but more nourishing than greed, pride, and bearing false witness,
and other ways we forsake our God.
Jeremiah 2:17
Have you not brought this upon yourself by forsaking the Lord your God, while he led you in the way?
John 8:31
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples.
Words of Grace For Today
God does not forsake us, ever, no matter what.
The Holy Spirit always leads us onward to serve Christ, and Christ alone.
It is not that the Holy Spirit leads us onward to serve our vision of the future, say what our own congregation should look like, or how much money we will save by cheating others, or how much comfort is due us at others expense, or even seemingly good goals: like that we will build family camps to nurture the faith at home, or that we will bring Vacation Bible Schools to remote areas in the North, so that First Nations people will be educated in the Christian Faith (as patronizing as that has always been!), or that we will recruit more and more people to join our church so that we are strong again.
The Holy Spirit always leads us onward to serve Christ, and Christ alone.
Discerning what Christ’s will for us is seemingly difficult, which we get so wrong over and over again. Only hindsight shows us how wrong we’ve too often been: take slavery, or exclusion of others by race, or nationality, or social class; or sexual orientation; or now on gender identification.
The ways we forsake God and go our own way seems to be unlimited.
The ways that the Holy Spirit uses to bring us home again, are actually unlimited, as unlimited as God’s Love and Jesus’ Grace.
Continuing in Jesus’ Way cannot be reduced to a few or even many sayings, rules, or verses. Democracy is not about a constitution, but rather democracy is about an attitude that toleration of others and their opposing ideas is essential to life and therefore to governing a people.
Being Jesus’ disciples is not reducible, not at all, to a set of rules, sayings or a constitution. It is a full experience of God leading us in ways and in places, toward ends that we cannot imagine, nor as we are underway, even fathom. It is about holding Jesus’ story of bringing Grace to all people at great cost to himself (his own life) as the guide to how we live. Following Jesus’ Way is about living out an ever evolving ethics that holds us humbly needing Grace, and bearing our own crosses, while not dumping the cross on others.
When we have nothing left to lose, then we are totally free.
We lose everything to follow Jesus, including the right to claim our right to live. Everything is the Holy Spirit’s to use. We are bold to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus, for though it cost us our lives on earth, no one can separate us from the Grace of Jesus, the Love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
What freedom that is! What security! What everlasting hope that provides!
Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.
2 Corinthians 4:14
We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.
Words of Grace For Today
The images for resurrection abound. Glorious, wonderful, hopeful.
The south wind blows hot air as I write this, warming it up into the high 30⁰. Not that comfortable.
Deception and lies abound all around, making lots of people hot under the collars. Not that comfortable.
Rule of law is lost as police brutality takes centre stage, with peaceful protests in response that are hijacked into violent riots in the heat of the nights for weeks. Not that comfortable.
Patterns of RCMP here at home, blatant in statistics, are racially focused and motivated by hatred spawned from irrational fears. Real crime is ignored, or abided, in a subtle agreement that it must exist, or it is attacked as if it were already war … and truth is the first victim in war. Society decay receives the heat of corruption applied, speeding it’s crumbling beneath a veneer of nice politeness. Not that comfortable at all.
In every generation the creative progress has always moved only along with the corruption of evil that permeates human efforts, so that eventually all (seemly) good things rot away.
The dead bodies of all human ‘achievements’ litter history and all creation.
In this dust, we each come to rest, at the end of our lives.
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The promise made evident with Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is that God does not abandon us to this dust, not after we die, nor as we live.
From this dust God will bring us back to new life, raised with Jesus Christ, to live in God’s presence.
It is a promise in which we place our trust and hope.
Hope pulls us up and out of the dust that surrounds us each day. We live differently, better, at peace, simply because we have this hope. We no longer need to struggle to be good, God makes us saints in spite of ourselves. We no longer need to struggle to make things happen, and in the process become the evil that we try to conquer, trying to do in secret what is certainly wrong, destructive, and futile.
Hope makes all the difference in how we live. We surrender to serve Christ and Christ alone, no longer making our own goals the purpose of life, at all costs.
Even today the Holy Spirit guides us to live this life. This life is as Christ provides: that we accept our own sinfulness, his forgiveness, and the renewed life that the Holy Spirit gives us – then we turn to other sinners and forgive them, helping them turn from the evil that consumes them.
God help us. Raise us from this dust that catches in our throats as we try to breathe. Give us Light, Breath, and Hope … by Grace alone.
Only the Holy Spirit can show us how love blesses everything and everyone.
Psalm 8:6
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet
Ephesians 5:1-2
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Words of Grace For Today
God gave humans dominion over the works of God’s hands, over creation, putting all things under our feet.
It is true that we, humans, do appear to be able to work our will over many aspects and creatures in creation. Certainly we do not have dominion over everything in the universe.
Since we pretty much destroy so much of what we attempt to control, perverting even our own good intentions into things terrible beyond imagining (remember how nuclear bombs, declining faithfulness, and pastor shortages came to be), it is probably good we have not mastered the entire universe.
Where we show most fearfully our successes is in our efforts to control and/or destroy other people. Warfare has developed to the point where we can all too easily dispatch a drone to blow up a village, missiles from a plane, ship, submarine, or land based silo that can obliterate whole cities, or suicide bombers to blow up a crowd. Terrorist attacks come by land, sea, air, and cyber means delivering projectile, poisons, explosions. Infamous leaders turn words that have no bearing in reality into deadly weapons, inspiring hate crimes, that invite protests, that are hijacked as violent riots, which in turn are use as excuses for more hate crimes inspired by infamously dangerous and irrational power hungry leaders.
Where did all this hate come from?
From our fearful hearts!
We fear that our share of the pie is disappearing, so we want to blame someone else, instead of take our own responsibility for living lives that demand others destroy air, land, and sea … and people, in order to satisfy our insatiable appetites for things that do not satisfy the soul.
How different Jesus’ life story is, filled with healing words and touches, wise words that reach the soul with truth, actions that demonstrate God’s omi-present, all-powerful, self-sacrificial love.
Be imitators …
not of those who pursue dominion over creation and creatures, especially other people.
Be imitators …
of Jesus, extending love, especially to the strangers, to the ones who is different, to the ones who cannot return our love, to the most vulnerable, to the most needy and to our own selves.
You can tell, in a congregation, who the people are who do not love themselves as God loves them. They always worry and try to make something (usually something impossible) happen according to their own plans. They lie. They cheat. The sow chaos, trying to keep their plans in the dark until the destruction is beyond repair, as if they somehow win with their lies, secrets, and interpretations of constitutions, bylaws, and contracts that are only possible if one suspends normal manners of thinking. While they demand more and more of others, they produce less and less real, loving work. What appears as loving actions is really power games to gain influence in order to rise out of their own chaos as a saviour.
Unfortunately people always follow leaders who create chaos and false fears, like Hottelstedter, who will then say they really had no idea where all the people disappeared to, those the cattle cars carried through their village… on the way to the extermination camps.
One has to pity those who are so fearful that the best they can imagine for the future is to create chaos and false fears to drive people to do irrational and destructive things. Yes! the pitiful have exercised dominion, the kind of dominion the Devil tempts us to, the kind that eats out our own souls and corrupts each piece of creation it touches.
Thank God, Jesus’ love, which the Holy Spirit equips and empowers us to imitate and act out for all people, even the most pitifully corrupt, cannot be overpowered by the Devil and his evil work, no matter the guise they come in. We are not separated from the love of Christ, not even by the Devil himself, not as God’s love flows into us in overwhelming measures, nor as it flows over, around, and through us to everyone around us.
Thanks be to God.
Therefore we pause at all hours, to be astounded with gratitude for all God has done for us.
Therefore we pray each day: may we not forget the over-abundance of God’s Grace and Love which saves us, even from ourselves.
Therefore each day we pray: may this day bring us to share God’s love with those so thirsting and hungry that they succumb to the Devil’s empty promises.
Yes, let us have dominion over all creation, as we imitate Christ, for Jesus’ kind of dominion is to pour God’s unconditional, irrationally prodigal Love and Grace into life around us … at all costs to ourselves.
From a Lutheran to Lutherans, other Christians and people of other faiths:
Here are some documents and posters I’ve collected that may be helpful.
Note: no guarantees are offered or implied: Inform yourself. Fact Check everything. The process proposed may help, or not. The Checklist surely is not complete, especially not for your situation and event.
Links to source documents are provided throughout the files, here in both .odt and .docx.
I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
Romans 8:26
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
Words of Grace For Today
Compassion and supplication,
to look and mourn, to mourn as for an only child.
What profound grief … to mourn the loss of a loved one,
a child no less, and
an only child.
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…
When we are caught in deep emotion, especially deep sadness, despair or grief, we do not function well.
And it is good to hear again and again that at these times
Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to be there with us, interceding for us, helping us to ask for what we really need.
Even the Holy Spirit is caught by our sadness, despair and grief. The Spirit sighs so deeply words cannot express the Spirit’s empathy for us.
No matter what, there is nothing that can separate us from the Love of God. When we do not remember this, the Holy Spirit carries us until we can remember.
Thanks be to God, for into the darkest days of our lives the Light of Christ shines.
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
Words of Grace For Today
We all have enemies. You may call them adversaries.
Maybe you’ve lived so as to win every conflicted encounter and you’ve left destroyed people in your wake as you’ve moved forward, progressing, you’ve called it, in you life … accumulating power, and/or wealth, and/or fame … and you’ve done this not so outrageously that people have stood against you with all their might, so that in your bubble of life you may not be aware of all your enemies. But you have earned your enemies by being against many people. Whether they count you as their enemy or themselves as your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived like that and accumulated great power, wealth and/or fame and many people would tear you apart if they could, because you have destroyed so many people along the way to your ‘top’, which is really the bottom of a pit of … what to call it other than evil. They know you are their enemy, and whether they are your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived just struggling to get by and you’ve not had the wherewithal to notice who stood against you or how. It was simply always something that took everything from you and gave so little back: an employer who took advantage of you and underpaid you for years, a colleague or boss up the ladder who took all the credit for your work and left you in the dregs, or ….
Maybe you did yourself in with self destructive choices. Or your ill-health took the focus of your life away. Or someone else, a friend or person of trust gaslit you until you thought you were the problem. Or maybe you just never had a chance to be anything the world values.
Maybe you’ve lived as I did, always taking it on the cheek, turning aside from destructive people and allowing them to have their way, just trying to ‘duck’ so as not to be caught so much by them.
Just maybe there are a few people, who like me, while ducking from the blasts of evil, we’ve done our best to provide for ourselves and our families AND we’ve sought to give as generously as possible our time, skills, compassion, kindness, wisdom, and/or resources to anyone who crossed our paths. We work to sow truth and peace wherever we are. Perhaps you started out as a pacifist, or ended up that way simply out of practice being at peace with all you were allowed to be or as God blesses you to be.
As sure as the rise of the sun is in the east, and the setting in the west, our enemies gaslighting us and their evil behaviours toward us, do not define us.
Their gaslighting, lies, and working in the shadows define them, each of them, no matter their position, power or wealth. They are defined as corrupt. They become a poison to the world around them. Things that could have been good decay from the inside. Their worlds rot like ant eaten tress under the pressure of the sins, and their turning from God to serve the Evil One. When the wind of even a small storm blows, they fall, shattering as they hit the ground. So much that could have been … is lost.
As the Psalmist writes: But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you.
Then comes what seems like the good part (though it is not)
Biblical Rache, revenge.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Revenge is hardly where I go with that at all. I do have to bind the sins of all those who contributed to the gaslighting, the lying, and the work in the shadows to do what cannot survive in the light of day. I’m not bothered to keep track of who did exactly what; God will deal with them. I will not prejudge them as ‘sheep to be slaughtered’ even if I am sure they have earned that. I will give them time for the amendment of their lives, time to set right what they have done.
Why not ask God to set them apart for the day of slaughter? Because we all rely solely on the Grace of God to breathe, live and hope. Maybe God will be gracious and forgive these people and doers of evil deeds. I cannot know. I move on, not forgetting, working to stop this kind of injustice, but re-engaging in God’s good creation that I still have time to enjoy.
So all that evil bears down on each day, not countered by a wish to do in one’s enemies, and still life is blessed. Even my life is blessed, relegated as the old hermit in the woods living on $40/month. My life is blessed, not because it is easy or comfortable or secure.
My life is blessed because it is as God chooses, and as I trust God makes it.
My life is beautiful, wonderful, and it is ‘cool!’
I encounter it in the oddest ways at the most unexpected times. God breaks in on my life, wonderfully so. So I wrote a few days ago as I settle in for the night:
It is cool.
It is cool, 7⁰C out, and 17⁰C in
It is cool, A fire laid for the morning.
It is cool, Hot water on demand and washcloths and towels aplenty to clean up well.
It is cool, How I’ve been able to clean up and distance long grass and buggies from here.
It is cool, How after pressing so hard for days my body just insists and gets a nap and takes 3 hours.
It is cool, The view as the sun has set. It is cool how the process and checklist for restarting worship in person are coming along.
It is cool, The fresh air here.
It is cool The connected-to-the-saints solitude here.
It is cool, To have hard physical work and challenging creative writing to do.
It is cool, The song birds and water fowl fill the air at times with music and noise.
It is cool, The technology that makes so much possible.
It is cool. The Peace that carries us in the face of enemies onslaughts.
It is cool. It is God, 3in1, all
Breaking always in
to our finite bubbles.
Cool.
May God break into your awareness this day and fill you with awe, wonder and peace, as you abide in God’s love.
We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Acts 12:7
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.
Words of Grace For Today
When Jesus forgives us it is amazing.
Perhaps, for us Christians who have lived in the promise of forgiveness it is not so spectacular, since it is an every day kind of thing.
For people, though, who have never realized this promise is for them, well how can we describe it?
If you have ever been in chains. If you’ve ever had your freedom taken from you. If you have, through no fault of your own, been thrown into jail … and someone came to release you, without notice … then perhaps you could understand this.
Or if you had a debt so great, there was no way you could pay it off in this lifetime, and you struggled to just meet the interest payments …
and someone unexpectedly paid off your debt, and put that much again in your account.
Or if you realized that your guilt load was so great that you simply could not make right with the many many people you’d left hurt and struggling in your wake …
and someone came and took that guilt, and gave you the ability to make things right for all the people you had hurt along the way…
Perhaps we can imagine what
freedom, being set free, actually means.
It is astounding, confusing, fear-making, exhilarating, anxiety ridden, and weightlessness in full gravity.
It is what Jesus does when he forgive us. He comes and says ‘do not be afraid,’ and we need not be afraid, such authority and calming compassion as he carries in his voice.
Then he sends us out into the harvest, to forgive others
so that they may live free.
Free to choose to allow God’s love to pour over their heart and mind, and transform their actions into moves of Grace, like an elegant swan, a confident dancer, a child filled with expectation and still calmly waiting …
The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
Mark 6:41-42
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled;
Words of Grace For Today
We don’t see miracles of meal multiplying beyond the capacity of the jar containing it, or fish and loaves multiplying in the hands of a crowd fed by Jesus.
We do see miracles.
We usually dismiss them
We want a sign or something that knocks us off our comfortable chairs compel us to see God at work in the world today.
God may work that way.
I think that Jesus multiplied the loaves (the text supports this as much as the traditional interpretation) by
calling the people to sit down,
who had come to hear him preach in an area far from a town that could service or feed the gathering of so many,
who were not dumb,
who packed a lunch, and rightfully carried with them, under their garments, so pick pockets could not steal it from them.
A boy pulls his out to eat.
Jesus uses their hunger, the disciples calling attention to crowd’s need to eat, and his trustworthy presence to ask people to sit and eat. No one brings out their food, not until the basket comes their way and they have plenty, so they add to the basket and you have something of a potluck.
The miracle is not Jesus working outside the laws of physics as we know them.
The miracle is Jesus working within our hearts, despite how we known them
as selfish, greedy, suspicious, and fearful.
Jesus transforms that crowd from what could become a frenzy of stealing food from each other, to a crowd of 5000 and many more who generously share what they have with each other.
What they have, Jesus shows them again, is more than plenty to feed everyone abundantly.
Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.
Words of Grace For Today
This is simple.
Do Not Do What Is Wrong.
Do not steal from others.
Do not seek your own advantage but that of others.
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except the world certainly does not work that way.
Lesson upon lesson teaches us that we need to take every advantage for ourselves and even then there will not be enough for us to enjoy life.
We must work hard, even if that means at cheating, lying, stealing, but …
but we just cannot get caught.
.
Really!?
Well, that is the world’s way, and the way our children are taught … by all those who lie, cheat, are rich, and still they do not enjoy life!
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The basic of Jesus’ story is that the world rejects generosity, and God builds God’s Kingdom on it. God is generous with forgiveness.
So can we.
God is generous in giving new chances to sinners who deserve condemnation.
So can we.
God wondrously offers life that is abundant and overflowing,
with challenges, rewards, and purpose.
Most of all God freely gives us (at great cost, God’s Son’s own life) the ability to fully enjoy life, and the freedom to live in God’s generosity that is not dependent on material things, so that we can seek other’s advantages, and trust we will have enough to enjoy life, no matter our circumstances.
Do not steal only starts with not taking other’s property.
It is also not taking one’s reputation by lying about them. (Further, Martin Luther referred to bearing false witness as worse than just stealing one’s reputation, it is to actually murder that person because they are left with such a reduced possibility of living well. – so to not steal one’s reputation is to not murder.)
It is also not taking other’s opportunities.
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Most of all it is to create opportunities for others, even if it costs us greatly.
The opportunities we strive to create for others is for them to learn that life is not dependent on things, but on trusting God’s Love and Grace.
To do that we need to trust that what truly has value for us in life is always free.
It comes down to the mysteries that God provides for us to live in awe of: beauty, truth, hope beyond hope, genuine love, grace, and forgiveness.
Look to see those beauties all around us each day and we will learn to enjoy life, one minute at a time.
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.
