While I Wasn’t Listening, God Was, Sending Light Into My Summer-Winter
Deuteronomy 9:26
I prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, do not destroy the people who are your very own possession, whom you redeemed in your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
Romans 8:32
He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
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Words of Grace For Today
Trusting that God listens is huge.
It means we recognize through history how God has helped people, and in our lifetimes, us.
So we can turn to God and trust that God listens.
Doesn’t matter what we say really.
As Jeremiah knew
O, God, you know!
God knows everything, even before we say anything, or even think a thing.
So why bother God?
Sometimes, it helps to unload.
Always it helps to recognize who made us,
who saves and redeems us,
who renews our life,
and who is always there for us, loving us even when we screw up big time.
As for those who cannot trust God, one has to wonder how they get by … until one recognizes the mess the world is in, which in large part is their part of trying desperately to make it right for themselves before it’s too late.
That always leads to shtako, big time.
As God has done for people in the past, God does for people now, and will in the future, and
I stopped listening and then next minute this happened: winter.
Isaiah 48:17
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go.
Luke 10:39
She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.
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Words of Grace For Today
Sometimes we just need God to send someone to remind us that we have stopped listening, if ever we did.
And then everything goes to hell real quick for us.
But there is hope, when God sends someone.
Of course we have to listen.
And then we do not, most of the time.
So are we stuck in hell, separated from God?
Time will tell, right.
Or we can trust that God always sends someone again,
The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.
Matthew 11:29
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
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Words of Grace For Today
Rulers dominate to make their wishes realities, with people falling into line to make it happen.
Leaders inspire and listen to the people they lead, bringing the best tomorrows into today, for all peoples.
God rules.
But not by dominating.
Rather with gentleness and humility (if we can imagine the all powerful God being humble!), guiding us to life unequalled in blessings.
So each new morning, with sunshine on the grass moist from the night rains or clouds dark over parched lands or cold gripping even one’s breath in a stranglehold [and all things of mornings], we
can smile
breathe
and
hope again
that this day will
bring love and wonders
to play and dance through our hours
until the night falls fully over the grass, trees and dirt
that is our home.
Eh you say again?
And God answers with a fresh smiling breeze of sunshine warm on our hearts.
It May Look Bleak, Until We Remember How God Has Walked Every Step With Us To This Blessed Time.
Deuteronomy 2:7
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.
John 1:16
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
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Words of Grace For Today
When the frenetic struggles overload our senses and memories, limiting our ability to make choices fully informed, it’s good and difficult to
stop
and
take
stock
of
the
whole
picture
of what God
has done and still does for us each day:
giving us breath and bread, longings and love, health and hope,
among so many other gifts
we certainly do not deserve.
While we may wish for more, God has and will always provide us enough to find our way home
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Hebrews 13:16
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
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Words of Grace For Today
When we struggle to achieve a bit of the dreams (from years past) that are still possible in the old life we live,
Sometimes one’s muscles, joints, bones, and brain just hurt too much to do more than the bare minimal for survival.
Then, after a life of not being compensated as agreed one would, and struggling to provide for children as well, when one already goes to the food bank for food, suffers astounding injustice, has no house (just an off-grid camper and wood stove), and few kin want to see one, yet alone help one (even hide, though that is so far from possible nor desired) what can one do to offer God the pleasing sacrifice:
to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke, to share our bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our house; when we see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide ourselves from your own kin?
Ah … is that not the rub. We always have explanations for why and how it is not for us to provide to others less fortunate than ourselves.
Even this day, we pray, help us see all God gives us, which is all we have to share with those in need greater than ourselves.
But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.’
James 5:7
Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
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Words of Grace For Today
With wildfires in the Northwest Territories, thousands of people have evacuated, mostly south, way south even to Calgary. Smoke swirls and flows across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan as the NWT fires’ smoke combines with those in BC to wreak havoc on breathing, which last I checked is still a basic function required for staying alive.
It’s not unlike all the other evils that come back to haunt us from our pasts, evils that we blithely contributed to, thinking the day of reckoning would not come, not really. It’s a shame. Almost all of the severe weather events we suffer now could have been avoided if we would have listened, believed and made changes back when changes would have made a difference. Oh, they still will make a difference, but we are in for a lot of suffering for the next few centuries. A lot of suffering.
Though forecasts of rising temperatures, no rain and shifting winds continue to be a worry, fire experts are taking several days to do infrared scans of several of the largest blazes, including the one outside the capital city, said Jessica Davey-Quantick, wildfire information officer for the Department of Environment and Climate Change.
The scans will provide information that will allow wildfire teams to plan next steps in the fight, she said.
If only we could have scanned into the future five decades, back in the 1980’s, eh?!
But we do now what we can:
“In coming days, we’ll have more information as these fires are assessed and our next steps are established. Right now it is not safe to return to these communities that have been evacuated,” she said.
Most of all we have to remain hopeful, and remember how we’ve survived in the past, and how we can help each other now:
“For now the best we can all do is just wait and see what’s coming. We’re going to get through this. It’s going to get better. Eventually,” she added with a smile, “it will snow.”
Thank God, literally, for knowing things like ‘it will snow’ which give us hope, hope for all the challenges we face in the midst of all the evil we have contributed to form our days,
And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’
Acts of the Apostles 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
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Words of Grace For Today
Bonhoeffer wrote Who am I? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. … and he ended with:
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
That is for all of us the most determinative thing to know about ourselves, that God knows us!
God knows us, every nook and cranny, all our good past-present-future, and all our terrible, hidden, denied, covered up, destructive acts and wishes and thoughts. It can be more than scary to think God knows all that! It can be downright debilitating, making us want to give up entirely,
EXCEPT
God demonstrates again and again, not only that God knows us inside and out. God shows us over and over again that God also loves us, as we are!
Knowing that God loves us, makes us able to love ourselves, and to love others (even though we never are very good at knowing ourselves or knowing others completely).
Knowing that we can love ourselves and others is liberating.
Knowing others do love us is marvellous, if entirely suspect, at times.
Knowing that God loves us is everything!
And of us miserable sinners (actually we are rather good at sinning) God brings us to be those who bring God to be glorified, by us and others, awestruck by God’s works for us all.
I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
1 Peter 2:3
if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
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Words of Grace For Today
We can observe 93 billion light years of universe, though we estimate the universe is more than 7 trillion light years huge.
Why did God create all this?
Before creation it was only void, emptiness, and we can anthropomorphize that God easily could have been lonely. But lonely for such small creatures so capable of evil as us? Really!
The earth’s diameter is only about 13 km, and it’s circumference is 40,000 km. In other words from here to the opposite side of the earth is only 13 km, straight down through the core and back up. Or we can travel from here to the opposite side and back in about 40,000 km. That’s only 42 billionths of one light year. In other words we live our whole lives within 42 nano seconds of a light-year.
Why would God create the entire universe, just for us to exist? Or did God? Maybe we were an afterthought, or a mistake, or a side-effect. (The juries would then be out on whether we are a good side-effect or a bad side-effect or even a deadly side-effect.)
Like a medication that tastes bad but is supposed to do us good, except it turns our stomach so that we cannot hold it down: Maybe that is the kind of side-effect we are in God’s plans for the universe?
Except
when we have tasted how marvellously good God is to us, forgiving us, loving us, renewing us, and sending us out with a purpose grand enough to take more than all the life we have to give, then
we, small as we are, can do none other than go out
recounting the gracious acts of God for us,
for us all.
So it is we go out also into this day, whatever it may bring.
The Lord your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.
1 Corinthians 10:13
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
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Words of Grace For Today
Follow, Obey, and Live!
It’s great to follow a wonderful leader.
One who give us good life in following!
If only we can find one, identify one, and know with surety that we are not wrong.
I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
Colossians 4:3
At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison
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Words of Grace For Today
Green.
Green growth.
Green growth of life
Green Spring rains
Green Spring rains cleansing
Green Spring flowers, grasses, trees, …
Green Spring sprung rains renewing what was once dying.
Green Spring sprung rains renewing .dying .. hope for life to continue well
or
Green growth of envy and moulds.
Envy and moulds that cover and choke spreading spores that can destroy us from the inside.
Green.
Will we grow green to renew hope in us and around us?
