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.
I, I am he who comforts you; why then are you afraid of a mere mortal who must die, a human being who fades like grass?
1 John 4:4
Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
Words of Grace For Today
Some days, there is so much work to do that one has little time for anything else, except to eat and sleep.
It is not fear of mere mortals, it is that one has a strong drive to survive and the courts are set on bringing me to my death, bullying me toward that end, with empty threats. But from nothing they have convicted me of crimes I have not committed, not even nearly. And for my good behaviour in court faced with a dirty, unethical, blood thirsty lawyer’s blatant lies I was declared a vexatious litigant.
One used to respect the courts, least I did. Not so much any more. I know that they lie and cheat, bully and threaten, and destroy and kill faster than others, for they are immune from criminal prosecution. One hopes the office of the Court can still be respected, but that decays pretty fast when those that fill that office treat their own office with such disrespect. The horrendous failings of the Courts needs to be addressed and corrected, soon, before the whole thing collapses on itself and we are left in a barbaric reality. It’s no video game, it’s gonners for most of everything we hold dear, just because those with power and authority corrupt and abuse their positions and the people they deal with.
So work, to the best of my ability I did. While the cold of fall set deep freeze in the air, into the ground and through the lake, so that it is partially frozen over.
God has conquered these evil people’s intentions and evil works. Fear is not how one need respond to corruption. Pity is more appropriate.
They and their evil and poisoned produce of theft and lies will fade like the grass. God’s grace and we, God’s saints, will survive, for yet another day on earth, and in eternity when our days on earth come to an end, long and full or cut short by evil it does not matter.
In Christ we have a home, even though our home is taken from us on this earth and we are left to live rough, managing as we can, with help from friends who are barely able.
Ahh, Grace and Kindness and true Friends: these are gifts from God that help us stand up to the evil that hounds us day and night, and to say with Christ: get behind me Satan.
Now, to breathe fresh air, enjoy the warmth of a fire, and the quiet of the wilderness night, from a warm down covered bed among the trees.
David said further to his son Solomon, ‘Be strong and of good courage, and act. Do not be afraid or dismayed; for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you, until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished.
1 Corinthians 4:1
Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.
Words of Grace For Today
If ever there was a time when we needed good people to be courageous and act, it is now. Evil has found a home in so many institutions, so many pieces of civilization, and in so many hearts and minds. The social contract that underpins civilization has been under attack by those who abuse their power and position and wealth for so long, no one can predict how long it will last, as it teeters next to the abyss with one foot on a banana peel. Predictions are that no matter the election results this November in the USA there will be civil unrest and violence. Among many others who are corrupt (including those with power in the Courts, with positions in politics, with wealth from oil and the inflated economy that surrounds it) Trump is trouble, bad trouble, real bad trouble.
Fortunately not everyone is corrupt, yet. Before corruption, well past the critical mass for unrest, reaches so many people that civilization is shredded by it, we need many many many people who are willing to make good trouble, good trouble for Christ.
Martin Luther wrote, shortly after his trial where he was found guilty:
If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitioussinners. Be a sinner and sinboldly,but believe andrejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world]we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness,but, as Peter says,we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousnessdwells. It is enough that bythe riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.
No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sinsby so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.
.
Luther is not encouraging us to sin wildly. He states clearly that we sin already, no matter what we believe, think, do or do not do. The matter is then what? Do we recognize God’s Grace as the ultimate determination of our lives (each breath we take and each action we commit?) When we do, then we move beyond fearing our own sin. We accept it. We accept others’ sins. We exercise God’s Grace for ourselves and for others.
Levelled down to begging God for mercy, then we all can start to act, and act courageously. We can do everything the Holy Spirit gives us the power to do to counter the work of the Devil. So acting courageously we will continue to sin. This does not stop us for we trust God’ Grace.
David instructs Solomon to act, to serve God, for God will be with him.
Paul writes that we are servants of Jesus, stewards of God’s mysteries.
I gave thanks yesterday for water and fire, sufficient safe water and contained fire that keeps me warm, cooks food, and boils water.
It’s difficult to get water. Gas is too expensive to borrow a truck to travel the 25+ km there and 25 km back to get town water. There is no well and the lake water is contaminated far to much to use more than occasionally. No children have emerged from a swim with an extra leg or hand, but it’s bad. I have a bicycle that costs just my energy to run, though it’s not suitable for hauling water in any quantity. I have developed a way to collect rainwater. Since the recent rains I now have nearly full stores of rainwater, filtered and treated.
The stove that keeps me warm burns wood. LOTS of work. Every year the stove needs to be serviced, or more accurately rebuilt, fixed again and again, in order to eek out another winter of warmth from it. I was able to get this done over the Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s ready for the coming winter. There are other things I have to complete, but that one is the primary one.
Now I am set to work at surviving the winter, and living well!
What do we do with all that is life that God has given us?
David hoped his son would be faithful and serve God as Solomon ruled as king of Israel following David’s reign.
Paul hoped the Corinthians would learn to respect each other, not get caught in senseless squabbles, and look to serve (instead of rule over) others.
What do you hope for?
To live without sin and without trouble is not possible.
So serving Christ, trusting God’s Grace alone to save us, we can be so bold as opportunities provide for us, so that (though we may fail and likely will do something terribly wrong) God’s Grace will be known by many people through our words and actions (not by our sins.)
The point is, we will sin anyway, no matter what. Trying all your life not to sin is a useless consumption of our limited time alive. To do so would guarantee that we did nothing good at all. Not one little good thing at all.
Better to sin boldly.
Better to trust God to be with us.
Better to serve Christ and hold on to the mysteries we know about God.
Make trouble, good trouble. Invite others to make good trouble. We’re going to make trouble of some kind. Best we choose to make trouble, good trouble, serving Christ…
and trusting God’s forgiveness will extend also to us … especially when we need it.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
1 Peter 1:13
Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.
Words of Grace For Today
The world demands that we strive to prepare, possess, and secure for ourselves all that is necessary for the best life we can achieve. We are taught: Trust possessions, wealth, fame or at least good reputation, and your own knowledge and intelligence to provide a future of the best and and greatest comfort available to you.
God created us and provided us creation for an entirely different way of living. We must strive. That is a given. But we are created to strive to connect with our Creator and Saviour, and with other creatures of God. This includes working to provide ‘daily bread’, the necessities of life. We provide them not just for ourselves and our own. We provide them also for the needy, the poor, the strangers, the refugees, the outcasts … and for all the people the world prefers to forget.
This is to prepare our minds for action, to discipline ourselves, to count on God’s Grace alone, to trust the Lord with all our hearts, to acknowledge God. To count on Grace alone and to acknowledge God enables us to prepare for action and to discipline ourselves to be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice of Grace for the ‘forgotten.’
Covid 19 restrictions and precautions have taught us once again that ‘we are in this together!’ It does no good to protect just the wealthy and the privileged. The poor and the homeless need to be protected as well or no measures are sufficient. To protect the poor and the homeless requires first that we ensure the basics of life are available to them as well.
Long since recognized is that it costs less to provide homes for the poor, than it does to provide all the other services, like emergency services, minimal health care, etc for people living without a home.
In homes, people are better able to care for themselves, even when some cannot do that well, caught as they are in addictions or circumstances beyond which they can resolve. People caring for themselves, from a level in a home, achieves greater results than from the street or woods level. ‘Homes’ does not mean an apartment in a run down, dangerous, crime controlled place of squalor. ‘Homes’ means a place that anyone would be eager to live in: a safe, warm in the winter, cool in the summer, dry, pest-free, friendly neighbourhood. That’s why homes for the poor need to be built in every community, sprinkled in as part of life, in all our lives. So NIMBY has no place in this world. God calls us to say YIMBY! and YIOBY! and YIYBY! Yes! in Everyone’s ‘Best Yard’!
When we trust the ways of the world, or our own insights, then we settle for much less than we are capable of, less than providing well for all other people.
Trusting God alone, and God’s Grace alone, moves us to be in ways and to do things that we could never have imagined we were capable of being and doing.
God’s ways with us are wonderful, awesome, and down right frightening – unless we trust God. Trusting God they are wonderful, awesome and enthralling – inspiring and life-giving!
Breathe!
Now comes the adventure of your life.
Today is Sunday, a day of rest.
Which may be a calm day, a break from work.
Or
It may be God’s day to get us to provide for the rest of the poor people in our city, county, M.D., or community a home, food, clothing and love!
It may be God’s day for us to get the rest of God’s work finally done! (or well on it’s way.)
Because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me, and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:9-10
For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Words of Grace For Today
Because we do something, therefore God does something good for us.
This is the half faith understanding of God.
It is good to humble ourselves before God. It is good to be penitent before God. Nothing we do, though, can effect how God exercises Grace for us. That is something God does even though we clearly do not deserve anything good from God.
In fact we deserve nothing but condemnation.
God graciously gives us life abundant, adopts us as children, promises us life eternal, and walks with us each day.
Everything that we are is by the Grace of God.
Knowing we are all God’s Grace can make us to be, inspires us to be more than we otherwise could be.
Life is wonderful, by Grace, even though we may think the Devil is running our lives to ground.
So we work hard, very hard at being the best people we can be, by living God’s Grace for others.
Do not fear, you worm Jacob,you insect Israel!I will help you, says the Lord;your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. 15 Now, I will make of you a threshing-sledge,sharp, new, and having teeth;you shall thresh the mountains and crush them,and you shall make the hills likechaff. You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. Then you shall rejoice in the Lord; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.
Romans 5:11
More than that [i.e. having been reconciled, we will be saved by Christ’s life] we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Words of Grace For Today
Worm Jacob and Insect Israel, judging the mountains!
Jesus reconciling wretched sinners, so that we can boast of the mighty sacrificial love of God.
When we know our place, there is no joy in threshing, crushing, and scattering the mountains and our enemies.
There is only boasting in what God has done for us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Who can give us life?
There is no life in judging others, especially not for what you have done yourself in order to make yourself appear better than you are. Worms and insects abound and do not make good judges.
Doch, to receive reconciliation, that is to receive as a gift that everything between us and God is made right, not by our own feeble and futile efforts, but by God’s own miraculous work through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now that is a gift that keeps on giving every minute right into eternity.
Now every day, the simplest visions of light, colour and hope spread God’s glory before us to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated.
We may be mere worms and insects, doch through God’s own will and work we are made to be saints, bearers of God’s blessings of light and grace for all the world.
Shine Jesus shine, in us and through us.
Let Jesus wonders be scattered throughout the universe.
Let us remember the marvellous light of Christ, even on cloudy days when it rains, even when Covid 19 still runs rampant, aided by fools and deniers and ‘I’m done’rs’.
Because God has made everything right between us and God, the our lives are made right in every way. Challenges become opportunities to share God’s grace, in our mundane tasks and among our enemies that work to kill us.
The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.
1 Peter 4:7-8
The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.
Words of Grace For Today
We make all sorts of plans, but God’s will will be done.
We plan a vacation sailing. God gives us life, but a storm puts us in a life raft, lost at sea, surrounded by water, with tools to save ourselves long enough that a rescue is possible. (foreshadow of tomorrow’s words.)
We plan all that we may, like a young unqualified pastor to lead us to rebuild the glory of yesteryear. But Christ’s Church is not tied to yesteryear’s model of the church, nor of our models we may contrive and build today.
In the movie, About Time, Tim’s wedding is a joyous bust, rain and wind driving the reception from under the rented tent canopies to crowd inside his parent’s home. The best man’s toast is repeatedly a disaster going from bad to worse, each time Tim uses his special gift (of all the men in his family) to go back and replay/change portions of his life. He chooses various friends to be best man and each new best man stoops to new lows in the speech.
Finally Tim asks his father to be his best man.
The first time through his father’s speech is great. But his father has second thoughts, wants to include a comment about how he loves his son. Tim says it was a great speech the way it was, but the father replays it and proclaims his love for three men in his life, not his own father, but including his son, Tim. He is proud of him.
Still, the most profound words were not those written about the father’s love for his son. They were the advice Tim’s father provides to all who would consider getting married: find someone to marry who is kind! Everything else can be worked through or around, if one’s spouse is kind.
1 Peter said it as well: maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.
When we confess how much we require God’s love each day just to breathe, and live, and hope, then we can practice for others that same Gracious Love which save us and gives us life.
Love is not as complicated as we seem to make it. It is simply humbly recognizing God’s gifts, and out of endless thanks to extend that same attitude towards others.
Sin and Evil may seem powerful and omnipresent, destructive and unavoidable. It may seem we need to join in and get out of life what we can by taking from others what is for the taking.
Love is a far better way to live.
Love is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.
It is indeed good, right, and blessed that we do join in and get out of life all that God freely gives to us, so that we can share it generously with others.
Covid 19 challenges us and reveals whether we trust God’s love for us and all other people, and whether we comprehend that Jesus calls us, especially now, to be the people who are generous with all people.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
Romans 8:21
Also the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Words of Grace For Today
With Climate change, the population density, encroachment on wild habitat, close proximity with other animals, and our ability to move around the globe … we humans have put a huge stress on the earth … and
there are few people who could not well imagine that today creation itself needs to be set free from its bondage to decay, the rate of which we’ve increased.
More than wallow in dismay, we count our blessings:
With Covid 19 the earth has received a reprieve. Now if we can just continue to provide a reprieve as we re-launch back to …
well whatever it is that we will get to, I’m not so sure it is ‘back to’ what it used to be, not anymore. Therein lies a small window for something to change for the better.
We also have been into the wildernesses, the National Parks and remote areas where few if any other humans have tread, and we have drunk in the splendour and wonders God provides in creation.
Our sins … They may well say that our sins are catching up with us and that we will serve a sentence many times what our sins deserve.
I’ve never believed terrible things happened to us to punish us for our sins. There is plenty of pain and misery that we bring on ourselves directly caused by us doing evil things. God, though, does not met out punishment. If that were the case then God would not be judging with equity and with righteousness, for some terribly evil people, who have done more evil than millions of people put together, seem to reap rewards instead of punishment for their sins.
So Israel was in exile, and one common way to explain that was to say that God was punishing her for her sins.
And what can we say we suffer today because of our sins? Shall we say Covid 19 is punishment for our sins? The people dying, the people paying the greatest cost, are not the ones benefiting most from the things that destroy the earth and other people in order to make life more comfortable for the few.
Rather it is the other way around. The rich feel the pinch of Covid 19 restrictions the least, while the poor are pushed to and over the brink of death.
That said: sin and there are costly consequences, whether it shows or not in this lifetime. Sin eats at one’s soul until one is forgiven, and one embarks on a renewed life guided by the Holy Spirit.
As Covid 19 restrictions are eased in many places, as here, we may well sing softly (humming is allowed) of the greatness of God’s blessings, and cry at the release from what may have seemed to be prisons of isolation. Indeed we look forward to the possibility that God may bless us in the days ahead, that we may be a blessing to other people.
And be reflected by all water and life in Creation
Isaiah 42:16
I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.
Luke 1:78-79
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Words of Grace For Today
Darkness. Total, deep, profound darkness of the soul. No light at the end of the tunnel.
When we find ourselves there, to put it into cosmic terms, in a black hole that pulls everything around it into nothingness …
When we find ourselves there it seems that everything is lost, not only things that build a sense of continuity and security (like jobs, homes, family, church, and even the tool that enables one to create – a camera, a pencil, a computer, a canvas), not just life and all good life at that for us and for creation, but meaning, history, presence and future ….
When time and hope are lost into the void and emptiness that is left to us, then only memory of, or re-spoken promises made in the past, or that little light at the end of the vortex can save us from going totally bonkers.
Covid 19’s threat (the lock-down, our isolations, our ‘staying the blazes home’, our financial concerns, the risk to our and our loved ones’ health and lives), for most of us does not approach the vortex of a black hole where no light exists. For some of us it does.
Whether its a total black out, or a brown out, or we have already gone a bit bonkers so that it all looks like dark colours everywhere …
However this affects us,
We yearn for Light, if yearning is still possible.
God promises to turn darkness into light, rough places into level ground. The dawn from on high breaks in on us in darkness, in the shadow of death, and guides us in the way of peace.
That’s the promise that we can remember … if we can remember.
That’s the promise that we can re-speak for others … when they cannot remember, we can, and we can still speak.
That’s the promise that we need to re-speak, to proclaim with all the vivid colours of the rainbow splashing about …
because even if we do not notice them, there is someone onto whom those colours (carrying Light) will splash.
And they will be saved from the vortex of absolute darkness, by our generous, reckless, prodigal re-speaking a promise that created, redeemed, and guides this whole universe of creation to be able to seek peace.
Peace is not something we attain and hold on to.
Peace is a manner of being in this universe, when participated in brings us to reflect God’s intent for us, but which is lost as quickly as a candle is snuffed out by even a gentle breeze.
Peace be with you, also this day, whatever this day is for you.
Splash and be splashed by the Light and Colours of the rainbow, God’s rainbow of promise, faith, hope, love, grace, and life – abundant life.
