One Day

One Day At A Time

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Waiting …

for the New Day

Of Hope Colours.

Psalms 30:11-12

You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Hope.

Hope lives despite the current circumstances that provide no basis for believing that things will get better as time progresses.

Hope.

Hope is that our mourning (for all that once was is now gone, and all the dreams of what could be have vanished with the setting sun coloured by smoke from fires that have burned so much) will be turned to dancing, that our despair (at how the world treats everyone as if we were all commodities) will be turned to joy overflowing, that the gloom of deceit (that steals the healing power of love from us all) will be turned to peace in our hearts and in our lands.

Hope.

Hope fuels the world, and it does not contribute to pollution, deprivations, or global warming.

Hope.

Hope seems too far to achieve, or climb to, or build it from the debris that remain.

Hope.

With grateful hearts, even in the deepest of our despair, we know that hope is ours, not because we possess it, but because God sends the Holy Spirit to give it to us fresh, like the morning dew in the mountain meadow as the sun rises between the green slopes lining the horizon.

Hope.

Hope is fresh, also this day, and our hearts overflow with thanks.

For without hope all would be lost, and the first to to be lost is always truth followed by love.

Hope.

Hope arrives, uninvited, colouring our hours, again this day.

Weeping & Pain

Overcome by God’s Promises

Friday, May 12, 2023

Fire & Smoke

May Colour Our World and Steal Breath From Us,

Doch God Promises Life

Abundant

Jeremiah 31:9

With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

John 16:22

So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

Words of Grace For Today

That life is filled with pain and sorrow, difficulties and failures, enemies and losses is no surprise for anyone with their eyes open.

Often in the midst of the worst that life serves up for us, it is challenging to remember that God intended us to enjoy life by giving help to others. God did not intend for life to be an endless party, ignoring ours’ and others’ needs. God did intend that life should be rewarding, joy-filled, and filled with vitality of mind, body, and spirit.

So God promises that though today we may have pain and sorrow, God has not forgotten us. God has claimed us as God’s own people and become a father & mother to us all.

What God promises no one can take from us.

That is reason enough to give every bit of effort we have into sharing the goodness of life with others.

The Reason

The Real

Renewed Reason To Celebrate

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Where Once Fishers Fished for Food,

Now Is Empty,

Dying Ice.

Jeremiah 33:10-11

Thus says the Lord: In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without human beings or animals’, in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants, human or animal, there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank-offerings to the house of the Lord:
‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever!’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.

Titus 2:11

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all,

Words of Grace For Today

How many desolate places are there these days, where no more are there inhabitants or animals to be found? Where conflict and destruction of wars have chased all living things away? Or climate change storms or earthquakes or floods or droughts or rising oceans or … (you name it) have made places uninhabitable?

How many desolate places are there these days, where inhabitants and animals are to be found? Where Covid isolation, strife among neighbours and within families, or greed for power has pitted some against others, or greed based lies have destroyed the foundations of trust, decimating all that remains of a place of safety where one used to acknowledge, converse, suffering with, mourn with, and celebrate joyfully with others?

Covid is no longer treated as a pandemic, yet long Covid has taken a greater toll than just the number of those who have succumbed to death because of Covid. And such a greater number of people all across the world have suffered irreparable damage because of the mostly sensibly enforced isolation of Covid restrictions. Elderly people in care homes, seniors with age and health issues, those suffering dementia, those already caught in the grips of addictions to alcohol, drugs, or anything else, people of all ages with compromised health, children of all ages, school age children deprived of years of learning opportunities and community with other children, extroverts of all flavours cut off from what energizes them, and even introverts and hermits driven further from others.

So many people suffer and will not recover. Others are slowly recovering, like feet that slowly recover feeling more than two years after a rather simple case of Covid early on before the variants of concern became household things.

But how does one reach out?

How does one welcome others, when welcoming them places everyone at new and unseen risks, even risk of death?

How does one carry on without contact with others, giving and receiving the simplest kinds of care?

This is not the first time we have faced such challenges. Many times in millennia gone by, we cried to God to save us,

and God brought voices of mirth and joy to ring from places so desolate not one human or animal had been found there, where before desolation took hold the hustle and bustle of life and community had been vibrant.

These are exactly the kind of challenges we face as people, for which Jesus came, lived among us, taught, ministered to and cured all that ails us, and demonstrated the power of God, not in acts of taking over worldly powers, but in the weakness of loving humans, all of us, just as we are, and showing us how the power of forgiveness gives new life to us all.

So we too, in slow recovery, will sing this day. We will sing God’s praise and pray that those lost will be found, those sick will recover, those dying will be set free to come home to Jesus.

Let the choruses ring out, and once again mark the land as blessed in all ways.

Did You Find

Your Way To A New Day?

Friday, April 14, 2023

Late to the Day’s Beginning,

As the Light is Already Bright and White,

But Still A Good Beginning.

Jeremiah 23:5

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

Words of Grace For Today

The dream of justice for the people, justice based on truth and righteousness, is as old as the hills.

And in these days it surely has not been accomplished, as tyrants and despots rule in many lands across the earth, and even in democracies, which give the appearance of some sort of justice, special interests (and international corporations with profits greater than many governments) corrupt the processes that are designed to be (or at least look to be) just.

Money gets its way, so to speak, and everyone suffers.

That hope for a just government is not what Jesus came to provide, as much as we hope that some day it yet will be accomplished.

Jesus came to free us from fear of death. That fear is what lies underneath almost all injustices, but to be free we have to allow God to work that freedom for us and in us. It is not something we simply choose, or can accomplish on our own. It is a gift. It is only a gift.

What we get to do with that gift is find the beginning of each day and the end of each day as God intends us to find them: free from fear of death, free from fear of guilt, and free from fear of God’s judgment (since God works with mercy for us.)

Did you find the beginning of this day?

Walking

With

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Walking, Running, Crawling: God is Right There With Us.

Psalms 91:9-10

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.

2 Corinthians 1:5

For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a very, very tempting take on the world: If we do the right things for God, like make God our refuge, then nothing bad will happen to us, like scourge in our tents and evil falling on our heads.

But God does not work that way, nor did God create to make it so. All that because – therefore agency-consequence is taken from the daily doings of providing for our survival. If you do not hunt, kill, and eat, well you will go hungry. Unless of course you’re a vegetarian at least for a while. Trouble is we take that because therefore thinking into our relationships and come up with If I do this, then you must do that! And we call that love. Which is nothing like love at all. It is coercion, plain and simple coercion that demotes the other from being a full person in order to elevate one’s self to something more. Which is pure bull and foolishness.

God protects us from evil by walking with us right into it … and back out again.

So we suffer, rarely as much as Jesus, but we suffer greatly, God with us, too. The strength we have is what God provides. And the consolation is as powerful as any love can be, for it is divine love for us poor creatures.

That’s the kind of love we can aspire to give to others on this good planet: walking with, suffering with, consoling with love so powerful it ‘moves mountains.’

Easter

Resurrection

Celebration of Life,

Again.

Sunday, April 9, 2023

And There IS Life, and Light, And Hope … Again!

Psalms 3:6

I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

Mark 16:9-10

And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.
Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping.

Words of Grace For Today

Only when we understand the darkness that God suffered by dying on the cross, and the darkness that permeated all creation, pushing, shoving, and sucking everything toward uncreation,

can we then truly celebrate

that Jesus is Risen, indeed!

And we can live, and laugh, and pray thanks, and dance, and hope, and reach towards others

with the same grace God has extended to us, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross,

offering them life, laughter, prayers of thanks, dancing, hoping and community so precious.

We can but overflow with prayers of joy and thanksgiving, for all of creation can live again.

REAL

Joy from Real Sorrow

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Our Justice can be as perverted as the crimes committed.

God’s Justice is perfect based on truth.

Jeremiah 31:13

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Words of Grace For Today

Listening to the great jazz music from the soundtrack to the movie Chicago reminded me how that movie portrays how perverted the justice system is.

Most devastating is the song of the many inmates in jail, all woman, all telling tales of how they just had to kill the man they were with. They just had no other choice. They had it coming.

While widows normally grieve the death of their husbands, these women had their supposed sorrow turned into joy. They were glad to be rid of their men. One man just chewed his food too loudly. One was caught in an affair. One was just too slow. One looked the wrong way.

God did not provide this ‘escape’ from real sorrow for these women, nor the thousands like them that exist in real life. When you meet a woman like this, who grieves not a bit for her dead husband (as she says to the children, “we are survivors”) one knows one has met the work of the devil that disconnects a person from the real world and sets them loose to destroy others without feeling a thing. Psychopath, sociopath, or borderline personality disordered … it matters not the ‘proper’ designation we give them, they are sick and the devil uses them well, all too well.

God would rescue even them, were there a way we too would rejoice.

God’s work recounted in the passages above is not about these women. God’s work is the real and very desperately needed rescuing of so many people who experience real sorrow, grief, and mourning. This is what God does. God turns the impossibly dark days of mourning (in which no light can penetrate, or so it surely seems) into days of rejoicing and celebrating and hope.

These are the things we celebrate, too, along with those who come back into the light from the darkness.

These are the things we celebrate, today …

with a smile, a peel of laughter, and a heartfelt thanks lifted to God

who walks beside us through all our dark days

…

bringing us into the light.

Why Sing?

Or Dance?

Wednesday 22 February 2023

It’s Cold.

It’s Dark.

It’s Frosty.

It’s Brambles even!

It’s Just the Moon.

And It’s God’s Gift of Beauty

For Us Again!

Jeremiah 20:13

Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

Luke 1:46-48

And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;’

Words of Grace For Today

The world is in trouble, and it appears more dire than ever before. War, Climate Change’s storms and upheavals, Nature’s Fight Against Human Overpopulation with Disease new and old, More and More Lies and Deceptions that Polarize Populations into Chaos Making Room for Fascist Rulers, Greater and Greater Inequity Between Peoples, Swings for Correction like Me-Too that have become just as destructive as the horrors they try to rectify, and on goes the list!

And personally for us all. I’m sure that you have your own list of disasters just waiting to blossom like nuclear mushrooms in your life, just as I do: thanks to a justice system gone amuck, and drugs and greed bending weak minds towards homicidal endings of me like I’ve never encountered before.

So why should we sing thanks to God?

Like Mary, when God steps into our lives in a visible and undeniable way it usually does not produce wealth, power, and privilege the likes of which we’ve only dreamed. On the contrary it usually brings great hardship to our mornings, noons, and nights.

So how on earth are we to sing God’s praise for all this?

Simple. Start by recognizing that the everything we are and have and can do, starting with breathing, is a gift from God – that we invariably mess up – and that we only continue to breathe at all because God’s wondrous Grace and Love reach out to us to forgive us and give us new life, as God has done for all the needy in every generation …

no matter what comes our way, or we throw in our own way.

So sing, and give God praise, and dance a jig of thanks

again this day.

And breathe, wondrously.

‘Final’ Translation

And As A New ‘Morrow

1) Lord, you are life’s hope when life withers away,
in clay and on rocks grow full in us,
be germinating seed, be a secure place,
Bring forth buds and bloom bright in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in this new growing day, blossom in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your strong, good hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this your planet.

2) Lord, you are life’s goodness where loving breaks down,
in our coldest times, breathe into us.
give generous spirits, be our warming light,
be hot flame, be burning in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
warming again this new day, burn bright in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your good gracious hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

3) Lord, you are life’s joy where all laughter is lost,
in our deepest dark, live on in us,
be joyous dreams dancing, be comforting sight,
be voices and sing on in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, a wonder filled new day, sing on in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your loving hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

Music from The Mass “Lied vom Licht” by Gregor Linßen

Und ein neuer Morgen (Herr, du bist die Hoffnung)

1) Herr/Gott, du bist die Hoffnung, wo Leben verdorrt,
auf steinigem Grund wachse in mir,
sei keimender Same, sei sicherer Ort,
treib Knospen und blühe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, blühe in mir.

Ref.: Halte mich geborgen,
fest in deiner starken Hand und segne mich,
segne mich und deine Erde.

2) Herr, du bist die Güte, wo Liebe zerbricht,
in kalter Zeit, atme in mir
sei zündender Funke, sei wärmendes Licht,
sei Flamme und brenne in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, brenne in mir.

3) Herr, du bist die Freude, wo Lachen erstickt,
in dunkler Welt, lebe in mir,
sei froher Gedanke, sei tröstender Blick,
sei Stimme und singe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, singe in mir.

Das Lied stammt aus der Messe “Lied vom Licht” vom Gregor Linßen
Die Original-Chornoten sind über den Verlag www.edition-gl.de erhältlich.

Original Choir sheet music is available (in German) from the publisher at www.edition-gl.de

Text from:

https://www.evangeliums.net/lieder/lied_und_ein_neuer_morgen.html

YouTube:

This is the best rendition I’ve found.

In a Worship Service:

https://www.zdf.de/gesellschaft/gottesdienste

Fear Filled?!!

You better bet your little … until …

Thursday 16 February 2023

The Waters Now Calm,

Without Warning,

Can Churn

and Consume all Creation into Themselves.

Jonah 2:1-2

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Luke 12:7

But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Words of Grace For Today

I don’t know about you but if I were thrown overboard by a fearful ship’s crew, who saw me as the cause of a storm that threatened to take their ship to the bottom (where the people of that time understood it was the primordial chaos of precreation void!), and I ended up getting eaten whole by a huge fish, I might have good cause to be a tad frightened. Okay, let’s be honest I’d be in a full out panic once or twice over.

I’m not so sure I’d have time to pray in any coherent manner.

Life for the common folk in Jesus’ day was no different in analogous ways, tossed ‘overboard’ by the ruling foreigners, or by the religious lackies, and then ‘swallowed up whole’ in the morass of being poor, where nobody cared for the poor, except what could be gotten out of them to make the rich and ruling classes more comfortable in their exquisite lifestyles.

Life for most people today is really still the same.

So how are we not to be filled with fear? At any moment life can be torn from us for no good reason other than we are in some rich or powerful person’s way.

That can happen in a blink of an eye, getting pummeled in any number of ways by bullies (that hide even as respectable people), being pulled over by a cop, or falsely accused by a woman (who in this ‘me-too’ attitude is always to be believed – unfortunately the truth is some of what women have suffered more than deserves getting brought into the spotlight and dealt with. But the lies do not deserve the same blind acceptance as truth. Not ever, no matter who tells the lies!) or slowly ruined by jealous others who wish not to see one’s success for against it they measure themselves as utter failures (which they are, worse than they imagine!)

So how can we not be afraid?

God has ‘counted the hairs on our heads’ since before we knew how to remember from generation to many generations later with writing.

Of course, it has to do with today. Does God counting our hairs do any good for us? It is less a question about our hair, without which we can live. It has to do with whether God walks with us, carries us when we falter, and revives our hearts when they have succumbed to the chaos and evil of life all around.

And to answer whether or not God does that, God sent Jesus, whose story makes clear that God treasures us, each and every one of us.

So take that, you agents of evil who would try to teach us poor masses that we do not count. God has taught us to dance, even as we count, 1,2,3; 1,2,3; … in celebration for life renewed … by grace alone.