You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
2 Corinthians 4:9-10
… persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
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Words of Grace For Today
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When I was much younger, I had two older friends, a married couple, who kept suffering the same loss, over and over again. They lost their glasses. I experienced their searches a few times before I realized that most often they had their glasses in a pocket or even on their head.
That’s us when we search for God. God is always with us, night and day, though God doesn’t allow our expectations to determine how God is with us, or how we can know God is there. We certainly don’t need to go find God, not even on a mountaintop, though sometimes after being on the summit we see life and God and all God’s wonders more clearly. We get a bit closer to God’s view of us.
No matter where we end up in life, through fire and water, persecutions and exiles, God is always with us, giving us the abilities to show Christ through our hardships
Alas for those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Ephesians 5:18
Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit
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Words of Grace For Today
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God has given us many ways to enjoy life on earth, only one of them is alcohol.
When we use what God has given for enjoyment as a way to dull our way through life, in order to deal with the pain life can be, we suffer.
Some suffer alcoholism, a disease of addiction that always beckons as an escape, an escape that always ends in death, unless one continually recovers, finding the goodness of life, starting always with honesty with oneself.
Other prices are many all the ways we take God’s delights, and turning them into escapes from honesty, from reality, from the suffering of life (ours and others.)
Honesty.
It’s hard.
But it is so much easier in the long term.
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For God intends for us to find delight in life, even as we remain sinners, causing pain for ourselves and others.
For God intends for us to pursue justice for all, and to share all that we receive as gifts from God, so that more and more people can find delights in life.
Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.
Luke 8:24-25
They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’
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Words of Grace For Today
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Life has all sorts of challenges.
Many would do us in.
More would just make our lives a whole lot more difficult, leading to an earlier death.
How do we hang on to our faith in the midst of these challenges?
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If faith were our own making, the news would be devastating. We could not hang on to our faith. We’d lose it. We’d be toast.
Thank God, the Holy Spirit creates faith in us, and through our experiences collected from our forebearers and our own experiences, we can learn that there simply are no challenges to us, not even imminent death, that need create fear in us that we are on our own, that God has abandoned us to the deep and deadly.
For God stands as sentry to our hearts, minds, and spirits, protecting us from all that would do us in. For, since God has made us sinners into saints (though we also remain sinners), we are therefore spiritual beings on a human journey, not mere humans on a failing spiritual journey.
Death is not our end, just an end to this journey, and then comes …
well that we will find out, but God promises it will be more wondrous than this journey as humans.
Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land.
Ephesians 4:11-12
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
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Words of Grace For Today
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There are lots of callings, all according to the gifts we receive. All given to be shared so that others will have life abundant, knowing God loves them.
So God guides us all.
Let us be guided by the Spirit, this day, too.
For that is who we are, Spirit led saints, God’s voice, feet, and hands in this world.
When Life Comes All Apart, Trying to Blindly Throw It All Together Rarely Works. Jesus Advises Us To Be As God Created Us, Ones Who Love Even Our Enemies.
Deuteronomy 32:36
Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining.
Luke 18:7
And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
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Words of Grace For Today
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While we have many plans to bring justice, by defeating evil itself, sending it into a grave it will never return from …
This is seldom the way God delivers us.
Jesus calls us to love our enemies.
Some of us have figured out that this is how God conquers evil.
Three bigger boys started in on the new boy, Yari, calling him names, taunting him, bullying him in more and more threatening ways. Then one day they knocked him around, stole his lunch, and ate it in front of him – taunting his helplessness. That night Yari talked it over with his father. They made a plan together. The next day, when the bullies appeared again, calling him names and demanding his lunch, Yari offered them three lunches, made especially for each of them. At first they were shocked. Then they left in embarrassment, never to bully or taunt him again.
Lectionary Stories, Cycle C, adapted 2025
May we be the instruments of God’s way to peace, in small ways each day.
What’s Coming At Us, From Behind the Trees, On the Road, Through the Woods?
Or
What a Beautiful Sunset
Over the Snow and
Through the Woods!
Isaiah 49:23
Kings shall be your foster-fathers, and their queens your nursing-mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.
Luke 12:11-12
When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.’
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Words of Grace For Today
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It’s all fine and good to say do not worry, but most of us worry no matter what, sometimes even about things that deserve to be worried about.
Being brought before the authorities to defend oneself for being a Christian, when the punishment for that faith was death for so many … well that certainly seems to deserve more than a little worry. One’s life is on the line.
But then
one’s life is always on the line
if one is faithfully serving Christ
by being a servant to all, and master to none.
Only in a different life will the kings and queens bend so low as to care for us, let alone care about us, other than to wipe us out for showing the truth about their wickedness and God’s goodness.
But that worry, and that other life to come, need not consume more than passing thoughts from us. We have our work cut out for us, sharing God’s blessing and gifts with those most in need of them. Without cost they are given to us, though we certainly have not and cannot earn them. The only ‘string’ attached is that we share them. For these gifts are really only blessings if and when we share them with others in need.
That’s how God’s world works, whether we worry or not.
Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe for ever.
1 Thessalonians 2:2
… though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.
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Words of Grace For Today
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There are so many stories one can read or watch, engaging, thrilling, and moving.
Some have something good to say about life. Many are not really worth the time spent taking them in. A few inspire one to embrace the goodness of life that God’s graciously blesses us with.
Paul was not received with grace by everyone wherever he went, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Though he was maltreated at Philippi, it was the congregation to which he wrote with the dearest, most loving and heartfelt joy and thanks. His letter to the Thessalonians comes in a close second.
Whatever challenges come our way, God mercifully loves us and keeps us safe. Often through the most challenging of times God most clearly proves God’s promises of mercy, love and faithfulness can be trusted by us.
Not that we seek out or enjoy the challenges, but all in all we trust that God walks with us, and that God’s faithful people live out that presence with us, as we live it out for others.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
2 Corinthians 12:9
… but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace.
Romans 12:9
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
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Words of Grace For Today
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We’ve all heard again that famous, or infamous, Rant, I am Canadian. With quiet music building to swells of patriotic music Joe states his case:
Hey, I’m not a lumberjack or a fur trader
I don’t live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dogsled.
and I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I’m certain that their really, really nice.
Uh
I have a prime minister, not a president.
I speak English and French not American
and I pronounce it about, not aboot.
I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my backpack.
I believe in peacekeeping not in policing.
I believe in diversity, not assimilation.
And I believe the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat.
And a chesterfield is a couch.
And it’s pronounced Zed, not Zee, Zed.
Canada is the second largest landmass
The first nation of hockey
and the best part of North America.
My name is Joe
and I am Canadian.
Reality
Given Trump and his threats and actual tariffs that will do great damage to our economy, one can understand the call to be patriotic.
At the core of our problems, though, we do not find economics or politics, but good old fashion love, faith, and hope, expressed as empathy and care for all people, especially the poor.
So ours is not a rant but a chant backed by any number of great pieces of music, for example “Canticle of the Turning” (ELW 723) by Rory Cooney, to the lively Irish folk tune used as a rugby match song:
Hey, I am not a crusading knight, nor a desert ascetic.
I don’t hold exorcisms, live in Corinth or Bethlehem or Nazareth.
I have a pastor and a bishop, not a coach or a guru.
I speak many native languages, but not Latin or Sanskritic.
I proudly were a cross on a fine chain around my neck.
I believe in peace not in war or violence.
I believe in respecting and welcoming diversity, not excluding strangers or foreigners.
I believe the fish is a wonderful symbol of faith, as is the boat.
I’m not concerned with how people pronounce words, but that we share the radical Word of God.
God’s favour is not won by what we do or say or believe, but is God’s free gift given to us.
We can refuse it and we do, sinners that we are. But God keeps saving us over and over again, making us saints able to do miraculous things for others, especially the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outcasts, refugees, strangers, and especially children.
Christianity may be worldwide and messed up in many places, sometimes even here at home, but it is the gift of life,
the gift of life abundant for all people.
We may be getting fewer in number, but being a follower of Jesus is the best part of life.
My name is not important because God knows it and everything about me and still loves me. I’m not ashamed of my name, yet it’s not what I’m proud of.
I’m proud that I bear Jesus’ cross and Jesus’ name,
