Author: T L

We All Have Our Reasons …

Reasons for Rejoicing

Wednesday 8 February 2023

This Thing Is On Water,

Accessible Through Holes in the Floor,

Otherwise It’s Just Ugly

As OSB Siding Always Is When It’s Worn.

At Least The Sky Behind It Is Awesome,

Sort Of.

Psalms 33:21

Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing …

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of things can make our hearts glad, like our solitude respected, the warm winter weather, the sunny skies providing great solitude, and … repairs finished to the water pump so that water now flows if we give our all to haul water and pump it where it belongs.

The wonder of life is that even if nothing is so to be enjoyed, God walks with us, and we are glad for God’s presence.

Therefore we have reason to rejoice and pray always, perhaps not unceasingly since it takes a bit of concentration to repair a pump and supply water to it, for instance, but in our pauses most certainly.

Again this day.

From the front

it’s got character too,

and a wood stove for heat.

That’s a start,

but not a home.

Word-Wise

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Like the Beauty All Around Us,

God’s Word Permeates Everything.

Trust It.

Isaiah 55:10-11

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

John 15:7-8

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ‘hot air’ blowing around these days, climate change not the cause. It is the age old thing about humans that deceit always seems a nice short cut to achieving what is desired.

So much ‘hot air’ (lies, deceit, fake news, perjury, corruption from the lowest to the most ‘trusted’ levels of everything – even courts, bishops, and … well everywhere!) floats around one has a real case to say that the case of global warming is due mostly to ‘hot air’.

In fact all the climate change deniers producing fake science, fake news, and fake intelligence kept the obvious from happening sooner, ie the reduction of everything that causes climate change.

But boys will be boys, girls will be girls … OK it’s really lying boys will be lying boys even when the get old. Mean girls will be mean girls even when they get old, and the Devil’s temptations to ‘short cuts’ that destroy the doer and many others keep catching more and more people meaning the increase in ‘hot air’ outstrips any incident of inflation ever.

Our words are very effective, at destruction of life, and at healing life.

No question which God intends for us to use with our words.

Thank God everything is not determined by our words, or there would be no hope for any of us.

God’s Word determines everything, even that we are capable of such ‘hot air’ destruction. God’s Word is simple: life is intended and best lived by accepting our sinfulness, confessing them always, repenting (turning back towards God’s will for us), and accepting God’s sending us out to be imitators of Jesus the Christ: sacrificially giving of ourselves (exercising compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love) so that others may live as God intended us to live.

In a Word: God’s Word for us is that we love God, ourselves, and our neighbours, even our enemies.

Today, as each day, that’s more than enough to keep us busy, focused, and working on making the world a bit better around us for us all.

Inversely

Proportioned Grace

Monday 6 February 2023

We, at our best, are like the moon,

(that shines fullgolden, mysteriously down on us)

wondrous reflections

of God’s Light.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

Galatians 6:9

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.

Words of Grace For Today

Francine gave most of her bountiful produce from her raised garden beds each year to others in need. But one person received the most. He lived in an old folks home. She would visit him each Sunday afternoon. During the harvest she’d bring bushels of produce and set them in his room. She would tell him each time that the vegetables were good for him, he should eat and enjoy them and the life they gave him. This old man had not lost any of his sharp mind, though his body was slowly giving out on him so that his mobility and daily care were always an increasing concern.

As she left, his friends would come to visit him. She was glad that they did, though she knew that this visit was more than a visit. It was an exchange. For her fresh produce he would trade them for all sorts of treats, sweet breads, pastries, and chocolates. She had known this was the deal for almost as long as she had been bringing him the produce. But what was she to do? He was a grown man, still with a sharp mind. It was his choice to give away the good produce for food that the dietitian strictly denied him, but which he’d always enjoyed too much, as he had all his life, and as was poisoning what life he had left. It would not be long now.

What was she to do? Her mother had died decades ago, and this man was her father, who had raised her, cared for her, protected her, and taught her to be generous with everything she had. Her Pappa got everything she could give while he was still alive. He certainly did not need ‘advice’ from her. He’d call it and it would really be nagging.

He had also taught her that many people in many ways would try to teach that everyone got according to what they did, good for good, bad for bad. But he had shown her that this was blatantly not true in life, and also not true according to Jesus. For God was always more generous, gracious, forgiving, and merciful than anyone ever deserved or earned.

The only way that we can understand that God gives us according to our ways and the fruit of our labour is the simple truth:

The worse our ways and the more evil the fruit of our labours, the more merciful and hopeful God is that we will turn, confess our bountiful sins, repent, and return, so that God can demonstrate how loving, forgiving, and life-giving God is to all God’s people.

Not that we need go out of our way to sin so that God can make a good demonstration out of us. If we are honest with ourselves and confess our sins, they already are more than enough for God’s demonstration to be an amazing display of the power of forgiveness, so as to astound anyone who cares to pay attention!

So this day, yes, we give it our best effort. Most of all we trust that God will bring from us all that God wishes: that we might reflect Christ’ light, mercy, and love to all people.

Most Assuredly –

Uncertainty and Certainty

Sunday 5 February 2023

No Matter How Broad Our View

Or How We Look More Closely

.

.

.

.

.

.

Or Even Most Closely At Our Lives,

the only sure thing is

God is

and God is with us.

Ecclesiastes 7:14

On the day of prosperity be joyful, and on the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them.

Matthew 6:26

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Words of Grace For Today

It is pretty near impossible, but the only way to be assured of one’s own worth is to find that worth only as a gift from God.

The birds may not sow and they eat, but they starve, too.

We may sow, and work extremely hard to provide for ourselves and ours, and we may think we are worth more than the birds, but we to will succumb and it may be much sooner than we anticipate.

There may be days when we are quite sure that as a result of our own work we have succeeded and we prosper … and we do well to celebrate. There are for every human days when no matter how hard (or not) we have worked we will fail and fall into great need, and suffer for it.

So God sends us both? And of course there is no way of knowing what will come next.

As long as we measure our days and reasons to celebrate by the ‘success’ of our own labours, then we have no way of knowing if tomorrow will be a day to celebrate success or to suffer our losses and great needs.

When we place our worth into God’s hands, and rely on God alone to determine our worth, as God does with love, forgiveness, renewal, and purpose (called and sent out to be little Christ’s in the world for all creation), then we can know with unwavering certainly what will come tomorrow. Tomorrow God will succeed, and since God accompanies us through each day, we also will succeed at God’s work (by grace alone, of course.)

Another day to celebrate how valuable God deems us to be (by grace alone, of course.) Ditto tomorrow and each day thereafter.

Planting For The Harvest

Giving More than a 10th

Saturday 4 February 2023

Cold Days,

Time to Plan

And Plant

for the Harvest.

Genesis 28:22

… and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.

2 Corinthians 9:6

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Words of Grace For Today

Henri put in a garden. He’d been meaning to do it for years, and now the prices of groceries finally put the fire in him to do it. He wanted a huge harvest, so he tilled up a good two acres of deep, rich soil. Then he bought manure from a neighbour farmer and tilled that in. He marked out the areas, made the lines, and after the last snow in late April he planted seeds of all kinds: corn, peas, beans, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, squash of 5 kinds, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, zucchini, 2 rows each of raspberries, strawberries, and blue berries.

Looking at the huge area he anticipated lots of weeds and he wasn’t into picking them for hours on end, so he went out and bought a small tractor with a harrow that he could adjust to the width of his rows. Then he thought about all the deer and rabbits that would eat out garden before he could harvest it, so he bought fencing materials and built a 12 foot fence all around with the bottom 6 feet a tight woven mesh.

Next he thought about the dry summer that he’d heard were so possible and he built a reservoir for water, a powerful pump, and mobile sprinkler system so he could water the whole garden when it needed it. Then he modified all the eaves troughs on his house, garage, and shop so that the water was collected, filtered, and piped to the reservoir.

Next he realized that a huge harvest would need to be picked, cleaned, and stored, either by freezing or canning most of it. So he built a special insulated and heated shed, adding fresh water and waste water and electricity to it. In it he built a processing ‘kitchen’ for canning and for freezing. Next came two large stand up freezers, and shelves upon shelves for the pantry.

Since he really did not think he was at all interested in spending hours harvesting the garden he hired five high school students for the whole summer. They had helped him with everything starting with the planting. Yet Henri still spoke to everyone and to himself as he had done everything himself.

Francine, an ‘on-again, off-again’ friend of Henri’s for as long as she could remember, had been putting in a garden for decades before Henri finally got around to starting his. She started off with 2 raised beds, each 3 feet by 12 feet, and slowly increase it to a total of 6 last year. Each bed had a gravity watering system for it from a tank she filled when it needed it.

It was a small garden by local standards, but those small beds produced more than any other garden in the area, mostly because she had learned so much through the years and tended to the beds with tender care.

She shared her produce with a number of people in the area, usually in exchange for some good manure for fertilizer or help fencing, tilling, planing, weeding, and harvesting. But she was in her garden working at it more than everyone else combined.

At the end of every year she would tally up her expenses over the grocery store value of her harvest (just her own). She usually came in at about 1/3. Her worse year it was 1/1, and her best had been her third her when it was 1/6.

She met Henri this past summer, and having heard of course about his garden, congratulated him on finally getting around to his dream garden. She asked what he expected his expense-over- harvest would be. He hadn’t stopped to consider that. At home he sat down and calculated out that he’d spent nearly $150,000 on infrastructure, $40,000 on the tractor, $2000 on seeds and another $5000 on 1 each of 5 different fruit trees that should grow in the area. Then he added in the cost of fuel he planned for the summer and the wages of his workers. If he divided the long-term assets over ten years he figured the summer would cost him around $30,000. Then he thought of how much he had spent last year and anticipated spending on the groceries his harvest would replace, that came to about $5000 or so, maybe more with prices rising. Even if he estimated it at $6000 that still meant his ratio was 5/1. He spent five times as much for his large garden than he would get out of it! He nearly had a heart attack!

….

This year, with the increase in groceries, no less that 2 dozen new people had contacted Francine about ‘helping’ in her garden in order to share in the produce, so she invited everyone of them to come on over. Each family built a new raised garden if not 2. One large family built 4. Everyone chipped in as they could with money, materials, fertilizer or muscle to build the new fencing and establish the new beds. The same went for all the work throughout the summer.

….

When the gardens in the area had just started to produce a harvest, the carrots always seemed to come in first, a hail storm hit and wiped out nearly half of Henri’s garden and everyone else’s, except the beds at Francine’s. They were small enough that people had put up a steep-peaked frame work over one or two off them at a time, and with the threat of hail they’d thrown tarps over the frames, anchored them well, and watched most of the hail bounce or rolled between the beds. The ice was a foot deep in places, but when the tarps came off only a few plants had been destroyed by hail that broke through the tarps.

…

Everyone knew (except apparently Henri, and he was just stubborn and a bit slow to pick up on the obvious) that while the Bible said those that plant much will harvest much, it rarely turned out that way in life, not just in the garden, but in all of life.

Makes one stop to think that Jesus’ story is about God ‘planting’ and us getting the benefit of the ‘harvest’ of forgiveness and renewed life! Francine reflected Jesus’ story as well: We receive great bounty so that we can share all we have with others, so that they will live abundantly. Most of all we get to share God’s bountiful, merciful forgiveness, compassion, and healing presence!

The question each day is: what are we planting today, that someone will harvest in the future?

Proud Potters

Or Humble Clay

Friday 3 February 2023

The Potter Makes Beauty Like This,

And We Mess It Up Real Bad!

God Planned For That, Too!

Isaiah 29:16

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?

Ephesians 2:10

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Words of Grace For Today

We are the clay, God is the Potter.

We are created to do good works, God is the one who demands it of us, since we are made that way.

Well, not quite so. That is all upside down!

If one wants to control others and make demands of them that they cannot fulfill and thus make them guilty and thus all the more susceptible to one’s control, then this is the right thing to say and teach and demand.

But Jesus came not to lay an impossible guilt trip on us, yet again, as the writer of Ephesians does so well.

God created us so that we will be demonstrations of God’s Love, Grace, and Compassion for all people. That is by our visibly, humbly, and gratefully accepting God’s forgiveness for our inevitable sins, failings, imperfections, and downright ornery stubbornness at wanting to the the Potter instead of the humble moulded clay, God makes us into demonstrations for all other people of how God works. God works not by demanding perfection or good works. Instead God makes us free to choose to love (and also then free to choose not to love – which is to sin). In our freedom we lose life and all that is precious in it, because we simply cannot always choose to love. God also made us to strive to be better, and in that striving we inevitably choose to be Potters of our world, and then of our own lives.

Ahh, if we were made just to do good works, then God did not need to give us freedom to love and not to love.

But God created us to love. And knowing we would choose to sin, inevitably, terribly, wretchedly, God planned for that, with compassion, forgiveness and unbounded love.

We were created to receive that love, and share it with others, first in being demonstrations of God’s love for us and all people, and then in being that love for others,

which is to do good works …

It’s just cutting it down to that we are created to do good works would make our lives impossible! That is the curse of scripture that asserts we are not potters of creation, and then tries to lay the guilt trip on us that we are made to be doers of good works, ie. good little potters and putterers.

That leads us to futile living (trying always to do good works), and at the same time surrendering our ability to choose to love (replacing it with blind obedience to others who tell us what good works are), and inevitably trying to become the ones who tell everyone what good works are … and there ya go, right down the rabbit hole of everything that is not love.

So simple. So complicated. So impossible.

And for that God planned the power of love, which is self-sacrificing giving so that others may live with the freedom to choose

to love or not to love,

and be forgiven when it is so often needed.

Up-Right!

OR Upside Down?

Thursday 2 February 2023

Don’t Let ‘Em Snow-job ya!

Let that be the pines load.

Jeremiah 1:12

Then the Lord said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.’

Matthew 5:17

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. (Jesus)

.

Words of Grace For Today

Jesus did so much that challenged the understanding of the Law and the Prophets, as it applied to daily life.

Yet, Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfill them, which out to scare the ebiejeebies out of us, unless we have listened well to God’s Word,

and understood that most of the time we humans turn God’s Word upside down to fit into our own plans for our own lives.

And Jesus did not do that, so seemed to ‘upset the apple cart’, when he actually set it back upright.

And Jesus demonstrated God’s attitude of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice to save us … in such a way that we might know we are saved from all that should scare the ebiejeebies out of us, the work of the devil, which we too often embrace, and which in turn grips us tight in a death spiral …

until God frees us.

So this day we live free, now

what will we do with it?

Return to Humble Gratitude

Wednesday 1 February 2023

It’s Not Much, And It’s Everything,

A Snow Crystal Covered Branch

Just Like

Life Abundant.

Zechariah 1:3

Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Words of Grace For Today

Return, and I will return to you.

The IF-THEN is right there, and that’s not how God works.

Rather God says: I have always been with you, and you have not noticed. I make it possible for you to return to me. This is my standing invitation, return now.

Or now.

Or now.

For God does not want any of us to perish, though we all seem deadset on that being the end for us. Rather God wishes that all of us will repent, return, and discover the abundant blessings God has poured over us since before we were born.

Jesus’ story makes clear to those who will listen, that God wishes for us to live filled with humble gratitude, ready to be sent and be the ones who deliver God’s bountiful gifts to others, so that they may live filled with humble gratitude as well.

Some of us need to survive a car crash, engine failure in a single engine plane, or a terrorist attack (or one or more of a huge number of ‘accidents’ that should have claimed our lives). Others cancer or some other life consuming disease. Others conflict of war or violent crimes. Others being framed, accused, convicted, and destroyed by the scheming of those closest to us, the police, the lawyers, the courts, and the judges, or some other blatant misuse of authority and power. Others need more than life provides and they never surrender to humble thankfulness. Sad.

Others seem to learn from other’s experiences and find humble gratitude early in life and return often to enjoy it in the arms of a loving God.

Whatever it takes for you, may you find humble gratitude your way of being this day. It’s what please God the most.

And It Begins

And It Continues As Before.

Tuesday 31 January 2023

Since the Murky Mists Of Time’s Beginning,

We and Creation Have Evolved

From Generation to Generation.

Only One Never Changes!

Psalms 102:26-28

Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

Revelation 1:4

John to the seven churches that are in Asia:Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne …

Words of Grace For Today

The week is underway.

The news reports things that have long since been: football wins with the last play, a field goal; inflation giving way to recession and jobs underpaid and worker shortages and ticket scalping, which are all the chaos of capitalism or called more honestly, futile efforts to limit legalized and unchecked greed; movies that win awards which makes money for more greedy people; and fear of the survivors and refugees in Canada as those, who darn near succeeded in finishing them off in a nearly ‘successful’ genocide, return to Canada; and the weather forecasts a dip to below the mid minus 30’s tonight.

John starts his writing with a greeting, one that had been underway for sometime: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come …

But these people John writes to live under great oppression and threats to their lives, thus the coded manner in which John writes.

After pleading that his life not be cut short, as he has taken ill, the Psalmist honours God as the creator long ago of creation. God will endure always even as people age and die and are replaced with others. In this cycle God has established the children of God’s servants, of God’s people, and the children of the children, and the children of each generation as it passes from life leaving the living to the following generations.

And this has been underway for quite some time now.

Not that getting ill and anticipating ones early death is easy or to be taken lying down (so to speak.) Nor that getting old and anticipating one’s timely death is easy nor should be taken ‘lying down’, if one can ‘stand’ at all any more.

But there is comfort in knowing that God provides for all God’s people, and all their children. The future, as we have seen it come to be our history, is and was in God’s hands, as it always will be.

So even the particulars of this day are in God’s hands, even as the temperatures drop near -40⁰.

Still, there is work to be done, to prepare, to survive, and to flourish in this life abundant that God provides for us, holding us always in God’s hands.

With

Monday 30 January 2023

Wherever the paths and tumbles of life take us,

God is with us,

Our Shining Light

Joshua 24:17

for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed

Matthew 28:20b

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Words of Grace For Today

A pilot, a rather sane, sober and sombre individual most of the time, lands after a transatlantic flight, just a routine flight. But he expects in New York that day he will find an answer to a puzzle that has challenged his sanity. It even sent him banking a plane for no good reason (apparently) to avoid another plane that was not there, a ghost plane as it were. But today, he knew he would unravel the mystery and his life could return to normal.

As he steps off the plane he realizes that, in stark contrast to his regular orderly and stayed mood, he is rather giddy. More than giddy even, an over-drive of exuberance he could call it. And that makes him wonder, yet again, if he really has, perhaps, started to go insane. Not something too attractive in a pilot who is trying to move from the right seat to the left seat, or stay in any seat at all.

Then he realizes, whatever is going on with him, whether he really is mad or not, he is no different than everyone else, we all have to work with the equipment we are given, Right!?

Sounds of Wings, paraphrase from p. 79 and before, Spencer Dunmore, Tom Dohetry Associates, 1984

It’s just some of us are given some very special equipment that makes being a pilot possible. And for a few of us it makes us extraordinary pilots, the creme of the creme as it were.

In the rest of life, and maybe even for us gifted with equipment that makes flying possible, the real ‘equipment’ that counts is hardly our brain, our hands, our coordination, or our heart. What really counts is the gifts God gives us that help us recognize how God has accompanied us, as God did our ancestors through the generations, even as they ventured into foreign and hostile lands, as God does for all the saints.

Knowing that God protects us along all the ways, with their twists and turns and setbacks, that we journey in live, gives us a piece of unequal ‘equipment.’ It is God’s presence each day, which guides us, and picks us up when we take a tumble into horrendous sins, and heals us, and walks with us out into the world of …

everything.

Again today, we work with the equipment we are given, right!