Squirrels,

Squirrels,

Those Damned Squirrels

Friday, April 21, 2023

An American red squirrel.

If the troubles squirrels make were the worst in this country ….

but no,

we have to endure lies from all quarters.

Exodus 20:16

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

Ephesians 4:29

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

Words of Grace For Today

While I certainly know personally the cost paid by one against who numerous people worked to bear false witness against,

the prohibition to not bear false witness is (even though seemingly impossible for even Justices given authority and responsibility to hear, determine and only provide truth) more easily complied with than the admonishment not to allow any evil to come out of our mouths, but to allow only words that give life through grace to be heard from and spread by us.

The one is a negative: do not do this.

The other is a positive: do this.

And, to not do something evil is easier than to do good always.

That said, not doing evil ever is still impossible for us humans.

That’s where God’s Grace comes in, without which we would be lost, more-so than it seems we are already.

God’s Grace frees us from the evil of our past, so that each moment we have a new unencumbered possibility to choose to do good, and yet we still choose evil.

Knowing that is how it is with us, then we are able (freed by God’s Grace) to allow grace to be everything for others. As we allow grace to be everything for others, then we cannot help but speak and spread grace everywhere for all people.

So we pray: let grace, O God, pour freely from our mouths, also this day, that Your will may be done also among us.

The Kingdom

For the Fools

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Without the Light of Christ,

We Get Lost In the Fog of Lies

That Are Spewed So Freely.

Second Kings 19:34

For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.

Luke 12:32

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Words of Grace For Today

A city or a kingdom. We could dream of having one or the other, someday. In today’s world where fear is fuelled with lies, fuelling hate and rage, and denunciations of others that are senseless.

One of many lately is the ‘charge’ against the Trudeaus for taking a warm, post-Christmas vacation to a luxurious location in Jamaica – owned by a friend – at their own expense, while the government paid for what is required for the prime ministers’ security. The trip was pre-cleared to be free of conflict of interest. There were no Covid restrictions or other kinds of restrictions in place that were ignored. The only ‘charge’ is that Trudeau is out of touch with the financial struggles of ordinary Canadians.

The people making and repeating those charges all have it luxuriously good. In the context of all human history they all enjoy a standard of living better than 99% of the people who ever lived! And the ones creating and feeding such bogus charges probably went on similar vacations to warm climates or somewhat luxurious locations. And I can guarantee you that 100% of those people making such charges enjoy a standard of living better than I do. Vacation!? Trips!? – As one who can barely afford one trip each week to town to get food, water, and supplies the people throwing out such accusations are simply off their rockers.

The problem is these are not isolated or innocent ‘charges’. Yes, they have become part and parcel of politics. And that is exactly how dire and dangerous such ‘charges’ are! Out of such lies thrown about to create fear, so that from fear grows hate, and from that hate grows rage, and from that rage stem all sorts of violent actions are undertaken and justified (like occupying the streets of Ottawa and the borders here in Alberta to the US), and from that chaos … well chaos is a smoke screen for greater and greater evils, and we stand on the precipice of a fascist ruler rising out of the chaos … and then the ‘freedom’ that so many rage-filled suckers claim they pursue will be totally lost for all … well all except those favoured by the despot ruler. There are all too many examples of how that is done and what people suffer because of it.

Even people favoured by the ruler suffer, for their comfort is bought at the price of living a lie, and turning a blind eye to those unjustly exploited, jailed, and killed to feed the rulers’ whims.

And there goes the neighbourhood, to hell in a hand basket.

There is a reason the people were warned against seeking and elevating a king to lead them. Corruption always follows. The question is of what kind and how much.

Well, perhaps we then can already begin to dream of a city or a kingdom that we can share with other righteous people, capable of compassion, listening, and dialogue.

Yet God provides the ‘kingdom’ and ‘the city’ already to us, baptized saints.

We may not live in any city at all.

We may not live in any kingdom, but rather a federation of provinces and territories.

But we live blessed,

fools for Christ, and

members of God’s city and God’s kingdom, which is all creation.

Strong

Competence

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Running for One’s Life

Between the Wood Piles;

Life can be like that

way too often!

Zechariah 8:13

Just as you have been a cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing. Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong.

2 Corinthians 3:5

Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God …

Words of Grace For Today

Like a rabbit running, twisting and turning between the trees, the firewood piles, and around the campers, to find freedom from the pursuing lynx, so Brett found himself dodging the taunts and slurs thrown at him, along with spit balls, as he exited from school for his walk home.

Lately this once enjoyable walk home had become a nightmare, a horror not knowing from where the next insult, slur, or physical challenge would come. Today he vowed to himself, would be different.

It was, just not anything like he had hoped.

Three bullies from Grade 9 showed up along with the usual five Grade 6 bullies. What started as a few taunts, slurs, and tossed spitballs, soon became physical rocks meeting the mark on Brett’s thin back and legs. Then came the punches to his head and back, even as he ran, felling him in a tangle to the hard pavement. The sack over his head nearly made him choke and puke. It stank and ran with dog feces.

One more punch to his head and Brett was relieved of consciousness.

The next thing he knew he woke, tied tight, unable to move more than an inch, the bag still in place. It was dark, and lonely, and painful everywhere on his body. The minutes crept by until he passed out again. For hours he wavered between unconsciousness and half-awake throbbing pain. It became light again and dark again, and light again …. Brett lost track of how many times before he stopped waking up.

When he woke again, the pain had not stopped, but the stink was gone, the sack was gone. He was not tied up, but lay in a clean soft bed. He’d been cleaned up and he lay in soft pajamas.

Celia came in. He could barely believe it. This was the girl he adored and had never had the courage to say or do anything to indicate his feelings. She carried a cup of hot milk and a bowl of oatmeal. She fed him and told him:

She had found him, called her father and together they had untangled him from the sack and ropes, cleaned him up, taken him to their home, showered him, and lay him in bed, waiting for a doctor to come.

Along the way, the bullies had shown up and challenged them, but she had told them in no uncertain terms that if they did not leave she would lay them flat on the ground. The biggest had challenged her, and she had done just that, knocking his legs out from under him. With that the other had run.

Her father had come then, and picked up the boy Celia had knocked down, and told him that he was fortunate because Brett was still alive, and Celia had done nothing more than knock him down. She had a black belt in taekwondo and found her strength not in her own small frame, but in her belief that God walked with her. She otherwise probably would have too easily killed him or left him permanently unable to walk.

Now he should drink and eat just a bit more and then the doctor would be there. He would be fine though. She’d made the bully promise that they would now protect Brett.

So God provides what we need to be safe, and if/when we die God welcomes us home, safe and sound for all time.

At Home

Looking To God’s Glory

Giving God ‘Omage

Monday, April 17, 2023

All Creation Turns Towards …

Jeremiah 51:50

You survivors of the sword, go, do not linger! Remember the Lord in a distant land, `and let Jerusalem come into your mind.

Ephesians 2:19

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,

Words of Grace For Today

There are more times in human history for more people than not, who have been robbed of their homes and sent out looking for … a life.

Yet, no matter how many times we lose our homes, and even our sense of home, though we may still have sticks and stones, plastics and metal, fibres and wires around us constituting some kind of shelter against the elements and the danger of intruders into our lives, God does not lose track of us.

God calls to us, not to lose track of God’s home for us, that provides shelter from the greatest dangers of all, the evils of fear, hate, and revenge. For God has not only promised and continually demonstrated that God keeps this promise (to be with us always), God also transformed us from the heart and soul to the outer cells of our skins. God has transformed us from sinners into sinner-saints, the ones who carry God’s Word of Grace to all the creation.

Now how are we going to do that today, anyway?

Same old, same old,

or

are we ready always to step out on the new path God sets before us?

The sun rises.

All creation turns it’s face to God’s glory.

And we sinner-saints are turned as well,

to bask in God’s Grace, in the homes God gives us (some with, some without a structure on this earth.)

Looking

Through Sun Rays and Time

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Looking Through Smoke and Mirrors,

to the Divine.

Psalm 99:5

Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!

Acts of the Apostles 4:31

When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s a marvellous contraption, prayer is. Not that many see it that way, yet in the beginning there was no prayer, and for many millennia humans had forgotten about this contraption. The rediscovery of it has changed lives and the way the world works. God knows we need it as we face a fourth world war.

Sotorus

That from Sotorus’ paper journal, discovered with 11 others in the year 4391.

But back to the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.

God spoke and the universe was created.

Humans spoke. Sometimes they spoke to God and they called it prayer. A contraption that allowed mortal beings to speak directly to the immortal creator of the universe. But most often when humans spoke all sorts of chaos ensued, tainted as every good intention was with intentions to make their own lives better, the cost to others be damned. And the humans damned the whole universe with their words and by their actions until in the year 2302 the earth ceased to support the 12 plus billion humans on it. Viruses wiped out 7/8ths of all people and half of what was left of other animals, birds and fish. In that same year earthquakes ripped every continent in pieces and violent ‘climate-changed-vicious’ storms wiped out what was left of every city within 50 miles of the new coastlines.

There wasn’t a city left with any building more than two stories high. No services existed anywhere.

Life became brutal for everyone …

Until groups of people gathered to live and work together. One group collected in an old warehouse area next to some of the only remaining arable land next to one of the new lakes fed by the new rivers the earthquakes created. They called themselves the Iblers.

This was not the only group who gathered. There were hundreds of them across the earth as it was the only way to survive against the wild storms and the few vicious animals left alive who survived by preying on the dead and the living, somehow not contracting any of the deadly viruses, or at least not suffering from them.

The Iblers had an old book in an old language that only one person could read. She taught others. In it they read of a thing called prayer, talking to God the creator of the universe. They practised it three times each day, twice alone at waking and sleeping, and once in the noon light gathered together. Slowly this practise changed the people, almost imperceptibly. Their transformation was slow and steady so that years later they were a content, hardworking, and thriving community, with children everywhere, with struggles galore, conflict still, but always great effort to sustain hope through love and grace. The book’s torn cover identified it as an IBLE.

Now in the year 5402 we give thanks for the Iblers and their rediscovery of the contraption called prayer, for with it we sustain hope, and love, and grace, and …

life itself

morning

noon

and

night.

Editor’s Note: Maybe I got the dates all wrong; the records are quite smudged and the air is smokey more often than not leaving a permanent haze in my eyesight, yet it is clear that contraption prayer is powerful and to be used daily, with thanks.

Did You Find

Your Way To A New Day?

Friday, April 14, 2023

Late to the Day’s Beginning,

As the Light is Already Bright and White,

But Still A Good Beginning.

Jeremiah 23:5

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

Words of Grace For Today

The dream of justice for the people, justice based on truth and righteousness, is as old as the hills.

And in these days it surely has not been accomplished, as tyrants and despots rule in many lands across the earth, and even in democracies, which give the appearance of some sort of justice, special interests (and international corporations with profits greater than many governments) corrupt the processes that are designed to be (or at least look to be) just.

Money gets its way, so to speak, and everyone suffers.

That hope for a just government is not what Jesus came to provide, as much as we hope that some day it yet will be accomplished.

Jesus came to free us from fear of death. That fear is what lies underneath almost all injustices, but to be free we have to allow God to work that freedom for us and in us. It is not something we simply choose, or can accomplish on our own. It is a gift. It is only a gift.

What we get to do with that gift is find the beginning of each day and the end of each day as God intends us to find them: free from fear of death, free from fear of guilt, and free from fear of God’s judgment (since God works with mercy for us.)

Did you find the beginning of this day?

As Long As

The Earth Endures

Thursday, April 6, 2023

A Reclaimed Oil Lease Is Scattered With Dead Limbs.

That’s Nothing Compared to the Chaos of Our Future.

Genesis 8:22

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

Luke 22:19-20

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’

Words of Grace For Today

The earth will not last forever. It will collide inside the Milkyway galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy, if nothing else so disasterous occurs sooner, in about 4.5 billion years or so.

Don’t hold your breath. In a few more hundred years we humans may have made the earth unfriendly for any kind of human life, along with so many other forms of life. Many, many are already extinct, and so many in just the last few decades!

How can we explain this to our descendants, who will struggle more and more just to survive? Will we say, well we enjoyed the power oil provided for our lives, our civilization … even while we corrupted truth at every turn to get the best, the most, the greatest comforts for ourselves while other humans starved to death, died of thirst, succumbed to curable diseases?

The debt load we carry would be unbearable … were it not for Jesus’ sacrifice that we recall every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

God knew how we would be, what we would take from the earth, other life forms, and other humans. So God set it all right with God’s own sacrifice. Jesus gave himself.

And we live free!

Now if we could just get it through our heads that we ought to provide the same amount of love and care to this planet as God has shown us, we might just live as a species for the greater part of 4.5 billion years, and even then we might, through some great miracles and wondrous discoveries, travel to a safe planet in another galaxy that is not set to collide with one of it’s own kind.

Each day let us pray, after we have confessed our sins and begged again for forgiveness, that God will give us ears to hear, hearts to learn, and faith to know God’s Grace for our enemies (us among them.)

Great Mystery

The Greatest Of All!

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

What Word Do We Have

That Will Bring Light

Into the Deepest Darkness?

Psalms 33:5

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

2 Corinthians 8:9

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

Words of Grace For Today

As a windfall is to unwieldy debts, how is an Easter sermon to our heartbreak, loss, helplessness, and struggles to live, sinners as we are?

We understand how debts can become oppressive, sucking the life and hope and joy right out of us. Yet we try to deny that we owe God and so many other people because of all our sins. We run up a debt load that is impossible to deal with. Our debts suck the life and hope and joy right out of us, even if we do not admit.

God planned for that, too.

God took all the riches of God’s own self in Jesus’ purity and sinlessness and God gave that all up. With our sins God ran Jesus into poverty so deep he would not escape it. He paid for our debts with his unjust death, and transferred the greatest riches of innocence, purity, and the best unconditional love to us.

God did this through Jesus’ death … and his resurrection. For God would not in any way stay poor. God spread the riches of all creation, all around … even to us who are such great sinners.

So we live, with hope, joy, and love enough to share with all who encounter us.

With what words could a preacher in an Easter sermon communicate such undeserved freedom to those who anticipate already that they have earned their place in God’s good graces?

What words communicate the largest windfall possible: blessed life that cannot be taken from us!? This is the same question for everyone who receives the gift of faith, not just the preacher on Easter Sunday.

Perhaps with great humility the preacher/believer must confess that there are no such words to be chosen. With “Christ is Risen!” “Christ is Risen, Indeed!” we can say great things that bespeak the wondrous mysteries of God’s love for us.

But to communicate that our sin-debts are paid once and for all time … well that is up to the Holy Spirit to give the people ears to hear, and hearts to learn, and faith to know.

Each day, after we have confessed our sins and begged again for forgiveness, let us pray that God will give us ears to hear, hearts to learn, and faith to know God’s Grace for our enemies (us among them, for most often we are our own worst enemies.)

Looking

For Jesus

Monday, April 3, 2023

We Build Houses,

Even For Fishing With Jesus For People.

God Has Other Plans

For Us.

Psalms 16:8

I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

Hebrews 12:2

looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Words of Grace For Today

For us all, all too often we see God as our right hand power that enables us to succeed in the world. Our enemies should lay down and worship, if not God, then us, for the power we wield.

Except life is not like that, and God’s Word for us is not either.

Instead God deals with the reality of life … which ends in death for us all.

God frees us from our sins, and our ultimate fears of death,so that we can live.

On Easter we will say: Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed! As enthusiastic as we may have learned to proclaim this wondrous news, the power of that news is clear only when we know deep in our bones and hearts what has come before: Jesus has died. Jesus has died a terrible, torturous, unjust death.

That’s what Holy Week is all about. It reminds us of the reality that Jesus addresses with his death and resurrection.

Make no mistake there have been plenty of deaths recently. Among them:

Five siblings, their spouses and children and friends gather to bury the siblings’ parents killed in an accident. An earthquake rocks the mountain overlooking the cemetery and buries them all. A tank runs over an orphan soldier crushing the breath out of him forever. An addict dies alone and helpless poisoned by xylazine cut into his drugs. An old man dies forgotten in his soiled bed. Two women are stoned to death by a crowd of self-righteous zealots.

And then this Friday we remember also that Jesus was falsely accused as many before and since, was strung up and left to die on a cross.

Anyone who is paying even a little bit of attention knows the searing sadness, and profound sorrow of death. That’s life on earth. We get used to such news.

God planned for that, too.

God lets us dive into the familiar of death, and then jars us out of our comfort zones with Jesus’ resurrection,

Turning our worlds all topsy-turvy, back upright,

Where only God is in control, and we live and breathe only as God gives us these gifts … to share.

REAL

Joy from Real Sorrow

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Our Justice can be as perverted as the crimes committed.

God’s Justice is perfect based on truth.

Jeremiah 31:13

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Words of Grace For Today

Listening to the great jazz music from the soundtrack to the movie Chicago reminded me how that movie portrays how perverted the justice system is.

Most devastating is the song of the many inmates in jail, all woman, all telling tales of how they just had to kill the man they were with. They just had no other choice. They had it coming.

While widows normally grieve the death of their husbands, these women had their supposed sorrow turned into joy. They were glad to be rid of their men. One man just chewed his food too loudly. One was caught in an affair. One was just too slow. One looked the wrong way.

God did not provide this ‘escape’ from real sorrow for these women, nor the thousands like them that exist in real life. When you meet a woman like this, who grieves not a bit for her dead husband (as she says to the children, “we are survivors”) one knows one has met the work of the devil that disconnects a person from the real world and sets them loose to destroy others without feeling a thing. Psychopath, sociopath, or borderline personality disordered … it matters not the ‘proper’ designation we give them, they are sick and the devil uses them well, all too well.

God would rescue even them, were there a way we too would rejoice.

God’s work recounted in the passages above is not about these women. God’s work is the real and very desperately needed rescuing of so many people who experience real sorrow, grief, and mourning. This is what God does. God turns the impossibly dark days of mourning (in which no light can penetrate, or so it surely seems) into days of rejoicing and celebrating and hope.

These are the things we celebrate, too, along with those who come back into the light from the darkness.

These are the things we celebrate, today …

with a smile, a peel of laughter, and a heartfelt thanks lifted to God

who walks beside us through all our dark days

bringing us into the light.