Blameless, Pure And Holy

Not Quite

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Not at all!

not even the snow is perfect, all crumpled up with chunks

Genesis 6:9

These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.

.

1 Peter 1:15

Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;

Words of Grace for Today –

Ah to be blameless, pure and holy,

but that would be to be not human.

So how was Noah attributed with being blameless.

How can the writer of 1 Peter call us to be holy as Jesus is holy?

Wishful thinking,

the kind that so many people have latched on to, chasing an unreachable dream,

and then using that dream to condemn others so the condemner appears (to themselves anyway) to be better than the condemned,

when

all are equally sinful in God’s eyes, far from pure, holy, or blameless.

Yet Jesus offers us the gifts of being reckoned by God as he was: pure, holy, or blameless,

which is not our record, but Jesus’.

Nothing to brag about or be proud of, just

a whole lot of humility and thanks for that,

again,

always.

It is the Lord

No question about it

Monday, March 24, 2025

the surprise for all but mystics

Fishing,

Seeking,

and Being Found.

Surprise!

First Samuel 3:18

So Samuel told Eli everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.’

.

John 21:12

Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.

Words of Grace for Today –

while mystics hear, see, smell, and feel God, and know it!

Most of us get surprised over and over again

(if we pay any attention at all

to how God is present in our mundane lives)

how God shows up

like when God called to the boy Samuel, and he thought the priest Eli who raised him as a son was calling for him

like the disciples on the road to Emmaus

when Jesus shows up to walk with them after his resurrection

and opens to them the meaning of the old scriptures and his death and resurrection and then asks them to join him for breakfast.

Are you ready to encounter God today?

At least be open to the possibility?

It’s a sweet surprise, a joy that lasts a lifetime.

Singing and Saying

To Be Known and Loved

Sunday, March 23, 2025

By God – Nothing Is Greater.

See the Light? The Light Sees You!

Psalm 59:17

O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.

.

Acts of the Apostles 26:22

To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place:…

Words of Grace for Today –

We all have a basic need to be seen, known, and loved for who we are, just as we are, warts and all.

When we accept that God sees, knows and loves us, just as we are

Then life becomes very interesting, very challenging, very rooted, and wildly unpredictable,

for God not only sees, knows and loves us, but also

sends us

to engage all kinds of people, to see them, know them, and to love them as God does.

Engaging with others does change us at our roots, and gives us a little better view to God’s perspective on us (all people), our lives, on this planet, and on the entire universe.

Singing and Saying what the prophets and Moses did …

Singing and Saying what God does in the past, today, and promises to do in the future …

Singing and Saying like that reflects that when we engage with others, actually keeping silent and listening intently, there is nothing predictable about where, how, and why God will take us today and all our tomorrows,

only that God’s love will always be there, as God walks right beside us into and through it all.

Yep, that brings us to Singing and Saying, all day and all night long.

What Is It?

Heard and Seen

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Can You Hear It?

See the Light,

Hear the Holy Water,

The Free Feast,

Life Abundant

Broadcast to All.

Joel 3:1

For then, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,

.

Acts of the Apostles 2:33

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear.

Words of Grace for Today –

Something has happened, is happening, will happen …

What is it?

It happened when God restored the fortunes of Judah and Israel.

It happened after Jesus was exalted at the right hand of God, having received the promise of the Holy Spirit, when Jesus poured out something that the readers of Luke’s saw and heard.

What is it?

Whatever it was, we know that God is still doing it in our midst, and that God will continue to do it in our midst, so that we can hear and see it as the early followers of Jesus did.

What is it?

It is tied to the restoration of fortunes for God’s people, to Jesus’ return from life and death on earth to sit at God’s right hand, and to Jesus receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit as promised.

What is it?

It sounds like … It looks like … It could be ….

But the texts don’t give that information, though the fuller texts could.

What is it?

Perhaps our experience with God will inform us as well.

Ah, and that must be it!

You see it, right? You hear it, right?

Scorning the Proud

Friday, March 21, 2025

Favouring the Humble

Like grass, we are fragile and yet God’s greatest when we serve others.

Proverbs 3:34

Towards the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he shows favour.

.

Luke 22:24-26

A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.

Words of Grace for Today –

We have our ways in this world of recognizing who is the greatest among us.

Oh, they are the charmers and spinners, the powerful and wealthy, the famous and infamous.

Lent is a yearly journey to remember that God sees the us differently in this broken world.

God favours the humble and scorns the charmers and spinners, the powerful and wealthy, and the famous and infamous alike.

Jesus shows us again God’s perspective as we turn, as we repent, away from ways that do harm and cause suffering to God’s ways of serving one another by seeing, knowing, and loving each other as God sees us, precious all.

From Scarcity & Zero Sum

To Precarcity

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Fearing the Fragile Future

Take the Less Travelled Road,

Return to God

Psalm 138:3

On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

.

Luke 11:10

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Words of Grace for Today –

In the newsletter from 19 March 2025 of the transcript of their podcast titled “Moving from Me vs You to Us vs Them” the Missing Middle Initiative initiated a new word, ‘Precarcity’.

We’ve all searched for strength to deal with the threats to our communities and even our own lives as so many struggle to afford the basics of life, clean water, food, clothing, shelter. Add to that the ever greater damage and further threats to human existence the world around from climate change’s alarming ever more vicious storms, … all that and many of us have been overwhelmed.

Where can we found strength?

Some have turned to their own finances as their security. Their own homes, and investments, and income seem to provide enough security for themselves and the people they care about. That, of course, requires a harsh and uncaring blindness to others’ suffering and the effects that swiftly spreading plight has on all our lives, and even more on our futures. For example, though one has a comfortable home in Edmonton or Calgary, far from the melting Arctic, or the burning forests, the wildfire smoke still invades our summers making breathing a challenge on more and more days. And the supply of fresh water in our rivers, the glaciers in the mountains, is dwindling. No amount of wealth can provide fresh water when there simply isn’t enough to supply a city, yet alone all of us.

Others have turned to a pseudo faith that says God will let those others suffer, but will always provide for us, if we are ‘good’ enough. So they work harder at being better. Which is of course futile. We are all always really good at one thing, sinning.

The podcast makes that point that we’ve know scarcity fears: affordability for food, housing, and other basics of life. They say now that has shifted in Canada to a fear of the fragility of our future. They call that precarcity. (A new word formed from the root precarious, combined with the ending and idea of scarcity.) Precarcity brought on by the threats from Trump making chaos in the world and setting many givens on edge or on the brink, like the existence of Canada, along with Greenland and Panama, as countries not part of the USA.

So how can we deal with this ever growing, spreading threat to our lives. The ground seems to be shifting under our feet, no matter where we stand.

Denials (like ‘climate change is not real or new or anything we can do anything about’), escapes (like alcohol, drugs, hedonism, travel, privilege, luxury comforts, poverty comforts), misplaced anger and rage (such as blaming others, with slogans like ‘ax the tax’, and f- Trudeau, damn orange amoebae in the White House, or with boycotts and curses of the USA), all provide no solution while degradign the life of those who try such responses – which is all of us to some degree at times.

The only solutions are not solutions but remembrances of who we are and whose we are:

God has created us and, knowing we would sin as we have, collectively and individually, God brought Jesus to live among us, teach, heal, and sacrifice himself. Therewith God demonstrates so clearly that God offers us all 2nd chances over and over again to repent, not just during Lent. And then we can surrender to accept what only God can give us: redemption, new life, and mission worthy of life itself. The mission is to be God’s generous Grace, forgiveness, and love for all people, thus bringing hope out of this precarcity, for ourselves and for all people. Yes our strength to deal with it all comes from God, and God alone.

So we say with the Psalmist: On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

And we trust Jesus’ promise that Luke reports: everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

So we pray: help us in these times of growing fears to call for strength. Help us ask, search, and knock on the door that opens life abundant for us all.

To Be Seen

To Be Known

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

And Loved

Especially When We Are Cast Out,

Cut-Off,

Alone.

Job 40:3-4

Then Job answered the Lord: ‘See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.

.

1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Words of Grace for Today –

There is nothing more frightening than to not be seen.

To have no one see one as a person, as a person of worth.

Or worse, to be seen and valued as worthy only for what one is not. To be a lie.

In the Psalm for this coming Sunday we read

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Our hearts, minds and spirits know from where we have come, and they thirst to be seen and known for who we are.

Most often we seek to be seen and known by other people. This is not misguided, for God created us people to be for each other God’s presence, God’s voice, heart, hands, and feet, graciously sharing all God’s gifts.

And as Jesus taught, to be God’s loving presence especially for the poor, the ill, the lost, the outcast, the foreigner, and even for our enemies.

What does God do for those, like Job, whom all others have rejected and there is no one to be God’s presence?

God comes and makes God’s own self visible, palatable, healing, loving, and enlivening in mysterious ways, in ways mystics have spoken of for generations.

Just as Paul knew there was no danger in not being seen by other people, because God still sees us, and knows us.

We need not bring our protests to God for how terrible the world has treated us, though we may. God can take it. We can know that God is Great above all, and we are but dust given spirit as a gift from God,

and we therefore can, especially during our Lenten journey, remain humble and still, bending low before the wonders of God all around us,

witnesses to God’s steadfast love for us.

And when we pray it can be in thanks in words the Psalmist gives us this Sunday:

For you have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.
My whole being clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.

Come All Who Thirst

Eat and Drink

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

No Money Required

Have No Fear.

All Points To God With Us,

Even The Shadows.

Jeremiah 16:19

O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge on the day of trouble.

.

2 Timothy 1:11-12

For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.

Words of Grace for Today –

God is our strength, stronghold, and refuge. The strength God gives us is none other than what fuels our lives: living water and nourishing food, freely given.

The invitation is repeated in the Old Testament Reading for this coming Sunday (Isaiah 55:1-9)

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

As Paul wrote, we entrust our very lives to our loving, gracious, and generous God.

Though we suffer, we need not be ashamed. The world’s ways are not God’s ways. Always taking, taking, taking giving so little in return, leaving so many to suffer at the hands of those who greedily hoard the necessities of life for themselves.

There is no shame in imitating Jesus, generous, gracious, and loving of all, even one’s enemies.

When the days of troubles descends upon us, from within and from outside, we need not fear. Fear leads to panic. Panic leads to chaos. Chaos leads to loss, suffering, and death. No, we need not start down that deadly path. For our God is not distant. For our God is not impotent. Our God is omnipresent, even with us, and omnipotent. Creator of all. More powerful than the most destructive forces within ourselves, within others, and around us in the universe.

God is our strength, our stronghold, our refuge. God calls, come all you who are thirsty and hungry and afraid … come, eat, drink, and be comforted, for as God spoke to Julian:

“Sin is necessary, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

[Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. M. L. de Mastro (Garden City, NY: Image, 1977), 124.]

The Lines

Of Sorrow and Mercy

Monday, March 17, 2025

Are so long

Across the face of all creation.

Micah 7:18

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger for ever, because he delights in showing clemency.

.

Luke 1:54

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

Words of Grace for Today –

When God hides from us, there is nothing more than despair left.

Joy has taken wing, along with hope,

and the wear and tear of life eats away at our hearts, minds, and strength until nothing is left, except

a prayer of desperation.

Phillip John Hanseroth wrote it in The Story for us all.

All of these lines across my face

Tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been

And how I got to where I am

But these stories don’t mean anything

When you’ve got no one to tell them to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP0BZ9P4gdA

Then a year ago, @Malindams, told her story commenting under one of Brandi Carlile’s renditions of The Story: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8pQLtHTPaI)

All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am”.

These words saved me during many rounds of chemo and radiation. I was diagnosed with breast cancer when I had a kindergartener and a 4th grader. My boys were so young, I told my oncology team, bring it on, I can take it…I just have [to] live long enough to get them through high school.

The chemo took it’s toll and aged me so much faster than my friends, it was hard to deal with. Now I know the lines across my face tell the story of where I’ve been. 15 years out and one boy has graduated from college and one who is a junior…both are thriving and I celebrate life every day.

Thank you, Brandi for putting into words, what I could not.

So it is with many of us, and for me:

The grief engulfed us and took us down, as God hid from us,

or so it seemed.

What then, but to take the advice

what can you do when you find yourself in hell, day after day?

Just keep going.

And on the other side of the dark dark blue blues, there are the days of brilliant sunshine, and blessings that were there all along,

just hidden in the grief,

holding life out in all it’s wonder for us to be grateful for.

so we thank everyone who had words to help us keep going through the hell.

It’s still there, it never goes away,

but the promises are truer now than before,

for there is no better way to know there is light,

than to see it from the darkest moments of the darkest wildernesses.

Thanks to all those who had the honest words

of God’s love for us all along…

.

You see the smile that’s on my mouth

It’s hiding the words that don’t come out

And all of my friends who think that I’m blessed

They don’t know my head is a mess

No, they don’t know who I really am

And they don’t know what I’ve been through like you do

And I was made for you.

.

Special thanks to the few who were always there …

And God, full of mercy and steadfast love, who sent them …

For whom we were made.

It Once

Was Good

Sunday, March 16, 2025

But Now You Hide Life From Me

the light is nearly gone, just a sliver of it left,

and then …

Psalm 30:7-8

By your favour, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication.

.

John 16:22

So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

Words of Grace for Today –

Oh, it used to be so good, blessed people said, though they plotted and schemed to bring me down, down, down,

without cause, just jealousy and fear at being seen for what they are.

So

it was

but now

is no more

The joy is gone

the hope has died

for even God has deserted us

and all that is left are promises, promises, promises

as old as the ages and newer than fresh snow

that have been broken

through the ages

so often and

so often

again.

Where is the joy?