Hemmed In

On All Sides

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Finding the Path Home?

Out There Somewhere?

Psalm 139:5

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28

so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.”

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Words of Grace For Today

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Trying to escape from the Wildernesses

of poverty

of hunger

of harassment

of threats

of apathy

of depression

of other people’s wildernesses

of the desert of a parched soul;

We’ve all tried at one time or another to escape

or at least minimize the parched heat, or the soppy wet floods, or the thunder, lightening, and wind storms of an angry planet or soul that seems out to do us in.

While we may try on our own, in real desperation, as even the least of believers to seek God,

yet God is not to be found, for God is before us, behind us, above us, under us, and to each side of us, walking with us through all the deserts and wildernesses that we traverse.

For we are God’s children, also this day, with all it’s challenges and things to be rightfully feared.

No other solution is needed, and we do not escape at all. God gives us what it takes to make it through, for even if death finds us, and takes us, there God gathers us in

to a home like none we have yet known. Home.

Be nice to have a home even in the wilderness, or maybe especially in the wilderness, eh?!

Fresh Start?

Ailments No More?

Monday, September 2, 2024

Rain Drops Clear The Air,

For a New Day.

Psalm 147:3

He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.

1 Peter 2:24

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

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Words of Grace For Today

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It is an odd, illogical thought, that we can be healed because someone else is wounded. That is the illogic of sacrifice. It is the illogic behind living organ donors (like kidney transplant donors).

The obvious truth is that we all need and want to be healed. Our physical ailments may come to mind first. Old people know ailments of many kinds that seem to multiply as the years pass. Far too many younger people suffer the cruel, random selection of genetic, developmental, and accidental ailments. While medicine makes advances each year, we still cannot heal all these ailments. We simply suffer them.

The most severe, and life-robbing, ailments we suffer are not the physical ones. They are our psychological and spiritual wounds and ailments that reek havoc in our lives, and the lives of many around us. The ‘science’ to heal us of these ailments, or at least mitigate their disruption to our lives makes advances to be sure, but the progress is minuscule for those who suffer.

How can God promise to heal the broken-hearted, and bind up their wounds.

Or to heal us by his wounds?

Yet both the Psalmist and the writer of 1 Peter don’t make that promise. They state it as an accomplished deed.

Oh, to live knowing our broken hearts are healed, and our wounds have been bound, that we have been completely healed so profoundly that it has cost someone else his life.

By faith we know exactly these things to be

how, since our baptisms,

we start each day,

each encounter

each challenge.

Good Morning!

A Fresh Start, Again!

Wounds and sins have no power over us.

To Pray or Not to Pray

Or not to be able to Pray

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Can We Pray For the Weeds Of Life To Be Beautiful?

Psalm 90:1-2

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Mark 11:22-23

Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.

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Words of Grace For Today

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it is a wonderful thing to be able to pray.

it is an even more wonderful thing to know that God will take our prayers and make it so!

What of all the people who cannot pray?

What can we give to them

from all the blessings God has given us as stewards in this fragile creation,

if not peace, love, and hope?

The Difference

God’s Because-Therefore

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Can We See Through the Fog Of Demands Laid On Us, To See God’s Love for Us ALL!

Malachi 3:17

They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.

Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

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Words of Grace For Today

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They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts!

The Ten Commandments start with BECAUSE. Because God is our God. What follows is many THEREFOREs. Therefore we will keep the Sabbath, honour our parents, and so on, showing us that our relationships are most important. God’s “Because-Therefore” laws begin with God’s love for us, followed by a guide to how we can return God’s love and love one another.

When we live, assured of God’s love for us – not striving to meet the demands of the Laws as if they were all and IF-THEN proposition: If we follow, then we are God’s people. And if not, then not! When we live, assured of God’s love for us life becomes a project of bringing God’s love to all people, and that converts us into peacemakers, those people who bring peace, by assuring people that they are loved, and can love one another,

no matter their differences.

What a blessing to be able to share in today’s polarized and fractured world.

Generational Wealth

Or Wealth Eternal?

Friday, August 30, 2024

Ready to Share Even This?

Psalm 33:11

The counsel of the Lord stands for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

Ephesians 1:11

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will,

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Words of Grace For Today

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When the ‘wealth for generations’ is denied so many people, while it is assumed as a right by others,

it is not hard to feel left out of life.

Yet the core to living abundantly is not in one’s possesions, but in what one has to give to others: grace, love, and hope

and help.

These God provides to us in our inheritance as God’s own children, adopted through Jesus’ redemption, demonstrated to us in our baptisms.

So how will we live today, concerned for our wealth, or lack of generational wealth?

ready to share the greatest inheritance with others,

grace, love, and hope

and help

not matter what comes our way?

For the Love of

God

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Some Circumstances Demand Attention To The Good Rules At Every Step

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In This Case Apply Heat Carefully

but Quickly and Amply!

Psalm 19:9

the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Luke 11:28

But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

/Jesus spricht:/ Selig sind, die das Wort Gottes hören und bewahren.

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Words of Grace For Today

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When the gifts of God are taken and reduced to

PURE FEAR and OBEDIENCE

one knows that something has gone terribly wrong.

Fear, capitulation, obeying orders (regardless of their good and right application), … and in all that allowing someone else to control what one actually does …

in the military perhaps it is necessary. But in life it is the sure bell toll of the death of all that is good.

For one must remain able to love, not just fear. Fear is a resignation of one’s soul. Love is the surrender of one’s soul in order that one has life abundant … no matter the circumstances or hardships one faces.

Luther was right to start his explanations with ‘We are to fear and love God so that ….’

Once love is part of the equation of one’s life at every turn – and how else can one rightly respond to all the gifts God gives us though we deserve none of them, for gratitude gives birth to love for God, which gives birth to love of one’s neighbour and oneself, and all creation –

once love is part of the equation of one’s life at every turn, then following the good and just commandments of God is not a capitulation but a voluntary surrender of one’s life to all that is good from God, for the benefit of others, and for creation.

And where will that take you this day?

You Know Who

Needs the Light

Monday, August 26, 2024

When the Light Is About To Disappear …

Psalm 56:13

For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.

Mark 5:41-42

He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement.

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Words of Grace For Today

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If you are in a foreign country where the government is not at all friendly to your own country, and you are there working with the ‘alternative’ hope for the people, their church … and people go missing all the time … having an arrogant, unpredictable, and violent bully-cop, who has it out for you, point at gun mere inches away at your face is a sure way to convince you your life is likely going to come to an end.

The outcome that shakes one to the core is to have that cop’s partner kill him with an equally violent bullet to the head, and then tell you that you are protected.

Seeing evidence that this protection, though never again seen in person, has continued through one’s life is mind boggling.

Certainly, one gives God thanks with the words of the Psalmist, I will render thank-offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life!

These kind of deliverances are rare. Many people would hope they would be more common, as countless people loss their lives to violent bullies.

The kind that all of us need at one time or another in our lives, and for most of us quite frequently in our lives, is a deliverance from the enemy within our own hearts, minds, and souls. This kind of enemy drags us through the dirt and darkness of life more efficiently than lead poisoning … from a bullet at close range. This enemy of life is self-created. Oh, sure, circumstances contribute to the darkness of life in endless ways. Yet we are not bound to llow the inevitable challenges of life grow out of control until we succumb to the hopeless darknesses of complacency, lethargy, and despair.

From these enemies of life, we all need deliverance all too often.

So Jesus says also to us this day, “Come, Get Up!” Inviting us to walk in the light of life.

See, the light is right there. Just walk into it, and bask in the steadfast love of God …

and then get our butts in gear, to provide that light to all people, especially …

well you know who.

Rescue

From Shame

Sunday, August 25, 2024

So Wondrous The Forests, Until We Chop Them All Down

Psalm 118:21

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

1 Timothy 2:3-4

This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

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Words of Grace For Today

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The alarm clock rang, louder than ever, setting off the pounding in his head.

He sat up and nearly vomited all over … a sleeping bag in a tent. Where was he anyway?

He lay back down as his partner turned off his alarm, pulled himself out of the shared sleeping bag, dressed, and disappeared out the tent flap, making noises of getting some breakfast, and then driving away to work, but

he stopped,

by the tree they had felled the night before, and left the top leafy branches across the roadway out

and an old man voice started to reprimand him for the tree felled on private land, the mess of the campfire that looked like a singed garbage can, and the mess all around their campsite.

His partner finally told the old man he had to get going, that he should talk to the ‘other guy’.

So it was his turn, same things, same shame, same weak excuse that the ‘Private’ sign was not at the actual boundary of public-private land. But then it was illegal to down a living tree on this public land. Elsewhere one could get a permit. Not here.

Shame filled over shame and his head throbbed with the loud pain of …

Well the hangover from their loud party into the early hours.

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And God desires all people to come to know the truth, to repent, and to follow Jesus, the Way of Grace and Truth …

Really even these pathetic excuses for young humans? Where has the promise of youth disappeared? Was it always so hard to find?

And God desires all people to come to know the truth, to repent, and to follow Jesus, the Way of Grace and Truth …

even these and many like them who put reason to shame.

Even those who would judge them, for the judgment is just as valid applied to the one judging.

God have mercy on us all!

The Stinking Filth

Of Our Pasts

Saturday, August 24, 2024

The Winds of Adversity Will Lay Us Flat, Broken

Zechariah 3:4

The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’ And to him he said, ‘See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you in festal apparel.’

Luke 15:22-24

But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

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Words of Grace For Today

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‘Pulling the least dirty shirt from the closet’

so goes the Johnny Cash song, not of a great day, but of a drunk’s morning after a binger of a night.

We’d all like to think we are not that bad off.

But, each in our own way, are at least much worse off, when it comes to being able to dress for our morning audiences before God, our judge.

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The Good News is that Jesus comes each morning (each moment) and invites us to take off all that filth and dirt of the previous dark times, and to put on a festive robe, befitting a king. Then Jesus invites us to the banquet with him, as one of God’s own children.

Our God, judge of all, is steadfast in love for all God’s creatures.

How will we start our day: in a filthy shirt from the dirt of our pasts, or in festive clothing offered to us by our Saviour, Jesus?

Stumbling

Into life eternal

Friday, August 23, 2024

God’s Work is Most Obvious When We Lose Our Way

Psalm 94:18

When I thought, ‘My foot is slipping’, your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.

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.

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Words of Grace For Today

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The contest is on: Who has the most weaknesses?

Right!?

Not.

We all want to boast how strong and competent we are. Even boast in strengths we actually do not have, so that others will see us in a better light, or so that we can win as others lose out.

But God wishes none of that game from us.

God wishes us to recognize the weaknesses that we have. Clearly. Firmly. Honestly. Even though it scares us. God wishes us to trust that when we are weak, God will rescue us, demonstrating again for us and others how God works for us all.

Hiking across the ice and snow after a long 5 day trek to the mountaintops, to view the wonders of the universe ‘on top’ she came to that most beautiful of views, up to the peak, down the valley to the river, and across the valley to the huge, tall waterfall, plunging and splashing it’s way to the pool churning from the added water each moment.

Taking it all in she held her camera as she continued walking and taking photos, for darkness would come all too soon and make any further descent unacceptably dangerous… as her foot slipped on ice she had not paid attention to. Down she went, camera flying. sliding out of control, off the path towards the cliff just feet away. Bruised, screaming, terrified, her feet over the edge…

then

her hood caught on a small tree root sticking up out of the ice.

She pulled herself, oh so carefully, back up from the precipice, clinging to that single protruding tree root,

until she could walk, gingerly, carefully

back up to the path where her camera lay.

She sat, prayed her profound thanks, poured a cup of hot tea from her thermos, took a photo of that tree root, and a few of the view.

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The tree root photo, enlarged, hangs in her office in front of her desk so that she sees it every morning as she starts her writing for the day …

a reminder of her weaknesses and God’s strengths …

and gratitude overwhelms her for a moment …

before she moves on in her day.

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How will you acknowledge your weaknesses today, and all God does for you?