Author: T L

Responding to

Encounters With God

Tuesday 25 February 2025

When was the last time you encountered God?

How did you respond?

Or did you not notice?

God Encounters happen many times each day for everyone!

Psalm 118:14

The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

James 5:13

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Scripture reports people responding to their encounters with God in many different ways:

Glowing faces (Moses)

Glowing clothes (Jesus)

Humility (David)

Astonishment (witnesses to Jesus’ healings and calming of the sea)

Thankful Survival (Elijah and the Widow)

Gratitude (Psalms and many others)

Naming God as one’s Rock, Salvation, Helper (Psalms and )

Calls to prayer and praise

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So how can we respond with indifference as if God were irrelevant?

Or with Ho-Hum, business as usual?

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Too used to miracle stories, we reduce them to elements of science and explain them away or dismiss them as false reports by fanatics.

Too successful in our own endeavours we choose to ‘rely’ on ourselves, while sinking into profound sadness as individuals and as a people, since no matter how we succeed (wealth, power, fame, or supposed freedom) our achievements remain unable to ‘pull us up by our bootstraps’ into joy at being alive.

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Scripture is full of acknowledgements that we think, speak, and live in such fogs of denial about God.

Thus Scripture and Tradition is full of Wisdom of the ages admonishes us to

Breathe.

Be still.

Listen.

Be humble.

Be thankful.

Be contrite.

Be bold.

Be as God created us to be, those who embody God’s Grace for us all… again today.

Delights Abused

Always Cost Us Life Abundant

Monday 24 February 2025

Beauty and Delight,

Or Chemical Escape

As Deadly As Lies

That Kill In So Many Ways?

Amos 6:4a, 6

Alas for those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Ephesians 5:18

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit

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Words of Grace For Today

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God has given us many ways to enjoy life on earth, only one of them is alcohol.

When we use what God has given for enjoyment as a way to dull our way through life, in order to deal with the pain life can be, we suffer.

Some suffer alcoholism, a disease of addiction that always beckons as an escape, an escape that always ends in death, unless one continually recovers, finding the goodness of life, starting always with honesty with oneself.

Other prices are many all the ways we take God’s delights, and turning them into escapes from honesty, from reality, from the suffering of life (ours and others.)

Honesty.

It’s hard.

But it is so much easier in the long term.

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For God intends for us to find delight in life, even as we remain sinners, causing pain for ourselves and others.

For God intends for us to pursue justice for all, and to share all that we receive as gifts from God, so that more and more people can find delights in life.

Faith

A Most Precious Gift

Sunday 23 February 2025

Guarded By God

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/northern-lights

Wonders of Wonders,

And More To Come!

Zechariah 9:8

Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.

Luke 8:24-25

They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’

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Words of Grace For Today

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Life has all sorts of challenges.

Many would do us in.

More would just make our lives a whole lot more difficult, leading to an earlier death.

How do we hang on to our faith in the midst of these challenges?

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If faith were our own making, the news would be devastating. We could not hang on to our faith. We’d lose it. We’d be toast.

Thank God, the Holy Spirit creates faith in us, and through our experiences collected from our forebearers and our own experiences, we can learn that there simply are no challenges to us, not even imminent death, that need create fear in us that we are on our own, that God has abandoned us to the deep and deadly.

For God stands as sentry to our hearts, minds, and spirits, protecting us from all that would do us in. For, since God has made us sinners into saints (though we also remain sinners), we are therefore spiritual beings on a human journey, not mere humans on a failing spiritual journey.

Death is not our end, just an end to this journey, and then comes …

well that we will find out, but God promises it will be more wondrous than this journey as humans.

Thanks be to God.

Shepherding The Flock

Equipped for Grace

Friday 21 February 2025

See the Light of Christ,

Let It Guide Us

To Be God’s Own

Micah 7:14

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land.

Ephesians 4:11-12

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

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Words of Grace For Today

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There are lots of callings, all according to the gifts we receive. All given to be shared so that others will have life abundant, knowing God loves them.

So God guides us all.

Let us be guided by the Spirit, this day, too.

For that is who we are, Spirit led saints, God’s voice, feet, and hands in this world.

Help, Help?

Listen For Help Given Long Ago

Thursday 20 February 2025

When Life Comes All Apart, Trying to Blindly Throw It All Together Rarely Works. Jesus Advises Us To Be As God Created Us, Ones Who Love Even Our Enemies.

Deuteronomy 32:36

Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining.

Luke 18:7

And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?

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Words of Grace For Today

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While we have many plans to bring justice, by defeating evil itself, sending it into a grave it will never return from …

This is seldom the way God delivers us.

Jesus calls us to love our enemies.

Some of us have figured out that this is how God conquers evil.

Three bigger boys started in on the new boy, Yari, calling him names, taunting him, bullying him in more and more threatening ways. Then one day they knocked him around, stole his lunch, and ate it in front of him – taunting his helplessness. That night Yari talked it over with his father. They made a plan together. The next day, when the bullies appeared again, calling him names and demanding his lunch, Yari offered them three lunches, made especially for each of them. At first they were shocked. Then they left in embarrassment, never to bully or taunt him again.

Lectionary Stories, Cycle C, adapted 2025

May we be the instruments of God’s way to peace, in small ways each day.

Working in Vain

Working for Bounty or Being Still

Wednesday 19 February 2025

Where Do You Find Stillness Before God?

Psalm 127:1

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.

Luke 5:5-6

Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.

Psalm 37:7a

Be still before the Lord.

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Words of Grace For Today

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He told his wife he’d be back the next day. Just a little business to take care of so that they’d have the money for that great retirement home they’d looked at. Well, he’d looked at for them. She was too sick that day.

She said they should spend time together. She was feeling exceptionally well. We don’t want to miss out. Not like before.

Before. I was there with you for every birth, every birthday and milestone. Well, most anyway.

Really?!, she said.

Well, I was right there with you, for the birth of our first two children. Though I had to leave for that business meeting and then your water broke. Still I was there early the next day to spend the first day with you and our youngest.

Time flies. Now they’re all grown and have families of their own.

So that’s what you think being there is? Then go, go do your business. But remember I invited you to stay with me today.

So off he went.

She had a massive heart attack six hours later.

When he returned ….

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There wasn’t a thing now he wouldn’t give to have those six hours with her. To be wise enough to not run off when she invited him to stay with her. They could have played chess, gone for a short walk out around the yard, listened to all the birds, squirrels, maybe seen a deer.

Instead, he’d gone to finalize the sale of part of his business. It had to be that day for the extra bonus, the unbelievable bonus of nearly 50% more than he’d gotten otherwise.

Now that extra money meant nothing. He certainly didn’t want to move into that retirement home without her. He didn’t want to do anything, not without her.

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No matter what we work at, when we take no time to be still before the Lord, we run off like chickens without their heads. We cover lots of ground, and it’s all for nought. We build great homes, and it’s all for nought. We make great plans for our future, and it’s all for nought.

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Be still.

Listen to Jesus’ heart beating in your chest.

Feel the Spirit moving through your mind.

Sense God All-Everything flowing in your veins.

Be still and know God’s Word in you, around you, for you, for all people.

And then give it your all.

Do Not Worry

About the Hour When …

Tuesday 18 February 2025

What’s Coming At Us, From Behind the Trees, On the Road, Through the Woods?

Or

What a Beautiful Sunset

Over the Snow and

Through the Woods!

Isaiah 49:23

Kings shall be your foster-fathers, and their queens your nursing-mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.

Luke 12:11-12

When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.’

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Words of Grace For Today

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It’s all fine and good to say do not worry, but most of us worry no matter what, sometimes even about things that deserve to be worried about.

Being brought before the authorities to defend oneself for being a Christian, when the punishment for that faith was death for so many … well that certainly seems to deserve more than a little worry. One’s life is on the line.

But then

one’s life is always on the line

if one is faithfully serving Christ

by being a servant to all, and master to none.

Only in a different life will the kings and queens bend so low as to care for us, let alone care about us, other than to wipe us out for showing the truth about their wickedness and God’s goodness.

But that worry, and that other life to come, need not consume more than passing thoughts from us. We have our work cut out for us, sharing God’s blessing and gifts with those most in need of them. Without cost they are given to us, though we certainly have not and cannot earn them. The only ‘string’ attached is that we share them. For these gifts are really only blessings if and when we share them with others in need.

That’s how God’s world works, whether we worry or not.

Keep Us Safe

Despite great opposition.

Monday 17 February 2025

Up, Up, and More Uphill.

The Path Forward is Hardly Ever Easy.

God’s Promises Keep Us

From Freezing In Place.

Psalm 40:11

Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe for ever.

1 Thessalonians 2:2

… though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.

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Words of Grace For Today

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There are so many stories one can read or watch, engaging, thrilling, and moving.

Some have something good to say about life. Many are not really worth the time spent taking them in. A few inspire one to embrace the goodness of life that God’s graciously blesses us with.

Paul was not received with grace by everyone wherever he went, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Though he was maltreated at Philippi, it was the congregation to which he wrote with the dearest, most loving and heartfelt joy and thanks. His letter to the Thessalonians comes in a close second.

Whatever challenges come our way, God mercifully loves us and keeps us safe. Often through the most challenging of times God most clearly proves God’s promises of mercy, love and faithfulness can be trusted by us.

Not that we seek out or enjoy the challenges, but all in all we trust that God walks with us, and that God’s faithful people live out that presence with us, as we live it out for others.

Thing Are Looking Up

At the bottom of life, down here.

Sunday 16 February 2025

Way Up There!

There’s Light

Up There!

Isaiah 40:29

He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

2 Corinthians 12:9

… but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

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Words of Grace For Today

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We want so much, when we think we have so little.

We beg for more, more, more.

And then Jesus shows us that

God’s Grace is everything for us

and God gives it freely to us

again and again.

In all our tiredness and hopeless powerlessness,

the Spirit moves us and shows us again

Christ’s power in us,

through us,

for others.

God Hears

And Answers With What?

Saturday 15 February 2025

Hard to See?

Always There,

Even in the Darkest of Times:

the Light of Christ.

Psalm 22:3

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

Hebrews 5:7

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

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Words of Grace For Today

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When we pray to God we want results.

Usually we know what kind of results.

Jesus prays to God from the cross. God hears him. Jesus still dies.

What kind of answer is that?

It’s the kind that saves us all

from all evil

even our darkest sins!

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That’s the kind of answer God gives to all our prayers,

which means our wanted results rarely are God’s way for us to move forward

into life abundant,

and blessed.

It’s a tough slog, but blessed every step,

as God walks with us, through all that may come our way.