Category: Grace

The New Year Winds

Bring In the Blues

Sunday, November 30, 2025

And All Will Wake in the Love and Light

Of Christ,

Like Children Filled With Expectation of

Impossible Things,

for These Impossible Times.

Jeremiah 31:34

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

.

Matthew 21:15-16

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself’?”

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

As another New Church Year begins, the wind blows and the colour blue for Advent arrives. The blue of waiting and boredom, the blue of royalty, the blue of despondency, the blue of deep yearning, the blue of hope, the blue of clear skies, the blue of the water into which we are baptized. These are the blues of Advent, four Sundays of preparing, as sombre as our other season of preparation, Lent. Just as Lent is more than giving up things, so Advent is more than waiting for the celebrations to begin.

These are the days (once again and always) to acknowledge

that in our baptisms

God has equipped us to know the Lord, for our sins are forgiven.

And we are freed to share God’s good things with everyone, especially those in need, and to sing God’s praises

unending.

From the Nest

Carried, Guided

Friday, November 14, 2025

On Wings, High Above It All

High Above the Brutality and Greed,

the Corruption and Scheming,

the Dishonesty and Shame.

Deuteronomy 32:11-12

As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided God’s Volk; no foreign god was with them.

.

John 10:29

Jesus spoke: What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

There’s enough in the world to go around,

air,

water,

food,

clothing,

shelter,

work,

and

love.

There’s also enough

Brutality,

Greed,

Corruption,

Scheming,

Dishonesty,

and

Shame.

…

God provides us protection and passage on wings of love and light, high above the worst of humanity’s failings,

so that we can be blessings to others,

sharing

all

that

is

good

and

life-giving

with

all

people.

The Benefits

Of True Devotion

Saturday, November 1, 2025

Shameless Living

Like Firewood,

God’s Word Fuels Our Lives

And Saves Us From

the Dark Cold Of Sin.

Psalm 119:6

Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.

.

Luke 8:15

But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

The world demands great things from us, mostly that we make sense of a senseless stream of dishonesty, brutality, betrayals, and greed.

There is no sense to be made of them, other than that they are senseless, driven by corrupted hearts and minds.

Fixing our hearts and minds on God’s Word and Commandments will guide us to live with some sense of right and wrong. Hearing God’s Word, and holding fast to it with open, good, and honest hearts and minds will lead us into great difficulties, out of which God sometimes brings us, after enduring great trials, to enjoy peace, calm, and a bit of prosperity.

Rarely God will deliver us without any shame going down on us.

But we will always fail to follow God’s Word and Commandments. We can only hang our heads in shame. What then?

What will save us when hearing God’s Word and Commandments is impossible to translate into perfectly, honestly, willingly following and keeping God’s Word and Commandments?

Only God’s good grace, as always, can come to our rescue.

So we pray, give us good and honest hearts, and lives that hear and keep God’s Word.

But more we pray, God forgive us, renew us, and free us from our inevitable shame, so that we might live beyond the stream of dishonesty, brutality, betrayals, and greed, in which even we are caught up in. Help us live your Word.

Reformation

Celebrations of History

Sunday, October 26, 2025

Challenges for Today

The Spirit Wends Its Way Into Every Moment, Every Life.

Sometimes we can even see it

between the trees in the sunlight.

Proverbs 3:27

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.

.

James 2:2-4

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

Do good!

Seek no honour!

Be humble!

All well and good.

But …

It’s not the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s not what brings us closer to God.

First: God acts and saves us through Jesus’ sacrifice, forgiving our sins (each moment we breathe – and sin, since that’s who we are- miserable sinners all. Well we are actually really good at sinning!)

And then …

Well then we GET (not must) … We GET to work to do good for all people and all creation.

We get to seek no honour! We get to be humble!

We get to live with wide horizons, open hearts, engaged minds, and active hands, always doing Christ’ work here today.

And that takes reform every day, moving from the status quo so dripping with sin as it always is, and moving towards being Grace saved, Grace living, Grace giving.

Satiated

Across the Earth

Saturday, October 25, 2025

From threshing, to vintage, to sowing!

Deep Pan Pizza,

1.5” of toppings on a thin crust.

The way it should be?

Leviticus 26:5

Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land.

.

John 6:33

For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

We’ve all heard that a good leader does not ask more from her people than she herself can and does do: no earlier arrival, no later going home, no more risk going into a challenge or into battle, and never any more sacrifice.

…

Following Jesus, a good leader if ever, would, on those terms, leave us total failures. Who among us can still the before-creation-chaos present in the seas and skies, in wind and storms, in demons and evil spirits? Who can follow by forgiving the unforgivable? Who can feed more than 5000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves. If anyone can, please step up now, for millions are starving today!

…

So we pray: Give us this day our daily bread, including all people on earth in our ‘us.’

Hope by Grace

Freely Given

Friday, October 24, 2025

To All!

When the Storms Threaten,

Hope Fuelled By God’s Grace

Calms Our Pounding Hearts.

Jeremiah 31:17

There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.

.

Ephesians 2:5b and 7

By grace you have been saved so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

We all want freedom.

Mostly Freedom From [fill in your latest list of maladies of your days here.]

Jesus promises us freedom.

But it’s not really Freedom From.

God saves us very rarely from our trials. Usually it’s in our trials.

Jesus gives us Freedom For.

Forgiving the greatest horror of life, our own sins (nope it only seems that it’s others’ sins.)

With that, though we still are captive to sin, slaves if you want to call it that, we are given the gifts to live life as God intended us to live it; free for everything good and worthwhile.

Jesus forgives us our sins and frees us for dancing, reading, skiing, singing, travelling, smiling, laughing, and dreaming.

Jesus forgives us our sins and frees us to have wide horizons, open hearts, engaged minds, and active hands.

Jesus forgives us our sins and frees us to care for creation, and to compassionately and passionately love, even our enemies; and to be loved, for who we are, just as we are.

That’s just a little something to keep our hearts thumping through the worst life throughs at us.

Even a wild pitch from the Blue Jays, or worse, from Trump.

Blessings

For All,

Friday, October 17, 2025

Young and Old, maybe?

When All The Colour Has Drained Out of Life …

Genesis 32:26

Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

.

Matthew 19:13a

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

Youthful Jacob is able to demand a blessing from the angel he’s struggled against all night. Got a lame hip for it

and

a blessing in the end.

Jesus distributes blessings to the children freely, widely, readily.

…

but

is there a blessing for the old people.

Some cultures revere their older people.

Some respect them.

Ours ignores them.

…

Maybe there’s a blessing in that, too.

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

…

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.”

…

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.

…

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?

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.

…

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.

…

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.