

So where do you want to go today, tonight, tomorrow and each day and night thereafter? Into your own self created hell, or into God’s city and into the wilderness of miracles in every little mundane thing and event?

Wherever you choose, God walks with you, waiting for you to ask what you can do for God, carrying you when you cannot even walk, and reminding you of God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness.