Category: Moon

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.

Wonders

Wonders of Wonders

Sunday, December 10, 2023

In Our Faces Wonders,

and Almost Hidden Wonders …

All Leave Us Awestruck …

Deuteronomy 3:24

O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might; what god in heaven or on earth can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours!

1 Corinthians 12:6

… and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Many people through the ages have looked in awe at things found in nature, as huge as the sky reaching across the universe or as tiny as the parts of an atom, and given God credit for creating an awesome universe for us to live in.

As well we have experienced first hand the power of storms, cold and hot, with violent, destructive winds; we have experienced the immense stillness of a calm day from atop a mountain looking out over snow, trees, lakes, rivers and oceans; we have experienced the fresh crisp air of a sunny winter day, and the warm sunrise of an early summer morning; we have marvelled at how life returns in the spring to the plants, and how life begins in animals and in our own children;

and we have been in awe of all that God has created.

There is, though, no greater wonder to behold, than God’s forgiveness, which allows us to heal after we are hurt or have hurt others.

This is the wonder of wonders,

that gives us renewed life each morning, noon, and night.

The Light of Christ

Guiding …

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Into Our Darkness,

Jesus Enters as an Infant

and Shines!

Isaiah 60:20

Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.

John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Hiking in the coastal forests, up and down hills, the tree canopy covering any view of the sky or the ocean or the mountains further inland, we came upon a lake. It was not a sandy shore. Rather the only access to the water was down a slope of a huge rock that stretched at least 20 meters wide and 40 down to the water. It was growing dark but we rested. The two young boys romped a bit. I, the only one of us parents with navigational skills, explored further for where the trail picked up. There was not a trace.

Distances were hard to gauge but we’d parked one car about 5 km further down the coast where the trail crossed near the edge of a small coastal town not far from our home. The other we left where we’d started hiking mid to late afternoon in a spot, one of many along the 186 km long trail, where one could drive, park, and jump on the trail for a shorter or longer hike, instead of taking the whole 186 in one long, multi-day hike.

But there was no trail to follow, not in either direction around the lake, nor back in any direction where we’d come. Cell phones were a new thing and I had one with me, but there was no service, not for the last kilometre or so.

Finally I hiked back to where there was service, called a friend, and even he had no clue where the trail went. He’d not be on this section enough to know where we were.

So I headed back in growing darkness, mountain lions frequenting the area as well as bears, navigation with a flashlight in spots where I needed to see, and walking in the dark where I could save battery power. This was long before LED’s so the flashlight would last maybe another half hour. …

Life has many such experiences, where serious darkness overwhelms us, where we lose the path forward, where danger could be just around any bend, behind any tree.

That darkness is the darkness of the soul.

That’s the darkness that God sent Jesus to be born as one of us, to live among us teaching and healing, and to save us with the sacrifice of his life. The light of Jesus’ life, teachings, healings, and death shines bright in every darkness, guiding us onward even when we become lost in the darkness, overwhelmed with the evil around us, alone against those that would lie and serve the devil in so many ways, in order to destroy us.

Thank God for that light!

Thank God each morning, noon, and night for that light.

…

in the dark the trail approached that big lakeside rock, winding it’s way around the steep uphill side of it and the hill that extended above it to the right. I needed the flashlight to find my way through a darker patch, unsure if there were rocks I would stumble on, and there

to my left on a tree was a trail marker, pointing to the left, down and back around a switchback, down to a creek with rocks to step across it and a clear trail that headed around the lake on that side.

I backtracked, continued on the ‘wrong’ trail to the lakeside, collected the other three, and in the dark we wound our way around that lake, through the trees as the moon rose lighting our way past more lakes and through more trees, until we arrived at the car, parked and waiting for us.

Visions and Realities

Friday, November 24, 2023

Visions of Grace,

Brighter in the Darkness of Our Realities,

Than the Moon on a Clear Winter Night.

Zechariah 13:9

And I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’

Revelation 21:3-4

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

The day is coming, when …

The day is coming, when will it come?!

The day is coming, when death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more!

When will it come!!?

That is a vision of God’s promises brought to completion for us all.

Meanwhile the realities we face are obvious:

It is as if we are in the smelters cup, over the fire, dross (which we have so dearly accumulated and attached ourselves to) is burning off, and we are poured into moulds of things precious and of use …

well,

of use to God, and maybe not to our worldly ways of evaluating things.

The realities of our daily lives are challenging to say the least, just to survive

as

God’s saints

pulled and pushed and cajoled and seduced by temptations to trust not in God’s good graces, but rather in our own efforts to secure life for ourselves.

Thank heaves we have visions

of God walking with us,

among us,

working for us,

completing some of the Promises God makes each day,

also this day.

God’s Reach

Into And Around Us

Thursday, November 16, 2023

For Our Darkest Times,

God Works the Greatest Wonders

Light in our Nights of Dread.

Jeremiah 32:40

I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me.

1 John 4:9

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

…

Words of Grace For Today

If we live thinking God does not matter, doing neither good nor bad, then our days will be more than dark. They will be desperately hopeless.

So that we do not fall into that despair, God works many wonders in and around us, in every generation.

Jeremiah reports that God makes a new covenant, an everlasting covenant (one that is valid still today!), so that God will always do good for us, and so that we will fear God and not turn from him.

Luther put it well that fear alone of God is miserable; one needs also the love of God so that one fears and loves God in all things.

Even when we have feared and loved God most of our lives there is no guarantee that we will be fully assured of God’s love in the next moment, facing the next awful challenges, challenges that threaten our very lives and the lives of those we love.

So that even then we can remember God’s good works for us, God sent Jesus to live among us, to live out a story that we tell even today, and a story that will be told until there are no more humans to tell it: Jesus came to live, teach, heal, and die for us in order to demonstrate blatantly how much God loves us.

When we remember how much God loves us then we can also remember to love God,

and then life is not so miserable,

for there is hope

for tomorrow

and beyond.

Like Yeast

Just a Little Yeast

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

What little light can we add

to the ‘crescent moon’ light of other’s struggles,

so that the Light of Christ shines

brightly for them as well,

and for us?

Psalm 22:26-28

The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live for ever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

Matthew 13:33

He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

This news came Monday in the CBC newsletter brief:

N.W.T. coastal communities walloped by weekend storm

October 23 , 2023 • 04:44 PM CDT

It was a weekend to remember for people in some of the N.W.T.’s coastal communities, as a storm system brought high winds and massive, crashing waves — and people scrambled to save boats and cabins from washing away.

I read news like this, disasters that others struggle through, with a huge bit of distance in my mind and heart, until

I realize that some day for some reason news like that will be reported about this area, and I will be the one to struggle to survive through it.

The Psalmist repeats a promise often reflected in scriptures, that God will look after the poor, hungry, thirsty, and the desperate.

Matthew reports Jesus’ words on how God works for the people: God works through the little works of our hearts and hands, giving aid to those in need. Just a little from one person inspires another to do something as well, and that inspires another, until the help is sufficient.

Today, how can my small capacity (not so deep in poverty as months past when I had $69 a month to live on!) to help others to bring to them what they need.

I’m not sure that those in the affected N.W.T. communities still need anything I can deliver, nor that I can deliver anything to Ukraine or Gaza or Israel or any of the other distant places where people hope against hope to survive another day, another night.

There are those who struggle just as hard living not far from us, maybe without real shelter, without anything to call ‘home.’

How can I help them?

What can I do today to help them?

What I have to give is not much more than words, yet who can I inspire with a word today, as I get water, visit the library, pickup at the food bank, stop at a store where I cannot afford what I really need?

What can any of us do this day? And every ‘this day’ to come?

The Cracks

That’s how the Light gets in.

Thursday, September 21, 2023

The Light Is Gold,

The Light Is Distant,

The View Mottled.

How Does the Light Reach Us?

Zephaniah 3:7

I said, ‘Surely the city will fear me, it will accept correction; it will not lose sight of all that I have brought upon it.’ But they were the more eager to make all their deeds corrupt.

Luke 19:45-46

Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer”; but you have made it a den of robbers.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

In all our efforts to have a ‘good’ life, we most of all deny that we have screwed up life tremendously.

We try to pretend that it’s just a little problem, that we did something ‘not quite right.’ When in fact the result is a crack in the foundation of our lives that tears more than the curtain in the temple. It tears apart our own hearts, minds, and souls.

Whenever God gives us ‘temples’ and ‘houses of prayer’ we turn them into ‘dens of robbers’ in so many ways, so many same old, same old ways, that people have used since the beginning of time, all trying to make our own way in life and make it better than it was. The more God gives us the more eager we are to make all our deeds corrupt, trying to cover up our latest corrupt deeds.

What does God do with us, then?!

God uses exactly those cracks in the foundation of our lives to shine the Light of Christ into the foundations of our lives,

to revive us.

God never repairs the cracks, as if they never were. The wounds heal, though the cracks remain, so that the Light can continue to shine in on us

so that we can live and breathe in the Light

even as we turn yet to more corrupt deeds,

also this day.

By God’s Grace alone, though we can breathe.

Breathe,

and bask in the Light,

and give God thanks,

and trust the call to go out to share the Light with all people.

When I Wake Up

I know who I am going to be!

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

The Moon Sets as the Dawn Breaks,

Who Will We Be This Day?

Proverbs 14:26

In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and one’s children will have a refuge.

Romans 8:35

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

…

Words of Grace For Today

Knowing who we are is a great start to any day.

Often our confidence in who we are is lost in delusions and dreams unreal.

There is only one identity that we can know of ourselves that will bring us life with each breath and that is …

—

Yet there is, before we speak of it, so much that would tear us from that identity.

Not least of all is our own drive and dreams to be something worth being.

Through hardships we forge ahead, proving we are worth the breath we breathe.

Through distress we dig deep, proving we are made of goodness.

Through persecution we deny our persecutors their satisfaction, proving we cannot be conquered (even as we sink deeper into the abyss.)

We try to survive through famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, but then the course of nature claims us in our deaths.

Oh, how futile all our struggles turn out to be. And how foolish our enemies have made themselves out to be, as they sink faster into the abyss with each move made against us!

There is no confidence we can have, about anything, least of all about ourselves that will save us.

We are doomed, all of us.

—

The one confidence that we have is a confidence given to us, though we do not deserve it, not at all, not at all.

That identity is one given to us by Jesus: we are the bearers and sharers of Jesus’ love for the world and all people ever.

From this love, nothing can separate us,

because God gives it to us each day, each hour, each minute.

Orphaned

Not

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Feeling Abandoned, Alone, Like the Moon, an Aside on a Cold Landscape … Is that us?

Psalm 42:6

My God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

John 14:18

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We fear being abandoned by all who love us, of being desperately alone. Like orphans bereft of loving parents, with no one to care for us.

So, remembering God’s promises, we pray always that God will be for us.

God of Paul and Peter, of Jeremiah and David, and of all the saints who have gone before us, guide us as your Church to genuine love for all people, and all creation, passing on to others your bounty of gifts in service to you, who showed us the way of the Cross as your way for all whom the Spirit calls to follow you. O God, You know: Hear us.

God of all the wonders of this planet, remind us that from the beginning of creation, you knit together a world meant for harmony. Protect and restore the wasted places to joy and gladness. O God, You know: See us.

God of all peoples, stir the leaders of nations and towns, militaries and courts, to listen for you. Let your call for justice reach all people and bring deliverance where there is oppression. O God, You know: Guard us.

God of steadfast love, show your love and faithfulness to those in despair. Increase their strength, care for all who feel low, keep safe any in the midst of trouble, protect vulnerable people from harm, comfort all who are ill and those who care for them. Today we especially pray for …. O God, You know: Hold us.

God of our hearts, encourage those who offer their gifts and talents in service to your church. Energize this congregation’s leaders, musicians, teachers, greeters, and administrators so they may be transformed in sharing your grace. O God, You know: Call us.

God of all the saints, death is overcome in Christ’s resurrection. We rejoice with the faithful departed (especially). Sustain us in hope until we come at last to our heavenly home. O God, You know: Carry us.

Your mercy is great, O God, and You know us better than we know ourselves. Into your hands, O God, we commend all for whom we pray, in the name of the one who reconciled all creation to himself, Jesus Christ our Savior.

Let it be so also this day.

Tasting

What Does Life Taste Like, Anyway?

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Can We Ever Taste The Trees Up Close,

The Cold Fog,

The Distant Shore,

The Clear Moon?

As God’s Works For Us!

Isaiah 63:7

I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

1 Peter 2:3

if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We can observe 93 billion light years of universe, though we estimate the universe is more than 7 trillion light years huge.

Why did God create all this?

Before creation it was only void, emptiness, and we can anthropomorphize that God easily could have been lonely. But lonely for such small creatures so capable of evil as us? Really!

The earth’s diameter is only about 13 km, and it’s circumference is 40,000 km. In other words from here to the opposite side of the earth is only 13 km, straight down through the core and back up. Or we can travel from here to the opposite side and back in about 40,000 km. That’s only 42 billionths of one light year. In other words we live our whole lives within 42 nano seconds of a light-year.

Why would God create the entire universe, just for us to exist? Or did God? Maybe we were an afterthought, or a mistake, or a side-effect. (The juries would then be out on whether we are a good side-effect or a bad side-effect or even a deadly side-effect.)

Like a medication that tastes bad but is supposed to do us good, except it turns our stomach so that we cannot hold it down: Maybe that is the kind of side-effect we are in God’s plans for the universe?

Except

when we have tasted how marvellously good God is to us, forgiving us, loving us, renewing us, and sending us out with a purpose grand enough to take more than all the life we have to give, then

we, small as we are, can do none other than go out

recounting the gracious acts of God for us,

for us all.

So it is we go out also into this day, whatever it may bring.