So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun.
Philippians 4:4
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
Words of Grace For Today
The cynical writer of Ecclesiastes commends enjoyment, eating, drinking and making merry, as people make their way through the toils of life. Nothing like a little backslap in the face about life being full of trouble and toils while speaking to enjoyment.
One surely can see that life is full of toil for some. But not for the privileged. Right? – Wrong. They have troubles, troubles with in consequential things, things of no import that they make into the greatest of troubles. Such it is with humans. If we don’t have trouble with and in life, we make it up. We are more comfortable that way.
God has other intentions for us and plans for us.
God would have us reorient our take on life, ours and others’.
Our lives certainly do have toils and troubles enough to fill a lifetime for each of us. Our lives also have most certainly enough joy, love, peace, and hope to fill a lifetime, and for those for whom that is not the case (which is always at least a great minority of people alive on earth if not most) God gives us this joy, love, peace and hope in great enough quantities to share with all those who need more of life in order to experience the goodness of joy, love, peace and hope.
Whoever we are, those with -or-those without, each day is filled with opportunities to give God thanks, for even in the activity of giving thanks we reorient ourselves from what we lack to the abundance that God pours over us – to be shared with others.
We Learn Best to Live By the Example of the Best of Days:
at Peace.
First Samuel 17:47
… and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.
Luke 10:5
Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!”
Words of Grace For Today
When Julius had calmed the community enough to put things into action, and sent their own runners up river to survey what was what with the ‘flood surge’ coming their way, every able bodied person worked to create a berm that could hold back some water. Then they moved their livestock to the highest ground away from the river. After that was done in a few hours, they all packed everything they needed and could take with them and retreated to their hunting camp. It was the first time many of them had been there. Not everyone hunted or needed to, since most of their food they grew and produced themselves. Those new to the camp were amazed how rustic yet functional it was, though it hardly could house them all. They set about expanding it, at least on a temporary basis so there was protection for everyone, protection from the weather and from the wild animals that lived here. It was after all a hunting camp.
Someone suggested that they should hunt down the animals nearby, to make it safer for them. Wiser people explained they needed the animals to live on, even here. So they implemented a better plan where they could live in peace with the wild animals and with each other. The latter soon proved to be the more difficult plan to achieve as disagreements rose and flared between people as they started to realize how short the resources here would be.
Julius worked harder than ever in his life to treat the ill and calm the nerves of those caught in the conflicts. He was glad that years before he learned to enter every house and conversation blessing people with peace.
Oh, he thought, that more people would orient themselves so, each morning, noon, and night.
My tongue will sing of your promise, for all your commandments are right.
Romans 1:16
For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
…
Words of Grace For Today
Julius discovered this fragment held by a healer he visited in one of the neighbouring communities on his travels to learn more about healing:
The commandments of God, collected in the Old Testament, like many other collections, are not unique to the Old Testament. They are gathered wisdom of humanity, often stated with variations specific to the region of their ‘origin’ or ‘publication’. Yes, God works in many and various ways to help guide us to live well, and to give life in it’s fullness to others.
Likewise, the Gospel of Jesus is not entirely unique, building on the Old Testament, refining and augmenting it. And yet there is one aspect that threads it’s way through the Old Testament and the New Testament which seems to be unique.
It’s almost impossible to implement, or even write about for a community of faithful people, without it being reduced to something else, something ordinary instead of shockingly profound and life giving.
That unique thing about Jesus’ Gospel: that salvation is free. One cannot earn it, or even meet God half way in order to claim it. It is a gift.
The question of life is no longer, ‘What must we do in order to please God and live well?’
Instead the real question of life is, ‘Since God has already given us the fullness of life and the ability to live it, how will we choose to share it with others, for only in sharing the goodness of life, is our life lived to it’s fullest and in the way God created us to live.’
Since it is free, not earned in any way, it is also not restricted to only some people, some people born into our clan or nation.
This free salvation is for everyone.
He promised himself that this would be part of each interaction with people who came to him for healing. Then he thought to himself, as we may also: ‘So how will we share it with others today?’
How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation.
Hebrews 12:28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe;
..
Words of Grace For Today
Sotorus’ journal lay before Julius. As he read, through his young eyes he began to recognize how many generations had lived, struggled to survive and flourish at times, and died. Among them were Sotorus’ father, Peter, Peter’s father, Isaac, and Isaac’s sister, Galilea, and their parents, Sotorus’ great-grandparents, Doug and Dawn. He read of their first venture into another galaxy to find a planet where humans could thrive. Yet it ended with an emergency evacuation and then a 2nd settlement at another planet, though his ancestors had returned to earth with the human population reduced by 90%.
In each generation Julius read how his people had oriented themselves by Jesus’ Word and Light. It had not been simple or naive. It was as great a challenge as any.
Yet as he had learned as a young child already, Jesus walked with his family, and with him. They were mystics, people said, able to see God and God’s works in the common every-day wonders that God provided to them all.
Julius that day before his 13th birthday started to form, what would guide him through the challenges of his life, a foundational understanding, an orientation for life, and a purpose for his own life. He would honour his ancestors and their work to help others with their life’s work. He would strive to give life abundant to all people. Little did he know what other people would make that cost him, and what joy and pain, love and hatred, hope and despair that would bring him.
So he started to realize, as his ancestors had in every generation, that life is full of possibilities, full of challenges, and always filled with God’s presence.
He thought (as we might also): What will our days be like this, another ordinary and extraordinary day in Easter?
I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
Mark 16:9-10
And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping.
Words of Grace For Today
Only when we understand the darkness that God suffered by dying on the cross, and the darkness that permeated all creation, pushing, shoving, and sucking everything toward uncreation,
can we then truly celebrate
that Jesus is Risen, indeed!
And we can live, and laugh, and pray thanks, and dance, and hope, and reach towards others
with the same grace God has extended to us, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross,
offering them life, laughter, prayers of thanks, dancing, hoping and community so precious.
We can but overflow with prayers of joy and thanksgiving, for all of creation can live again.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
Luke 18:31
Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.’
Words of Grace For Today
Have a great day!
So we wish others, and wish for ourselves.
But
the world does not always comply with our wishes.
Some days are not great.
In fact some days are some of the worst in our lives, even the worst days in history!
While we may wish for easy, comfortable, luxurious even, days that we can slide through without any great challenges, life is not that way.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
And that means, come what may, it is all going to eventually come our way, too, the good and the evil.
How can we prepare?
For the greatest evil there simply is no preparation that would be sufficient.
We can at best lean on God to accompany us, whatever comes our way.
To take even the bitterest cup with sure hands, knowing that even death cannot conquer us, for Christ is for us, is with us, and will always welcome us home, even in death.
Today may be a normal day, or a great day, or a day that astounds us with amazing things. Or it may be the flip of that, and astound us with the amazing destructive power of evil.
May it be, that we are led to trust God’s presence with us, whatever it may be.
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
Luke 1:69-75
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
Words of Grace For Today
Sotorus sat to copy his father’s (Peter’s) journal entry, which really was copied from Peter’s father, Isaac, and Isaac’s sister, Galilea, about Sotorus’ great-grandparents, Doug and Dawn, from the old digital disk to his paper journal with great care.
First he wrote:
“20 June 2299: All the digital records are disappearing into thin air. Though no one knows why for sure everyone suspects it has something to do with those deadly latency rifles used to end the last war on earth. Loaded with specific human traits, the charge would sit for years, even decades, before going off when it’s target came within 10 metres. Now two decades later so many people had been killed, even after the war, and the accumulation of the residue from billions of charges seemed to spread and wipe out not only their targets, but all nearby digital storage in the bio-memory chips used in everything for the last 90 years. So copying what we have as records of the past onto paper is the only way to preserve them at all.
“Albert Einstein was correct in many ways when he said, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’
“While explorers like my grandparents were off to Andromeda, those remaining on earth had reduced it to a thinly populated wasteland. No one had the energy or means to fight.”
What Sotorus could not know was the will to fight would return in 1450 years.
Sotorus’ journal entry continued with Peter’s entries from 3 October 2264:
“This from Isaac’s (my father’s) journal of 21 March 2246:
“This is about the day in November 2213 when my grandfather and grandmother, Doug and Dawn, and a stranger, made a quick and desperately simple decision that saved my life and the life of my sister, Galilea.
“This is what I knew about my grandparents decision to leave earth. Doug and Dawn had studied the beginnings of the universe all through university and wrote separate but related PhD dissertations on the doomed first expedition to Mars in 2029 compared to the more recent successful unmanned expedition to Andromeda’s closest star with planets in 2183. It was a no-brainer then when they were offered the opportunity to travel on the first peopled expedition to what people were calling the ‘Andromeda Earth’. In 2210 they packed their few possessions into storage and reported to train for intergalactic travel certificates. In 2113 they launched from earth to the moon, and two days later from there to Andromeda’s ‘third planet from the sun’.
“Eleven months after their three month long trip to A-Earth, as they called their destination planet, they and the other 45 mission specialists, had established the core of a settlement. The rich air and moderate gravity among the most interesting lush and vibrant plant and animal life forms seemed almost a paradise. They had hardly had time to consider more than their work studying the evolution of the plant and animal life that seemed to ‘teem up’ from the planet each day. Yet in those years they had also had us two children.
“I had not kept a journal but Galilea had. Her journal is lost, but I remember it pretty clearly, because we sat and read it often in her last year, as she suffered dementia, common among the most brilliant minds in their later years.
“Isaac was a spunky athletic 6 year old and his sister, that’s me, Galilea (Peter added, that’s my aunt), well I was not yet 2 but I was up and running, reading and writing already.
“This morning, an hour before sunrise, in the dark and bitter cold, the alarm had sounded. Everyone was told they needed to report to the spaceship, refurbished, refuelled and resupplied, and waiting for such an emergency these last four years. The Aearth’s crust had buckled up into a new mountain range on the far side of the planet and we had maybe 6 hours before the air would be poisonous. ‘Bring no more than 150 lbs with you!’ Everyone knew the fuel was not as combustible as the fuel they had used to lift off from earth so weight was indeed a problem.
“Our dad, Doug, called us children, from our studies in the ‘backyard’ near the river, started packing a small backpack, while Mom and us children fretted and argued about which things we could bring: a photo of our house, a rock from the riverbed that glowed at night, our computers and studies and papers, a favourite game made of wood and rocks, and my teddy bear. Finally Doug put his foot down and said we had just enough time to get to the spaceship, or we’d be left behind. With no more thoughts we grabbed only what was packed and headed off.
“At the spacepad, we registered and weighed our bags. We could have tossed in another 20 lbs. The security guard looked at us, checked off Mom and Dad’s names, Doug and Dawn. Then he looked at us children, Isaac and Galilea. He asked our parents if they had weighed us? No! Did they have to? Of course! So back to the scale we went. Together Isaac and I weighed 159 lbs. We all tossed our bags aside and, with the guard telling us we were out of time- others were waiting and time was tight, we two children stripped off our clothes until the scale stood at 154.
“The next person in line (we didn’t even know her or find out her name later) saw the chaos and offered to give up 10 lbs if the guard would let us children take our clothes along. A nod from the guard, a quick ‘thank you! thank you!’ and off we went through the gate to the loading queue as the woman behind us started tossing out big books from her case.
“Later Galilea wrote in her journal:
“Today, I’m not sure of the date, it’s been so confusing, we left a whole crowd of explorers and their children on another planet in the Andromeda galaxy, at a planet everyone called ‘Andromeda’s other third planet from the sun.’
Sotorus, grandson of Galilea, continued his paper journal below the above entry:
“Today is the last day of this millennium, 2299. It’s a day of freezing fog. We heard from many that those who lived at Aearth’s farthest bounds were awed by God’s wondrous signs all around them. They affirmed, and we can certainly affirm now as well, that God has shown to us all the mercy promised to our ancestors, to grant us that we, being rescued, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days.
“We can be thankful, that though the years have not been easy since the last big war, we (my two sisters, my three cousins, and I) are alive because Isaac and Galilea did not weigh more than 10 lbs too much, and an anonymous woman sacrificed her precious books for our grandpa’s and his sister’s lives.”
Sotorus could not know then, but his journal would be only one of a dozen that would survive the next 1500 years of ‘sticks and stones’. Without it no one would remember Doug and Dawn, Isaac and Galilea, Peter, or Sotorus. Nor would anyone remember that people had migrated to Andromeda and back, or that half the explorers had chosen to stay at another inhabitable planet in one of Andromeda’s star systems.
…
What will we weigh to take with us today?
What out of our past given to us by our ancestors?
What of our baggage and sins and horrible mistakes?
What of our joys and hope and dreams?
What of our lives?
From the Saints?
Of our spirits?
Of our love?
…
What we choose will give or take life to more people than we can imagine, in ways only God can show us!
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.
