Dance – This Life

Dead Man Walking

and Dead Woman Walking

No More

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Many or Few, Our Steps Will Not End With Death.

Psalm 30:4

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.

John 5:25

Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

…

Words of Grace For Today

‘Dead man walking’ refers to those on death row in particular as they walk their last few steps from their cell to the execution room. It also is used by extension to describe those who are targeted to die soon for their ‘misdeeds’.

It is a hell of a term,

not least of all because every human alive is walking their last steps alive on earth. Some have a few decades of walking, some a few years, some a few weeks, some a few days, some a few hours, but we are walking towards our deaths.

Jesus turns the meaning of that hellish phrase around. Those who are dead will be called some day to walk again. Properly we should say it’s dead people not only walking again but living again,

and living most fully,

in the grace and light of God.

For this God promises also us all, even those who still walk our few remaining steps, so that we need not fear death.

For death will not have the final say. Neither will the devil nor those who seek our deaths.

Already today then we sing and dance and praise God for the life abundant God has given us for this day, as yesterday, as every tomorrow.

New Plantings

Friday, December 8, 2023

Sometimes Finding Our Way is Difficult,

and Even Looking To Where We Have Been

Is Hard to Find.

Isaiah 43:18-19

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Matthew 13:31

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field ….’

…

Words of Grace For Today

We cannot see the future and know what it is for sure.

Yes, we have ideas or estimations or imaginations, but we simply cannot know the future. Lots of people would give so much to be able to know the future, but that’s because it’d be a huge advantage over all the rest of us.

So we have the past, and we spend lots of time studying the past. We even have wise sayings that tell us that if we do not study and learn from our past we are bound to repeat our failings in the future.

Then the wisdom of scriptures tell us, more than once, that we ought not to consider the things of the past, that God is doing something new, that we ought to look past our past (of sins, especially) and accept God’s forgiveness, so that we can move into a new future.

Not that we have much ability to forget the past, especially sins done against us and our own sins …

unless …

we realize we participate in God’s forgiveness whether we know it or not.

Then

with no more explanation than that God walks with us

we can leave our pasts in the past

and

embrace the future God has for us

and

for all those we forgive.

And wait for the new seeds of life to sprout in and around us,

as God grows

a new

future in and among us.

Adopted

Undeservedly so.

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

God Guides Us On Our Challenging Path to the Light of Christ,

and Calls Us to Share It and Everything

With Everyone.

Psalm 65:4

Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.

Galatians 4:4-5

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Happy are those.

Happy are we, as some of those, as we are, who are adopted by God as children. God has chosen us and taken us in when we least deserve anything good. God has given us bounty beyond bounty of things good. Nothing can take that from us.

God calls us to share all this with everyone we encounter, the promise, the reality, the reception of gifts, the challenges, the call to share it all.

God help us, for the tasks are as impossible as the gifts are astounding.

How can we but dance and sing our thanks and praise for all God has given us, including the answer to the age-old question: what is the meaning of life?

Which is none other than to share all we have with those in need.

God help us if we don’t. God help us to do this, each day.

For the Most

For the Most Vulnerable

Monday, November 27, 2023

The Spirit Dances

Each Morning, Noon and Night.

Only By the Spirit Working In Us

Can We Dance Jesus’ Dance.

Zechariah 7:10

… do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.

Ephesians 4:20

That is not the way you learned Christ!

…

Words of Grace For Today

God calls us many times in many ways to do justice for the most vulnerable, in Zechariah named as the widow, the orphan, the alien and the poor.

How do we learn?

How do we learn to do justice?

How do we learn Christ?

Is learning to do justice the same as learning Christ?

…

No, they are not the same.

They do overlap.

To do justice is for the most part to follow Christ’ commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours (and enemies) as ourselves.

But not all of ‘doing justice’ is what Christ calls us to.

And just ‘doing justice’ hardly begins to encompass all Christ calls us to.

For Christ calls us to love. To love as God loves. To love even when it costs us. And that moves us into and then also far beyond just doing justice for others.

Yet how can we learn to do justice?

Study, practice, and make errors … and more study, more practice, and more errors and (it keeps repeating, since we never get it completely and what we did yesterday does not provide justice for the most vulnerable today.)

And how can we learn Jesus?

Some would say it is the same. We study, practice, make errors, and repeat.

Those who have listened to the saints will know that will never even get us close, for the key to Jesus is

that we cannot learn Jesus on our own at all.

We only come to know Jesus when the Holy Spirit moves us to.

So we pray each day, come Lord Jesus, walk with us, let the Holy Spirit guide our thoughts, hearts and spirits, our dreams, visions, and hopes, and most of all our actions. Let them be reflections of Jesus to one another, and especially the most vulnerable.

And then we study, contemplate, plan, dream, and act as if it were all up to us, humbly remembering the Holy Spirit will guide and empower us.

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.

Closing Time

The Last Dance Is Done and …?

Friday, September 22, 2023

The Day Is Coming To A Close.

Now What?

Isaiah 55:5

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we wake up to the reality of what we have done with our lives, as the carouser wakes from the ‘Johnny Walker wisdom’ run out, leaving us with no more than a dark hangover,

the question is what can we do, now that the ‘party is over’, the last dance danced, and it’s long since been closing time, in so many ways?

Time to return to the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

It’s not a jump into an alternate reality or timeline.

It’s not a huge jump across the ‘pond’ to another continent.

It’s not a huge trip into the Hinterländer.

For God has walked with is into every hell-hole party, through every good and bad dance, and through every closing time.

God is right there with us, in us, around us; we are not alone, and it’s never closing time for God’s Grace for us.

That is the one thing of goodness and life that never closes down on us.

Thanks be to God.

Ephraim

Fruit in the land of misfortunes

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Ephraim By Francesco Hayez (1843)

Genesis 41:52

The second he named Ephraim, ‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.’

Romans 5:3-4

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

…

Words of Grace For Today

Just because suffering can be identified as bringing good effect (eventually) in our lives, there is no justification for foisting suffering on others, or seeking it out ourselves.

Suffering is, as Joseph knew quite well, not the choice one made for oneself, nor the thing to be celebrated. Rather one celebrates that one survives suffering and moves on. The end of suffering that is replaced by much more than the lack of suffering is what is celebrated.

Thus Joseph names his second son Ephraim. Ephraim, of two word-roots: depleted and fruitful, lingers not on depletion nor jumps merely on fruitful, but in the combination of fruitfulness from depletion.

Death brings an end to suffering. This we do not celebrate. The dead do not celebrate, right?

What we look for is life that has delights in each day, comforts to our ills, and reasons to see our children’s children and their children live well.

The challenge to a comfortable life is that until we know we may lose those comforts and indeed life itself, and not just a theoretical exercise but knowing it from our own experience, we really do not know how to live well with comforts. We take them for granted and surrender even our own thinking minds to have comforts — and then some fascist ruler takes not only our minds but our lives and that of our children’s children and their children.

So we pray, may our suffering (which is inevitable for all humans) be of a kind and duration that we may survive and therein learn the value of truth, compassion, and shear joy in the simple things of life — and most of all that we will learn from our suffering the true value in life is less our comforts but in our helping others survive their suffering to be able to enjoy life with us. Thus we set off a cascade of events that will bring many in the coming generations to know the true value of life, and how to find delight in the small things, and compassion for others.

We can but hope

for that for us

and for our children

and their children

and many generations to come.

Hubris

Catastrophic

Thursday, August 10, 2023

How Small We Really Are,

Minuscule

in God’s Great Universe.

Habakkuk 2:4

Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

James 1:21

Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

Human pride pushes the boundaries of reality with deceptions powerful so that we may think we can save ourselves, and even convince us that we have, yet pride dupes us also to think and believe that we are left

alone

By faith the Holy Spirit, implanted in us as a gift from God, revives us so that we can see reality, the reality of how low we are, so that

we may meekly beg

beg

from God that we might live again in the sureness of God’s grace, able to breathe, dance, and laugh

as the Holy Spirit returns our spirits to health

for by love alone

God’s steadfast love

are we saved and can we live abundantly

of spirit, mind, and body

no matter what may come our way.

Out of Our Distress

God Gives Us The Horizon

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Breathe In The Broad Horizon

Of God’s Steadfast Love

Psalm 118:5

Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

2 Corinthians 1:7

Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

Words of Grace For Today

When we auger our way into deep holes of whatever kind, we are not able to see even our own dreamed of horizons, our goals, or our hopes. We want God or someone to come and pull us up so that we can see our horizon again, so that we can walk forward towards our goals, so that we can realize our hopes.

God comes all right.

God comes and pulls us out of the holes we get ourselves into.

God comes and places us in broad open places,

But NOT so that we can see our own horizon, goals or dreams realized.

God places us in the broad open places of God’s creation so that we can see, not only our own lives, but all of God’s universe from a bit of God’s perspective. We never see as God does: all things, from all times, all at once, fully knowing and understanding everything. God does share with us a glimpse or two of the broadness of God’s creation and our place in it.

God sends saints to guide us,

Then God sends us saints to guide others,

Always in God’s good creation according to God’s good will, grace, and steadfast love for us all.

Just another day. In the Hole. God plucking us up. Glimpsing the broad view. Sharing it with others.

Always God’s steadfast love surrounds us, so we dance a step or a jig of thanks.

Sometimes.

Sometimes God!

Sometimes God Simply Astounds Us.

Friday, July 21, 2023

The World’s Wonders Are Visible In Just A Drop

…

Of Love.

Second Chronicles 5:13-14

… it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever’, the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

Revelation 21:2-23

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Words of Grace For Today

The dull-drums of ho-hum life are never more persistent then when problems overwhelm us and we see no progress towards improvement. We have no hope, so we struggle to make ourselves get out of bed. We struggle to get on with any task at all. Getting to work is necessary but we barely make it. Getting home is an insurmountable chore, day after day. Especially if we have no home! Finding a reason to sleep is beyond us.

Not every life is this way. Not every day is this way for most of us.

And then God

Then God shows up in awesome splendour!

Then God shows up in awesome splendour and astounds us!

The trumpets and cymbals may play, but God out plays them all, with stars dancing, winds singing, and creatures humming along.

And the light show prickles our skins and pierces our hearts with colours we’d forgotten if ever we’d seen them.

Just a bit

of God

dancing

for us

to break the dull-drums

off of us

and get us back to thankful living.