Lake – This Life

Gone Degenerate and Wild

Will Anyone Plead for Us?

Friday, October 10, 2025

Surely Someone?!!

Sunset Glory.

The Colours Are Not Real.

But God’s Blessings Are!

Jeremiah 2:21

Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?

Romans 11:2

God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

If we are at all honest with ourselves we know that we have at least taken the good vineyard God planted in us and chosen to bring in wild weed seed, and degenerative thoughts, words, dreams, and deeds,

to much so that they choke out life in and around us.

…

Elijah, as powerful as he may be, cannot save us.

Thankfully, God has not rejected us and deserted us to ourselves and all the evils we dream up.

Instead

God sent Jesus to save us

and save us he did and does

each day.

…

Thus we may live this day

as the ones God blesses,

all in order that we share those blessings will all.

…

Breathe.

The Spirit

Always in and around us, for life.

Betcha Can’t

Betcha God Can!

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Thwarts and All Cannot Stop God’s Love

Canoe at 72?

Possible.

Be Saved Yet Again?

For God All Is Possible!

Job 42:2

Job to God: I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Luke 1:37

For nothing will be impossible with God.

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

Trusting that God will not be stopped, that all things are possible for God, is the first good half of trusting God.

The other half is knowing, from experience (one’s own and those of the God’s people since the beginning of time) that God intends good for us, that God indeed loves us like we can only dimly imagine possible.

That’s seemingly impossible:

loving such miserable sinners as us,

mere blips in time,

vulnerable to

the smallest

bugs,

and so capable of

ugly and hateful destructive things

against the earth that supports life for us all,

towards people different than, and especially those so like, us,

and even to ourselves!

Yet there it is to see: God loves us, forgives us, and does the impossible:

God gives us life, and then renews life for us when we botch it so badly.

Deliver Us!

Send Us

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

to deliver us all.

As We Get to Reflect Christ’s Light

to Strangers and Friends Alike.

Psalm 79:9

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.

Luke 24:46-47

Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

Psychology professor Gillian Sandstrom was a lonely graduate student in Toronto when she … and a woman who ran a hotdog stand on her way to university around 2007 would wave hello and smile at each other. Their interactions were so small that Sandstrom uses air quotes to even describe them as a “relationship.”

And yet “it really meant something much bigger than it seemed like it should, and it made me feel like I belonged there,” said Sandstrom.

From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/micro-relationships-and-talking-to-strangers-1.7636486?cmp=newsletter_CBC%20Edmonton_1646_2029080

In the drudgery and loneliness of life God finds us.

Most often God uses another person, intentionally reaching out to us,

and even more often another person unintentionally reaching us

exactly where it hurts so much we barely can describe the pain.

…

Psychology professor Gillian Sandstrom was a lonely graduate student in Toronto when she began what she calls “a tiny, tiny micro-relationship.”

Today there is a whole surge of people recommending that interacting with strangers is exactly what we are missing in the technology driven and ‘stranger danger’ driven world we’ve created.

…

In the drudgery and loneliness of life God finds us

and sends us out to share the Good News, even with strangers.

We need not start, nor should we start by mentioning Jesus’ name or forgiveness or sacrifice and atonement for sins, or even sins.

We start by being the saints God makes us, acknowledging, sharing, addressing, listening, smiling, thanking the stranger for being.

In that interaction God will bless them, and us,

and maybe we will have opportunity to demonstrate and explain that Jesus makes us possible to be

today’s saints

just a bit

for

them.

Water Flows

Living Water Flows

Monday, September 22, 2025

Through Us

Like Foam, Stuck

In The Weeds Of Life.

Psalm 111:3

Full of honour and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.

Philippians 3:8b-9

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

When I take a shower, the water is pulled from the camper’s 30 gallon water tank, which now after nearly 45 years, probably only holds 25 or so. Since a shower takes about 10 gallons, it’s a bit dicey getting water throughout the shower unless I first refill the camper’s tank from the bigger 275 gallon holding tank. If I take a shower without enough water in the camper tank … Let’s just say it’s uncomfortable trying to fill that tank with soap in my eyes. So before I shower I open the valve on the bigger tank, which has a hose connected to it, which at the other end is connected to the filler connection on the camper.

Water flows out for the shower.

Water flows in to refill the camper tank.

All is well.

Jesus’ sacrifice for us does not simply fill us up when we empty ourselves living sinfully in this world.

No! Jesus provides a different solution for our tanks, and we are showered not with righteousness earned by our compliance with the Law, or dedication to living as Jesus did.

No! Jesus provides the living water that satisfies all our thirsting for life, life as we were created to live it. That valve is always open, flowing over us, overflowing through our lives to all those around us.

Then come the challenges of life, and we might struggle with them as usual. Or we can recognize that we are made different in our baptisms, by the living water that we are submersed in, which flows over us, which washes away our sins, which provides the water needed for growth. The living water carries us with God and our struggles become God’s, and God’s joy becomes ours, and God’s call becomes the priority for each our days.

Until we forget.

And then the living water of Jesus’ hard won forgiveness for us washes over us again and still into our ‘tank’s’, our lives, freeing us to recognize again the change the Holy Spirit makes in us, equipping us to live and deal with all the challenges of life differently.

We see, instead of unending reasons to despair, great cause to celebrate in all that has been done for us, by so many people, by so many saints working God’s blessings for us.

Then we know as Paul did, that

For Jesus sake we have suffered the loss of all things, and we regard them as rubbish, in order that we may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, given to us by the Holy Spirit, founded on the righteousness from God based on faith.

And we can praise God with the Psalmist, being examples that God walks with us, and his work is full of honour and majesty, and his righteousness endures forever.

Given the Wilds of Climate Change

We Need Jesus to Do More –

Than Walk On Water

Friday, September 12, 2025

We Need God to Stabilize the Water Everywhere!

Storms A’Brewin’

Proverbs 3:25-26

Do not be afraid of sudden panic, or of the storm that strikes the wicked; for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.

Matthew 14:26-27

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

it’s just fine to deny that we are the cause of climate change.

Just go a head and bury your head in the sand,

so you can carry on blithely, making it so much worse for us all.

Now if we’d followed Jimmy Carter’s plan for 20% solar power, started in 1979,

(adapting it in each country, like our own, eh?)

We’d not be in the such terrible grips of climate change with smoke and wildfires and drought and floods, and storms so wild we’ve never seen the likes of them.

…

But wishing doesn’t make it so.

And only lots of action, guided by wise thoughts (dreams and prayers as well),

will make our future a bit better than

the even worse it is each year

because

did

nothing

when

counted

the

most.

…

Now our actions

or in-actions

count

again

the

most.

Is He The One?

The One To Save Us

Saturday, July 5, 2025

From Ourselves?

Right there.

He was yelling right there at the top of his lungs,

“What’s Wrong?!

Everything!”

Lamentations 1:20

See, O Lord, how distressed I am; my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.

John 4:29

The woman said: Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

We make so much trouble for ourselves, giving us cause for so many lamentations, and agreements with the passage from Lamentations.

We wait with great expectation worn weary into apathy for the One who can save us from everything.

It is so easy to scream or resign or fight, because our world economy sings only one tune: that of powerful greed.

Greed feeds us selfishness, insatiable hungers, and a callous disregard for all creation. As greed permeates everything around us, it is difficult to sing the songs of God’s Kingdom. Each day we need new images to jostle our hearts, minds, and imaginations to recognize God at work around us, and in us, and through us for others. We need to be reminded that Jesus is our song each day on this wonder-filled journey. Otherwise, drowned in greed-fed-fears, we only ramp up the heart-and-mind-stopping panic around us.

How can we find freedom from greed? How can we find a blessed tomorrow from today?

Encountering a man ranting and raving loudly in the woods where people come to camp for free, I asked, “What’s the problem?” The guy stopped a second before screaming, “Everything!”

What is your Everything? At the checkout till they keep asking: “Is that everything?” with a wink, I respond “No, the universe is a big place and I can’t afford everything. I’ll just take these few things, thank you.”

…

Our times are as tumultuous as any. It’s difficult to tell who is or will be a threat. Southern neighbours are now irrational and unpredictable. Last year’s extreme weather keeps becoming this year’s norm. Wildfires wipe out homes, communities, and livelihoods, and disrupt even more lives with deadly smoke, planting time-bombs in our lungs and blood. It’s difficult to tell what is safe, what is sure to be lost, and where one can take even a short rest from the tumult. We do know that our future, like a wild rapids, is going to be more difficult, dangerous, and full of surprises from new directions.

Yet God knew all this would be so in our times, as God has known about every time in the past, and knows about every time to come. God created us with the only real security for life in this universe: God’s own assurance that, come what may, God is with us through it all. And God sent God’s own Son to save us from our own sins and the evil that permeates the world. Each day God calls us to allow ourselves to be dandled in safety on God’s lap in this New Creation. Each day the Holy Spirit sends us out to share the wonders of God’s steadfast love with all who need it. And in the end, God will call us home, to sing our thanks again, for we are home, home with the saints in light, home at last, home at last.

And that is our Everything.

The Last Hope

For Life Lost

Friday, July 4, 2025

Where Will You See It?

Waves Come In and Go Out

Washing Us Free.

Psalm 119:114

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

John 6:40

This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

How do you find that precious slice of time-place-tempo-song that gives you

everything to live for,

that gives you hope,

for another day, week, year, decade?

In the lives of those who have found a way to move from desperate-despair-loss-end

to become someone for someone, and maybe for a few more than one or two, maybe even for us all?

In the words that inspire one to dig deep?

Or in the faces of sounds defying the obvious end, despite the great loss getting into tomorrow from here?

Or in the safety of laughter and joy with children not yet stained by the short-harsh-brutish?

…

in the turmoil that is inevitably life,

the only hope for all kinds of life is

…

knowing that God is with us, for us, and

more than eager to redeem us, renew us, and give us renewed life each day.

Rich And Done

Or Sacrificing All Now and …

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Rich Forever

Why Wait To Really Live?

Give Your All, Today!

Psalm 138:6

For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away.

Luke 12:19-21

The rich will say to their soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

How people have yearned to be rich. To be able to ‘take a break’, head off on the ‘freedom 55’ train, give up deadlines for lifelines, to do what you want, when you want, where you want, and how you want, to turn ‘short, nasty, and brutish’ into ‘eat, drink, and be merry!’

But life simply does not work that way.

Life lived for oneself becomes perverse, if it wasn’t that already. And it rots from within, spreading to those around one, and affected by one. It’s living hell.

The true treasure of life is free, but not without cost. It is to live as Jesus did, giving everything to give life to others, to love one’s neighbour as oneself, even one’s enemies, and the downtrodden and outcast most of all.

To be truly rich, we only need recognize that God walks with us, blesses us, and sends us out to be that same blessing for all other people.

Searching??

Or Following

Sunday, June 22, 2025

The Guide Already There!

Seeing

The Wonders, Truth, Hope, Guide, Joy

Right

In Front Of Us

And All Around Us.

Exodus 13:21

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night.

John 5:39

You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.

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Words of Grace for Today –

…

So often we realize we ourselves or others spend our time and energy searching, searching, searching for

searching for truth,

searching for guidance,

searching for love,

searching for joy,

searching for God!

Then someone points us to the scriptures that show God has been with us all along, guiding us onward, like fire at night and clouds by day, showing us truth, loving us completely and unconditionally, giving us innumerable causes for joy, being right there with us

through it all.

By Grace alone the Holy Spirit enables us to have clear minds, open hearts, and active hands, always leaning on God.

Each day

clear minds

open hearts

active hands

always leaning on God

Beyond These Troubles

Fear Not

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

God Goes With Us

And brings us home,

to a home greater than a city,

or even a nature retreat

…

at the last.

Genesis 46:3-4

Then God said to Jacob, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again; and Joseph’s own hand shall close your eyes.”

Luke 18:28-30

Then Peter said, “Look, we have left our homes and followed you.” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

The rise of dictators around the world, and most disruptive, to the south, has any thinking person on edge.

The threats are like those in many times in the past. None of those times were good times for most people. Of course there were a few who made tremendous fortunes on the backs of everyone else. But it’s hard to see how any good person today would follow that path, though plenty are poised to try, if not already in action, to ‘fleece’ us all for their gain.

The immediate economic threats are clearly felt as we look for food, clothes and shoes, transportation (even vehicles for some), and shelter (even apartments and houses for the lucky ones), all at prices that we can afford. No honest person says things are going to get more affordable. The effort is to stop the rate of increasing un-affordability! Drop that on our heads and the response is almost always FEAR. Fear for ourselves, and greater fear for our children, and all the following generations.

The breakdown of good order in society adds to the triggers of fear. More and more the police are found to be bullies or white supremacist-racists or misogynists or misandrists, as are prosecutors, lawyers and judges. Even churches seem to be led by those faithful to something far from the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. The less than faithful can be found in all religious institutions.

…

If we follow Jesus …

If we follow Jesus then we recognize we were created and given great gifts (everything we are and have, including the unmatched gifts of the Holy Spirit – given at our baptisms) so that we can share them with those most in need … the world ‘round.

Which means we already have no claim to any security of possessions, place, privilege, or reputation. Instead our security is founded only in that God will be with us and …

Well, even though we have reason to fear for our survival in the future.

We already know the future will be harder than the present.

But God always offers us peace

in knowing God gives us life, not to enjoy comforts and false security offered by possessions, place, privilege, or reputation.

God gives us life so that we may expend it

giving life to others.

And in the end

God will be with us and bring us home.

Fear not.

Purpose given, the best possible security demonstrated each day, the only ending worth anything.

Fear not.

God gives it all to us.