Category: Sky

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.

Fear

To Love?

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

The Whole Universe,

Determined By

God’s Judgments

OR

God’s Love?

Genesis 3:8

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

Words of Grace For Today

Love ought to preclude fear, but all I know from life is that love has taught me to fear greatly, especially that the love claimed is not really love at all, but rather sick manipulation that will kill if it can, and otherwise ruin anyone who trusts it faster than you can blink an eye.

Or Maybe:

Love ought to preclude fear, or maybe just drive out fear. The difference being love exists along with fear, but love moves fear out of the driver’s seat of one’s life and heart and mind and spirit. Fear is still there, love just negates it into being irrelevant. But all I know from life is that love has taught me to not worry, for love claimed may or may not be love, but love from God is sure and in that love I allow myself to be defined. That is the love that has taught me what love really is.

Adam and Eve hide from God for fear, for they know Good and Evil and they have disobeyed God. They have tried to reach beyond their own selves and have tried to be God, knowing Good and Evil. So they think they know Good and Evil, and in a small way they do. They have caught a glimpse of it. Same as I have caught an eyeful of love claimed that is really manipulation. What they have not yet learned is that God’s love is greater than all Good and Evil.

But they will.

And we will.

And in that we need not worry for tomorrow

for God loves us, even as we are caught in Evil and in Love.

…

God’s love defines not only us, but the universe through and through.

Special?

Special Favours

For the Righteous, Really?

Sunday, July 23, 2023

We May See the Obstacles.

God Shows Us the Light

that Gives Life Abundant to All.

Psalm 5:12

For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover them with favour as with a shield.

1 John 5:18

We know that those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them, and the evil one does not touch them.

Words of Grace For Today

Sometimes it just ain’t so, as Scripture seems to tell us.

The righteous are not blessed with special favours. In fact there are few if any really righteous people.

And all people seem to get the same challenges and shafts, enough to send us to the grave happy to escape this mess.

Except the wealthy, powerful, and privileged seem to get away with ‘blessings’ that are really not theirs to have, stealing the necessities of life from others so that they can live in comfort and privilege they certainly do not deserve, unless evil rewards them so!

Except …

Yes, this is the first EXCEPT:

We do not make ourselves righteous. Only God can do that, and God did do that, in our baptisms, as promised through the life, teaching, healing, death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus, the Christ.

So the righteous do get special favours, not that we’ve earned them, but that God has chosen us and chosen to favour us, even though we do not deserve anything but death.

As for the evil one touching us … well, we remain sinners and therein the evil one gets us each day, also.

So we live blessed and captured by the evil one, both at the same time, all the time, fully so both.

No wonder life never seems simple, except

except when God has us see clearly, God’s grace, God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s will for us … to share all the blessings we have with others.

Sharing all we have with others is the foremost special favour God shows us.

Simple.

Simply Wonderful.

Simply Beautiful.

On That Day

But Not This Day?

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Amid the Smoke and Fog, Beyond the Weeds One Sees Two Loons,

and

By Faith

One Can Trust That Their Chick Is With Them,

Safe,

Growing,

Beautiful.

Isaiah 25:9

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Words of Grace For Today

Waiting.

Waiting for.

Waiting for something important, or something scheduled, or something freeing.

Waiting is something we all do, if not by sitting still, breathing slowly, anticipating but not moving, then by moving to something else that will take us time, but in the back of our mind we wait for ….

What is it?

The next pay-cheque, so we can pay our bills, or buy something so that something that has broken can be fixed or replaced, or

The crops to grow, so they can be harvested, or

Other people to complete their work, so that we can start or resume ours, or

The neighbour’s music to stop, so that we can get back to sleep, or

The tyranny (by whomever of whatever kind among the so many different kinds that are worked against people) will end, or

The impossible: that real guilt will go away, or grief will turn to joy, or loss into gain, or that we will see again or hear again or move again, or that we will love again, or that we can forgive again, or that we can breathe again, or that we can remember again, or dream again, or sleep at all again, or

That the devil (attacking us in so many ways, also through our enemies who would do us in) will leave us and we will be free to live, laugh, and love, again.

And

That God will save us.

For that day we wait.

Wait.

Wait,

but not so patiently sometimes, many times.

Only faith interrupts our waiting; for by faith we know not only that God will save us, but that God has saved us already,

and we can breathe, and live, and laugh, and love

also this day.

Beautiful.

Remember Us??

God Never Forgot!

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Even on the Coldest, Toughest Winter Days,

God Remembers Us!

(See the Light.)

Do We God?

Psalm 74:2

Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.

Matthew 18:20

Jesus said, For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

Words of Grace For Today

We often pray to God to do something for us, to remember us, when things are ‘going straight to hell in a hand basket’ and we find ourselves ‘up a creek without a paddle.’

Most often there are things we ought to be doing to help our own situation and the situation of the other 8 billion people on earth, or a good number of them that we can make a difference for.

Instead we do little to nothing and pray. Not that prayer is a bad thing; rather it is a quite good thing indeed! But prayer without action is just laziness of heart, mind, and hand.

Praying to God when we feel abandoned is exceptionally good. Praying that God remember us misses the point all together. God never forgets us. We forget God. I suppose it’s terrifying to realize that in the worst situations we get ourselves into (or put others in or others put us in) God certainly is remembering us, and letting all that is bad happen to us, to smarten us up, or to (and I think this is the best explanation) allow us freewill: free to choose to love God, Creation and all Creatures; AND free to not love God, Creation and all Creatures, especially those 2 legged humans that seem so hard to deal with … and then suffer the consequences of our choosing to not-love what God has given us.

It’s easier to fool ourselves into thinking that God has abandoned us.

But God has not. God is here all the time, remembering us and all other people always.

God always offers us mercy, steadfast love, and hope.

So let’s hope we come up with some good ideas on how to FIX the MESS before the earth eliminates us as the fix.

A small start to another day, eh?

Seeing

The Light

Friday, July 14, 2023

Looking To The Stars …

Deuteronomy 14:2

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

… for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

The James Webb Space Telescope looks into the universe, back in time, displaying light of many kinds captured, processed, and presented to us in our visible spectrum of light and colour, in our time.

It’s images have changed our view of the universe around us, all around us, and in that we have come to know ourselves differently.

Yet, we are the same.

We are the same God chosen, blessed people.

We are the same God chosen, people of the Light and Colour.

(See https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/james-webb-telescope-marks-1-year-of-peering-into-far-corners-of-the-universe-1.6904609 for details of each photo, including credits, a series that summarizes the first year’s photos from the JWST.)

Two Things

To Start With

Monday, July 10, 2023

You Don’t Have To Be A Jedi

To Know

The Day Starts And Ends

With

Two Things.

Psalm 95:6

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

1 Timothy 1:17

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

Two things to get straight at the beginning of …

well at the beginning of every day

and the beginning of anything:

First thing is that God is due worship and praise. (I’m not sure about ‘on bended knee’ now that mine are old and do not like to be bent, yet alone knelt on. Kneepads help, but just a bit. – I trust that God knows about that, too.)

Second thing is that we are miserable sinners, or actually we are tremendously good at sinning, and telling ourselves that we have not sinned, not terribly anyway. So confessing our sins puts us right with our reality.

God is Great; we are great at being terrible.

Humble pie and songs of thanks: makes a blessed start … to anything.

Dreams

And DREAMS

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Dreams Draw Us

Through the Fog of the Future

Into Many New and Wondrous Days

Psalm 138:2

I bow down towards your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness; for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Words of Grace For Today

I have a dream

I have a dream: I have a dream that one day I will live in peace, away from the chaos of people, industry, and commerce.

I have a dream. I have a dream that I will own land as far as the eye can see, with lakes and mountains, where I can travel to camp among the wonders of creation, in solitude and in peace.

I have a dream. I have a dream that my home will have a zero carbon footprint, with solar, wind, and hydro power abundant, with insulation and design to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and be built to last for more than two hundred years.

I have a dream that fresh water in will be filtered and fed under pressure by gravity so that no pumps are needed to provide water, and that waste water will flow out by gravity power alone so that no pumps are needed.

I have a dream that I will have an airplane powered by electricity from my carbon-free power generation, with skis in the winter so I can visit remote places with a camera.

I have a dream that my friends will come to visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that I will actually have friends, at least two or three. I have a dream that my family will come and visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that at least a few of my family will actually be kind and honest, and that they will be the ones to visit and the others will come only every ten or twenty years to visit, if then.

I have a dream.

I have a dream, but I know God has other plans, at least God certainly has so far in my 60 plus years on this earth and there’s not much time to make any part of my dream come true, so what am I to do?

Knowing that I am born anew, not of perishable things but of the eternal Word of God I know God’s Word creates dreams for me.

So I have these other dreams. They grow from God’s faithfulness and steadfast love, from God’s Word of grace for me and for others, and they guide me to find the peace of God in the chaos of people, politics, conflicts, and storms. God’s Word guides me to value, more than my dream for myself, the peace that I can offer to others. God’s Word inspires me to take photos of where I live, to show people the beauty of creation that they often miss seeing: like a bright yellow flower in the meadow that belongs to a tenacious, invasive species of weed, like the play of light at 4 am as the sun rises above the smoke beyond the foothills seen from a mountain meadow (which is hardly a meadow since it’s a decommissioned oil well site,) like the trickle of water sliding down the rope holding the tarp in place over my ‘home’, a camper, a tarp that leaks so that the water drips everywhere, just not yet inside the camper, like the creek flowing in just one spot amidst the curves of snowbanks at -30⁰ just beyond the dry road to town that the grasshoppers own in the summer.

God’s Word guides me to write as I can, words that share the Good News of God’s steadfast, unconditional love for us all, words that inspire people to remember God’s dreams for us, for us all.

The End

To Everything Will Come

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Don’t Be Foolishly Fooled;

Even the Sun

and It’s Setting

Will Come to an End.

Habakkuk 2:3

For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.

1 Peter 4:7-8

The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.

Words of Grace For Today

Knowing that ‘this too will pass’, can often be a comforting bit of wisdom to remember.

This grief

– after the death of a loved one,

– after a loss of a relationship,

– after the loss of health and abilities,

– after the loss of dreams and hope itself,

(all kinds of grief) will also pass.

The excitement of celebrations, tainted

– by family and/or friends who are not at all kind,

– the reminder of loved ones not present,

– the burdens, past and future, such celebration puts on daily life and/or daily survival,

– one’s own inability to actually eat or dance or talk with others,

(all kinds of celebrations, tainted or not) will also pass.

This life, too often aptly described as hard, brutish, and short, will also pass.

Knowing that everything will pass, eventually, even breath itself, helps keep us focused on what really matters,

… well sometimes it does.

Sometimes we just focus on trying to ‘beat’ time and ‘cheat’ death and ‘get more out of life’.

When we realize that God walks with us through everything that will pass then it is easier (as the Holy Spirit guides and enables us) to see how precious it all is,

even that person who is not at all kind,

even the grief from a loss, that gives witness to how precious who/what was lost really was,

even the celebration that we cannot fully participate in, is precious, and worth participating in as we can.

Each day, each hour, each minute there are so many things that are precious, and

if / when we realize this,

we can take the good and the bad

as precious gifts from God

which gives our hearts, minds and strength the most precious things of all, faith, hope and love:

faith that God created us and walks with us,

hope that the future will be precious as well as each minute now is,

and love for God, God’s people, and all of God’s creatures and creation.

And that can make for some interesting, challenging and rewarding time,

like today.

Awe

An Awesome Thing

Friday, June 23, 2023

Like Sunshine Reflected

Precious, Golden

Off The Ice-glazed Snow,

So God’s Great Works

Reflect Off Our Hearts and Minds

To All Around Us.

Exodus 34:10

He said: I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Matthew 4:23

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Words of Grace For Today

There is much in life that can surprise us, but nothing blows us away like the works that God does among us.

Take …

Well take any old day, of any random person, such as yourself.

Look closely.

Perhaps it is filled with unpleasant or downright terrible things.

Look past all that.

Look at how, in spite of it all, you still breathe.

With breath in and out, you can smile.

And with a smile in the face of all the terribleness of any old day of any random person like one’s self,

one can know that God has worked yet another awesome thing.

Awe is the reality of seeing God at work,

Smiling with gentle steadfast love for us, for us all.