Geography – This Life

Do Not

Be Afraid!

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Blessings Promised

Lots of water

between here and

the coming storms.

Genesis 26:24

And that very night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

Ephesians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

“Do not be afraid.”

Always, “Do not be afraid.”

But …

well, there’s plenty of reasons to be afraid.

Seasons change,

and with climate change, the wild storms are now ferocious, focused on destroying us

…

it seems.

…

Morning

Rising moon sliver cannot dent the not quite frozen dark.

Innumerable stars pierce the black void around dancing magnetic streams.

Dew drenched grass waits increments of snow piling on.

Ferocious winds wait, catapults loaded.

Biting cold looms over the horizon.

Already the monster chews it’s bright orange flames turning wood to ash & light & heat

Ever slowly boiling the pot for morning coffee & the day’s tea.

All is well

…

For now.

…

Thank God for all the blessings (as promised each day through the generations) that have kept us alive

until now.

And a home waiting

when that last day comes

our way.

Place?

My Place

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

what’s your place like?

The Geese,

Soon Gone.

The Stillness Stays Behind.

Isaiah 55:12

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Luke 10:17- 20

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

pulled and pushed my bones and muscles resist

but they must out of the warmth from under a down duvet rise

dawn peeks through the trees

frost covers the grass

the air holds it’s breath waiting

the lake waters exhale fog rising

on the shore a goose honks once, then twice

across the waters the oil processing plant roars dullness

and trucks pound the pavement, as another of their work day begins

smoke rises from the chimney

a four fist size rock sits beside the path, pulled out from where it tipped innumerable loads of wood coming in

My day begins, a pot of water on the wood stove, waiting for heat, an hour until it boils for morning coffee and the day’s thermos of tea.

My ‘place’ awaits another 8 hours of hard labour preparing wood for the winter, repairing and improving systems that keep the cold, the storms, the animals and bugs at bay

…

and me alive.

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What’s your place in life?

…

Is our place anything other than to rejoice that God has a place for us, in creation, and beyond?

Gone Degenerate and Wild

Will Anyone Plead for Us?

Friday, October 10, 2025

Surely Someone?!!

Sunset Glory.

The Colours Are Not Real.

But God’s Blessings Are!

Jeremiah 2:21

Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?

Romans 11:2

God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?

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Words of Grace for Today –

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If we are at all honest with ourselves we know that we have at least taken the good vineyard God planted in us and chosen to bring in wild weed seed, and degenerative thoughts, words, dreams, and deeds,

to much so that they choke out life in and around us.

…

Elijah, as powerful as he may be, cannot save us.

Thankfully, God has not rejected us and deserted us to ourselves and all the evils we dream up.

Instead

God sent Jesus to save us

and save us he did and does

each day.

…

Thus we may live this day

as the ones God blesses,

all in order that we share those blessings will all.

…

Breathe.

The Spirit

Always in and around us, for life.

For This Reason

And What Reason Is That

Thursday, October 9, 2025

That God Would Bless Us?

The Spirit Works Where God Wills

Genesis 12:1-3

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Galatians 3:9

For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

God calls and says “Go!”

God promises a great nation, blessings to be blessings to all.

And Abram and Sarai, go, and manipulate, cheat, and lie their way to wealth, security, and fame (or infamy to their victims). But they cannot make a great nation, starting with a family unless God blesses them with a child, and for that …

well they are humbled, most humbled. They cannot do it on their own.

Late in life, they finally have a child, and the rest is history.

A history of a nation growing and strong, then corrupted and overrun, and reestablished but still weak, then dispersed across the earth, and oppressed, killed and driven out.

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Do we want to join that family?

Maybe not so much, eh!

…

Yet, by baptism into Jesus, the Christ, we are made a part of that family of God, a family larger than just Abraham’s blood descendants. A family bound together by the fire-wind-spirit of God, pouring gifts upon us all

…

all so that we can be blessings to others.

And how are we brought into this family? Do we do what is right and good and just and earn our way in. Not on your life.

We, like Abraham and Sarah, can do nothing, except wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to bring us home, into the family of God.

…

For this reason, namely, that we are saved not by our works, not by our own hands, not by our own hearts or minds; that we are saved by faith given to us by God;

for this humble reason, that we do none of it on our own, that God must do it all for us.

For this reason, this humbling reason, we are blessed

not for our benefit

but that we can be a blessing to others, many times over.

Coming Up Short In Life?

Look!

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Even Zacchaeus Is Invited to the Feast!

Success Is Not Finding the Right Path and Reaching the End.

It is Loving Everyone Along the Way, No Matter How Far We Get.

Psalm 10:17

O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear.

Luke 19:5-6

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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We measure life

in money

in power

in popularity

in relative privileges and comforts

in things of this world,

– ignoring those who come up short.

…

And so many must come up short.

…

God has always given special attention to those measured as coming up short:

the meek

the widows

the orphans

the slaves

the servants

the handicapped

the ill,

– which pretty much leaves no one out, except those that insist on staying out.

Jesus reaches down where we think people don’t even count, and invites us all to come to the feast of knowing Jesus at home, and in the feast of life (purchased with his death.)

…

For God measures life

in empathy

in forgiveness

in helping

in serving

in love

in joy

and in hope,

– and in seeing everyone as they are.

…

and the Holy Spirit makes sure no one comes up too short for God to notice!

Betcha Can’t

Betcha God Can!

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Thwarts and All Cannot Stop God’s Love

Canoe at 72?

Possible.

Be Saved Yet Again?

For God All Is Possible!

Job 42:2

Job to God: I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Luke 1:37

For nothing will be impossible with God.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Trusting that God will not be stopped, that all things are possible for God, is the first good half of trusting God.

The other half is knowing, from experience (one’s own and those of the God’s people since the beginning of time) that God intends good for us, that God indeed loves us like we can only dimly imagine possible.

That’s seemingly impossible:

loving such miserable sinners as us,

mere blips in time,

vulnerable to

the smallest

bugs,

and so capable of

ugly and hateful destructive things

against the earth that supports life for us all,

towards people different than, and especially those so like, us,

and even to ourselves!

Yet there it is to see: God loves us, forgives us, and does the impossible:

God gives us life, and then renews life for us when we botch it so badly.

Even, Especially, Now

God’s Goodness

Monday, October 6, 2025

Hearing, Seeing, Trusting

Life Without Trust

Life With Trust

Psalm 27:13

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

James 5:15

The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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It’s all good and fine to live life waiting for life after death, dismissing how miserable life is here for oneself, or how miserable it is for others, while oneself enjoys comforts and privileges unimagined even 100 years ago.

Well, that’s not good or fine, really.

Our lives are more determined by what we hear, see, and trust than the actual things we experience. The same mundane and boring or dire and desperate circumstances can be experienced completely differently by different people, usually depending most (not considering various vulnerabilities due to health and age) on their value-reality framework, which they live with each day.

If one hears the autumn winds blow, and does not take the time to actually see beauty of the yellow leaves against the deep blue skies, the marvels of the waters reflecting the wisps and billows of clouds, and the freedom from bugs the cool temperatures provide, how can one trust that even as winter approaches one’s preparations for the darkest and deepest of cold days will be enough?

If one hears the words upon words spoken, presented, and drilled into the fabric of our lives these days, and does not take the time to also hear the Words recorded by the saints through the ages of God’s love for us, and then to see the wonders the Word has brought to all peoples of all times, how can one trust that in the darkest and coldest of days to come God will walk with us?

The wonders of God’s love for us are not reserved for only after death. These wonders spring up and blow about each day around us. Today we can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Today we can trust that prayers help those who are ill, and that God already pours forgiveness to all people, hoping we will hear it in God’s Word, see it in lives past and present, and learn to trust it today, and in each day to come.

Wonders to hear, see, and trust abound.

Deliver Us!

Send Us

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

to deliver us all.

As We Get to Reflect Christ’s Light

to Strangers and Friends Alike.

Psalm 79:9

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.

Luke 24:46-47

Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Psychology professor Gillian Sandstrom was a lonely graduate student in Toronto when she … and a woman who ran a hotdog stand on her way to university around 2007 would wave hello and smile at each other. Their interactions were so small that Sandstrom uses air quotes to even describe them as a “relationship.”

And yet “it really meant something much bigger than it seemed like it should, and it made me feel like I belonged there,” said Sandstrom.

From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/micro-relationships-and-talking-to-strangers-1.7636486?cmp=newsletter_CBC%20Edmonton_1646_2029080

In the drudgery and loneliness of life God finds us.

Most often God uses another person, intentionally reaching out to us,

and even more often another person unintentionally reaching us

exactly where it hurts so much we barely can describe the pain.

…

Psychology professor Gillian Sandstrom was a lonely graduate student in Toronto when she began what she calls “a tiny, tiny micro-relationship.”

Today there is a whole surge of people recommending that interacting with strangers is exactly what we are missing in the technology driven and ‘stranger danger’ driven world we’ve created.

…

In the drudgery and loneliness of life God finds us

and sends us out to share the Good News, even with strangers.

We need not start, nor should we start by mentioning Jesus’ name or forgiveness or sacrifice and atonement for sins, or even sins.

We start by being the saints God makes us, acknowledging, sharing, addressing, listening, smiling, thanking the stranger for being.

In that interaction God will bless them, and us,

and maybe we will have opportunity to demonstrate and explain that Jesus makes us possible to be

today’s saints

just a bit

for

them.

Water Flows

Living Water Flows

Monday, September 22, 2025

Through Us

Like Foam, Stuck

In The Weeds Of Life.

Psalm 111:3

Full of honour and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.

Philippians 3:8b-9

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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When I take a shower, the water is pulled from the camper’s 30 gallon water tank, which now after nearly 45 years, probably only holds 25 or so. Since a shower takes about 10 gallons, it’s a bit dicey getting water throughout the shower unless I first refill the camper’s tank from the bigger 275 gallon holding tank. If I take a shower without enough water in the camper tank … Let’s just say it’s uncomfortable trying to fill that tank with soap in my eyes. So before I shower I open the valve on the bigger tank, which has a hose connected to it, which at the other end is connected to the filler connection on the camper.

Water flows out for the shower.

Water flows in to refill the camper tank.

All is well.

Jesus’ sacrifice for us does not simply fill us up when we empty ourselves living sinfully in this world.

No! Jesus provides a different solution for our tanks, and we are showered not with righteousness earned by our compliance with the Law, or dedication to living as Jesus did.

No! Jesus provides the living water that satisfies all our thirsting for life, life as we were created to live it. That valve is always open, flowing over us, overflowing through our lives to all those around us.

Then come the challenges of life, and we might struggle with them as usual. Or we can recognize that we are made different in our baptisms, by the living water that we are submersed in, which flows over us, which washes away our sins, which provides the water needed for growth. The living water carries us with God and our struggles become God’s, and God’s joy becomes ours, and God’s call becomes the priority for each our days.

Until we forget.

And then the living water of Jesus’ hard won forgiveness for us washes over us again and still into our ‘tank’s’, our lives, freeing us to recognize again the change the Holy Spirit makes in us, equipping us to live and deal with all the challenges of life differently.

We see, instead of unending reasons to despair, great cause to celebrate in all that has been done for us, by so many people, by so many saints working God’s blessings for us.

Then we know as Paul did, that

For Jesus sake we have suffered the loss of all things, and we regard them as rubbish, in order that we may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, given to us by the Holy Spirit, founded on the righteousness from God based on faith.

And we can praise God with the Psalmist, being examples that God walks with us, and his work is full of honour and majesty, and his righteousness endures forever.

The Little and All That Matters

Some Give, Some Sacrifice … Some Live.

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Finding Our Way?

Coming And Going: To Darkness

To The Light?

Isaiah 55:2

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Mark 12:44

Jesus spoke, For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but the widow, out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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it takes many words for form a worldview in a person.

it takes just the wrong words to send a person into despair, anger, and misdirected violence.

it takes just the right words to pull a person out of misery into happiness, from angst into hope, from anger into joy, from death into life.

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the widow had next to nothing, and gave it all.

Jesus’ listeners would think that more money is better, and yet giving is not only for the recipients, it gives life to the givers.

Those who know where all they have comes from can be willing to give it all, even if it is not very much.

Just a word or two

can save a life.

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What words do you absorb each day?

What words do you share each day?

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What words does the Holy Spirit bring to you each day, to bring you into freedom?

What words do you thus have to share that will bring freedom from, and freedom to, to those who most need it, today?