The Learning Curve

Yearning Enough

Sunday, July 13, 2025

To Go Out As The Sun Goes Down

To Pray: God Save Us!

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.

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Mark 1:35

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Oh that it were so.

Or so.

So that we could climb the steep curve to learn justice.

And that we could make justice be equal for all, and life be abundant for all, and all be able to enjoy the basics of life, and …

well, that God’s will were on earth as it is in heaven!

We yearn for lots of things,

but our greatest, rightest, most worthy yearnings are that God’s judgments to be applied for all on earth,

for we trust God’s mercy and abounding steadfast love, to forgive when we need it, and when do we not need it!

Yet

so much interferes

each day

so

we seek the calm of the approaching dark to beg God

to come

and save us

also this day

and this night.

God Listens

Which May Be Good

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Or Not

For God Sees Through Us To Our Core.

Isaiah 49:8

Thus says the Lord: In a time of favour I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages.

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2 Corinthians 6:2

For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

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Words of Grace for Today –

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When the whole world seems to be falling apart at the seams and between,

Words of assurance come from on high:

God listens, and helps us.

What a blessing.

Of course, sometimes we’d prefer that God would not be listening in on our lives.

So

Blessing or Curse?

Depends, eh?

…

Though the greatest blessing is to know that God is with us and for us, at all times, and even in those times when we’d prefer God were not listening, God forgives us, frees us from the shame and all else.

Wonders of wonders.

Armaments and Ordinances

Blow the Enemy Sky-high

Friday, July 11, 2025

Leaving Holes In the Fabric Of Life.

Life is Fragile,

and Home is as Well …

even if it’s more than tarps.

Psalm 119:52

When I think of your ordinances from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.

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2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Oh so many have taken, do take and will always take comfort in human ordinances, for with their power they can blow their enemies into oblivion, and who does not (at least in passing) wish to do that to those infuriating [deleted expletive] irritants (meaning one’s enemies.)

Yet God provides a different kind of ordinance, one that guides one to live well.

These are harder to trust and take comfort in, for they ask self sacrifice from us, and unconditional love for our enemies.

The upside is they do not put holes into the fabric of life. Instead they heal what is broken, and offer life to the downtrodden.

And

when our enemies use their destructive human ordinances to blow our homes sky-high, then God still has a home waiting for us,

and God will welcome us home.

Reasons to Follow

Abound

Thursday, July 10, 2025

For God Is God, After All

Creating us to live well

wherever our paths take us.

Leviticus 22:31

Thus you shall keep my commandments and observe them: I am the Lord.

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John 14:23

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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There are ample reasons to follow God’s commandments.

They are guides for living life as God created us to live.

Why not live well?

How better to live than to live as one is created to?

For a spider trying to be a fly does not do well.

Nor a coyote trying to be a whale.

Nor a person trying to be a god.

…

Following is good,

it’s just not what saves us

morning, noon, and night of each day.

Only God’s Grace demonstrated in Jesus’ sacrifice to save us can do that.

Knowing we are saved, makes following the commandments possible.

We are not trying to prove something.

We are living out what has been given to us a gift:

Life Abundant.

On Watch,

Getting Us To Plant and Build

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Goodness in Our Time

Join the Circle

…

of Life.

Jeremiah 31:28

And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.

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Titus 2:11-12

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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It’s easy to think the world is lost.

The present times of turmoil and uncertainty do not promise a better future, if a future at all, for us.

With whatever time we have,

God gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit

to leave behind impiety and worldly passions (like the economy’s foundation of greed)

so that we can reflect

the goodness God has made us capable of embodying

to other people,

Making these days, short as they always are for each of us,

the best days of life on earth,

ours.

Things That Go Bump

In the Night

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Can Be Deadly

God Knows

And Brings the Light.

Daniel 2:22

He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.

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John 17:25

Jesus prayed: Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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In the cold dark of night

intruders, hollering, laughing, snickering, partying drunk and high,

on an adventure, the think,

enter the meadow, my home, such as it is.

Home Invasion, almost, as threatening.

What they do not know is …

is what is hiding in the cold dark, out there.

…

Skunks meandering after a meal of mice.

Coyotes laying in wait for whatever moves slowly.

Lynx, the hunter predator that silently stalks its prey, including vulnerable humans.

…

Life treats us similarly.

Venture into the cold dark,

into the dark of human sloth, scheming, striving, or revenge,

into the dark of the soul, where past sin accumulates a semi-truck overwhelming load of dark-matter, where regret rules and all hope is lost,

into the dark of the valley of misery, disease, and death,

venture into the cold dark,

and one is likely going to lose it all, entering the vortex that sucks one down, down, down forever …

unless

God sends the light into the cold darkness.

Caught in the darkness? Pray for the light to come, and soon.

Pressed Down

In Chains

Monday, July 7, 2025

Of Low Estate.

Here God Loves Us and Calls Us

to Speak Boldly of That Love.

Psalm 136:23

It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever.

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Ephesians 6:19-20

Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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What the English translates as ‘low estate’ one German translation has as ‘unterdrückt’, ‘suppressed’ (as in suppress one’s anger) or ‘oppressed’ or ‘repress’ or literally ‘pressed down’.

In Mexico and other Central American and South American cities built on hills, the rich have built fantastic estates on the highest hills, not unlike one sees around L.A. The lower one descends down the hillsides (the direction the refuse and excrement flows) into the valleys, the poorer the houses become until in the valleys, in the dreck, one finds the shanties of the poorest.

While enjoying the ‘good times’ of living high on the hills it is more difficult to recognize that all goodness comes from God, and not one’s wealth, fame, or station in life. In the bottom of the valleys of life, where goodness is hard to see, when one recognizes goodness it is much easier to recognize that it comes from God. Still the challenges of life ‘on the top’ and ‘underneath’ can either drive one away from God or towards God.

As we struggle through life’s challenges, it is as if (regardless whether we live on the hilltops or in the valleys) we struggle to exist, as though we were pressed down to the bottom of life, where one misstep leads to death.

Here Jesus finds us, in the low and lower and lowest levels of existence as it becomes survival instead of existence.

Here Jesus finds us, or the reality is, God was with us all along, all along the hard road of life that became ‘low estate’ or poverty or barely surviving. What may change is we become newly aware that God walks with us, so we say ‘Here Jesus finds us’ meaning, even here we are or become aware that God is with us, and

and God loves us, with all the glory and blessing of divine, unconditional, all-powerful love,

and, as we are forgiven, revived, and given new life (though not often pulled out of our ‘low estate’), and newly equipped to give testimony to God’s love …

and as God does all that for us, Jesus sends us out

to share that same glorious blessing of divine love with everyone, with words only when necessary.

We, having been ‘pressed down’ just as olives are pressed down to make precious olive oil, become priceless treasure in God’s Kingdom, life savers for those in greatest need.

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So –

How’s your day going so far?

Up on the hills?

Down in the valleys?

Do you see God walking with you?

Are your ready to share the wonders of God’s love with others?

Is Reconciling


The Bank Account Simple,

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Compared To Reconciling One’s Life With God?

God doesn’t freeze our accounts with God

but the banks … well . . .

Isaiah 55:7

Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

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2 Corinthians 5:20

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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If the wicked want to forsake their ways, I’m not going to stand in their way. Are you?

Or would anyone, really?

So let them!

Of course it takes more than letting them, before the wayward will return to God,

us being among them.

We need to be inspired by the Holy Spirit,

working through other people, circumstances, wonders, miracles, signs

or whatever it takes

so that we know

we CAN return to God

and expect that God will not do us in,

for God is ready with pardons unending.

God does the work of reconciling our lives with God.


Now if only someone would reconcile the the bank account for me at their cost . . . .

Is He The One?

The One To Save Us

Saturday, July 5, 2025

From Ourselves?

Right there.

He was yelling right there at the top of his lungs,


“What’s Wrong?!

Everything!”

Lamentations 1:20

See, O Lord, how distressed I am; my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.

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John 4:29

The woman said: Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?

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Words of Grace for Today –

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We make so much trouble for ourselves, giving us cause for so many lamentations, and agreements with the passage from Lamentations.

We wait with great expectation worn weary into apathy for the One who can save us from everything.

It is so easy to scream or resign or fight, because our world economy sings only one tune: that of powerful greed.

Greed feeds us selfishness, insatiable hungers, and a callous disregard for all creation. As greed permeates everything around us, it is difficult to sing the songs of God’s Kingdom. Each day we need new images to jostle our hearts, minds, and imaginations to recognize God at work around us, and in us, and through us for others. We need to be reminded that Jesus is our song each day on this wonder-filled journey. Otherwise, drowned in greed-fed-fears, we only ramp up the heart-and-mind-stopping panic around us.

How can we find freedom from greed? How can we find a blessed tomorrow from today?

Encountering a man ranting and raving loudly in the woods where people come to camp for free, I asked, “What’s the problem?” The guy stopped a second before screaming, “Everything!”

What is your Everything? At the checkout till they keep asking: “Is that everything?” with a wink, I respond “No, the universe is a big place and I can’t afford everything. I’ll just take these few things, thank you.”

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Our times are as tumultuous as any. It’s difficult to tell who is or will be a threat. Southern neighbours are now irrational and unpredictable. Last year’s extreme weather keeps becoming this year’s norm. Wildfires wipe out homes, communities, and livelihoods, and disrupt even more lives with deadly smoke, planting time-bombs in our lungs and blood. It’s difficult to tell what is safe, what is sure to be lost, and where one can take even a short rest from the tumult. We do know that our future, like a wild rapids, is going to be more difficult, dangerous, and full of surprises from new directions.

Yet God knew all this would be so in our times, as God has known about every time in the past, and knows about every time to come. God created us with the only real security for life in this universe: God’s own assurance that, come what may, God is with us through it all. And God sent God’s own Son to save us from our own sins and the evil that permeates the world. Each day God calls us to allow ourselves to be dandled in safety on God’s lap in this New Creation. Each day the Holy Spirit sends us out to share the wonders of God’s steadfast love with all who need it. And in the end, God will call us home, to sing our thanks again, for we are home, home with the saints in light, home at last, home at last.

And that is our Everything.

The Last Hope

For Life Lost

Friday, July 4, 2025

Where Will You See It?

Waves Come In and Go Out

Washing Us Free.

Psalm 119:114

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

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John 6:40

This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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How do you find that precious slice of time-place-tempo-song that gives you

everything to live for,

that gives you hope,

for another day, week, year, decade?

In the lives of those who have found a way to move from desperate-despair-loss-end

to become someone for someone, and maybe for a few more than one or two, maybe even for us all?

In the words that inspire one to dig deep?

Or in the faces of sounds defying the obvious end, despite the great loss getting into tomorrow from here?

Or in the safety of laughter and joy with children not yet stained by the short-harsh-brutish?

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in the turmoil that is inevitably life,

the only hope for all kinds of life is

…

knowing that God is with us, for us, and

more than eager to redeem us, renew us, and give us renewed life each day.