Seasons – Page 14

Gifts

Gloriously Plenty

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Gloriously Plenty …

Dandelions?

Jeremiah 31:14

I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, Says the Lord.

1 Peter 4:10

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.

Words of Grace For Today

On the walk to the lake the path is covered with pine cones fallen from the trees, and husks of pine cones eaten by squirrels. One steps on the path, after so many days of pine cones coalescing into a soft carpet, with comfort even for arthritic feet and hips. This just as the view of the lake’s waters opens between the branches of the trees.

This is repeated in a few places where more pines grow than the weed-like trees, the poplars.

And the population of squirrels need not forage for food at all. So they multiply, and multiply. And steal more and more insulation from my camp.

God also provides plenty for us. If you have ever seen a combine off-load it’s grain into a waiting trailer, filling and sometime overflowing, the cavernous grain haulers, which in turn off-load their fill into even larger trains of semi trailers, which in turn off-load their fill into grain bins, wider and taller and more in number every good harvest year, which in turn are loaded into mile long trains of grain cars …

If you have ever seen this process of grain hauling, grain flowing, grain filling larger and larger containers then

well then you have seen an example of how God provides gifts to each one of us, and multiplies them as we gather to share what we have.

God does not give gifts for us to hoard them. God’s gifts of wisdom, intelligence, physical strength, determination, communication, charisma, leadership, handiwork, trades skills, compassion, inspiration, faith, and (most of all) love really only shine and provide us the goodness of life when we share them with others,

as the pines share their pine cones to form a cushioning carpet, and to feed those darn squirrels.

So, yes, sometimes what we share with others does not produce blessings.

God knew this, and prepared for it,

and walks with us to bring us through the evil that others ‘share’ with us,

(and to help others through the evil we ‘share’ with them),

and renews life with forgiveness, redemption, healing, and a bounty of more gifts,

and always overflowing, steadfast love

like a cool, refreshing breeze

that cannot be held,

only enjoyed.

Compassion

From the Highest One

to the Lowest Ones

Sunday, August 6, 2023

God’s Compassion Is Spread,

Like Sprays of Cloud,

To All People,

Through Us.

Psalm 22:5

To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

James 5:11

Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Words of Grace For Today

God knows we get a lot of grief, ridicule, and judgment from other people, and that we hand out more than a fair share of it to others.

Compassion may flow occasionally from us and to us, though anyone with eyes to see and hearts to know will know full well that there is not enough compassion in the world, nor in any single human’s life, not since the beginning of time, nor to the end of time.

God walks with us, saves us, redeems us, and sends us out to share God’s mercy and compassion with others. God models compassion in Jesus’ life many times, also when he seeks private time to grieve John’s death at Herod’s hands and sword … and then a huge crowd intrudes on his solitude and grief. Jesus has compassion on them, teaches them (in Mark) and heals them (in Matthew- and teaches and heals them in Luke).

The Spirit inspires us to be compassionate with all people. It’s not like we can do it on our own.

So where, when, how will the Spirit bring compassion to people today, through us?

Prayers or Charms

Watch What You Ask For

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Magic Mushroom,

God’s Spores of Poison

Cleaning the Ground?

Psalm 5:2-3

Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.

Mark 11:24

So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Words of Grace For Today

Prayer works kind of like a charm.

If you think the charm works you will see it working (kind of making it up to see it) and if you think your prayers are heard you will see and hear God answering (though, not really making it up to see and hear God.)

The charm thing is our brains reaching for rationalizations to affirm our crazy need to have some control over our lives (or at least explain how someone or something else has made things better for us, assuming the charm is good. I guess the same thing would apply to a curse?)

The prayer things is our brains and spirit being pulled into God’s reality that is everything, though many times we think to separate ‘our world’ from God’s reality.

Like the old saying goes, though, be careful what you wish for, because

Because if you look for charms and curses, you will find them plenty enough to build an undying fear in your bones – fear of what curses lie ahead and fear of what charms you will miss out on!

Because once you allow yourself to see and hear God nothing remains the same!

What you thought was your own life, your own possessions, your own rights and obligations disappear like the last smoke from a snuffed candle. You may ‘smell’ the smoke of all that was yours for a long time, but it just is not there. Everything you thought was yours is clarified to be God’s on loan to you for you to be a good steward of, and to share in the best possible way with those most in need in God’s good creation.

Then every morning, noon, and night you will find yourself in conversation with God your creator, asking and pleading, and complaining and grouching, thanking and praising. The life that God loans to each of us is never easy, and it can only be tolerated if we finds our own value and worth in God: created by God, measured by God, redeemed by God (at the highest price possible, God’s Son’s life), purposed by God, and accompanied by God.

As we see and hear God walking with us, then what may look to others, and even to our old sinful selves, to be intolerable or undesirable, in truth is the best life has to offer.

Charms and curses befuddle us.

Prayer connects us to God’s reality for us. And then

Watch,

As our lives constantly change

to be as God intended us to live, when God created us.

Today is another day, running in fear from reality or seeing and hearing God (and seeing and hearing God changing us).

Guard Your [Everything]

But Humility Knows It’s Futile

Friday, August 4, 2023

A Bit of February’s Chill Feels Good In August’s Heat.

Fools Forget the Bite of -40⁰ and of +40⁰.

We Are Vulnerable.

Ecclesiastes 5:1

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools; for they do not know how to keep from doing evil.

Matthew 7:1

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

Words of Grace For Today

Right, Ecclesiastes again. All full of wisdom and folly, advice that cannot help one iota.

If we could do what we know or easily could know is right, the world would be a different kind of place,

one without love,

since love requires freewill and

freewill inevitably allows and produces not love

which includes choosing and doing what is not right (even when we know what is right.)

As far as not judging others, it’s also great advice, a warning that we too will be judged.

But we will inevitably judge others and we will for sure be judged, regardless of what we do.

Only God can save us!

…

And God has, does, and will again.

Now that’s wisdom that is not full of folly.

Humbly trusting God’s works for us

is the only worthy way of living.

…

But we will miss that mark again today, again and again.

…

Thankfully God knew that, and has taken that into account with forgiveness for us that is unending.

So we can dance a little, maybe?

Fickle Love.

Sure Love.

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Challenged, Human Love Fades

Like Sunlight In Smoke

Making Cowards

Out Of More And More Of Us.

Hosea 6:4

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.

1 Corinthians 13:1

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Words of Grace For Today

Love.

Love?

Love??

Love is a

wondrous

complicated

often confused

most often abused

little understood and acknowledged

and

necessary for life,

or at least life abundant as God created us to live it.

Human love is like the morning dew that evaporates in the heat of the day.

God’s love is steadfast and sure,

the only thing that can be trusted in all the universe.

When people say they love us, that usually means they want to take something from us and,

when they have gotten all they can get, then they decide that they do not love us anymore.

We humans love God like that, too. Greedy and fickle, changing with the time of day and the tide of climate change and with opportunity.

God’s love is sure.

The only thing that is really sure.

Locked down, constant, unchanging, and reliable

if we dare see reality.

…

And that is it really, love requires courage.

We humans are mostly cowards, though we like to think otherwise. Which is part of our problem.

When the Holy Spirit makes us courageous, then watch out, for the miracles pour through us from God to others, wondrously.

Like feeding 5000 men and 20,000 women and children with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread. Turning hearts from fear to trusting and generous.

…

Will God’s love miraculously turn our hearts today from fear to trusting and generous?

Watch and see,

if we dare!

Out of Our Distress

God Gives Us The Horizon

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Breathe In The Broad Horizon

Of God’s Steadfast Love

Psalm 118:5

Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

2 Corinthians 1:7

Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

Words of Grace For Today

When we auger our way into deep holes of whatever kind, we are not able to see even our own dreamed of horizons, our goals, or our hopes. We want God or someone to come and pull us up so that we can see our horizon again, so that we can walk forward towards our goals, so that we can realize our hopes.

God comes all right.

God comes and pulls us out of the holes we get ourselves into.

God comes and places us in broad open places,

But NOT so that we can see our own horizon, goals or dreams realized.

God places us in the broad open places of God’s creation so that we can see, not only our own lives, but all of God’s universe from a bit of God’s perspective. We never see as God does: all things, from all times, all at once, fully knowing and understanding everything. God does share with us a glimpse or two of the broadness of God’s creation and our place in it.

God sends saints to guide us,

Then God sends us saints to guide others,

Always in God’s good creation according to God’s good will, grace, and steadfast love for us all.

Just another day. In the Hole. God plucking us up. Glimpsing the broad view. Sharing it with others.

Always God’s steadfast love surrounds us, so we dance a step or a jig of thanks.

Remember?

Remember Me?

Remember Us!

Monday, July 31, 2023

Memory Fails Us

Both by Forgetting

and

Remembering

Psalm 25:7

Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!

John 3:7

Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

Words of Grace For Today

One of the most difficult things in life is to accept that we will be forgotten, and worse, that we will forget other people and events, both good and bad.

Truth disappears when we cannot remember.

And only truth provides a guide through the weeds that lie ahead.

So we pray:

God, remember … Remember me. Remember us.

But then we realize that much of what we have been is not something we would have anyone remember, least of all God.

Yet, God alone remembers everything about everyone.

God remembers everything, including the things that make for nightmares as our subconscious lifts up issues and conflicts and problems and failures and shame into our dreams, dreams that haunt us, and dreams that supposedly will free us from our past we would forget.

So we pray: God, remember … Remember me. Remember us. Remember not our sins, sins of our youth and sins of our middle age, and sins of our present old age.

Instead God, please we beg of you, remember us according to your steadfast love and mercy.

And in God remembering us thus, we are born from above, in the record of all time for all time for all people and for God remembered as if we were without sin.

And to be remembered so is a gift most precious

for it allows us to set aside our fear of being forgotten, or remembered as sinful as we are.

Instead we are freed

also this day

to live out God’s steadfast love and mercy for others,

as impossible as that is sometimes.

Only God

Knows Why?

Sunday, July 30, 2023

God Creates Beauty,

Not With Perfection,

But Imperfection.

Psalm 119:26

When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes.

1 John 5:15

And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.

Words of Grace For Today

Tell a child what not to do, over and over again, and the child will inevitably try out what is prohibited.

It’s not that much different for adults.

Hearing and doing God’s commandments are two very separate things. What stands between them like an insurmountable wall is our freewill and curiosity; just like a child we will choose to do what we are told not to do.

Hearing God’s commandments is one simple thing. It requires the patience and humility to give focus and take time to listen.

Doing them, well that requires something beyond our ability.

So we pray:

help us.

And knowing that God hears us,

and God forgives us,

we are then inspired (Spirit working in us) to sometimes even be able to follow God’s commandments.

So how do we respond to others who breech even a semblance of God’s commandments? What do I do with the party-ers ‘next door’ who make such a racket yelling and screaming with loud music to boot until after 2:00?

I ought to be able to forgive and understand.

But forgiving is as far as I get, with a strong hand on my wish to interfere and complain to them of their behaviour. Understanding is beyond me. First the urge to party. Is that something that covers up the stupidity of life they choose or are left with? I’ve not a clue. Then the need to party into the early morning hours. Again, not a clue. And to do so where many other people are left to suffer from the noise and ruckus? This becomes a stretch of imagination that I cannot make, why anyone would be so blatantly insensitive, inconsiderate, and destructive to others with such a choice of actions, time, and place.

Forgiveness will have to be enough, and the minimum is to not try to interfere, which would probably put my life on the line.

So as people have since the beginning of time, I pray and know God hears and know all is well: Dear God, there are some people that need your attention. Please give it to them … in spades!

It’s a bit better than asking Karma to include a few more people missing from the list.

Ok, not much, but a little? Maybe not even a little, you say?

Thus each day has it’s beginnings, never perfect, always requiring God to forgive me (us) so that we can move through the day not trying to figure out what we are not supposed to do, but giving our all to do the things we know God would have us do.

Two Headed

Monsters

Friday, July 28, 2023

When Everything

In Our Lives Looks Like An Obstacle

Blocking Our Way

…

Does Money

Really Rescue Us?

Psalm 97:10

The Lord loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked.

Matthew 6:24

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Words of Grace For Today

No one can serve two masters! Really!

Ask any of the many double agents. Hardly ever does a life of a spy turn out well, even less so for double agents. It’s just hard to keep up with all the lies, and keep them all straight! Especially when you have to keep two completely separate sets of lies (and many subsets) straight.

One might call that the life of a politician, or a diplomate, or bishop, or dirty cop but that would be to simplify their ‘complicated’ lives.

The reality is today pretty much anyone who makes a decent wage or salary and who owns or rents a home is actually owned by their financial obligations, their possessions. That is their possessions posses them.

The challenge is to image a life where one is not obligated financially, without being so wealthy that one has never or never will again face debt problems, just money problems. Harder is to actually find a way into such a kind of life, and then to live it.

What would it, what could it, possibly look like, this life of serving God, and not money?

Enough saints have left wealth and entered poverty, but as it was said of Gandhi, one who lived in poverty, ‘it takes an awful lot of money to keep Gandhi in poverty.’

Thankfully our serving God is not that for which we are rewarded God’s grace, favour, and love. God chooses us, forgives us sinners (again and again and again when we certainly do not deserve it; that’s grace), bestows on us all sorts of favours (blessings and gifts of the Holy Spirit, some even have a monetary value to them at times), and loves us steadfastly and faithfully without end.

So we start another day, sinners still, God-made saints, thankful for God’s awesome works for us; giving God thanks and praise (even as we struggle to balance our expenses and income.)

Getting It Right

Or Esle!

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Think You Can Find The Right Path?

Fools Alone Think So!

Isaiah 43:11

I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no saviour.

John 17:3

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent ….

Words of Grace For Today

I really like this kind of message, so common in scripture and from the lips of so many people:

Get it Right!

OR EXLE. opps

OR ESLE!

Opps again

OR ELSE!

So the demands come at us, as foolish as ever a human word can be.

So the the interpretation of God’s communications (revelations) to us are made by humans, and they miss the mark of all God’s Words.

To demand that we get it right is to demand something beyond our abilities.

Stuck in sin, Slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves, sinful by nature, human nature is flawed, Evil will have it’s ways, Boys will be Boys, Women will be manipulative and devious.

It all has many different names and endless permutations in humans history, permutations that each generation repeats many times over.

Knowing Jesus is to know God’s Grace, is to trust that God rescues us when we certainly do not deserve it (for the umpteenth Millionth Billionth Trillionth [infinite] time.)

Of course demanding of others (and maybe ourselves a little) that they get it right, is to play right out of God’s hands into the Devil’s.

Trying to be right.

Never works.

Start with humility: confessing who we are as sinners, trusting God’s mercy and grace to save us and renew life in us. Then accepting that Jesus sends us out to exercise that same mercy and grace for others.

That’s a good minute, a good start to any day, a wonderful way to be all day long, if only we could.

But God has the rest. God is our Saviour.