The Rich

And the Poor

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

What Stands Before Us?

Obstacles?

Or Wonders?

Psalm 109:31

For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.

James 2:5

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

While the wealthy enjoy comforts unimagined by previous generations, the poor suffer on, as in every generation, just to survive. Because the wealthy presume they have earned the comforts and luxuries they take for granted, and that the poor have not, they sink into a false sense of security that blinds them to the realities of God’s good creation. First among them they forget that nothing we have is our right or what we have earned, for everything have and are (especially our abilities to work to ‘earn’ anything) is given to us by God though we certainly deserve none of it.

The poor are not so blinded, for they enjoy only the real joys of life as we struggle to survive another day, another night, and then again another day. Their eyes are opened to the wonders that God provides. Their joys immense, even while their sufferings overwhelm their ability to survive! Out of such paradoxes the Holy Spirit nurtures faith, faith in God’s good grace for us all.

And which are we, who enjoy more comforts than imagined by the generations gone before us? Do we know how to live faith, each day, amid our ‘little sufferings and discomforts’?

Pray, then, that God will save us, too, wealthy and blind, or poor and joyous at creation’s wonders.

Walk On

Toward Justice and Love

Monday, March 18, 2024

Take a step in the right direction,

Towards the Light and Love

of Life.

Isaiah 10:1-2

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!

Matthew 7:12

‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

What do we want?

What can we do?

Is it so hard to do for others, what we would want for ourselves,

and to do it first for others,

before expecting it will be done (by us or others) for us?

A small step away from injustice and towards the love that holds the universe together,

and gives life to every heart.

Ready

march

or rather walk on

by Grace alone.

Global

Issues

Friday 2 February 2024

Looking at You … and Me … and Us All,

and the Whole World!

Isaiah 2:3

Many peoples shall come and say,‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Matthew 5:1-2

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

At home we have an old globe which usually sits on top of a book shelf, and collects dust. Only rarely do we take it down, dust it off, spin it around, peer into the different colours indicating different countries, some long since with new borders and names.

The world actually has a fever, not unlike so many people suffering from demon possession. Yes, whether we admit it or not, there are demons, even today.

…

God’s globe does not collect dust on a shelf. It is alive, though feverishly ill, struggling on into the future. If only we could take it and dust it off it’s and our demons as easily as we can dust off our old globe.

Still God, our creator, is present always with all of us. Every day God works to heal all of creation, including us, so that we in turn can be healers for other people and for all of creation. We do not have any right to think we are better than anyone else. We’ve done nothing to ‘earn’ God’s healing and blessings.

This is what Jesus sat down to teach us all.

Now, how are we going to be God’s healers, today?

Guests?

We Are All Guests

Some Desperately Need Homes, NOW!

Friday 12 January 2024

globalnews.ca/news/10213526/edmonton-rowland-road-homeless-encampment/

“Edmonton police officers and city crews could be seen at a homeless encampment in the area of 95th Street and Rowland Road on Tuesday morning [9 January 2024]. Police and cleanup crews were met with resistance from people who live in the camp and from advocates who showed up to support them.” Global News

Psalm 119:19

I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me.

[or another translation: I am a guest on earth.]

2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Just because we know that we have a home waiting for us

after life

even if the earth is destroyed

even if the universe is destroyed,

does not give us an excuse to destroy

life

the earth

this universe!

These are gifts from God

to be treasured.

Life to be lived with integrity, kindness, and mercy for others.

The earth to be used and guarded from destruction so that future generations have a better earth to live on.

The universe to be explored and admired and guarded from destruction of all kinds, because this is our home now

And God said life, the earth, and all the universe are Good.

So we ought to keep it all that way.

Instead of bulldozing tent cities, the last, most secure place for many people who find themselves homeless in the cold of winter and the heat of summer,

How about making a home for them as well,

a good, safe, nurturing home

on earth?!

Hey You!

Ya, You! You know who you are!

Wednesday 10 January 2024

Do We Dare Depart From the Worn Path of Evil,

and Follow the Light of Christ?

Psalm 34:14

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

Romans 14:19

Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Depart from Evil …

Well to depart one must first be engaged in it, right?

So, you out there, who are engaged in evil, you know who you are, depart from it!

It does you no good!

It destroys other people, as you intend, and even beyond what you intend. And it also destroys the goodness of life for you yourselves, blind to that as you may be. But the Devil has your hearts and souls wrapped up like a hot sauced enchilada. One bite into your way of life and it’s curling sweats, gasping for breath, grabbing for water that does no good, (not even fruit juice can help against the Devil’s hot sauce) and then it’s lights out ….

Oh, you may still be breathing, but it’s the fire of the Devil that consumes everyone around you and yourself.

The only escape is to depart from Evil and seek peace so diligently that it becomes one’s life’s pursuit.

Well, that won’t work either.

The only escape is God’s Grace promised of old, promised to each of us in our baptisms, and demonstrated most clearly in the life, healing, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God’s own Son.

Thankfully, we receive that Grace each morning, noon, and night (and all moments in between!) Therefore we are able to purse peace and what makes for mutual edification, mutual among all people!

What a day God has open for us today?

Dare we step into it?

Epiphany!

New Year’s Resolution Worth Making (an eye opener)

Saturday 6 January 2024

Finding Our Way Through the Brambles of Life,

Alone?

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Matthew 2:12

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going a different way.

I suppose New Year’s resolutions are the imagination and statement that one will go a different direction going forward.

The three wise men, being warned in a dream, take a different route on their return home after presenting gifts to the child Jesus.

How many times are we going to try to ‘go it a different way’, forward or back, and it will be merely another futile attempt, a classic demonstration that we are not quite in complete control of our lives, not even when we make choices to become better people.

Thank God,

like the dreams sent to the three wise men, like the Law given to the people new to the Wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, like the Prophets sent to guide the nation Israel and it’s people overrun by more powerful neighbours, like the science that can tell us the consequences of our actions (like burning fossil fuels in the extreme we have and still do, and seemingly cannot stop doing),

God does send us notice and guidance.

But that is never enough.

We need to be convinced that 1. God will forgive us our failures (or else we are frozen by guilt past, present and especially future), 2. God will renew our spirits so that we can possibly do something right and good, and 3. God will help those, who we harm and those of us who are harmed by others, to heal.

A New Year’s Resolution worth making each year:

We will pray: God help us to accept forgiveness and boldly go out to do your work in this precious creation, and help us all heal from all the harm we’ve done and is done to us.

And then go boldly into the days’ ‘breach’, so to speak, bringing God’s grace to bear on others’ lives.

Boxing Away

Boxing Day Failure

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

One Day In and

Our Memory of Jesus

is More Faded

Than the Morning Moon

Setting

Isaiah 60:16

You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall suck the breasts of kings; and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

2 Timothy 1:9b-10

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Boxing Day

brings to the fore the obvious

necessary

failings of Christmas.

It’s when the commercial xmas takes over, crowds rush to the stores, sales and stock are piled high and wide, and money flows like smoke from a huge, hot wildfire.

Many retail stores turn a profit only because of the huge boost in December, and particularly on Boxing Day. Large stores turn extreme profits on this day, adding to the wealth they collect for stock holders and executives with huge bonuses.

Year after year, we attempt to remember that God is the sole source of our well-being. That God is the only source of a life worth living.

Christ comes as an infant, a sign that God’s true power is not in force or wealth or in possessing or possessions accumulated, but rather in the love that is pure, true, and steadfast.

We gather with small candles lit in the darkness and sing our faith on our sleeves of God’s wonders for us all, and then …

we run to the store the second day of Christmas to spend and get and possess all that we can.

What a huge failure we all are.

Our only rescue is in God’s Grace. God’s forgiveness.

So much for sucking life from the nations of the kings of the world. All that is is poison for our souls.

Pause, amid the hectic, and remember

God’s goodness in the simple, pure gifts of love

that sustain us each day.

The Only One

The Only One Listening

Monday, December 11, 2023

A logging road in the Klanawa Valley on western Vancouver Island divides two landscapes: a cutblock on the right, and old-growth trees that are part of a wildlife protection area on the left. Tara Carman/CBC
*https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/the-forest-beside-the-clear-c*

No One Listens and Cutblocks Eat Away at Our Precious,

Climate Saving, Old Growth Forests

Psalm 38:9-11

O Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me. My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction, and my neighbours stand far off.

1 John 5:14

And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Job knew it, as many have since.

It is that experience that everyone and everything has turned against one, even life itself, and there is no one that hears. No one that listens. No one that understands. No one that cares.

Except

That God hears, listens, understands, cares and

and

God even responds, providing what we need to survive even those dark times.

And survive we do, until the sun shines brightly again in our lives and we have all the listening, hearing, understanding, and caring we require

in order to

Give God thanks with our every breath.

For the Most

For the Most Vulnerable

Monday, November 27, 2023

The Spirit Dances

Each Morning, Noon and Night.

Only By the Spirit Working In Us

Can We Dance Jesus’ Dance.

Zechariah 7:10

… do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.

Ephesians 4:20

That is not the way you learned Christ!

…

Words of Grace For Today

God calls us many times in many ways to do justice for the most vulnerable, in Zechariah named as the widow, the orphan, the alien and the poor.

How do we learn?

How do we learn to do justice?

How do we learn Christ?

Is learning to do justice the same as learning Christ?

…

No, they are not the same.

They do overlap.

To do justice is for the most part to follow Christ’ commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours (and enemies) as ourselves.

But not all of ‘doing justice’ is what Christ calls us to.

And just ‘doing justice’ hardly begins to encompass all Christ calls us to.

For Christ calls us to love. To love as God loves. To love even when it costs us. And that moves us into and then also far beyond just doing justice for others.

Yet how can we learn to do justice?

Study, practice, and make errors … and more study, more practice, and more errors and (it keeps repeating, since we never get it completely and what we did yesterday does not provide justice for the most vulnerable today.)

And how can we learn Jesus?

Some would say it is the same. We study, practice, make errors, and repeat.

Those who have listened to the saints will know that will never even get us close, for the key to Jesus is

that we cannot learn Jesus on our own at all.

We only come to know Jesus when the Holy Spirit moves us to.

So we pray each day, come Lord Jesus, walk with us, let the Holy Spirit guide our thoughts, hearts and spirits, our dreams, visions, and hopes, and most of all our actions. Let them be reflections of Jesus to one another, and especially the most vulnerable.

And then we study, contemplate, plan, dream, and act as if it were all up to us, humbly remembering the Holy Spirit will guide and empower us.

Sigh!

Sigh, Again

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Morning Arrives,

The Crescent Moon Accompanied by A Star,

a helper light,

which is actually the planet Venus.

Psalm 31:23

Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.

Romans 8:26

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

…

Words of Grace For Today

The challenges of every day are more than enough to dampen our energy available to even cry for help to God. How does one pray when one’s loved one is gone, one’s world is ripped out from underneath one, and even in the morning the light does not help clarify where or what one really ought to do?

How does one pray when one’s home is destroyed and one survives only because one was away that day, working on a project that required it? Where does one go?

How does one pray when rumours, nasty and dirty rumours, are spread by deceitful, arrogant, fearful, cowardly bullies, and they grow so intense that people want to kill you?

How does one pray when everything seems to be okay also this day and yet your heart tells you that your life is doomed, maybe the whole world’s, maybe just those you love and all the honest and good people (if there are even any of those left!)?

When our light has been snuffed out by the chaos and hatred of people lost in their own darkness, we are not abandoned.

The Holy Spirit, with sighs too deep for words, blows in again as a fresh morning breeze, reviving us, and giving us the words for our prayers,

the priority of meaningful tasks for this day,

and a direction for our lives, even as we walk yet in darkness.

Like a sliver of a moon, with a companion star, walking the sky as the morning sun pushes back the darkness in the east, God winds us through our days, sometimes with just enough light so that we do not stumble

too often

and we can find once again

the light by which to love

even those who want to be our enemies.