Category: Geography

God’s Pleasure

Us As Examples of Sin

Re – Redeemed!

Thursday 23 February 2023

Like a forest laid like waste after oil is extracted,

We’d wish evil could be also eradicated!

Ezekiel 33:11

Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?

Matthew 6:13

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

Words of Grace For Today

We would like to eradicate evil from the earth, especially by wiping out others who are caught in evil they have little interest in escaping.

Evil-cide!

‘Let it be gone forever!’ We cry, until we realize that would eliminate us, too!

Then, having come to our senses, we start to notice once again that God’s way of dealing with evil is not to kill it off, but

to forgive it, transform it, and use it

as a demonstration of how Great God’s Deeds are in redeeming us who are irredeemable, really!

So we are bold to pray that we might not succumb to the Evil One, but that God would once again save us.

That’s a good start to the day.

Now our purpose also this day is to be God’s instruments by which others are saved from the Evil One. Not a small task, and it’s only possible by the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

Another day. Another miracle. Lots of work.

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.

So Long!

So short

Monday 20 February 2023

Dark Days, Dark Decades!

Hope Forever?

Job 14:1-2

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.

Hebrews 13:14

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Words of Grace For Today

Of all the projects she could have undertaken, Risha knew this would be her legacy. She’d earned her degrees in political science, biochemistry, philosophy, law, and her PhD in Oceanography.

She had designed the filter system and now led the corporation in charge of implementing the system in 100 locations around the ocean shores. While filtering and cleaning pollutants out of the ocean’s waters, effectively restoring water up to 500 miles around the filter, it would siphon off fresh water and provide irrigation and drinking water for areas that had gone dry and deserted over the last 30 years due to climate change.

The real ‘miracle’ of the filtering was that it could be set to consume carbon dioxide at huge rates. Turned and left on it would leave the air for 100 miles unbreathable, but if turned on and then off again, in cycles, the 100 filters could clear enough carbon dioxide from the air in 10 years to undo the carbon increase from the last 50 years, at least in their locations.

If she could just get 10,000 of the filters up and running within the next five years, they could reverse climate change completely, back to the re-industrial age.

That was her project!

Until the truth of Job was borne out again:

A mortal, born of woman … comes up like a flower and withers.

Risha, in the third year, well on her way to the 5000th filter location, came down with cancer. She had blossomed so brightly and so many people had seen and put their trust in her. And then within a month she was gone. Because so many people wanted to get rich from Risha’s project and were fighting with everyone for their own advantage, something she kept at bay while she was alive, the projects ground to a halt, and even the established filters had trouble staying in operation.

Five years later, the last filter shut down for lack of funding.

How had it come to that!?!

There was so much hope for this to save us all, and now our only hope would be in the New Jerusalem.

What a loss? What a typical self-destructive development from miracle and cure to fighting and decay and destruction that would continue as long as one could imagine surviving the onslaught of climate change that had already destroyed a tenth of all the coastal lands, cities and people. Living inland was not easier. Storms and precipitation or droughts had made another 30% of all the land masses uninhabitable, and everywhere else it was more or less a futile struggle to keep going.

God, will we humans ever learn?

Save us!

(yesthereishopealways)

Alone

Forever?

Sunday 19 February 2023

Sometimes Both Paths and

All Choices Lead

…

…

…

Nowhere!

Psalms 42:9

I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?’

Matthew 14:23

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

Words of Grace For Today

There are, as Henri had experienced in spades, junctures in life’s torturous winding ways, when one has nothing left but to beg God:

Why have you forgotten me?

Jesus finds himself alone many times, and seeks God’s assurance in prayer, except the last time Jesus cries out that he knows that God has forsaken even him!

So if we experience the same abandonment, it should not shock or surprise us … and yet it does, and it overwhelms us, and it leaves us lost.

Better would be to live on, as a leaf fallen from a tree in autumn blown about until one comes to rest on terra firma, good only for fertilizer for other life forms.

Here we are though, abandoned by God and the sun may shine, but not for us. The winds may blow gently and the rains may fall softly, but not for us. People may smile and celebrate, but not for us, and certainly we are not smiling and celebrating!

We live on, but as shells lost in the primordial chaos of void before creation. Living is groundless, meaningless, directionless, purposeless, and dark. Oh so dark.

In those hours, days, weeks, years, decades even, our only hope (completely unaware of this hope’s possibility – so detached, forlorn, and empty as we remain, totally hopeless) is

that others will pray for us,

that Jesus will pray for us, and

that the Holy Spirit will do everything to save us, for we have nothing to give towards such a rescue, confession, repentance and possible renewal to life lived abundantly.

Yet that is what God does for each of us, each day, especially in our darkest times.

Ah, God would so delight in demonstrating how God can save even the most lost among us!

(Like you!?

Like me!?)

Separated

from the Love of God?

Saturday 18 February 2023

Sometimes Even the Next Step

Is TOO Large!

Psalms 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

It seemed so simple to ask others to join in his outlandishly expensive garden project gone amuck. Truth is it took Henri a full day and a half to decide he’d take Francine up on her offer. Then it took him a half day again to actually get himself to start the process by calling people.

If one knew what Henri had gone through in those two days one would wonder that he even could come to the decision to invite other people to his farm and was able to start calling people he did not know.

Decades earlier, when Henri was a young man he’d met and fallen head over heels in love with Suzanne, and she with him. They dated all through college and were married a week after Henri’s graduation, to the relief of all their friends and family who wondered if either would dare to take the obvious leap. Both Henri’s and Suzanne’s parents had divorced, and died in their late forties. A trauma for both teenagers that seemed never to end as their siblings then took up to fighting over the inheritances, slim as they were. One would not blame them, their friends thought, if they avoided marriage and commitment and everything requiring trust. Even when Suzanne took a year off with their first child before she finished her degree and graduated suma cum laude with a double major! But there they were, married, joyously so, with 3 children as they broke into their 30’s.

Then … Suzanne had picked up Bert, May, and Zerish, 9, 7, and 5, from school, and headed back out to their acreage-farm. She’d stopped at the railroad tracks for a train when a drunk driver plowed into them shoving the car onto the tracks and into the oncoming train. The drunk driver survived with a few scratches but Suzanne and Bert were instantly killed. Miraculously the other two children were alive when the ambulance arrived. Then May died during the operation to repair a punctured lung and Zerish dwindled off into a coma during surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. Two long years Zerish hung on before he woke up, for two days, before a seizure and a massive bleed into his brain stopped everything. His organs simply shut down in unison.

Henri knew what St. Paul had suffered: arrest, jail time, beatings, whippings, having to run for his life, and how Paul was so certain nothing could separate him from the love of God. But Henri knew then and there that God had deserted him, not just a huge bit like when Suzanne and Bert had died. Not even the colossal bit when May died. No this was complete and ultimate abandonment.

He withdrew. He could trust no one. He went on with work, burying himself in it and became (almost in spite of himself) wealthy. Still he blew off anyone who tried to befriend him. Didn’t Francine know! Even 25 years later in his mid-fifties, Francine would get just a bit too close and bang the door would close in her face.

So when Henri called people to take on his garden project with him, it was beyond difficult for him. It was nothing short of a life-altering miracle. Many people knew it was out of the ordinary for Henri. Everyone, after all, knew of Henri. But Francine was beside herself with wonder. What had God done to Henri, anyway?! She realized that Henri had given up on God, but why had God waited so long to show him God had not given up on Henri? So why and how now?

Same question, she realized could be asked about most of us in our lives.

Even for you and me, today.

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.

So!

So Now You See It, Then What?

Wednesday 15 February 2023

Notice God’s Awesome Deeds Lately,

OR

are you missing out?

Isaiah 29:14

so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Matthew 15:31

so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

Words of Grace For Today

So …

Something has gone before and this ‘so’ makes the connection: something that has gone on before has led to what follows.

In Isaiah what follows is what has gone on since the beginning of time and will continue beyond the end of time: God does shocking and amazing things, and by comparison our puny wisdom fizzles to infinitesimally tiny bubbles unobservable in the universe, as if specks of stardust were lost between galaxies. Even those who discern what God is about will be hidden by the shock and awe of God’s brilliant works.

By comparison, Matthew reports that Jesus’ works do not hide anything. They are clearly visible, astounding, and transforming. The people see, hear, and feel what Jesus does healing the deaf, maimed, blind, and lame, also for those so diseased and crippled in heart and spirit.

Nothing is hidden with Jesus, and even so many people do not comprehend, because they do not know what to expect and not expecting anything awesome from God they miss it all, just as freeway drivers smash into and destroy a small plane that just completed an emergency, engine-out landing in front of them. People die because their minds do not ‘compute’ what is so out of place, even when it is God’s place to do wondrously shocking and awesome deeds all through creation.

What will God do today?

Will we see it,

or run it over in our haste to make our own way in the world?

Humble

Humble Desperation

Monday 13 February 2023

On the wretched marred surface and depths of our lives, God works miracles for us with forgiveness, making us precious, just as the golden sunset turns glazed, rutted, treacherous ice into a wonder to behold.

Psalms 51:13

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Luke 18:13

But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Words of Grace For Today

It’s hard to be that tax collector, so out of character, beyond anyone’s expectations, actually humbly, desperately begging God for mercy.

Yet that is God’s intention for each and all of us, to be the outsiders, the ones done in, the ones rejected … and yet for us to be the ones most blessed by God’s mercy. The deeper the hole we get ourselves into, the greater God’s mercy for us is an obvious demonstration of God’s grace for all people to take note of!

Starting there, recognizing the hole of sin we’ve dug ourselves into, each day, each worship service, each moment allows us to humbly and desperately beg for and accept

God’s strength in weakness,

Christ’ sacrifice on the cross to give us new life,

and to meet other people’s sins with that same humble forgiveness fuelled by God’s mercy for us and for them.

Our teaching and inspiring is not about bringing people to be good, or better or less bad. That is the work of the Holy Spirit, which is evident all around us and in us … if we take notice.

Our teaching and inspiring others is only to teach all people of God’s ways, God’s ways of mercy, forgiveness, and renewed life for even the most wretched of sinners.

That will keep us more than busy this day, and each day gives us breath.

Efforts?

Towards What?

Sunday 12 February 2023

Thinking We Can Find Our Way In The Dark

Or Even In Daylight?

Think Again.

Joshua 22:5

Take good care to observe the commandment and instruction that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

John 12:26

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

Words of Grace For Today

Getting around to serving Jesus, following him, and therein loving and serving God is not something for the faint of heart. If it is left up to us, none of are able to ‘get around to it’. Not on our own.

So why all the wasted words about trying to ‘get’ us to make these choices?

Nothing good comes of those words and nothing good goes into those words, no matter how many people and how many times people think that they are ‘encouraging, commanding, or inspiring’ others to follow Jesus and love God.

We are sinners. Simple start for each day is to admit that as best we can, and then pray for mercy.

Then maybe God will give us sight to see, hearing to hear, and heart to love God and God’s creation.

For today, how does it start?

Again, simply: confession, mercy, and hard work on our part, praying that God will make something good out of all our efforts.

Prison?

or Free?

Saturday 11 February 2023

The Horizon.

God’s Gift,

one of many.

Psalms 142:8

Bring me out of prison, so that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

John 8:36

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Words of Grace For Today

Of course, you, yes proud, upright, self-righteous you, have never been in prison, so to be set free, and to be free indeed is nothing, right! Not to you.

But let me tell you as one who spent time in prison, put there by lies about a crime that did not even happen, by judges, prosecutors, lawyers, RCMP, and witnesses who all knew they were lying, for it was that blatant, being set free is an experience one does not ever forget. Nor does one forget the time spent as an inmate. Life threatened in various ways at least once a week, by real violent inmates prompted and setup by guards, and by nurses, and by the brass, but protected by real criminals and maybe even a few honest guards … and by God and God’s people. Food and medication that were not tolerated by my system. The noise. The predictable and irregular inspections and demands and new impromptu ‘rules’ and the lack of horizon and photography and intelligent conversation … and the boredom.

The real prison that we find ourselves in does not have brick and mortar walls and evil people attacking us, and uncommitted crimes dumped on innocent scapegoats, and other ‘real’ criminals (guards include) so unpredictable and demanding. The real prison we find each find ourselves in is the one we make out of our own sins. Lies that corner us. Deeds that destroy others (as we intended) but that also haunt and destroy us. Words that we used to try to create a new reality for ourselves, and in denying God’s real creation we step right into the Devil’s playground, where a physical jail would be millions times more preferable!

This is the prison that God has always offered to free us.

This is the prison that the Devil has sent so many ambassadors to, to offer us yet again another way out, which is really another shackle to add to the many that choke the life right out of us.

This is the prison that we try and try and try to free ourselves from, and too often delude ourselves that we have succeeded, only to see the Devil’s playground has expended again around us and our lives and around those we love.

This is the prison that Jesus frees us from. And when Jesus frees us we are free indeed.

So we breathe.

So we dance.

So we take photos.

So we enjoy the horizon.

So we delve into intelligent conversation when it is possible.

So we worship each day to begin the day.

So we sing God’s praise and give thanks for all that keeps us alive, by God’s grace alone, for obviously we do not deserve any of these blessings.

Our task is simply to extend these blessings to as many other people as we possibly can.

That’s life lived richly, abundantly, as God created us to live.

So on this day, what will we do?

What will you do?