Category: Sacramental Mystic

With the Help of …

Tuesday 17 January 2023

All Paths Lead to The Point.

The point of life is to treasure

God’s Grace!

Psalms 119:11

I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.

2 Timothy 1:14

Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Words of Grace For Today

While we are given the ability to choose to love or to not love (sin), we do not posses the ability on our own to do all that is right. We are, by design, sinners.

But with the help of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us as is promised and demonstrated at our baptisms, we are saints, ones who do God’s will.

Now that is something to treasure!

It is the most precious gift ever possible.

And God gives it to us wretched sinners, so that we may live, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Required Perfection

Thursday 12 January 2023

Oil Fuels Our Circumstances, and Destroys Creation.

Love Fuels Our Hearts and Heals Creation.

Deuteronomy 10:12

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

1 John 2:5

but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him:

Words of Grace For Today

The formula for life is simple, so people say: just do everything just and righteous, obeying God’s commands, and you will live perfectly, well, and blessed.

The formula for a terrible life is simple: do that and you are for sure going to suffer, suffer, suffer.

Even after Jesus’ story is there for us to learn and treasure, even after the light of the star of the Magi has come and gone and we can learn of it and treasure it, even after so many have ‘discovered’ the key to life and faith is God’s Grace and written, preached, and lived so that we can read their words and treasure them, we humans trundle back to our old and failing ways: we live as if it is all up to us and what we do is the key.

Doing, striving, and learning to do better, and even ‘discovering’ all we can about God’s love for us and all creation are certainly crucial parts of life. It’s just that when we place them at the top of our priorities and the top of the causation chain for how life should develop for us, then we are in for lots of miserable living. Oh, we may acquire riches, power, and fame, but our hearts will be miserable.

Our hearts determine more about our lives than our external circumstances. Our hearts guide us to strive for more and more for our greedy, selfish, perverted selves OR

our hearts can guide us to the key to living a blessed life: love.

First we realize and acknowledge anew that God loves us first and most powerfully, overwhelmingly so. Then we can acknowledge and confess again and again that we are greedy, selfish, and destructive people, greatly in need of forgiveness and a new start in life so that we can live free of our woeful sins (as they all are) and live to love others with God’s love, which is to love ourselves as well. Then we realize that even before we sin so terribly, God loves us, and graciously forgives us our past sins and our present sins and even our future sins, all so that we can live free of them, free to love God and God’s creation with all our hearts, minds, and strength.

Then we get to work, strive, learn and delve into making the circumstances of others’ lives better, as a demonstration of how God forgives us, and how God is ready to forgive them.

That’s the blessing of life, and the required ‘perfection’ of life: to rely not on our own sinful selves, but to rely on God’s forgiveness, and then to get working at making life right for others.

When we are unsure of our place with God, then we realize again and again, it is not up to us to fix it, for God has already done that. That is the security of life, the only security in life, the only thing that is sure. God has done it for us, done love extraordinaire though we deserve nothing of it at all, at all.

Lifelong Living to the Fullest

Thursday 5 January 2023

God’s Blessings Give Life It’s Fullness,

Even in Our Darkest Times,

as the Moon Brightens Our Night.

Psalms 71:17

O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

Luke 2:29-31

Simeon said: Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples….

Words of Grace For Today

Living to the fullest may mean hard partying, drinking, drugs, and sex for some. Or working hard to make so much money one cannot spend it all and playing even harder trying to spend it. Or just about everything under the sun in the extreme to the extreme.

All that as if one’s actions, accomplishments and record were worth something at all, when measure by the one measure that counts at all, God’s measure, our human actions, accomplishments and record are worth next nothing, especially compared to what God does, accomplishes and establishes through us and without us.

The fullest life we can live is to continually, humbly, give God thanks and praise.

Living life to it’s fullest in this way we can be ready to greet our death as Simeon did, with thanks and praise for all God’s gifts, especially the gift of God’s Son living as one of us, God’s communication to us that is so clear we can tell the story over and over again and marvel at God’s Grace and Love for us all.

It’s a drag or

What is lame is healed?

Wednesday 4 January 2023

The ‘yard’ with the drag,

before the last 1.5 feet of snow.

First Kings 19:7

The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’

Hebrews 12:12-13

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Words of Grace For Today

As the years accumulate and take their toll on my body, more and more joints complain, some very loudly and persistently.

Whether it’s arthritis or decayed bones or broken tendons, muscles, and blood vessels, the complaining is voracious when it comes to consuming my time and abilities.

Ah, such is life past it’s best by date.

It’s not that the journey is over. There’s lots of time travelling (forward one day at a time) left. And I hear more than just angels telling me to get up and eat to strengthen my body, mind, and spirit for the day’s travels.

The 1.3 km path through the woods into the meadow is already providing challenges. With the snow already at the beginning of January as deep as it was at the end of winter last year, the coming and going is tricky to say the least. So much of my time and resources are spent (despite complaining joints) to make the path smooth, or at least smooth enough that I can continue to drag the route in with a piece of roofing tin supported by an odd assortment of screwed together wood. That beats the snow into a hard packed mess that makes it a bit easier coming and going, a bit, but not enough.

Now I would love to have the joints healed, and the road bed (the dirt, grass, and rock surfaces) make level so that snow clearing were so much simpler and coming and going when it all melts and turns to soft mud would be predictably possible. I haven’t seen that yet.

So I love this passage’s promise, but I just don’t see it happening.

Rather time travel steals more and more usefulness from my joints, and that’s just life, or at least life past one’s best by date.

Another day of challenges, meeting them as best as possible, trusting that God walks with me always. Do God’s joints complain when God walks with me? Kind of think they must, or at least something similarly, so that God has compassion and mercy and at least heals my spirit, one day at a time.

Mercy Me!

Monday 2 January 2023

A New Day,

A New Year,

Same Mercy and Grace

Sustain Us.

Jeremiah 31:20

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child I delight in? As often as I speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore I am deeply moved for him; I will surely have mercy on him, Says the Lord.

Ephesians 2:4-5

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Words of Grace For Today

New Year’s Resolutions are already being broken around the world. Old sins have accumulated and weighed people down to the point they see no other way ahead than to sin more and more as if digging themselves out of it all, when they actually are digging themselves deeper and deeper into the excrement of sins from generations upon generations.

And how does God deal with this, yet again?

God points out our sins!

And

God is merciful and gracious: God forgives us and frees us from the burdens of broken resolutions and accumulations of sins and sins’ excrementations.

And

God delights in us, as we move forward, not free from sin, but able to be saints in this chaos of life on this precious planet.

And

God adopts us as God’s own children, blesses us beyond our wildest imaginations, and sends us out

to share this mercy and grace with all other people.

Another day beginning another year, come what may, God is ready to walk with us through it all.

Last Stand, Forever Secure

Saturday 31 December 2022

As Sentinels

Against All That Would Do Us Harm,

God Stands

Day and Night

By Us!

Zechariah 9:8

Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.

Romans 8:31-32

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Words of Grace For Today

Looking back at the year bygones and all

I wonder

what will become of

today?

all daze?

looking at the weather

or not to travel on gravel

to the bench the Judge wants order

is not something possible in this world

ways I’ve decided are not to be trusted

thoughts one cannot know so much

is out of my hands

Oi vey! my hands are sore

no more.

…

So we look to a new year, just like the last,

Knowing that God not only walks with us,

but is encamped with us, protected as a guard the doorways,

to the camp and our lives,

so that those set on destroying us

devil and all

will not prevail

not even in the new year.

We will continue to enjoy God’s blessings beyond imagination,

given to us, not earned, signs of God’s grace for others to see that God is gracious to all people,

blessing that cannot be bought with money or time:

love, hope, peace, joy, faith, fullness of life, and purpose.

Mystery of Between Time

Tuesday 27 December 2022

In All That Is,

We Find Ourselves

In The Between

Jeremiah 31:28

And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.

James 5:7

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.

Words of Grace For Today

This is the time outside of time,

as it were.

Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, a week of extra-ordinary time.

Time to contemplate the wonder of Christmas, Jesus born as one of us, giving us a clear story of God with us.

Time to remember who we are, and whose we are, and what wondrous, loving, and gracious things God has done for us great sinners to make us saints.

Time to remember the stories that make us live as we do, humble, generous, loving, and bringing wondrous news to all people: that God is for us!

God, the judge of all able to destroy all evil, relents and graciously moves us to plant and build today for a future for all people.

God provides this time for us to wait, again, for a new beginning, just as we sleep at night each night, waiting and trusting that God will forgive us that day’s sins and create in us clean hearts for the start of each new day, and each new year.

Time between,

Time between us being irrational people caught by emotions that confuse and mislead us, between that and rational minds that have no room for wonder and grace, and between all that (and more that we humans are in our feeble ways) and

the miracle that is God knowing us completely, choosing us, forgiving us, renewing us, calling and sending us out to share God’s Good News, the story of Jesus for us, and then God walking with us come what may.

Time

Time between

Time between the mundane and the mystery,

Time to be miracles of God’s making, living with emotions and using rational thought, and surrendering both to the mystery that is life, and God for us in this life.

Well, Whadaya Know?

Sunday 25 December 2022

Fresh Christmas Snow Covers the Ground

as Grey Covers the Skies,

Yet Bright is Christ’s Light This Day.

Joshua 24:23

He said, ‘Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.’

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ways to orient one’s life,

only one is a living God, born among us to poor parents, from a most unabashedly scandalous pregnancy, and heralded by the lowest of the lowest of society.

Thus it is we are thought to be fools, and yet we continue as servants to the poor, the sick, the needy, the imprisoned. We continue to humbly begin our ways in the world remembering not our own greatness, but God’s in dealing with our great sins. We continue to live in a peace from out of time and place while conflicts storm around us. We continue to effect change, not through power, might, and force, but through humility, compassion, love, and forgiveness.

We continue.

We continue to live life to it’s fullest, sharing that fullness with all we encounter.

The snow may be fresh, but our orientation in life is as old as the universe: it is God-given from the beginning

and the Word

was made

flesh

to

live among us.

Amid the Chaos …

Saturday 24 December 2022

Stepping Down,

Stepping Out,

Living In The Light!

Zechariah 9:10

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem; and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Luke 2:14

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!

Words of Grace For Today

As the nations wage war, as conflicts consume lives from billions to one single person by another, and as the Devil plays in God’s good creation:

God comes and commands that there be peace among all nations and for all people, for God favours us all.

The sun rises shining bright, lightening hearts and minds in these short days and lately these cloudy days.

The temperature rises to above -20⁰.

And small successes provide music worth listening to this season, blessed music that is not Xmas musak.

Christ is born this evening (we celebrate again the event of more than 2000 years ago.)

And there is cause to celebrate life in all it’s chaotic complications, time to pray for those close and far, and even for those who are bent on destroying me to cover their lies and injustice, and time to rest in God’s peace that permeates all.

What else would one do on Christmas Eve

.

.

.

if one is not caught in the manufactured celebrations and all the pain that go with them?

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.