Category: Seasons

No!

Not That At All. Instead

Go and Tell All …

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Sometimes We Fog Up,

Looking for the Way Out of Our Messy Lives.

God Sends Us Back Into the Mess, to ….

Psalm 31:7-8

I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have taken heed of my adversities, and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; you have set my feet in a broad place.

Mark 5:19

But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

All too often we ask and even try to demand from God something that we want, something that we are sure is what God would have for us, something that is a sacrifice of all we are and can be, and

God

says

No!

Instead God sends us right back where we’ve tried to escape from, from the grind of daily life, from the hell that daily life is (due to other people, usually), from the past that has dragged us so far into to the pit that we can barely see the horizon.

God sends us back, and tells us to

Tell everyone what God has done for us, rescuing us, healing us, forgiving us, renewing life in us, giving us hope again!

It is that we year and long for everything to be different so that maybe everything will be right in our lives.

Instead, God makes us right with God, so that no matter the circumstances that we live in and under, God can work through us to bring Grace to bear on more and more people.

So it is, this day, we enter our daily lives, looking like nothing has happened to us, and yet

everything has happened,

God has happened,

the Holy Spirit has transformed us poor sinners (actually we are very good sinners, just poorer beyond imagination for it) into saints,

those through whom the Light of Christ shines

through all the brokenness of life

into the heart of the matter, the heart of each person, the heart of God’s Kingdom come near.

Just another day for saints

to be God’s miracles

for others.

The One

Sure Thing

Monday, September 25, 2023

Though Autumn Carpets Abound, Again

Climate Change Teaches Us Now:

Even the Seasons Are Not A Sure Thing!

Psalm 33:4

For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.

Matthew 24:35

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

…

Words of Grace For Today

While we yearn and long to make life better, we chase after all sorts of things,

which we hope will make life better,

But

they are dreamed of out of greed and selfishness

and they bring us more misery and hardships than we ever dreamed would be ours to endure.

Only as the Holy Spirit inspires us to yearn and long for God’s Grace and Blessings to be shared with all other people,

do we start to participate in God’s Kingdom,

wherein God’s Word provides us with the one sure thing,

Grace,

simple, unearned, undeserved, unending

awesome

Grace.

As the Spirit moves us God’s Word transforms us so that

our yearning and longing, our drive and and works,

and our hopes

focus on recognizing what we already have received

and

sharing it with those who have so little and need so much

just to live.

More opportunities this day

await us.

Thanks be to God.

Closing Time

The Last Dance Is Done and …?

Friday, September 22, 2023

The Day Is Coming To A Close.

Now What?

Isaiah 55:5

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we wake up to the reality of what we have done with our lives, as the carouser wakes from the ‘Johnny Walker wisdom’ run out, leaving us with no more than a dark hangover,

the question is what can we do, now that the ‘party is over’, the last dance danced, and it’s long since been closing time, in so many ways?

Time to return to the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

It’s not a jump into an alternate reality or timeline.

It’s not a huge jump across the ‘pond’ to another continent.

It’s not a huge trip into the Hinterländer.

For God has walked with is into every hell-hole party, through every good and bad dance, and through every closing time.

God is right there with us, in us, around us; we are not alone, and it’s never closing time for God’s Grace for us.

That is the one thing of goodness and life that never closes down on us.

Thanks be to God.

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.

Gifts

And Promises

Forever … or Not.

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Everything Points To …

Psalm 105:8

He is mindful of his covenant for ever, of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,

Romans 11:29

for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God remembers and does not revoke God’s promises for us, for more than thousands of thousands of generations.

God does not revoke the gifts given, nor the call to us to share those gifts, the requirements of life abundant, with others.

But we surely can deny those gifts in us and the call given to us.

And from that immense dismay, hurt, sorrow, and destruction have covered each generation.

Let us pray today that God will guide us to share the gifts with those in need, so that our hearts may know the peace that surpasses all understanding.

Breathe,

Breathe In

And Take Share in Adam’s Atoms Yet Again.

Friday, September 8, 2023

We Walk Short Distances,

But the Atoms from Our Breath Circle the Globe,

in a year.

Isaiah 26:19

Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.

Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we breathe in we breathe in atoms that have been breathed in by all creatures who breathe up to about a year before we breathe. When we breathe out, in little more than a year, our expelled atoms will be breathed in by every living creature that breathes in air.

That’s a connection.

That’s a significant reliance.

That’s a dependency.

That’s … scary, considering what we are doing to the air around planet earth!

When we realize that the atoms we breathe in integrate into the bodies we are, which when we die decay back into the earth (one way or another), it is not difficult to acknowledge that when any new life is born or hatched or otherwise begun, it contains part of all who have gone before. So out of the dead rises new life, just not quite like themselves, usually.

This happens almost no matter what we do. Cremation or burial both lead to the same thing, just in different ways on different timelines. If we shipped our body off in a spaceship towards some distant galaxy, only then would our atoms not reenter the life stream on earth.

Laying aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, as the writer of Hebrews admonishes us to do, is on the opposite end of possible for us; it’s impossible on our own.

This we can only appear to do as the Holy Spirit accomplishes it for us. So we ‘run with perseverance the race’ before us, knowing that even putting one foot in front of the other is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Our place in the race is a rather humble one; God runs us for us.

For that we can be thankful this day, again.

Of course, we always have the choice to stop running. God does leave us freewill. Stopping God’s walking us is something to avoid each day.

But we don’t avoid it, not at all, not at all. So God needs to rescue us many times each day.

Thank God, God does rescue us; also this day, again, and again, and again.

Truth

They say truth is relative.

That’s a lie.

Monday, September 4, 2023

Each Moment, Even at Sunrise, the Truth is There to Be Seen, Heard, Lived.

Exodus 23:1

You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness.

Ephesians 4:25

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.

…

Words of Grace For Today

In today’s world, like in all generations past, it is all too easy for dishonest people to lie, destroying people all in order to get ahead.

And they do get ahead, in ways the world’s relative truths are twisted so that hell is ahead of life.

For a lie is always a lie, even if one gets away with it to start with. It will always come back to bite the life right out of you. It starts by taking something life-giving out of the people you live with, yourself and then those closest, and it spreads to include all of humanity. The bite back, though, comes back at the liar(s) like she/he/they have laser targets painted on them by none other than God.

Truth may be a bit aggravating, but it is life giving, after one learns to confess one’s own sins and accept forgiveness for them.

Truth is only relative in that all of us are related and anything taken from the truth with a lie costs all of those involves, and all of their relatives.

Truth may be hard to discover among so many lies, but it is there to be paid attention to. It is there in each moment, for those who wish to live in it.

That’s where God blesses us heartily, also this day.

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.

God Abandons?

No, God Engages

Always, to save us from ourselves

Saturday, September 2, 2023

When it seems the world closes in on us, as if God has abandoned us, hope carries us back to trust God always walks with us.

Isaiah 63:15

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.

Galatians 5:5

For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God provides all we need to live, fully, abundantly, graciously, and generously with others.

It is not that we choose to be good and live righteously. It is a gift given to us in our baptisms and renewed many times each day. So we live as saints.

We can and so often do (thus the repeated giving of the gift) deny the gift, turning away from God to follow our own path, which always leads us straight to perdition.

Thank God, God saves us from ourselves.

And so this day also we live as saints, despite having chosen perdition again and again.

Thank God.

Gimme, Gimme!

Gimme Bread?

Give You More Bread,

Haven’t you had enough?!

Thursday, August 31, 2023

It was and will be cold again. And God will continue to bless us. Simple!

Psalm 105:40-42

They asked, and he brought quails, and gave them food from heaven in abundance. He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed through the desert like a river. For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham, his servant.

Matthew 6:11

Give us this day our daily bread.

…

Words of Grace For Today

One knows, even after one has one’s fill, even at a feast, that one will get hungry again.

That’s how it is.

But,

how come we cannot be satisfied, knowing that there will always be enough?!

Well …

Because, there often has been, in history and in our own lifetimes, not enough!

The thing is when we work so there is enough, and take only what we need, not more, then we end up able to share more with others,

and others are more likely to share with us, when the day comes when we do not have enough

and through it all we have not wasted time and energy and opportunities to try to secure enough for ourselves.

Wasted that time is because there is no such security.

Might as well trust God and get on with as good a life as one can live,

which is (as God created us to live) a life of sharing with others, even to the point of suffering ourselves.

So Jesus messes with our lives (messed from how we want always to hoard for ourselves) and that saves us from messing up our lives so bad life is lost.

Today: trust God’s bountiful blessings.

Why not?