T L – Page 18 – This Life

Thanks Five

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

What Is It?

Zephaniah 3:12

For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord—

1 Corinthians 1:28-29

God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

Out of the lowest God brings the most precious.

Humble and helpless we come into the world, humble and helpless we age in our last days before death (if we are so fortunate to live that long.)

What are you thankful for today?

Answer 2

A simple hand cart which I use to move wood, once it’s cut to length, an essential to surviving, since my back surely cannot haul all that is needed, not even close. It hauls lots of other things as well, and every two to three years it needs new wheels. The bearing just give out. Not the most robust design, but it works hard for me.

Thanksgiving Four

Thanks For It All

Monday, October 9, 2023

What Is It?

Proverbs 10:2

Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.

Luke 19:8

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Today, but for me Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

What abundance can we use as stewards to point to the Owner of it all?

What are you thankful for today?

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Answer 1

Ice in the water bucket: thanks for the freeze that put the mosquitoes and black flies to an end. Makes working outside so much easier.

Thanks Three

Thanks 3

Sunday, October 8, 2023

What Is It?

Psalm 16:6

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.

2 Corinthians 9:8

And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

The boundaries are set, and leave ample room to give thanks!

What are you thankful for today?

Thanks Two

Saturday, October 7, 2023

What Is It?

First Kings 18:37

Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.

Luke 22:32

… but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week starts the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

With thanks we start ask, then we ask, and having already received, we turn to give to others the strength that only can come from the Spirit.

What are you thankful for today?

…

So a sneak preview of the answer to Thanks One, but the explanation will wait until Thanks Four:

Answer 1

Ice is nice?

Thanks One

Friday, October 6, 2023

What Is It?

Jeremiah 7:23

But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’

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

Thanksgiving Week starts the Friday before (today), why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

Continue Giving Thanks.

What are you thankful for today?

Promises and Shame

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Remember the days of wildfire smoke that turned the sun orange?

Even then we stilled breathed!

And survived.

Joshua 21:45

Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Luke 13:17

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

…

Words of Grace For Today

I’m not so sure that all that God has promised has come to pass. There are many words of condemnation, promising the demise of all God’s people, which may have come to pass, but certainly not all of them, as God has relented and rescued God’s people, again and again, from the folly that we get ourselves into at the hands of our opponents.

Jesus, on the other hand, put his opponents to shame, with all the great works that he does.

Even this day, the wonders continue:

The air is breathable, free from smoke.

The water is drinkable, processed by systems designed by people building on the wonders of science and technology of this and previous generations.

The food is edible. Or sort of, maybe. Some of it in the grocery stores makes one question whether a huge source of cancer is not all the processed food we eat, with all the poisons in the packaging, and all the poisons that are on and in the food grown and sold … and eaten by so many people, us included.

But we do not go hungry. We just suffer all sorts of weird illnesses and diseases and decays of life. Of course the wealthy have ways of getting food that is less poison-laden, and us poor are left with no choice but to take what no one else wants. But at least we eat, right?

That is the promise that God has kept for us, that we will eat.

The shame is ours when we forget how blessed even our lives in poverty are.

Even moreso when we do not realize how others struggle to survive on so much less. Our poverty would be a dream come true for them!

So we practice this day giving thanks again:

Thank you God for all that keeps us alive!

Good Land

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

The Good Land?

Deuteronomy 8:7

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,

Acts of the Apostles 14:17

… yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Perhaps if we develop ‘warp drive’ (space flight faster than light) we can anticipate that God will bring us into a good land, flowing with water and all goodness, but until then

we’ve ruined the earth so much that it is hard to imagine a ‘good land’ somewhere under these skies.

The water flows alright, as the glaciers and ice caps and land mass ice melt, and it collects in the oceans and they rise, and what used to be ocean front property is underwater.

Or the water does not flow and the rains do not fall and the crops do not grow.

Or … you name it, the climate of earth has gotten mean.

What did we expect?

Okay, it’s not really all all that bad.

There are blessed places where the water flows, the rain falls in good amounts, the sun shines, and the crops grow.

And if one has lived in an area that was marginal to good before climate change, conflicts and disasters, but it has become uninhabitable or unsafe then coming to a land where crops grow and people live in relative safety, then one can count that as a blessing.

Typical is, though, that if we’ve always lived where the crops grow reasonably well year after year, then we easily forget how blessed it is that God has brought us to this good land.

It is easy to forget how others yearn for such a land to call home.

It is easy to think we deserve it … and others do not.

When life is hard, survival in question each day, then each breath is precious, and with each breath we can say, thanks for such wondrous blessings. These are the blessings that make life possible.

Forces

Dark Forces

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

We Try To Catch Power From the Dark,

But Real Power Only Comes from the Light of Christ.

Psalm 16:1

Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

Matthew 6:13

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

…

Words of Grace For Today

There are dark forces.

There are dark forces at play.

There are dark forces at play again this day.

There are dark forces at play again this day and we like to think they are in others, aimed at us.

If we can just avoid those others, we will be free of such dark and dreadful forces that eat us up, spit us out, and leave us to die, slowly, ever so slowly in pain.

Yet

There are dark forces.

There are dark forces at play.

There are dark forces at play again this day.

There are dark forces at play again this day aimed so deceptively into us by forces we cannot resist.

They play with all our hopes.

They play with all our yearnings.

They play with us as toys led to the battle and our slaughter by our own weapons of deception and greed.

We have no defence against such dark forces.

We become the ‘others’ who aim these dark forces at others.

We can only pray, God save us, in you we take refuge.

Save us from such trials. Save us from the Evil One.

…

Let the Light of Christ Shine on us, in us, and through us

to all

those

caught

in the Dark,

caught

by the Dark Forces.

Bridges II

Bridges to

The Light

Best read AFTER yesterday’s Devotion – below.

Monday, October 2, 2023

When We Think We Are Done In And Gone,

The Light Reveals Another Day

Another Way …

Isaiah 30:26

Moreover, the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, on the day when the Lord binds up the injuries of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

1 Peter 2:24

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

…

Words of Grace For Today

As the Light of Christ shines brighter than the brightest sun, clearer than the clearest moon, then all our wounds he heals, all our wounds he makes strong. Where we thought we’d lost it all, where we thought we’d come to our end, exactly there the Spirit finds us, frees us from our past, transforms us into saints sent back into the darkness, into the darkness to share Christ’s Light and life, for all.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I looked for them in this quiet hermitage and there were so few,

maybe one, maybe two?

I’d done nothing to set the fires,

Truth I’d spoken at all costs,

I’d been breathing their smoke for years.

Where were all the bridges in my life?

Was blessed solitude all … all I had left.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I thought I’d moved beyond the need for bridges in this home sweet home,

maybe still, maybe not?

Yet here they are bridges of my life,

Truth stands firm beneath them all,

standing solid, reaching far shores.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude thrives all in all.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I look for them in this quiet hermitage and there are countless,

surely one, surely all?

Streaming across, seeking this here peace,

Truth attracts in all kinds and ways,

Many struggle to make their way.

I’ve been breathing their smoke for years.

Here lead all the bridges in their lives.

Here start all the bridges in my life.

This blessed solitude is sought’n shared by all.

Where are all the bridges in this life?

This blessed solitude covers us now.

All is peaceful, all is still,

From it rises melodies of God’s Truth.

From it rises harmonies of God’s love.

Alone and connected through blessed music, dance, prayer

Bridges bring us all home at last,

across all rivers, obstacles, and dark valleys,

Bridges bring us all home at last,

where blessed solitude is sought’n shared in all,

where blessed solitude is sought’n shared all in all.

…

Truth Be Told,

By Grace Alone,

All is well at Last. All is well at Last. All manner of things are well at Last.

Bridges

To Peace At Last

Sunday, October 1, 2023

*https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.xcl_uFXzEe3mTcZmZdGoewHaHa&pid=Api&f=1&ipt=d5fc09d5d836e816dc82041152b3433cc2854ae5406d45e2ed1f8de69c42ebea&ipo=images*

One More Goes Up In Smoke.

Jeremiah 9:23

Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth;

James 3:18

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

…

Words of Grace For Today

A friend’s daughter has a song out, listen to it (buy it) here.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=_PmAmmbmRXI

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJYD87ZJ?tag=fndcmpgns-20

Which made me ponder bridges, and write these words.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I look for them in this quiet hermitage and there are so few,

maybe one, maybe two?

I did nothing to set the fires,

Truth I spoke at all costs,

I’ve been breathing their smoke for years.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is all I have left.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

Why’s the truck I drove ‘cross them run hard aground, broken down again,

maybe faults, maybe sin?

I did nothing to break the wheels,

Truth I held at all costs,

I’ve been sinking in the mud for years.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is all that remains.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

My legs are stopped moving, my arms crippled up, pains alone remain,

finger free, maybe a toe?

All I could do is get ancient,

Truth I lost into the mists,

My heart’s not doing for what it’s meant.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is my future,

It’s only a few days now.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude covers me now.

Truth is hidden far and deep.

All is quiet, all is still.

There is one blessed bridge across I come,

home at last, sweet home, at last I am home.

…

Peace at Last