Author: T L

Astray

or on the Narrow?

Saturday, March 18, 2023

The Light Shines

Straight To The Truth

About Us All,

And God’s Grace For Us.

Psalms 14:3

They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

Matthew 7:14

For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Words of Grace For Today

Finding God or walking God’s way is real difficult.

We are all so messed up.

Yet God planned for that, too.

Thank God!

So today, whatever comes our way we …

So today, no matter how narrow the path seems …

So today, no matter how few people find God’s path for us …

We need not worry, because God guides us to the path and gives everyone access, guided by the Holy Spirit, to be God’s people,

even in the chaos of

today.

Little

Or Much – Truth?

Friday, March 17, 2023

Finding the Path, the Truth,

May Be Only The First Challenge,

as Predators

(The Devil’s Agents)

Wait for Us.

Jeremiah 5:3

O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth? You have struck them, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.

Luke 16:10

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

Words of Grace For Today

If only we could get it right with just a little bit, like being faithful … and not just faithful to some confused idea of what’s important, but the one thing to be faithful to that makes all the difference in the universe, God.

Of course, we cannot, not for long. We are good at getting it all wrong, no matter how long we hang on to getting a few things right. Eventually we just let the Devil have her way with us.

It’s great that God knows the truth, even the truth about us: that we play with the Devil eventually … every day. Because God, knowing the truth, still planned for that, and responded with grace and love.

Imagine, for all the one’s who work for the Devil, God consumed them, but they refused to take correction.

God consumed them! Yet they live on??! What’s that about? How does God consume them without them dying? That’s grace, big time!

And still, like all of us die-hard sinners, it does not matter that God’s grace is so powerful for us, we have made our faces harder than rock; we have refused to turn back.

So what does God do???

More Grace,

and more Grace,

and yet more Grace!

God works wonders by transferring Jesus’ record of faithfulness to our record … just as if we were actually faithful in just a little and in a great big deal.

So what are we going to do with this?

What are we going to do today?

No matter what we try to do, God will work through us, and the results are going to be wonderful and miraculous,

.. so hang on to our hats.

Barren

Wild (-erness) Love

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Sometimes

Christ’ Light Draws Us

To The Far Shores

…

of Our Imaginations

to See and Be

God’s Love for All People

Deuteronomy 32:10

He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.

Or perhaps better pro-nouned:

God sustained the people in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; God shielded them, cared for them, guarded them as the apple of her eye.

1 John 4:16

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Words of Grace For Today

Led out of slavery, across the land of a hostile despot, pursued by well trained, deadly soldiers, saved by a miracle crossing the Red Sea into the wilderness, and then?

What good is it to be freed from slavery only to end up in the wilderness to die of thirst, or hunger, or empty hearts and souls unable to imagine God’s grace?

So God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people in the barren howling wasteland. God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people with love, for there is nothing so powerful.

Seeking to establish a democracy leaders of the country (politician, banker, and publisher) arrive at the White House for a week of consultations. The brilliant writer leads them to craft a wonderful constitution. The President ‘interferes’ by bringing two of the greatest minds into the room with them. The greatest minds are from opposite parties and from opposite ends of the spectrum of thought, especially about how a democracy should function … except for one basic foundation.

Stymied by the constant arguing that prevents any consensus about what should and should not be included in the new constitution, the writer finally seeks out the President to silence the arguing. They only have one day left to finalize their document!

The President advises the writer that the goal is not a constitution, written and sealed for adoption. The goal is to teach by example, and in that example reach into the leaders’ hearts, minds, and souls to show them that the foundation of democracy is not any written document or anything else, except for the willingness to listen with respect to one’s opponents. If this small group of leaders learn to respect that one foundational principle, not in writing, but in their hearts, minds and souls, then they will teach others by example back home. With that principle they will be able, not easily, but successfully, to write and adopt … and the hardest part … and to follow the constitution with respect for all opinions honestly presented for consideration. (From West Wing)

Our foundational principle for life is not merely for the worst of all forms of government, (except all the others). Our principle for life is what God gives us, love. Living that love, trusting that love, listening to each other with that love, these are the things that Jesus does for us setting an example, so that we may live, trust, listen with love for others, so that they may learn to live, trust, and listen with love. With this miracle, for it can only happen by miracle transforming our hearts in spite of ourselves, God brings us through every barren wilderness to the Promised Land.

Today we get to live out the love that God has for us.

That’s Light work, spreading God’s miracles with abandon across the landscapes of all creation. Ready or not God already has sent us.

Consolation

Constellation

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Sometimes,

Like Storms Obscure the Far Shores,

the Storms of Our Lives

Prevent Us From Seeing

the Foundations of Life

Psalms 117:2

For great is his steadfast love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever. Praise the Lord!

2 Corinthians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation,

Words of Grace For Today

To win! That’s the thing!

For some people it is the only thing!

Even great Christians want to win the big thing: Salvation! YES!!

For the rest of us who do not press to win at everything, there are consolations. Those are the things that no one really wants, right? Like the old Miss Congeniality prize, a small admission that the whole beauty contest was worthless. The best person would not win, but gets a consolation prize.

Rightly so then

that Paul identifies our God as the God of all consolation. Now that may most rightly mean, that God consoles the inconsolable among us. That’s priceless, too.

More foundational is to recognize that God is not a God who sets us out to live with others in order that we can win as others loss. We win money; They lose life. We win fame; They lose voice. We win power; they lose freedom.

No God is the God of all of us who know we will not win, for we will not sacrifice our blessed living for a worthless win. Instead we rest in God’s good hands, trusting that God’s steadfast love towards us, and God’s faithfulness … endures for ever.

Therefore we celebrate the treasures of living and find plenty of opportunities to Praise and bless the Lord!

Another day, another dollar sacrificed to give others a better life.

Light work for gracious and thankful hearts.

My Life

For a Light!

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Just a little light can make a big difference.

And God’s Light

Makes ALL the Difference

in the World.

Isaiah 66:18E

For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory,

2 Corinthians 4:6

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are three ways (maybe among many others) that we take to deal with darkness in and around us:

1) we shine a light into it to change it.

2) we wallow in the darkness as if it were all we have or could have.

3) we deny the darkness and bruise our shines over and over again until we die, having bled out from our open shine wounds we cannot see in the darkness and refuse to acknowledge, for fear we will have to admit we are in the darkness, or worse: that we are the darkness.

What do we do, though, when we do not have a light, and we know the darkness too well to either deny it or be willing to wallow in it?

We trust that God will bring the light that we cannot find, shine it in the darkness and in our darkness, and as painful and disgusting as it may be to see what up until then festered in the dark, God also brings forgiveness, renewal, and a mission for us: to share the light with everyone caught in darkness.

Light work for this day as well, ready or not.

Blessings and Curses

As God Chooses … … … Graciously!

Monday, March 13, 2023

God’s Light Shines!

No Matter What Obstacles Stand

Between Us

God’s Light Shines Also

For Us Each and All!

Psalms 115:2-3

Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.

Acts of the Apostles 17:30

While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Words of Grace For Today

A sensitive, and creative pastor came to visit on his rounds, first Sheila and then Roxy that seventh day. He started, as always, by reading the 23rd Psalm to each woman. He went on to explain that God worked in mysterious ways for all of us. God knows we all sin. God calls us to repent, and God knows we may or may not repent, but all of us will return to sin.

And God planned for that, too.

So God always offers us a new beginning, a beginning without the burden of our sins of the past, without the burden of others’ sins, with an assurance of God’s blessings, not because we earn them, but simply because God so chooses to be gracious to us, especially when we do not deserve anything good!

As the women in turn started to tell him the barest of details about their situation he realized they had much in common yet they were so different. So he arranged for the women to share a room when they were moved out of the ICU that afternoon.

After they were both moved into the room, monitors still hooked up to each, both now able to talk and move slowly, the torrent of conversation, anger, grace, and love started to flow between the women, and eventually their few guests, long abandoned family and friends.

So much for obeying God’s commandments in order to be blessed or disobeying to be cursed.

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

And yes, God planned for that, too.

Curses

From not obeying?

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Think The Brambles and Branches

Of Our Sins Are Too Many

For Us Weak Sinners

To Find God?

Think Again!

God Is Always With Us!

Deuteronomy 30:9

and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors,

Philippians 2:13

for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Words of Grace For Today

Roxy, not unlike the character in that fancy, up-beat, perverse show Chicago, did everything she could to get some pleasure for herself out of life. And she ruined every relationship she had in the process, and as the cost of her high living came to roost in her late 30’s she lost control to her alcohol and drug consumption. Life was no fun at all any more. One morning she woke with her face in her own vomit, her clothes dirty from weeks without washing, and a splitting body ache that felt like she was on the rack.

If she had ever heard of Moses’ blessings and curses, and Jesus’ abiding in God’s love, she would have known that she suffered outside God’s love and dead centre in Moses’ curse, and pretty much every other curse ever spoken or dreamed up.

But God planned for all that, too.

Roxy crawled all of three feet towards the cheap wine bottle before she passed out from the pain. It was more than luck that a person passing the construction shack she’d passed out in noticed her, called an ambulance which got her to the hospital. She woke up in the ICU unable to move or speak. She found herself wondering what great miracle had landed on her that she was still alive, and sober for the first time in longer than she could remember. She knew she was sober because she ached all over, her mouth was dry, her head pounded, but she could see straight for the few moments she could endure the pain of keeping her eyes open. That all slowly subsided over the whole 7 days it took before she was finally able to speak her first word, and ask what had happened to her.

Each moment she realized she was still alive, she gave God thanks. The awareness of God as a merciful, gracious God welled up in her from her childhood at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church.

So much for dis-obeying God’s commandments and reaping only curses!

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

Blessings

By obeying?

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Think We Can Find Our Way To God’s Light

Passed All Obstructions?

Think Again!

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

John 15:10

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Words of Grace For Today

Sheila worked hard every day as a nurse, and made sure she took at least one day of rest per week, when she recuperated, worshipped with the Eucharist, and prayed. Her prayers also included assembling a list of things she was thankful for that she would read each morning before even getting out of bed and people she would find time to pray for each day.

She knew that she ‘abided’ in God’s love, and that obeying God’s commandments she was blessed, and certainly not cursed. She had given up on all her family and friends, one by one, as they did not ‘obey’ God’s commandments to her standards.

Then …

Sheila had a small seizure on her way to work after weeks of 16 hour work days and a small celebration with ice cream cake the night before for her 35th birthday. It wasn’t a big seizure. Just long enough that she veered into an oncoming semi. Both were only going 50 kph, but it was enough. She woke up days later in the hospital, not working as a nurse, but as a patient in the ICU.

After the first long and dreadful chaos and confusion of getting her bearings and understanding that she could not move her legs or her arms, panic set in and she understood from the inside what a curse was. That barely subsided through the whole 7 days it took before she was finally able to speak her first word, and ask what had happened to her.

So much for obeying God’s commandments and avoiding curses!

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

Peaches and Cream

It Ain’t

Friday, March 10, 2023

How to Get To Our Goals?

Yep! Lots of Reasons to Fret!

Yet,

Worry

Won’t Help A Bit!

Psalms 121:4

He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

1 Peter 5:7

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

Words of Grace For Today

Each day has challenges, worries, and failures waiting to overwhelm us, if we care to take note.

God sends us into the world, knowing that we will succumb to the evil One if we go it on our own. So God walks with us.

And keeps watch over us, without pause.

And listens to us, giving us an ear to hear our anxieties, fears, and trepidations.

We need not bear the weight of life on our own.

Not this day.

Not any day.