Stupidity – This Life

Walk!

Walk it off?

Not a chance.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/covid-19-and-fungi-a-nightmare-in-the-making

John Hopkins: Fungi Nightmare in the Making

Lamentations 3:58

You have taken up my cause, O Lord, you have redeemed my life.

1 Peter 2:21-23

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

…

Words of Grace For Today

CBC health newsletter reported how a man came home for a long weekend, walking up his drive he vomited blood on his driveway, ended up needed a new liver (cause of cirrhosis unknown), four years later went in for a liver transplant, and spent more than a month on IVs with multiple superbug infections (infections resistant to antibiotics).

And this is more and more common. Surgery is getting to be dangerous, because of the killer infections that come with it. Covid should have woken us up to the huge risk we are at, across the world, to unstoppable infections. Instead people want Covid to be over so they say it is over and behave as if it’s over, but it’s not. We will suffer greater death and losses of health because of it. People don’t want that to happen, so they live as if it is not already happening. Wanting it to be, does not make is so.

A walk up one’s drive, after a long, hard work week is supposed to be the beginning of a kind of rest and recuperation. The walk is the beginning of ‘walking it all off’, so that one is ready to be with one’s family, and then ready to return to a productive work-week.

Sin is worse. We cannot just ‘walk it off.’ We can pretend it does not exist, which only deepens the sin’s ravaging in our lives, like superbugs denied and thus let loose to run havoc more freely in our midst.

Only God’s forgiveness can save us from sin.

Also from the sin of denying Covid, and the dangers of super bugs: bacteria, viruses, fungi.

Without God’s forgiveness, redemption, and renewal of us, we cannot engage to help one another survive come what may.

So we celebrate each morning, noon, and night (and also this day) with the writer of Lamentations: ‘You have taken up my cause, O Lord, you have redeemed my life.’ And we pray that we may be delivered from diseases that cannot be cured, again today.

The Answer is

(NOT always)

Love!

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

https://entertainmentmesh.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/deep-red-rose.j

Roses Are Red

And Violets are Blue

But

Love

Can Make You

Dead, Through and Through.

Or make you wish you were.

Psalm 22:23

You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

John 17:22

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we are young (ish) and we search for a mate for life, some of us come up with some real doosies!

No names of course, for that would embarrass us all.

The man who marries a young woman and then, despite conversation and promises to be faithfully monogamous, insists that it is his right to have sex with other woman.

The woman who in her 60’s continues to hoard canned food. Already more than 100 lbs overweight she remains fearful that, impoverished as they are for his having served as a pastor, … that they will run out of food. Her hoard fills all their living space, living room, dining room, extra bedroom and even their own bedroom. It takes an extra moving van to move the cans.

The female synodical bishop who aspires to be the bishop of the national church and uses every means to run off or ruin any pastor or congregation who challenges her autocratic, unjust, and even illegal actions to secure her ‘power’.

The woman, to compensate for her insecurities, who cannot accept responsibility for anything she does wrong always blaming it on someone else (as ludicrous as her reasoning often is), who latches on to a fat man who is ‘going places’, and then ridicules him to his literal death, to avoid a divorce and the loss of half their accumulated wealth (more than a little of it legally gained.)

The senator’s wife (a senator who serves on the committee for space exploration) who all her money and tries to send his to a scam artist, who sends news every month of the ‘little green men’ in their midst and his negotiations with them to keep them from overthrowing the government.

The obscenely rich land developer whose wife never runs out of energy or appetites for other people, without their clothes, who has to be sent to one of their other homes to interrupt her appetites run amok.

…

For some people the blessing that we may be one as Jesus is one with the Father, is not such a blessing.

The words of wisdom certainly apply, no matter for what else you marry someone, marry someone kind.

At least then, no matter how crazy they (or you) turn out to be, at least they will not try to bring about your death.

Best to be humble before God, confident only in God’s grace, for in many awesome ways God demonstrates God’s saving grace for us, not only for the Hebrew slaves escaping across the Red Sea into the wilderness, but for all of us, from our slavery to whatever oppression or sin, into the wilderness where we can learn to serve others God’s own grace, instead of our confidence in things that will always fail us.

These are the

Things …

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Our lists are as helpful as clouds are for planning a meal.

Not at all.

Zechariah 8:16

These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace,

Romans 14:19

Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification.

…

Words of Grace For Today

It’s easy to find lists of things about which one can justifiably say, these are the things. One can even find lists of things about which one can justifiably say, these are the things we should do.

Peace always tops the list and love others is almost always in there, … as long as the list of things to do is a list of how to be good.

The trouble is that we

too often

try

to be bad

even in spite of ourselves wanting to think we are good.

here’s a list of things that we can always be sure we will do:

etc until the last one is: die

…

Empty lists of things that we can be sure we will do followed by a sure thing: death.

How did God ever expect us to make anything good come about when death is the only sure thing we know we will do, and it’ll be good because we leave room then for the next generation and for evolution??!

If that is a real question for us, then it’s time to take a break….

It Will Get Better

Eventually …

Friday, August 25, 2023

Fires Spot the Ground,

Eating Everything in Their Paths.

Smoke

Takes Our Breath Away

Isaiah 49:4

But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.’

James 5:7

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.

…

Words of Grace For Today

With wildfires in the Northwest Territories, thousands of people have evacuated, mostly south, way south even to Calgary. Smoke swirls and flows across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan as the NWT fires’ smoke combines with those in BC to wreak havoc on breathing, which last I checked is still a basic function required for staying alive.

It’s not unlike all the other evils that come back to haunt us from our pasts, evils that we blithely contributed to, thinking the day of reckoning would not come, not really. It’s a shame. Almost all of the severe weather events we suffer now could have been avoided if we would have listened, believed and made changes back when changes would have made a difference. Oh, they still will make a difference, but we are in for a lot of suffering for the next few centuries. A lot of suffering.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/it-was-like-a-beast-evacuees-describe-fleeing-kelowna-wildfire-losing-their-homes-54

It’s Gotten Hot,

Not Just In Hell.

Then from CBC news (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-wildfire-update-august-23-2023-1.6945337) we get this:

Though forecasts of rising temperatures, no rain and shifting winds continue to be a worry, fire experts are taking several days to do infrared scans of several of the largest blazes, including the one outside the capital city, said Jessica Davey-Quantick, wildfire information officer for the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

The scans will provide information that will allow wildfire teams to plan next steps in the fight, she said.

If only we could have scanned into the future five decades, back in the 1980’s, eh?!

But we do now what we can:

“In coming days, we’ll have more information as these fires are assessed and our next steps are established. Right now it is not safe to return to these communities that have been evacuated,” she said.

Most of all we have to remain hopeful, and remember how we’ve survived in the past, and how we can help each other now:

“For now the best we can all do is just wait and see what’s coming. We’re going to get through this. It’s going to get better. Eventually,” she added with a smile, “it will snow.”

Thank God, literally, for knowing things like ‘it will snow’ which give us hope, hope for all the challenges we face in the midst of all the evil we have contributed to form our days,

even this day.

Thank God for ‘snow’.

Who

Who Are We?

Who The [Hell] Are We Anyway!

Monday, August 14, 2023

They ask about us:

are we palatable, like tasty berries?

Or are we more like poisonous berries,

bright and deadly?

Proverbs 16:7

When the ways of people please the Lord, he causes even their enemies to be at peace with them.

Matthew 5:44-45

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

…

Words of Grace For Today

In the tumult of today’s world,

when even mother nature seems to be angry with us, challenging our ability to adapt and survive even more extreme weather and destructive storms,

when wars erupt unjustly (as always) leaving people caught between death, destruction, and displacement,

when there are so few honest people who provide truth as a measure of who one is to them,

in the tumult of this world

how are we to know who we are?

how are we to find peace, with ourselves, our world, and with others who wish to do us harm?

Today we measure mostly who we are looking within our selves, an inside view, established by ourselves. This leads to a detachment from others and from community, and more and more people are ‘lost’ to themselves and others. This in turn allows people of power to use, abuse, and denigrate others. In the extreme assembling one’s identity mostly from within leads to narcissism.

In Jesus time people mostly measured who they were by looking outside themselves to what others thought of them. It allowed for distinctions made by powerful people to denigrate the masses as less than significant except to serve the powerful. In the extreme this leads to co-dependency, as we would call it, for those who assemble their identity nearly all from others.

Through history we humans have swung this way and that, between codependency and narcissism, finding our identity mostly with difficulty.

Always, no matter how we assemble our identity, there are ample paths to tear apart anything like peace for ourselves and those around us. Narcissists and codependents wreak havoc for themselves and people around them. Wars are begun by them, easily and often. Sometimes the wars are global, sometimes against a community, sometimes within a family, often within one person. Disruption and destruction reign.

Where is peace to be found?

How can it be that even our enemies will find peace in our presence?

This is only possible when we allow the Spirit to build our identity based on who God says we are: simultaneously pitiful sinners and, miraculously, saints.

God’s peace flows around this kind of people, known by their love for others, even for their enemies. Peace flows with their love like water from the rock in the wilderness as Moses led the people out of slavery into the wilderness, their offspring lead by Joshua into the Promised Land; our ancestors.

Today who will we say we are?

Who will our actions say we are?

How will people know us?

Will they encounter God’s Grace and Peace through us?

Pray the Spirit inspires us to be a bit of a miraculous saint even this day.

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!

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.