Not to Condemn

But to save … the whole world!

Thursday 6 February 2025

The Glaciers, and a lot else, are disappearing from the face of the earth.

Genesis 8:21

And when the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

John 3:17

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Noah offers sacrifice to God, and God turns, finds the sacrifice pleasing, and promises never again to curse the ground because of humankind, though the inclination of every heart is evil from our youth.

Not cursed, but it’s clear, we really don’t know how to give God God’s due.

Always grabbing for more, at others’ expense, and at our expense, and at the earth’s expense.

Trade war is only the latest in our own backyard.

…

But Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it or us.

I like to take John 3:16 and place it after John 13:17. It helps counter the so familiar v16 being so out of context.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Lots more context is really needed. There is no way we can all line up to believe, doing the right thing, making it right for ourselves with God.

Believing in Jesus is only possible if the Holy Spirit makes it so in us. We of course can refuse, back out, turn our back on it all. But no one can choose to turn to God. That’s all gift, given to us over, and over, and over again, by a God who loves us so.

Then we can, of course, choose to stop condemning others and the earth. That is what God wishes from us: a choice to love – as God loves – all creation.

Looking Back

Trusting Forward

Monday 3 February 2025

As the shadows lengthen,

the day of life coming to a close,

remember –

blessed Light

Ezra 8:31

Then we left the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go to Jerusalem; the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes along the way.

2 Timothy 3:11

… my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

What memories I have, of trials, of lies, of abuse, of un-earned prison, of false judgments, of concerted efforts to destroy our reputations, of rejections, of false accusations, of being told to leave, of being forced to leave town …

of surviving, by God’s grace alone, when all else had failed,

yet being loved profoundly,

of experiencing God’s walking along with me,

of trust rebuilt from the foundations of life,

of many helping in small ways and huge ways,

of being dependent yet free,

of living the dream (hard as it turns out to be).

I’m sure you have your memories of life’s challenges as well.

Hopefully you have known and remember that God has walked with you through them, not removing them or resolving them, but equipping you to endure them to whichever end, theirs or yours, and knowing you are blessed to know life in it’s fullest and most truthful blessedness.

With the memories of God’s blessing in the past comes a hard-won trust in God’s promises for our futures.

Moving into today … all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

Forgive

Even the Atrocities!?

Monday, October 7, 2024

1 Yr After The Attack On Israel, Is There Hope?

Photo by Saša Petricic · CBC News https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-gaza-west-bank-year-war-1.7344060?cmp=newsletter_CBC%20News%20Morning%20Brief_12625_1736161 accessed 2024.10Oct07

Jeremiah 14:7

Although our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake; our apostasies indeed are many, and we have sinned against you.

Matthew 6:14

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Sin is a hard thing to live beyond.

It has a way of haunting us,

even when we do not know it,

creeping into our fears, our nightmares, our reactions to stress, our hopes,

eating at us

like locust eat a landscaped dead, one bite at a time

times millions

like the number of our small sins.

How do we find freedom from these living, consuming, deadly haunts in our minds and souls?

…

God knew we’d need help,

so God sent Jesus, to free us with his sacrifice, so dramatic, less we miss out what God does for us,

and each day God promises to forgive us,

no strings attached!

God asks (non-binding is the request, but it completes our freedom) to forgive others as well.

Not doing so is another sin,

which eats at us again.

Are there really any circumstances – consequences of another’s sin – that cannot be forgiven?

Very definitely, and yet God forgives us for all of them, and asks us (non-binding is the request, but it completes our freedom) to forgive others these atrocities as well.

Are we up to it today?

Before ‘Yet’

And ‘Job answered’

Friday, September 20, 2024

What Came Before All This?

Summer?

Nighttime?

Injustice?

Hope?

Job 9:1-9

Then Job answered:
‘Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God?
If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.
He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength—who has resisted him, and succeeded?—
he who removes mountains, and they do not know it, when he overturns them in his anger;
who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble;
who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars;
who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea;
who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south …?

1 Corinthians 8:6

… yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

There’s something before ‘yet’.

Is it important?

There was something before Job answered.

Is it important?

Context sometimes is everything.

Our context is simple to adduce:

God created everything and can do anything and everything.

We are creatures who live a short time, often suffering greatly,

even at our best when we love, it always ends in suffering the loss of love

or our life.

How can we pretend to take on God?

Yet

(there it is again)

Yet, we do so often,

So often to make good through and through fools of us,

like the ant that tries to escape from the anteater’s tongue.

Or like the mouse that tries to free itself from the trap.

Or the young bird that tries to fly through a window.

Or a person who tries to speak as if God.

What will we do today?

Live humble lives before our Creator?

Live futile lives trying to be our own godlets?

Signs?

For Some, Maybe.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

You May Well Be The Only Glimmer of Hope For So Many This Day!

Psalm 65:11-12

You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy

Acts of the Apostles 14:17

God has not left us all without a witness of God’s doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

The bounty that God provides reaches the tables of some, but not all people. Not by a long shot.

Millions will not have enough to eat today, as for days or years before and so it will be for days or years to come.

Yes, the land produces enough food to feed all the 8 billion plus people on earth.

But

we do not distribute it fairly, to all people. We do not even distribute it unfairly to some people; they get next to nothing. We distribute it cruelly. For people who go hungry, and without sufficient water, know that there are places on earth where people get plenty to eat and have more than enough water for each day.

What do we do about it?

What can we do about it, today?

Start by giving God sincere thanks for everything that keeps us alive, including food and water.

Then pray that God will forgive us our sins.

Then start paying attention to how one can help distribute food to those without enough: food bank donations and volunteering, soup kitchen contributions and volunteering, political awareness and actions focused on encouraging and supporting politicians who work to distribute food equitably, who work for food security for everyone!

Then end the day with thanks to God for all that one can do, for all the people one has been able to help,

and for all the people still waiting for enough

to survive

another

day.

Who

Will Rescue Us?

Monday, September 16, 2024

And The Skies Run Red With Their Blood,

As God Lets Evil

Take Itself To It’s Own Bloody Death?

Isaiah 50:7

The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame

Matthew 14:30

But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

The OT reading for this Sunday Jeremiah 11:18-20 overlaps in theme with this verse:

It was the Lord who made it known to me, and I knew;
then you showed me their evil deeds.
But I was like a gentle lamb
led to the slaughter.
And I did not know it was against me
that they devised schemes, saying,
“Let us destroy the tree with its fruit,
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
so that his name will no longer be remembered!”
But you, O Lord of hosts, who judge righteously,
who try the heart and the mind,
let me see your retribution upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.

…

So it is time to ask:

And who is out to get you?

By guile and deceit

in secret

and hidden ways

so that those uninitiated to such devious ways will not see or suspect or ever know

of the evil that is worked against you?

Oh, you say, there is no such effort made against me.

But then how would you know?

And what is all this about polarization of peoples, infiltration of social media to effect election outcomes, hate created fear motivating voters, world domination by fascist dictators, war hungry leaders hiding in war their failing support at home, the economy played for the benefit of the already rich to get richer and the already poor to get poorer (if there is such a thing for many) and for the middle class to sink, sink, sink closer to poverty?

Are these not already a few powerful manipulating what can be to send us closer to our deaths?

Are you paying attention?

…

But God is with us. And we will see our enemies destroy themselves.

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.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

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.

…

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 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?