Poverty & Homelessness

Finding Us

In the Fog

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Freezing Fog Is

God’s Painting

Beauty

In The Cold and Dark

Ezekiel 34:16

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

Luke 15:6

And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Words of Grace For Today

The bones are dry, dead, gone.

God assembles them.

Breathes on life into them again.

And we live.

…

The cantankerous ram is lost, yet again.

He’s found by the dedicated shepherd caught in a thorn thicket, unable to free himself.

The shepherd suffers cuts and tears and blood and time … rescuing the ram from the thicket.

And then the walk home, the ram limping along, not able to fight or think of running off again.

And we celebrate.

…

The enemies are strong and attack from afar.

The powerful and rich are greedy and corrupt and rot the nation from within.

Many people suffer lives of agony without the necessities, yet with joy that God is with them. They are the winners, even as the corrupt bask in their wealth and power, for

God comes to rescue the lost, the ones suffering, the ones denied life, and the fat, corrupt, unjust, and cruel powerful and rich are brought to their knees and left destitute on this earth and still devoid of a soul.

…

These we know as surely as the fog of the night is captured in beauty in the morning light on all the tree limbs and brush of the wilderness.

So our hearts, though suffering oppression and abuse, are filled with the free beauty of God’s creation and the cold of the night,

While God warms our hearts, minds, and spirits by the fire.

…

How shall we enter this day if not with unending thanks to God, and clarity of our mission to share life abundant with all people.

What Are We Doing

To God?

Monday, March 6, 2023

Not the Poorest,

Still With Candles For Light,

We Celebrate Being Alive

Zechariah 2:12

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?

Small

Words, Mighty Results

Sunday, March 5, 2023

With A Word God Creates!

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.

Wake Up!

See The Poor

Saturday, March 4, 2023

How Wide Is Your Sky That You Wake To?

What Joy Do You Know

and Share?

Psalms 12:7

You, O Lord, will protect us; you will guard us from this generation for ever.

John 6:63

It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Words of Grace For Today

The world is in trouble. Grave trouble. Dark trouble.

We are all going to die.

That’s just how it is.

Knowing that God walks with us and protects us gives us the spirit to move into all that trouble, bringing blessings, peace, and joy.

Harmon wakes cold in the winter and too warm in the summer. His insulated tarp tent is a collection of 2 years of collecting other people’s junk. His greatest boon was when a foreman at a construction site let him pick through the scraps before it was shovelled into the dumpster for disposal. He landed 5 insulated tarps in rough shape, and he came back later to get the few metal 2×4’s and five 2×6’s the foreman let him put to the side because he could barely carry the tarps. Even then he couldn’t manage the 2×6’s so the foreman tossed it all in the back of his pickup truck and had a young worker deliver it and Harmon back to his campsite in the river valley or as near as they could drive. The young man helped carry it all in, he said under orders from the foreman.

It was a tough life, Harmon knew. But it was so much better than living with his uncle up north. There he woke to getting hit before breakfast for he never knew what. His uncle served the same for lunch, supper, and before bedtime. It was better than what his friends managed in the tent city downtown, where the only thing between them and the elements and thieves was a thin piece of tent and their sleeping bags. Though they had ready access to water, showers, supplies and clothes. Twice a week Harmon hiked up the river a mile or so and then across and up into downtown for a shower and supplies, and food, sometimes even a hot meal. Otherwise he was content to collect scrap wood for a fire, read books he got from a helpful woman at the library (they were going to be tossed out anyway), write and draw. It wasn’t much, but along with helping serve meals on Sundays at ‘his’ church, he kept his spirits up.

We are all going to die. That’s 100% death rate for us. But before then there is life. Best to keep it in perspective.

Paul writes that the body is nothing, but Harmon knew that you needed to care for the body or the mind and soul had no chance at all. And you needed to care for your mind and soul or your body had no chance at all either.

What do you wake to each morning? How many running feet of floor or square feet of space is yours to roam? How many hours does it take to provide all that for yourself? Do you provide for others? Do you find time to volunteer? Do you see, hear, know, or remember the homeless, the poor, the ones Jesus came to live among?

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.

God Works Not With Perfect

but with us.

Monday 26 December 2022

We’d Like to Think We Are Perfect

And Others Make the Pollution For God to Deal With!

…

But If We Look Up Close and Are Honest

We Are Also So Broken,

and Only By Grace Do We Live,

But Oh How We Live

Blessed By God’s Grace.

First Kings 8:66

On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went to their tents, joyful and in good spirits because of all the goodness that the Lord had shown to his servant David and to his people Israel.

Luke 2:16-17

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;

Words of Grace For Today

God Speaks,

Things Happen,

Unexpected, Inexplicable, Wondrous Things.

God Acts,

which is the same as God speaking!

And we are astounded (if we care to notice at all) how God works in and among and for the poor, the outcasts, the lowest of the lowest, and the least remarkable people on earth to carry a message of Grace, Love, and Peace,

from God to us all.

Like shepherds, we get to go

to go out

to go out and tell the world

what great goodness, mercy, and blessings God has shown us

simple

poor

outcast

broken and sinful

folk.

It’s too unbelievable to not be true?

Friday 23 December 2022

Even at -39⁰ the morning

starts

again

with

Eucharist

breakfast.

Psalms 21:13

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength! We will sing and praise your power.

1 Timothy 3:16

Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory.

Words of Grace For Today

There are stories that are just too unbelievable to be made up. My ex, a bunch of women, the cops, and the courts gave me such a story. If I had not been so lied about I would never believe what happened, being kicked out of apartments for no good reason except someone was trying to frame me, being arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison for crimes that never happened (yet alone were committed by me!), and financially sent into debt so far I’ll never see my way clear in this lifetime.

That’s the evil done to me.

Then there is the rest of the story, of people quietly acknowledging what they saw happening as corrupt and unjust, of life criminals going out of their way to protect me from real harm in jail (while guards and other inmates certainly sought to kill me – without getting caught), of opportunities and circumstances that provided me enough to survive on, and the skills to better and better protect myself from the elements and the ever-present criminals, … and from the on-going lies others tell about me which are then used in court over and over again, even though anyone with half a mind knows what is said are lies, yet again.

And the mystery, not that I can survive in spite of it all, which is substantial enough, but that God has blessed me, walked with me in very visible, tangible and life-giving ways, and protected me from all harm that would do me in.

Jesus’ story is like that, too. Every story of God making things happen in spite of evil people working to ‘get ahead’ is like that, too.

There are countless stories like mine. People are dealt with unjustly by people intentionally doing evil. And God providing a better life for them in the midst of all that evil.

Makes one stop and contemplate, how Advent calls bring us to prepare, and Xmas culture lays great expectations on us, and yet God reaches into our lives and brings to us each Christmas (in spite of all the things we do to avoid noticing God at work) the wonder and awe of God being everything for us, even as a young infant child born in poverty.

Thank God for that, again.

And again this day, we stop to wonder in awe, and give God thanks for the simplest things that show us God walks with us.

Promises, Promises

Saturday 12 November 2022

The Reason to Hope:

Shadows Always Point to the Light!

OR Grace!

I’ll take both, thank you.

Isaiah 51:11

So the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Revelation 21:4

God 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

To return home singing with everlasting joy and gladness through every fibre of our being, and that sorrow and sighing at the evils that can be done to innocent people shall flee away to never be seen again! Oh, what a dream! What a promise.

Likewise that God will wipe away EVERY tear, that death will be no more (though is that a good thing for creation?) so that there is no mourning or crying or pain anymore. Are these the first things?

I always thought that death was the last step in life, and grieving a loved one’s death was the last thing anyone wanted to endure again, or for the first time if one is observant of what it costs others.

Of course these are not the first things that the Revelation’s passage speaks of. The first things are all that make up this universe: God’s first things for us, beloved creatures, which also includes evil, since love requires a priori a choice to love, and then also to not love, which is a choice of evil.

That is to say this promise has a prerequisite, namely that the universe we know is no more.

I’ll hope to wait on that, meanwhile there still is death, for creation would be overrun with humans if we did not die, as if it is not already, along with all life forms that would no longer die. So death is here to stay for a while.

But already today or any day soon, I’ll take the coming home, singing with joy and happiness that will not end, putting sorrow and sighing scurrying for the far reaches of the universe far, far away in a time that is not. I suppose all displaced peoples of all times would take that, too. Those with homes they’ve never lost nor had no home for years may not quite fathom the joy this would bring us all.

It seems an impossibility for me, as for most displaced peoples, most refugees. The promise we hope for with real expectations is that we would once again be able to have a home to come home to, a secure, safe, warm/cool, and dry home, one where we have the ability to supply us and ours the essentials of life.

One might think that starts with air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful work and love (giving and receiving.) Yet it actually starts with what God’s Grace supplies: faith, hope, and love. For without these a home is nothing, as many people have endured, knowingly so or completely unawares.

For now I am, as many are, graciously given faith, hope and love, so that where we land for the night and sometimes through the day is already so blessed, a home without them would be nothing to desire.

Singing and endless joy is ours already. A home would be a bonus, a good bonus, a longed for bonus, and for that we hear God’s promises and hope that one day ….

Lordy, Lordy, I Want That!

Monday, October 17, 2022

Oh, Can I Have A Camper Like That?

That Would Be So Much Better,

Easier, Roomier, Safer,

Warmer in Winter, Cooler in Summer!

It’s Been Dumped In The Yard Here,

…

Causing No End of Trouble!

Who Will Get It Out of Here!

Deuteronomy 5:21

Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife.
Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

2 John 1:6

And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it.

Words of Grace For Today

We need to put limits on our wants and wishes, drives and desires, and our endless comparing and complaining, right?

Yes, by all means.

Of course, taking what is our neighbours is plainly wrong, and most of us avoid that to some degree in our lives, since societal pressure condemns those who just take. If we think we are free of the sin that this commandment would save us from, just because we do not take what is our neighbours’, then we are so misguided.

Girard had it right when he connected for us that our desires grow out of seeing what those closest to us have, which sets up competition that leads to conflict, which conflict we inevitably cathartically resolve by falsely blaming and scapegoating innocent bystanders.

This commandment to not covet or desire what is our neighbour’s tries to save us from destroying innocent bystanders as we attempt to save our relationships with those closest to us. The real challenge is that societal pressures shove us firmly into scapegoating innocents in order to cathartically resolve our conflicts. It helps society continue to appear to be ‘civilized.’ And ‘civilized’ appearances help everyone blithely continue on as if all were done well by us.

That is the same reality-denying approach to life which sets us up to have leaders like Trump, movements like ‘Querdenkers’-Covidiots-Covideniers, populist movements like Daniel Smith’s that proclaim they are looking out for the ‘common people’ when actually they are serving us all up on a platter to powerful interests, and government advisors who will say that our privacy needs to be balanced with businesses need to collect our private data from which they can create products to provide to us. Which must be products we do not need, since no one needs to collect private data to be able to identify the real needs of a population. Those are constant. The only thing that changes is the way in which others’ interests – ie. ‘not in our interest’ – work to deceive us about what is required for life. That effort is always to manipulate us to ‘have’ covetousness and competition-conflict-creating desires.

And that’s what the commandment would save us from.

If only.

As for me and the squirrels (well probably not the squirrels since they keep stealing insulation out of the skirt, but at least for me), we – or rather I – like this commandment. I know I cannot keep it. So I pray, “God save me!”

And that will have to do for this day, as everyday.