Category: Seasons

Knowing

Knowing Power

Or Knowing God?

Tuesday 9 January 2024

Do We See the Power of Machines,

or the Beauty of Nature,

as Gifts from God?

First Samuel 2:10

The Lord’s adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed.’

John 1:29

The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

It is one thing to recognize power that overcomes one’s adversaries with might, thunder, and violence, and then to attribute that same kind of power to God.

It is a completely other kind of thing to recognize the power that God exercises for us all.

Of course, God could exercise that power might, thunder, and violence, again and again and still not bring us to know peace or a blessed life.

Instead God, sends Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Only when we know we are free from the guilt and destruction of our sins are we able to know peace and live a blessed life, not just for ourselves but for all other people as well.

That is the kind of power that God has and exercises,

for us all.

So with that freedom each morning, what will we do?

Epiphany!

New Year’s Resolution Worth Making (an eye opener)

Saturday 6 January 2024

Finding Our Way Through the Brambles of Life,

Alone?

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Matthew 2:12

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going a different way.

I suppose New Year’s resolutions are the imagination and statement that one will go a different direction going forward.

The three wise men, being warned in a dream, take a different route on their return home after presenting gifts to the child Jesus.

How many times are we going to try to ‘go it a different way’, forward or back, and it will be merely another futile attempt, a classic demonstration that we are not quite in complete control of our lives, not even when we make choices to become better people.

Thank God,

like the dreams sent to the three wise men, like the Law given to the people new to the Wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, like the Prophets sent to guide the nation Israel and it’s people overrun by more powerful neighbours, like the science that can tell us the consequences of our actions (like burning fossil fuels in the extreme we have and still do, and seemingly cannot stop doing),

God does send us notice and guidance.

But that is never enough.

We need to be convinced that 1. God will forgive us our failures (or else we are frozen by guilt past, present and especially future), 2. God will renew our spirits so that we can possibly do something right and good, and 3. God will help those, who we harm and those of us who are harmed by others, to heal.

A New Year’s Resolution worth making each year:

We will pray: God help us to accept forgiveness and boldly go out to do your work in this precious creation, and help us all heal from all the harm we’ve done and is done to us.

And then go boldly into the days’ ‘breach’, so to speak, bringing God’s grace to bear on others’ lives.

Return,

Repent, Believe the Good News

Friday, December 29, 2023

Our Well Worn Paths, Beckon,

But God Calls For Us To Turn,

And See Anew.

Deuteronomy 30:2-3

… and return to the Lord your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you.

Mark 1:15

… saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

We think all too often that we do not need to repent and return and believe anew the Good News.

But

in this in between time

we remember

humbly

that

we need start each day

with confession,

followed by repentance,

Then returning to God

and believing anew

the Good News,

That

promises us that God is eagerly waiting for us to repent, return and believe anew.

Another day

A new beginning

again.

Boxing Away

Boxing Day Failure

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

One Day In and

Our Memory of Jesus

is More Faded

Than the Morning Moon

Setting

Isaiah 60:16

You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall suck the breasts of kings; and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

2 Timothy 1:9b-10

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Boxing Day

brings to the fore the obvious

necessary

failings of Christmas.

It’s when the commercial xmas takes over, crowds rush to the stores, sales and stock are piled high and wide, and money flows like smoke from a huge, hot wildfire.

Many retail stores turn a profit only because of the huge boost in December, and particularly on Boxing Day. Large stores turn extreme profits on this day, adding to the wealth they collect for stock holders and executives with huge bonuses.

Year after year, we attempt to remember that God is the sole source of our well-being. That God is the only source of a life worth living.

Christ comes as an infant, a sign that God’s true power is not in force or wealth or in possessing or possessions accumulated, but rather in the love that is pure, true, and steadfast.

We gather with small candles lit in the darkness and sing our faith on our sleeves of God’s wonders for us all, and then …

we run to the store the second day of Christmas to spend and get and possess all that we can.

What a huge failure we all are.

Our only rescue is in God’s Grace. God’s forgiveness.

So much for sucking life from the nations of the kings of the world. All that is is poison for our souls.

Pause, amid the hectic, and remember

God’s goodness in the simple, pure gifts of love

that sustain us each day.

Christmas!

Blessed Christmas!

Monday, December 25, 2023

The Light At Noon,

Is Enough To Show Us

God’s Bright Love.

Isaiah 38:14

Like a swallow or a crane I clamour, I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upwards. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security!

Luke 2:11

… to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Blessed Christmas,

May we not get lost in our efforts,

and let God’s wonders wash over us,

transforming us

and our views

or this world

with love.

Not to Come Up Short,

Remember!

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Remember How God’s Grace

Lights Up Our Lives and

God’s Whole Creation!

Psalm 103:2-3

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,

1 John 4:10

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

…

Words of Grace For Today

As the days get shorter and shorter and the darkness longer and longer, it is time to remember:

remember how hard we’ve all worked to get where we are.

How arduous the journey has been.

How competitors and enemies have taken possibilities and resources from us, leaving us with so much less.

And still we have come out okay, or so we say.

For we could have gotten more if we’d been like our enemies, vicious, uncaring, unscrupulous, deceptive, and downright dishonest about anything and everything that would give them an advantage, damned by the cost to others.

But we did not.

Some would say we suffer now because of it.

They are right of course.

Kindness, honesty, and fairness are always rewarded with suffering, even being cast out and labelled as abominations.

But remember

remember

remember

that we have come so far by God’s Grace alone,

and this day we survive only by Grace,

and living in God’s Grace is more wondrous than all the advantage our enemies have stolen from us, as we have worked to save the most vulnerable from destruction and disaster.

Remember

That we live in the love of God for us, enabled only by that love to be anything good at all, and able to love others, creation, and God above all.

Short days, long nights.

Remember

God’s love shines brightest in the darkness.

Left to Beg

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

We Can Do As Much To Bring the Rains, As We Can to Bring Evil It’s Due.

Psalm 34:16

The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

Romans 12:12

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Well, would it be so already today, that the remembrance of evildoers were cut off from all creation!

But it is not so, and will not be so, in spite of any and all efforts we may spend and waste toward that end.

So

We are left to rejoice in hope, be patient in our sufferings, and persevere in our prayers that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead,

and in the meanwhile we pray as beggars, for we have nothing else, God resuscitate us from the dead, that we might live the few short days we have left on this blessed and condemned earth (blessed by God and condemned by us all.)

Another day, full of challenges, full of blessings, full of waiting and letting God do God’s new things with and to us, and full of our efforts to answer God’s call and sending us into the world to be God’s grace

for all.

Another day.

Another ….

Wishing!

Wishing But Left Waiting

Monday, December 18, 2023

In Midwinter We Can Wish For the Golden Light Of Summer,

But There Ain’t Nothing We Can Do To Make It Come.

Daniel 2:21

He changes times and seasons, deposes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

Luke 1:52

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Not just a few people whom I have known more than deserve the wish that Jesus would come to judge them, cutting through all their lies and false rumours and self justifications for the evil they work against others. Then they would be stopped in their tracks and their victims would be restored to life as it was before they so destroyed them with lies and abuse and all kinds of evil.

For while these abusers and evil doers are still all too active in their evil doing, they have long since ceased to live, for their spirits have been taken by the Evil One, and they walk as shells in motion without heart and soul.

Jesus come!

But

There is nothing in that wish,

not for those wishing it,

nor nothing that stops the evil nor restores the victims.

So we wait.

So we wait and can do nothing to bring Jesus’ judgment and healing.

For there is nothing to be done to stop the evil doers and their evil, nor to restore their victims.

So we wait.

So we wait, so oft impatiently, for there is no other hope for things to be made right.

So we wait, and pray: come Lord Jesus, come!

…

until we remember that through forgiveness God heals the victims of evil, and the perpetrators as well.

So we pray, come Lord Jesus, come! Forgive us, heal us, and if you must, forgive those who still work evil against so many victims, helpless to defend themselves, except that they rest in your presence

here already today,

for while there is nothing to do to bring Jesus to come,

we can recognize Jesus is already here,

among us,

healing us,

even when we cannot pray that our abusers would be forgiven,

even when we hope the Holy Spirit would bring our abusers to amend their lives.

So we wait, and pray

our thanks that Jesus is already come, is here, and will come again to judge both the living and the dead.

Smaller and Smaller

Sunday, December 17, 2023

The Pile of Thin Pieces, to Fill Between.

Everything provides some heat.

Numbers 23:19

God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

2 Corinthians 1:18-19

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Out to stoke the fire, and split some short chunks of wood.

Amazing how things get smaller in the process of heating with wood.

First there is a tree, tall and strong, which dies or gets knocked over by the winds, ferocious as they are at times.

The tall and strong tree loses the ability to grow branches and the old ones are the first to break off, some when the tree comes crashing down, all 2000 to 3000 pounds of it.

Then slowly the ants and other processes eat at the tree until it is no more than dust dissolving into the dirt of the ground, unless …

unless I find it and cut off the branches that will be in the way, and sometimes cutting the log into two or three long pieces so I can pull it out of the woods.

In the yard I buck the log into short pieces, short enough to fit in the wood stove. Those full-stove-sized pieces get stacked for cold days, when I toss them into the stove, they burn producing the heat I need and end up as ash, which collects at the bottom of the stove, and from there I dump them in a pile to be used for various things.

There are all those not quite full-stove-sized pieces, which I set aside to split, or thinner sticks that I gather to cut up and stack for filler beside fatter logs.

Today those short, fat pieces were the ones I split (or chopped as it were) into pieces to cram in the wood stove to burn when I do not need the maximum heat the stove can produce. The climate change weather this winter has mostly been that kind of cold, barely below zero, not yet colder than -15⁰.

…

The Devil goes at us like I go at logs for heat, except the Devil’s purposes for us, cut into ever smaller pieces of anything good is to merely destroy every good thing God created.

Thankfully, God, knowing more force would only reduce us to smaller pieces for the Devil’s work, uses steadfast love and forgiveness to rescue us, bind us, heal us, and make us able to live out that same love and forgiveness for other people.

Another day, getting cut up smaller, but healed and sent out ….

Ready?

Ready of not, God’s working on us.

A Maze

Or

Amazing

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

The Maze of Bush Can Trap Us.

God Sees A Way Through For Us

…

Forgiveness.

Psalm 139:4

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

1 Corinthians 4:5

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Too many people think they know everything.

‘If everyone would just listen to me, I could straighten them out!’

…

or so they all say.

And then go off doing all sorts of crazy things, based on lies and partial truths, and biased views of things that might have, or might not actually have, happened.

Thankfully God sees, knows, and will judge all according to truth. No partial truths, false confessions, or desperate defence strategies needed. God knows everything already.

Thankfully.

So there is that to look forward to becoming plainly evident to all those people who think they know everything,

and

actually have it all wrong.

So we can rest, peacefully, at the end of each day, and step confidently into the beginning of a new day,

assured that God not only knows everything,

but judges us with compassion and steadfast love.

Just another day in the bushes.