Why Sing?

Or Dance?

Wednesday 22 February 2023

It’s Cold.

It’s Dark.

It’s Frosty.

It’s Brambles even!

It’s Just the Moon.

And It’s God’s Gift of Beauty

For Us Again!

Jeremiah 20:13

Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

Luke 1:46-48

And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;’

Words of Grace For Today

The world is in trouble, and it appears more dire than ever before. War, Climate Change’s storms and upheavals, Nature’s Fight Against Human Overpopulation with Disease new and old, More and More Lies and Deceptions that Polarize Populations into Chaos Making Room for Fascist Rulers, Greater and Greater Inequity Between Peoples, Swings for Correction like Me-Too that have become just as destructive as the horrors they try to rectify, and on goes the list!

And personally for us all. I’m sure that you have your own list of disasters just waiting to blossom like nuclear mushrooms in your life, just as I do: thanks to a justice system gone amuck, and drugs and greed bending weak minds towards homicidal endings of me like I’ve never encountered before.

So why should we sing thanks to God?

Like Mary, when God steps into our lives in a visible and undeniable way it usually does not produce wealth, power, and privilege the likes of which we’ve only dreamed. On the contrary it usually brings great hardship to our mornings, noons, and nights.

So how on earth are we to sing God’s praise for all this?

Simple. Start by recognizing that the everything we are and have and can do, starting with breathing, is a gift from God – that we invariably mess up – and that we only continue to breathe at all because God’s wondrous Grace and Love reach out to us to forgive us and give us new life, as God has done for all the needy in every generation …

no matter what comes our way, or we throw in our own way.

So sing, and give God praise, and dance a jig of thanks

again this day.

And breathe, wondrously.

Honestly

Getting Our Numbers Straight

Tuesday 21 February 2023

More than preparations for these kinds of numbers,

We prepare for God’s Gifts

with God’s Number One for us.

Second Samuel 24:10

But afterwards, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.’

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

David, the hero, warrior, leader, blessed by God, and revered ancestor of the country of Israel, takes time to confess his sin.

He counted the people, taking a census.

Now I’m not able to wrap my head around that as a sin, so why is it recorded. We all know that David had other much more spectacular sins that are recorded, not least is his affair with Bathsheba and murder of her husband and one of David’s soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, along with his confession of that sin after his son dies, a dancing down the streets in sackcloth in his grief.

It seems to many that such sins and admissions of sins, and blatant displays of guilt are not at all in the make up of real heroes, especially among those that are God’s own people! Yet this is the record for us.

When Jesus, like so many before and since, taught us to confess our sins, the hope is not that we would somehow imitate the greatness of David by such confession. In fact real confession is rarely displayed as David did. He was the King after all and the people (at least it seems David thought) needed to see that their King had confessed his terrible sins.

Why such a thing as confession? It is avoided by so many people, even pastors and congregational leaders, dismissed as something people are not comfortable with, something that will cut down on the number of people who come to church.

So instead of beginning worship with confession, it is avoided at all cost. Mention of sin is avoided as well, unless it is a hurled at others as a spear to indict them before God, and to justify their exclusion from worship, community and God’s favour.

Yet, Jesus calls us to confess our sins.

Without admitting and confessing our sins we have not begun to understand our place in creation, and our place before God, and our place before each other. We are not perfect. We are not ‘good enough’ even. Not for creation, God, or each other!

As we confess our sins, we start to see the wonder of God’s Grace for us: God forgives us, as God forgave David. God uses us imperfect creatures (and great sinners) just as God used David. We may not be kings, but we are people, precious in not only God’s sight. When we confess our sins we begin to find our humble place in creation, before God, and with others: we breathe only because God forgives us, and hopes for us and all people that we will learn how to forgive others.

What forgotten things have we ignored, forgotten ‘skeletons in our closets’ that eat at our spirits, forgotten or ‘wished forgotten’ sins again others and against God that in the ignoring of them incapacitate us to proceed through even a minute, much less a day, as God’s witnesses (object lessons, really) of God’s amazing love, grace, and forgiveness?

So how to start each day?

How to start each worship service?

How to start each significant conversation and project and hope and dream?

Sin is already there. No need to provide more. It’s always confession that starts us out right.

That’s number one.

So Long!

So short

Monday 20 February 2023

Dark Days, Dark Decades!

Hope Forever?

Job 14:1-2

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.

Hebrews 13:14

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Words of Grace For Today

Of all the projects she could have undertaken, Risha knew this would be her legacy. She’d earned her degrees in political science, biochemistry, philosophy, law, and her PhD in Oceanography.

She had designed the filter system and now led the corporation in charge of implementing the system in 100 locations around the ocean shores. While filtering and cleaning pollutants out of the ocean’s waters, effectively restoring water up to 500 miles around the filter, it would siphon off fresh water and provide irrigation and drinking water for areas that had gone dry and deserted over the last 30 years due to climate change.

The real ‘miracle’ of the filtering was that it could be set to consume carbon dioxide at huge rates. Turned and left on it would leave the air for 100 miles unbreathable, but if turned on and then off again, in cycles, the 100 filters could clear enough carbon dioxide from the air in 10 years to undo the carbon increase from the last 50 years, at least in their locations.

If she could just get 10,000 of the filters up and running within the next five years, they could reverse climate change completely, back to the re-industrial age.

That was her project!

Until the truth of Job was borne out again:

A mortal, born of woman … comes up like a flower and withers.

Risha, in the third year, well on her way to the 5000^th filter location, came down with cancer. She had blossomed so brightly and so many people had seen and put their trust in her. And then within a month she was gone. Because so many people wanted to get rich from Risha’s project and were fighting with everyone for their own advantage, something she kept at bay while she was alive, the projects ground to a halt, and even the established filters had trouble staying in operation.

Five years later, the last filter shut down for lack of funding.

How had it come to that!?!

There was so much hope for this to save us all, and now our only hope would be in the New Jerusalem.

What a loss? What a typical self-destructive development from miracle and cure to fighting and decay and destruction that would continue as long as one could imagine surviving the onslaught of climate change that had already destroyed a tenth of all the coastal lands, cities and people. Living inland was not easier. Storms and precipitation or droughts had made another 30% of all the land masses uninhabitable, and everywhere else it was more or less a futile struggle to keep going.

God, will we humans ever learn?

Save us!

(yesthereishopealways)

Alone

Forever?

Sunday 19 February 2023

Sometimes Both Paths and

All Choices Lead

…

Nowhere!

Psalms 42:9

I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?’

Matthew 14:23

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

Words of Grace For Today

There are, as Henri had experienced in spades, junctures in life’s torturous winding ways, when one has nothing left but to beg God:

Why have you forgotten me?

Jesus finds himself alone many times, and seeks God’s assurance in prayer, except the last time Jesus cries out that he knows that God has forsaken even him!

So if we experience the same abandonment, it should not shock or surprise us … and yet it does, and it overwhelms us, and it leaves us lost.

Better would be to live on, as a leaf fallen from a tree in autumn blown about until one comes to rest on terra firma, good only for fertilizer for other life forms.

Here we are though, abandoned by God and the sun may shine, but not for us. The winds may blow gently and the rains may fall softly, but not for us. People may smile and celebrate, but not for us, and certainly we are not smiling and celebrating!

We live on, but as shells lost in the primordial chaos of void before creation. Living is groundless, meaningless, directionless, purposeless, and dark. Oh so dark.

In those hours, days, weeks, years, decades even, our only hope (completely unaware of this hope’s possibility – so detached, forlorn, and empty as we remain, totally hopeless) is

that others will pray for us,

that Jesus will pray for us, and

that the Holy Spirit will do everything to save us, for we have nothing to give towards such a rescue, confession, repentance and possible renewal to life lived abundantly.

Yet that is what God does for each of us, each day, especially in our darkest times.

Ah, God would so delight in demonstrating how God can save even the most lost among us!

(Like you!?

Like me!?)

‘Final’ Translation

And As A New ‘Morrow

1) Lord, you are life’s hope when life withers away,
in clay and on rocks grow full in us,
be germinating seed, be a secure place,
Bring forth buds and bloom bright in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in this new growing day, blossom in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your strong, good hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this your planet.

2) Lord, you are life’s goodness where loving breaks down,
in our coldest times, breathe into us.
give generous spirits, be our warming light,
be hot flame, be burning in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
warming again this new day, burn bright in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your good gracious hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

3) Lord, you are life’s joy where all laughter is lost,
in our deepest dark, live on in us,
be joyous dreams dancing, be comforting sight,
be voices and sing on in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, a wonder filled new day, sing on in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your loving hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

Music from The Mass “Lied vom Licht” by Gregor Linßen

Und ein neuer Morgen (Herr, du bist die Hoffnung)

1) Herr/Gott, du bist die Hoffnung, wo Leben verdorrt,
auf steinigem Grund wachse in mir,
sei keimender Same, sei sicherer Ort,
treib Knospen und blühe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, blühe in mir.

Ref.: Halte mich geborgen,
fest in deiner starken Hand und segne mich,
segne mich und deine Erde.

2) Herr, du bist die Güte, wo Liebe zerbricht,
in kalter Zeit, atme in mir
sei zündender Funke, sei wärmendes Licht,
sei Flamme und brenne in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, brenne in mir.

3) Herr, du bist die Freude, wo Lachen erstickt,
in dunkler Welt, lebe in mir,
sei froher Gedanke, sei tröstender Blick,
sei Stimme und singe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, singe in mir.

Das Lied stammt aus der Messe “Lied vom Licht” vom Gregor Linßen
Die Original-Chornoten sind über den Verlag www.edition-gl.de erhältlich.

Original Choir sheet music is available (in German) from the publisher at www.edition-gl.de

Text from:

https://www.evangeliums.net/lieder/lied_und_ein_neuer_morgen.html

YouTube:

This is the best rendition I’ve found.

In a Worship Service:

https://www.zdf.de/gesellschaft/gottesdienste

Separated

from the Love of God?

Saturday 18 February 2023

Sometimes Even the Next Step

Is TOO Large!

Psalms 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

It seemed so simple to ask others to join in his outlandishly expensive garden project gone amuck. Truth is it took Henri a full day and a half to decide he’d take Francine up on her offer. Then it took him a half day again to actually get himself to start the process by calling people.

If one knew what Henri had gone through in those two days one would wonder that he even could come to the decision to invite other people to his farm and was able to start calling people he did not know.

Decades earlier, when Henri was a young man he’d met and fallen head over heels in love with Suzanne, and she with him. They dated all through college and were married a week after Henri’s graduation, to the relief of all their friends and family who wondered if either would dare to take the obvious leap. Both Henri’s and Suzanne’s parents had divorced, and died in their late forties. A trauma for both teenagers that seemed never to end as their siblings then took up to fighting over the inheritances, slim as they were. One would not blame them, their friends thought, if they avoided marriage and commitment and everything requiring trust. Even when Suzanne took a year off with their first child before she finished her degree and graduated suma cum laude with a double major! But there they were, married, joyously so, with 3 children as they broke into their 30’s.

Then … Suzanne had picked up Bert, May, and Zerish, 9, 7, and 5, from school, and headed back out to their acreage-farm. She’d stopped at the railroad tracks for a train when a drunk driver plowed into them shoving the car onto the tracks and into the oncoming train. The drunk driver survived with a few scratches but Suzanne and Bert were instantly killed. Miraculously the other two children were alive when the ambulance arrived. Then May died during the operation to repair a punctured lung and Zerish dwindled off into a coma during surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. Two long years Zerish hung on before he woke up, for two days, before a seizure and a massive bleed into his brain stopped everything. His organs simply shut down in unison.

Henri knew what St. Paul had suffered: arrest, jail time, beatings, whippings, having to run for his life, and how Paul was so certain nothing could separate him from the love of God. But Henri knew then and there that God had deserted him, not just a huge bit like when Suzanne and Bert had died. Not even the colossal bit when May died. No this was complete and ultimate abandonment.

He withdrew. He could trust no one. He went on with work, burying himself in it and became (almost in spite of himself) wealthy. Still he blew off anyone who tried to befriend him. Didn’t Francine know! Even 25 years later in his mid-fifties, Francine would get just a bit too close and bang the door would close in her face.

So when Henri called people to take on his garden project with him, it was beyond difficult for him. It was nothing short of a life-altering miracle. Many people knew it was out of the ordinary for Henri. Everyone, after all, knew of Henri. But Francine was beside herself with wonder. What had God done to Henri, anyway?! She realized that Henri had given up on God, but why had God waited so long to show him God had not given up on Henri? So why and how now?

Same question, she realized could be asked about most of us in our lives.

Even for you and me, today.

In the Beginning …

Lemons

Friday 17 February 2023

Smile, Sourly?

Hope Contagiously!

Psalms 104:24

O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

Revelation 4:11

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

Words of Grace For Today

Henri sat chewing on a blade of grass, wondering how his garden project had come to such a terrible juncture. It cost him six times or more what just going to the farmer’s market would have cost him, and then double that with the hail destroying half his crop. And what was he going to do with all the produce anyway, even the half that would still be harvested.

Mein Gott, Mein Gott, he thought!

Which brought him to wonder if God, the creator of the universe and all the creatures on earth felt the same way after humans made such a mess out of it all!

Except God probably knew what would become of humans! And God, of course, planned for that, too! So why did God let Henri make such a colossal mistake when he was just trying to do the right thing?

He remembered hearing that God most delighted when bent, perverted, and lost souls finally confessed, repented, and allowed the Holy Spirit to renew life in them.

Kind of like making lemon-aide out of lemons, only on a universal scale! To which Henri thought, ya, not just throughout the universe, but for all people!

So how to make ‘lemon-aide’ out of his garden project gone amuck?!

He just could not spend more money on the project, and this summer was pretty much set. His mind swam aimlessly finding no ‘lemon aide’, just ‘lemons upon lemons’ all the way down, and all the way back up.

So he called Francine. She was beyond busy she said, but she offered to get back to him the following week. Then she threw out as a good-bye, ‘why not take on all the people who didn’t get a garden with her? I’ll send you the list.’ click.

And there it was: it clicked. Involve more people. That was the answer, but Henri really loved his peace and quiet and solitude. He thought that maybe it was time to sacrifice a bit of that to help others. So he, procrastinated, ruminated, and waited a whole 2 days before he started calling and …

At the end of the week, more than a few people had shown up and claimed a portion of the garden as theirs to care for and to harvest, and share with Henri.

Henri said he already had enough coming in from the student workers for himself, so they all agreed that the food bank would see great donations of fresh and preserved produce, and even some people offered to make dishes for the food bank to distribute.

Henri thought: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. You are worthy to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. … Even ‘lemons’.

Fear Filled?!!

You better bet your little … until …

Thursday 16 February 2023

The Waters Now Calm,

Without Warning,

Can Churn

and Consume all Creation into Themselves.

Jonah 2:1-2

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Luke 12:7

But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Words of Grace For Today

I don’t know about you but if I were thrown overboard by a fearful ship’s crew, who saw me as the cause of a storm that threatened to take their ship to the bottom (where the people of that time understood it was the primordial chaos of precreation void!), and I ended up getting eaten whole by a huge fish, I might have good cause to be a tad frightened. Okay, let’s be honest I’d be in a full out panic once or twice over.

I’m not so sure I’d have time to pray in any coherent manner.

Life for the common folk in Jesus’ day was no different in analogous ways, tossed ‘overboard’ by the ruling foreigners, or by the religious lackies, and then ‘swallowed up whole’ in the morass of being poor, where nobody cared for the poor, except what could be gotten out of them to make the rich and ruling classes more comfortable in their exquisite lifestyles.

Life for most people today is really still the same.

So how are we not to be filled with fear? At any moment life can be torn from us for no good reason other than we are in some rich or powerful person’s way.

That can happen in a blink of an eye, getting pummeled in any number of ways by bullies (that hide even as respectable people), being pulled over by a cop, or falsely accused by a woman (who in this ‘me-too’ attitude is always to be believed – unfortunately the truth is some of what women have suffered more than deserves getting brought into the spotlight and dealt with. But the lies do not deserve the same blind acceptance as truth. Not ever, no matter who tells the lies!) or slowly ruined by jealous others who wish not to see one’s success for against it they measure themselves as utter failures (which they are, worse than they imagine!)

So how can we not be afraid?

God has ‘counted the hairs on our heads’ since before we knew how to remember from generation to many generations later with writing.

Of course, it has to do with today. Does God counting our hairs do any good for us? It is less a question about our hair, without which we can live. It has to do with whether God walks with us, carries us when we falter, and revives our hearts when they have succumbed to the chaos and evil of life all around.

And to answer whether or not God does that, God sent Jesus, whose story makes clear that God treasures us, each and every one of us.

So take that, you agents of evil who would try to teach us poor masses that we do not count. God has taught us to dance, even as we count, 1,2,3; 1,2,3; … in celebration for life renewed … by grace alone.

Valentine’s Love?

Hardwork?

Valiant with Tiny or Great Expectations?

Tuesday 14 February 2023

Burning Hot, As Hot as 2000 Cherry Red Chimney Pipes,

Love is Wonderful and

Dangerous?

Psalms 73:1

A Psalm of Asaph. Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.

Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Words of Grace For Today

Valentine’s Day, the day we celebrate love, and think seriously about what it means in life for us all.

It is rightfully described as that which holds life together, that which covers for so many shortcomings enabling us to live joyful, thank-filled and hopeful lives, that which is not cheap but rather will cost us daily irritations, immense pain, and sometimes even our lives.

Yet this is what God created us to live as: those who are sustained by God’s love, which enables us to love others with self-sacrificial love. The wonders of ‘being in love’ are wonderful, but short-lived. It’s a human body chemical thing at first. However long term one remains ‘in love’ only with tremendous work, growing self-awareness, and so much forgiveness.

Those who expect love to be easy or only beneficial to themselves, toss out the other either by taking them for granted or by leaving them … and thus they deny themselves the opportunity to love and be loved. Then one lives a short changed life, and all kinds of futile efforts are expended to try to achieve what is missing, for loving others at great cost to one self is an essential for life.

Those who work hard at love, and are willing to humble themselves to being the ones who forgive, not only the other, but themselves, are blessed, for they will find the Holy Spirit has given them the gift of a pure hearts, and that’s a wondrous blessing, each sun rise, sunset and all the moments between.

And for us all, love remains a dangerous thing, as dangerous as life itself: no one gets out of it alive.

Efforts?

Towards What?

Sunday 12 February 2023

Thinking We Can Find Our Way In The Dark

Or Even In Daylight?

Think Again.

Joshua 22:5

Take good care to observe the commandment and instruction that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

John 12:26

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

Words of Grace For Today

Getting around to serving Jesus, following him, and therein loving and serving God is not something for the faint of heart. If it is left up to us, none of are able to ‘get around to it’. Not on our own.

So why all the wasted words about trying to ‘get’ us to make these choices?

Nothing good comes of those words and nothing good goes into those words, no matter how many people and how many times people think that they are ‘encouraging, commanding, or inspiring’ others to follow Jesus and love God.

We are sinners. Simple start for each day is to admit that as best we can, and then pray for mercy.

Then maybe God will give us sight to see, hearing to hear, and heart to love God and God’s creation.

For today, how does it start?

Again, simply: confession, mercy, and hard work on our part, praying that God will make something good out of all our efforts.