Category: Lake

Resting

Resting in God’s Peace

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Like the Moon,

We Reflect Christ’s Light in the Darkness,

Spreading Living Colours For All.

Genesis 2:3

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

Philippians 4:7

… and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…

Words of Grace For Today

There are times in our lives, more as we age, where we do not have what it takes to make it through a day, and we suffer.

Sometimes it is thirst, or hunger, or danger because we do not have proper clothes or shelter.

(Yes, many have not experienced that, yet, for the assured, protected, and luxuries way of life that many live – which is far beyond a dream for most people – can be taken or disappear without warning or cause, such are the realities of life on earth, especially when others are evil enough to take them from us, and more and more people are able to do just that!)

Sometimes it is a matter of having the ability to think clearly enough to make it through the day. Our thoughts are muddled. Our memories tainted or lost. Our decision making capacities escape us. Out of fear or failure we freeze, fight, or flee, or even act, and those actions or lack of actions place us in more danger than before.

Sometimes, though it is much worse. This happens to people the world over. Has happened-Happens-Will happen to people through all time, past and future. Standard of living does not make one immune, in fact the higher one’s standard of living the more likely it will overwhelm one, so ill equipped one becomes at dealing with such tragedies: we lose our spirit, or our spirits darken to the point we do not see the Light of God, not at all, not at all.

This darkness of the heart invades also our minds and our bodies and can literally kill us, or maim us to such a degree we might as well be dead … and may wish that were possible.

Into this darkness, like the Advent Wreath’s candles growing in number and brilliance each week against the increasing darkness of our days, the Light of Christ comes into our hearts,

into our bodies,

rejuvenating our spirits,

and giving us more than enough light to share with others,

as

we

become

instruments of God

spreading the Light of Christ to those

caught in the darkness,

unjustly denigrated and cast out by others,,

forgotten,

until

…

until

the Light of Christ

brings them and us God’s Peace,

and

proves their preciousness,

our preciousness,

to God

once

again.

Another miracle, whether we are ready to see it or not.

Fear

And love

Monday, December 4, 2023

God Can Burn It All Down,

or Light a Fire Under Our Lazy Butts.

Which do we need today?

Isaiah 41:10

… do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

Matthew 21:15

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Fear can grab us without notice.

If we often let ourselves stay there, then the path for fear (one of the Devil’s favourite tools) is slick and becomes more and more travelled, more and more often without any reasonable cause.

Especially if we, like the chief priests and scribes, hold on to power by dominating others with fear fuelled by deception, corruption, manipulations and/or false gods or words supposedly of God.

Fear can rip our clear thinking minds right out of us, pressing us down into anger, anxiety, and panic … which keep us from thinking straight or being able to recognize what is real around us. We react to false fears as easily to real fears, always with disaster, whether we freeze, run, or stand ‘our ground’ to fight.

All a waste of time, energy, and life.

God’s word so often calls us to not be afraid.

God knows we have enough real reasons to be afraid.

Yet, God promises us that God walks with us, and therefore even when there are real reasons for us to be afraid, we not need fear. Instead we can participate in Jesus’ reign throughout all creation, wherein love, sacrificial love, is more powerful than anything that could threaten us.

Love carries us, even into and through death.

So there is no reason to fear,

unless we turn from God, and then we rightly fear God.

When we realize that God has turned to us, again and again with steadfast love and mercy, forgiving us, renewing us, equipping us, and sending us out to share the power of sacrificial love with all creation, then

well, we still fear God, for God is all-powerful, able to end us and all creation in the blink of an eye. Yet we also love God, for God has given us and does now give us and always will give us life, precious blessed abundant life.

So we breathe, and sing and dance in praise and thanks for all God is and does for us.

From Dark

to Light

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

The Way To the Light

Seems To Cross Thin Ice,

So We Hesitate …

and then it is dark again.

Psalm 119:130

The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.

Ephesians 5:8

For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Moving into the Light should be a simple thing.

Just choose your steps on the path towards the Light, right?

But

the devil has also sorts of false lights,

luring us into dead

ends.

Of course, the Light of Christ requires more than just walking,

it requires right hearts and minds and spirits,

all which we are completely incapable of attaining on our own,

if ever,

really!

So

We need Christ to show us the way,

and even then

we need the Spirit to transform our hearts, minds, and spirits so that we can follow.

And still we fail.

So Christ comes

into our darkness

and brings the Light

to guide us

onward.

So we hope we will live in the Light

…

but we know from the past we will choose to wander

back into the darkness all too soon (like right now)

and

Christ will need to come again

and again

and again

and

again … ad infinitum.

Ask and …

“What the #*^%&#^$&$^$!! Happened!?!?” ?

Sunday, November 26, 2023

The Lake Sings The Morning In!

Another Gift From God,

so precious.

Nahum 1:7

The Lord is good, a stronghold on a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him,

Matthew 7:7

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

All of us have asked for things to be a bit better,

or a lot better.

And

it seldom

turns out to be better,

especially if we get exactly what we’ve asked for!

Thankfully God

hears our pleas, our cries, our wailings, our dreams, or requests,

and

God most often only gives us what we need

to

offer life abundant to others.

So much for getting

it to be a little bit better for ourselves.

So we could say, following Jesus really is a bummer, right?!

But,

What God provides that we seldom ask for is

everything we need to live life abundantly.

It is certainly so that living with everything hunky doory and with an abundance of what the world would have us chase after, is not

God’s life abundant

that we receive.

Instead

we receive hope, the ability to love and be loved, the ability to be kind and honest, the ability to give

to the most needy

what they desperately need.

And then God gives us the ability to say thanks and enter each day

confessing our sins, and relying wholly on God to bring us to do good things for others.

.

.

.

Or, when God does not give us exactly what we asked for (that would be so bad for us) we can pretend to be astounded and selfishly ask,

“What the #*^%&#^$&$^$!! Happened!?!?

Begging Low

Before God

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

As the day comes to a close, begging again, that all will be well.

Job 9:2-3

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.

Luke 15:18

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

We would like to think that we can justify ourselves, before others to be sure, but also before God.

Yikes!

So much trouble comes from that thinking.

Starting a new day

one begins begging

again

and

again

for God’s mercy and forgiveness,

for we cannot make ourselves righteous,

nor free from our sinful past.

That only God can do for us,

and God promises to do just that

if we but just ask.

So begging it is

to start and end each day.

Unless, of course, it is an ordinary day when we try to justify ourselves to ourselves and God,

which leads to more disastrous days than we care to remember.

So

what are we waiting for?

God promises us ….

With A Little

Help From …

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

As A New Day Dawns,

Remembering From Whom Our Help Comes.

First Samuel 7:12

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’

Acts of the Apostles 26:22

To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going it alone, or with our own family, or friends, or company, or kind is typical for us as we meander through life towards, well, we like to deny it with all our efforts – but it’s still towards death.

And we get there in the end, successfully, whether we like it or not.

The journey is usually fraught with failures and detours and disasters of our own making.

As we get to the end of any day, or the start of a new day, best is to recognize that we have nothing new to offer the world,

but the old stuff we have received from the saints before is precious.

Each day, ending or beginning, it is helpful to remember that we cannot make anything good happen for us or anyone else, unless we let God have at us and guide us and perform miracles in us so that out of our pathetic efforts some good will come.

So, to give thanks, to God,

who helps us on our way,

blessing us

and through us others,

well

that’s a good start and a good end to each day.

Gimme, Gimme

Make Meself Safe and Secure! ?

Saturday, November 18, 2023

What Will We Endure To Give

Our Enemies Peace?

Psalm 33:17-18

The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love …

Philippians 3:3

For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

In what do we put our trust and hope?

In money, privilege, and might?

The war horse looks strong. It will indeed aid the killing of many enemies.

And then what?

Winning a war is never a solution. It only changes and most often multiplies the problems.

The deeds, by which we are known as followers of Christ, have always been of sacrificial love. Helping in plagues ensuring one’s own infection and death. Working as caregivers on the battlefields and in the poorest of poor areas of life. Loving one’s enemies so completely that they capitulate to join in loving their enemies, for that is life, where hating one’s enemies is death, even if one continues to walk the earth.

So in what will we put our trust this day?

Is It All Falling Apart

Or Coming Together?

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Are These Just Clouds,

Or a New Kind of

Stealth Bomber?

Isaiah 57:16

For I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God, with steadfast love and mercy deals with us sinful lot of people, sending Jesus to save us, and entrusts to us that message of reconciliation. “You saved sinners-made saints: Share the Good News!”

What Good News is there to share today?

Peter Armstrong wrote in his weekly Mind Your Business Newsletter for CBC: “There’s an old joke that Canada’s economy is really just some banks, telcos and energy companies in a trench coat. But that doesn’t factor in the real estate industry.”

Lately, of course, we’ve heard a lot about consumer buying, fuel prices and taxes, interest rates and so many choosing between housing and food, while still living in houses and eating enough to not starve. Which is to say the degree of pain is sometimes locked into a standard of living that many in the world would gladly almost achieve, yet alone be able to continue in. But we are talking about losses in the face of inflation (economic manipulation by the wealthy at it’s heart) and not how good we expect life in Canada to continue to be. So all is well, right?

Maybe not at all, not at all.

Then Armstrong, commenting on a TED talk by the Irish economist David McWilliams, writes:

McWilliams “says a normal economist would come armed with charts and graphs and maps, the tools of his trade.

‘But I’m an Irish economist, so I’m only going to come here armed with some lines and verses of poetry,’ he says.

He starts by quoting the (Irish) poet W.B. Yeats. The Second Coming was written in 1919 and it famously describes a world falling apart:

‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…’

Remember, this was written in 1919. The Great War was over, peace had been restored to a weary world. And yet Yeats saw trouble.

McWilliams says all the economists back then were saying the world would go back to normal and everything was finally going to be OK.

Within a few years, Benito Mussolini was in power in Italy. Joseph Stalin was on the rise in the Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler had just staged a putsch in Munich.

“So what’s always bugged me is, why did the poet get things so right at a tipping point, and the economists get things so wrong?” asks McWilliams.

He says the artists, poets and musicians always seem to give themselves permission to think differently.

The TED Talk was done in Vancouver, so he quoted the Leonard Cohen line about how there’s a crack in everything, and that is how the light gets in.

‘What Cohen was saying to us was, “Look for the cracks, look into the cracks.” That’s where we’ll see the big picture,’ he says.

McWilliams says we are in a precarious moment in the world. And this TED Talk was done in April. The world has grown immensely more precarious since then.

He says at moments like this, the institutions risk falling into groupthink and confirmation bias.

‘So my idea, that I think is worth spreading, is the following: if you want to understand the world a little bit more clearly, listen less to my tribe, the economists, and listen to Yeats’s tribe, the poets,’ he says to thunderous applause.’”

Russia invades Ukraine and destroys countless lives. (Our inflation losses do not compare.) Hamas attacks Israel, kills and kidnaps civilians including children. Israel responds killing thousands and thousands of Palestinians as Hamas uses civilians, hospitals and schools as cover over their tunnels. Iran threatens to enter the conflict. The US already is in the area using it’s military on select targets in neighbouring countries.

Interest rates at home should be stable for a year, maybe. Maybe they will go down next year or soon thereafter. Maybe they will rise. Some food prices have dropped. Before this mess Silk (soy milk) sold for $3 for 1.89 litre. It rose to $5.50 at the highest with ‘special sale’ prices of 2 for $8.5. Then the sale price dropped to 2 for $8. Costco brought in 3 for $9 something. Now the price is dropped to 2 for $7.50. Something for us who pay the premium compared to milk, which we cannot consume for health reasons.

Where is the good news that is not false good news?

It takes starting with noticing that the real problem is our sinful ways that bring evil on others. That is at the bottom of all the other real bad, ugly evil, problems that we face in these days.

Poets see beyond the economics.

God’s saints see (enabled by the Holy Spirit) beyond the poets.

Thankfully we have God’s Word and Promise: God’s love is steadfast and his mercy endures, for each and all of us.

Angels for the Trickster?

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Shall This Place Then Be Called

Not ‘NearSite’ but

HereWalksGod’ or

‘AngelsAlways’?

Genesis 32:1-2

Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him; and when Jacob saw them he said, ‘This is God’s camp!’ So he called that place Mahanaim.

Hebrews 1:14

Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

…

Words of Grace For Today

Jacob, the trickster, after twenty years in hiding from Esau (from whom he stole his birthright), 14 serving Laban for his daughters and 6 for his flocks, sneaks away from Laban out of fear. Laban pursues him, and only a warning from God in a dream keeps Laban from doing Jacob harm. Instead they make a pillar of stones and make a covenant that neither will cross this point to do the other harm, nor will Jacob take other wives. Laban leaves Jacob, and Jacob continues on towards his birth home.

And then this passage: God’s angels meet Jacob so Jacob call the place Mahanaim, meaning two hosts or two camps.

If God sends angels to watch over and protect the trickster Jacob, then surely God sends angels to watch over each of his people, his broken and redeemed, sanctified people,

which is us.

Where will you see God or God’s angels watching, protecting, guiding you this day?

Why

Why Believe?

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

The Secret to Life is Simple: Believe in …

But There’s a Cost.

Psalm 118:26

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.

John 1:12

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Many of this world’s 8 billion people really do not welcome those who come in God’s name. Instead they gang up on those who are not willing or able to fight, cheat, and lie their way through life,

While this goes on to the detriment of so many people, God offers life abundant

to those who believe in Jesus name as the Son of God, the one who demonstrated God’s sacrificial love and eagerness to forgive, heal, all of us, and then to send us out to others, so they may know God’s grace.

Children God calls us.

Children of God, God calls us.

Children of God, God calls us and blesses us with life abundant as God created us to live.

So why do people not choose to believe in Jesus’ name?

First, to be clear, it’s not a choice anyone can make without the Holy Spirit empowering us to make it. It is gift, pure gift.

And then, according to the world’s standards and values, it is a losing proposition. One gets to give up and give away everything that God has given as gifts to us. God intends them to be shared. It’s humans who think they are to be hoarded and used as status, power, and leverage over others.

So why believe at all?

Most do not.

A few do.

And the saints live on from generation to generation, sharing the secret to life: sacrificial, gracious, abundant love.