The command has been carried out that Jonadab son of Rechab gave to his descendants to drink no wine; and they drink none to this day, for they have obeyed their ancestor’s command. But I myself have spoken to you persistently, and you have not obeyed me.
Luke 11:28
But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
God speaks.
Some obey, others not.
Well, some try to obey, and everyone fails. That’s human nature.
From CBC Ideas: About 2,500 years ago, Thucydides travelled ancient Greece, gathering stories about a brutal war that plunged the ancient world into chaos. He set high standards for accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness in his reporting.
His observations, so different compared to the ‘histories’ told as legends and myths, biased towards the speaker-author’s loyalties, are worth hearing any time, and surely today as ‘fake news’ and ‘spin’ and destorying of so many people polarize the populous into camps deaf-to-the-heart to each other.
First would be the horror that he saw every human would descend to preemptively commit murder and destruction against an ‘enemy’, even if it were a previously good neighbour or child or parent. When law is laid waste by corruption from within or out right destruction leaving all sense of security spinning in the wind for every person, then every person is easily capable of the worst atrocities. For 27.5 years the Peloponnesian War pitted not only Sparta and Athens against each other, but they drew every city-state into the fray. 27.5 years of horror and in the end the result was the destruction of every city.
That’s the result of humans ‘not obeying’.
That’s the result of ‘fake news’ and polarized citizens.
That’s the result of little and big lies accepted and created by Courts as facts, for it corrupts all of society’s trust in the law to maintain order, especially the trust of those who benefit from the corruption of the law by the Courts.
That’s the result of every little lie told out of greed, avarice, covetousness, hatred, fear, and revenge.
Where are today’s Thucydides, tellers of accurate, objective, and thorough stories reporting real events, and us little people dedicated to truth at all costs?
What will we be today?
Truth seekers and tellers?
Or
Spinners and corrupters of truth?
Blessed are those who God helps to find and to hold on to the truth, one day at a time.
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
Luke 1:69-75
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
Words of Grace For Today
Sotorus sat to copy his father’s (Peter’s) journal entry, which really was copied from Peter’s father, Isaac, and Isaac’s sister, Galilea, about Sotorus’ great-grandparents, Doug and Dawn, from the old digital disk to his paper journal with great care.
First he wrote:
“20 June 2299: All the digital records are disappearing into thin air. Though no one knows why for sure everyone suspects it has something to do with those deadly latency rifles used to end the last war on earth. Loaded with specific human traits, the charge would sit for years, even decades, before going off when it’s target came within 10 metres. Now two decades later so many people had been killed, even after the war, and the accumulation of the residue from billions of charges seemed to spread and wipe out not only their targets, but all nearby digital storage in the bio-memory chips used in everything for the last 90 years. So copying what we have as records of the past onto paper is the only way to preserve them at all.
“Albert Einstein was correct in many ways when he said, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’
“While explorers like my grandparents were off to Andromeda, those remaining on earth had reduced it to a thinly populated wasteland. No one had the energy or means to fight.”
What Sotorus could not know was the will to fight would return in 1450 years.
Sotorus’ journal entry continued with Peter’s entries from 3 October 2264:
“This from Isaac’s (my father’s) journal of 21 March 2246:
“This is about the day in November 2213 when my grandfather and grandmother, Doug and Dawn, and a stranger, made a quick and desperately simple decision that saved my life and the life of my sister, Galilea.
“This is what I knew about my grandparents decision to leave earth. Doug and Dawn had studied the beginnings of the universe all through university and wrote separate but related PhD dissertations on the doomed first expedition to Mars in 2029 compared to the more recent successful unmanned expedition to Andromeda’s closest star with planets in 2183. It was a no-brainer then when they were offered the opportunity to travel on the first peopled expedition to what people were calling the ‘Andromeda Earth’. In 2210 they packed their few possessions into storage and reported to train for intergalactic travel certificates. In 2113 they launched from earth to the moon, and two days later from there to Andromeda’s ‘third planet from the sun’.
“Eleven months after their three month long trip to A-Earth, as they called their destination planet, they and the other 45 mission specialists, had established the core of a settlement. The rich air and moderate gravity among the most interesting lush and vibrant plant and animal life forms seemed almost a paradise. They had hardly had time to consider more than their work studying the evolution of the plant and animal life that seemed to ‘teem up’ from the planet each day. Yet in those years they had also had us two children.
“I had not kept a journal but Galilea had. Her journal is lost, but I remember it pretty clearly, because we sat and read it often in her last year, as she suffered dementia, common among the most brilliant minds in their later years.
“Isaac was a spunky athletic 6 year old and his sister, that’s me, Galilea (Peter added, that’s my aunt), well I was not yet 2 but I was up and running, reading and writing already.
“This morning, an hour before sunrise, in the dark and bitter cold, the alarm had sounded. Everyone was told they needed to report to the spaceship, refurbished, refuelled and resupplied, and waiting for such an emergency these last four years. The Aearth’s crust had buckled up into a new mountain range on the far side of the planet and we had maybe 6 hours before the air would be poisonous. ‘Bring no more than 150 lbs with you!’ Everyone knew the fuel was not as combustible as the fuel they had used to lift off from earth so weight was indeed a problem.
“Our dad, Doug, called us children, from our studies in the ‘backyard’ near the river, started packing a small backpack, while Mom and us children fretted and argued about which things we could bring: a photo of our house, a rock from the riverbed that glowed at night, our computers and studies and papers, a favourite game made of wood and rocks, and my teddy bear. Finally Doug put his foot down and said we had just enough time to get to the spaceship, or we’d be left behind. With no more thoughts we grabbed only what was packed and headed off.
“At the spacepad, we registered and weighed our bags. We could have tossed in another 20 lbs. The security guard looked at us, checked off Mom and Dad’s names, Doug and Dawn. Then he looked at us children, Isaac and Galilea. He asked our parents if they had weighed us? No! Did they have to? Of course! So back to the scale we went. Together Isaac and I weighed 159 lbs. We all tossed our bags aside and, with the guard telling us we were out of time- others were waiting and time was tight, we two children stripped off our clothes until the scale stood at 154.
“The next person in line (we didn’t even know her or find out her name later) saw the chaos and offered to give up 10 lbs if the guard would let us children take our clothes along. A nod from the guard, a quick ‘thank you! thank you!’ and off we went through the gate to the loading queue as the woman behind us started tossing out big books from her case.
“Later Galilea wrote in her journal:
“Today, I’m not sure of the date, it’s been so confusing, we left a whole crowd of explorers and their children on another planet in the Andromeda galaxy, at a planet everyone called ‘Andromeda’s other third planet from the sun.’
Sotorus, grandson of Galilea, continued his paper journal below the above entry:
“Today is the last day of this millennium, 2299. It’s a day of freezing fog. We heard from many that those who lived at Aearth’s farthest bounds were awed by God’s wondrous signs all around them. They affirmed, and we can certainly affirm now as well, that God has shown to us all the mercy promised to our ancestors, to grant us that we, being rescued, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days.
“We can be thankful, that though the years have not been easy since the last big war, we (my two sisters, my three cousins, and I) are alive because Isaac and Galilea did not weigh more than 10 lbs too much, and an anonymous woman sacrificed her precious books for our grandpa’s and his sister’s lives.”
Sotorus could not know then, but his journal would be only one of a dozen that would survive the next 1500 years of ‘sticks and stones’. Without it no one would remember Doug and Dawn, Isaac and Galilea, Peter, or Sotorus. Nor would anyone remember that people had migrated to Andromeda and back, or that half the explorers had chosen to stay at another inhabitable planet in one of Andromeda’s star systems.
…
What will we weigh to take with us today?
What out of our past given to us by our ancestors?
What of our baggage and sins and horrible mistakes?
What of our joys and hope and dreams?
What of our lives?
From the Saints?
Of our spirits?
Of our love?
…
What we choose will give or take life to more people than we can imagine, in ways only God can show us!
There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
1 Peter 1:15
Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;
Words of Grace For Today
It was just a four day outing into the Boundary Water Canoe Area. The first day the sun shone bright and warm, the winds were light and mostly at their backs. Camp that first night was everything they’d dreamed of for their honeymoon. What neither could know was that it would all dramatically change soon enough.
Brent and Nellie had this planned since they were seniors in High School. During University they’d continued to date, except for those few months when they’d fought and broken up and tried to imagine life without each other.
It was the last thing each had wanted, but in their chemistry class the professor had assigned them to work together on a lab and demonstration to teach the complex events of nuclear fission compared to nuclear fusion. It had nearly cost them their sanity as they tried to work on the project without being anywhere near each other. It was that fusion part that had, ironically, brought them together to film their presentation to a class of High School students and their parents.
After they got over their awkwardness and moved into the presentation everything started to flow, like it had for them before. Then the slide presentation simply quit. The computer died. So without missing a beat they started to really click and work together, one talking while the other drew on the presentation paper they had for ready to record questions on, then switching roles as each led with their strengths. That paper and their voices were their only presentation medium. Like a dance couple they had pulled it off with grace, and in fact their impromptu final demonstration of fusion, a completely unplanned kiss, drew applause … and their chem prof used the video of their presentation as a demonstration for their class and for years afterwards of what an A+ presentation looked like!
That kiss rocked their worlds, providing balm for so many hurts.
Within days they both knew from their own experience so much more about God, their Rock and Salvation, than ever before … most of it was about mercy and forgiveness.
That’s God’s holiness in motion, even for us today.
He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.
Or perhaps better pro-nouned:
God sustained the people in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; God shielded them, cared for them, guarded them as the apple of her eye.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
Led out of slavery, across the land of a hostile despot, pursued by well trained, deadly soldiers, saved by a miracle crossing the Red Sea into the wilderness, and then?
What good is it to be freed from slavery only to end up in the wilderness to die of thirst, or hunger, or empty hearts and souls unable to imagine God’s grace?
So God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people in the barren howling wasteland. God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people with love, for there is nothing so powerful.
Seeking to establish a democracy leaders of the country (politician, banker, and publisher) arrive at the White House for a week of consultations. The brilliant writer leads them to craft a wonderful constitution. The President ‘interferes’ by bringing two of the greatest minds into the room with them. The greatest minds are from opposite parties and from opposite ends of the spectrum of thought, especially about how a democracy should function … except for one basic foundation.
Stymied by the constant arguing that prevents any consensus about what should and should not be included in the new constitution, the writer finally seeks out the President to silence the arguing. They only have one day left to finalize their document!
The President advises the writer that the goal is not a constitution, written and sealed for adoption. The goal is to teach by example, and in that example reach into the leaders’ hearts, minds, and souls to show them that the foundation of democracy is not any written document or anything else, except for the willingness to listen with respect to one’s opponents. If this small group of leaders learn to respect that one foundational principle, not in writing, but in their hearts, minds and souls, then they will teach others by example back home. With that principle they will be able, not easily, but successfully, to write and adopt … and the hardest part … and to follow the constitution with respect for all opinions honestly presented for consideration. (From West Wing)
Our foundational principle for life is not merely for the worst of all forms of government, (except all the others). Our principle for life is what God gives us, love. Living that love, trusting that love, listening to each other with that love, these are the things that Jesus does for us setting an example, so that we may live, trust, listen with love for others, so that they may learn to live, trust, and listen with love. With this miracle, for it can only happen by miracle transforming our hearts in spite of ourselves, God brings us through every barren wilderness to the Promised Land.
Today we get to live out the love that God has for us.
That’s Light work, spreading God’s miracles with abandon across the landscapes of all creation. Ready or not God already has sent us.
Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.
Acts of the Apostles 17:30
While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
Words of Grace For Today
A sensitive, and creative pastor came to visit on his rounds, first Sheila and then Roxy that seventh day. He started, as always, by reading the 23rd Psalm to each woman. He went on to explain that God worked in mysterious ways for all of us. God knows we all sin. God calls us to repent, and God knows we may or may not repent, but all of us will return to sin.
And God planned for that, too.
So God always offers us a new beginning, a beginning without the burden of our sins of the past, without the burden of others’ sins, with an assurance of God’s blessings, not because we earn them, but simply because God so chooses to be gracious to us, especially when we do not deserve anything good!
As the women in turn started to tell him the barest of details about their situation he realized they had much in common yet they were so different. So he arranged for the women to share a room when they were moved out of the ICU that afternoon.
After they were both moved into the room, monitors still hooked up to each, both now able to talk and move slowly, the torrent of conversation, anger, grace, and love started to flow between the women, and eventually their few guests, long abandoned family and friends.
So much for obeying God’s commandments in order to be blessed or disobeying to be cursed.
God planned for that, too.
For us? Yes, for us, too!
Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.’
Luke 22:35
He said to them, ‘When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘No, not a thing.’
Words of Grace For Today
If we live life in order to have more money and a full purse,
If we live life in order to have the best bag of everything,
If we live life in order to have the best footwear,
… If we live life in order to have things, power, status, …
Then …
Well then we will always not have enough and we will lack for what we think we need.
This is the way of the world, and it brings more destruction, disease, and destorying to others and to oneself, always more, but not goodness, always evil running others and oneself closer and closer to meaningless and death. If you want an eye-full of that watch Succession, the HBO series, or simply open your eyes to see how so many people live in the world around us.
This is not a fun way to live, no matter if people party hard and seem to be enjoying themselves. In truth this kind of living can only be pursued if one hides from one’s self, one’s real self.
God created us not to take from the world and claim it all to be ours. God created us to receive enough and share everything we have with others.
Jesus sends the disciples out with everything they need: kind hearts and a message of God’s love for all people! They lack for nothing.
God leads Moses who leads the people into the freedom of the wilderness, out of slavery, and though they barely have enough to survive, and it’s touch and go more than a few times, they always have enough … as long as they remember that God has led them and accompanied them all their years, even their ‘40’ (which is a symbol for ‘lots and lots – more than enough to count’).
Today we live in circumstances that outwardly do not appear to be wilderness: there are roads, vehicles, cities, barns and houses in farm yards, and industrial sites of many, many kinds. We call it civilization, but no matter what it looks like from the outside, if we do not have hearts ready to share God’s Word of Grace, all this is mere cover and running, running hard in the barbaric wilderness of humans bent on destroying, making ill, and destorying one another.
What will our day be like today, if not another blessed journey with God walking with us? Breathe. Give Thanks. We lack for nothing.
What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.
Words of Grace For Today
Oh that we might all see, hear, and follow God’s Word.
Recommended by a CBC economics writer I’ve watched 3 seasons of the HBO series “Succession”. It’s horrible. Or more frightening it’s an honest portrayal of capitalism today, in all it’s corruption, denigrations, and perversions at the highest and greediest levels. I would not recommend anyone suffer watching it.
There are better things to occupy one’s time and mind on.
Like Yellowstone, which portrayed an abusive, violent, and corrupt life of cattle ranching and all around it in Montana, Succession uses the wealthiest, selfish, greediest levels of corporate owners as the setting to display murder, perverse sex, alcohol and drug use and addition, and abuse of all kinds. Even the ‘best’ of characters, of course ‘pure’ mid-westerners from Minnesota, play out unbelievable abuse against other people, to no one’s benefit.
At first one can pretend anyway that these things do not really happen. Then the onslaught of repetition wears down one’s defences and one capitulates: this is how people actually live. There is some basis in reality that is used to portray these pathetic ‘hero’ characters, events, and disasters of humanity.
One must think: what has the world come to, anyway?!!
Which makes one remember the same selfishness, greed, and perversions reported about other ‘empires’, like Rome and even King David.
What is it about humans that when we are blessed with privilege, means, and opportunity we use it to destroy other people and any goodness that might be in us?
Remembering this about other times and most about our own, can we hear more clearly the petition: O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord!
God’s Word stands in stark contrast: Jesus comes as God most privileged, and sets that all aside to live as one of us, one who sacrifices everything of himself to pay for our unending sins, so that we might be free of them and live as God’s own children. So that we might be blessed to be blessings to others.
Into the pathetic, perverse, and violent state of our dark world God’s Word comes to us. God sends us out to share that Word with all people: What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.
Today, which will we be and do? Our own small versions of selfishness, greed and perversion that is everywhere and in every time so rampant? Or the life-renewing proclaimers of God’s Word of Grace for all?
The Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.
Matthew 25:40
And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Words of Grace For Today
As we do to the least of these, you have done it to me!
So God gives notice that God accompanies even the poorest, most ignored, the most denigrated of the people on earth.
And what we do to them, we do to God.
Offer them mercy, kindness, love, and one’s ear, and so it is that we will hear God.
Offer them condemnation, cruelty, hatred, and one’s cold shoulder, and so it is that we turn a cold shoulder to God.
We might hope that God would respond in kind to all those who exercise evil against the poor, and us among them.
Doch, God is merciful and loving towards all people, even the most evil, waiting and hoping they will know God’s presence, grace, and judgment to be everything that makes life worth living.
What will you evil people do this day to God and God’s poor people? Will we be among the evil ones?
Or will we celebrate God’s presence with kindness and mercy towards all people?
With Great Effort and Big Machines (and cruel words)
We Destroy and Destory,
Doch God Saves All Creation
and Us In It
With A Word.
Psalms 33:9
For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
Matthew 8:8
The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.
Words of Grace For Today
It’s cold again this morning. Not the coldest, but enough that one needs take care before one goes outside, care to dress warm enough, not to leave any skin exposed, even a piece of one’s face that cannot be warmed quickly.
When crises rise up in our path, blocking our way forward, it is perhaps not so heart wrenching as to watch one’s daughter fall ill and no doctor’s efforts can save her. It may be worse, as war or earthquake or rising oceans, or other people rip us out of our lives and leave us with nothing more than the clothes on our bodies, if that.
Baptized in water and word, born of the Spirit from above, we can find our way to God’s promises, for when God speaks it is so.
So God created the world.
So Jesus cures us of our every ill.
So it is.
But when we cannot find our way back to God’s promises, and we flounder in waters too deep, cold, and wild for us to survive in, then what?
Then God accompanies us into the deep, cold, and wild, and finds us with a Word holy and simple: I love you!
And that is more than anything else in all the universe.
For no matter what happens to us, God welcomes us home … with a Word.
