Category: Stupidity

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.

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.

It’s BROKEN!

Got Any Ideas for the Fix?

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Long Ago Our Fore-bearers’ Species

Crawled Out of the Soup of Water and Breathed

… Breathed the Air God Gave Them,

Gives Us,

Unless We Burn the World Down.

Psalm 150:2

Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!

Romans 1:20

Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse ….

Words of Grace For Today

We’ve taxed the whole earth to support us greedy 8 billion people, and in many and various ways the earth is fighting back to reduce us back to …

back to whatever it takes.

While climate change fills the air with smoke from wildfires, many times more fires and acres burned than ever before in a year, and while we find it hard to breathe,

Covid came and we wrestled it to the mat but it’s not pinned and gone yet and never will be, they tell us,

the economy went into turmoil, because we stayed home, money stopped changing hands as fast, government subsidies helped many, and then with the lockdowns ended, money changed hands at a rate to make up for the lockdown-slowdowns and inflation climbed like a rocket (but not like the 80’s of 20% and more, just 8%) so the central banks increased interest rates to slow things down.

Now the pain of increased interest rates bites hard and many face more than difficulties, even bankruptcies, and many ask what are we doing????!!!!

Other than the central banks increasing interest rates, which will put more people out of their homes, and rents have skyrocketed so renters are not immune, what have we done?

Some experts say there is much we could do.

The best line I’ve heard quotes the Simpson show: “We’ve done nothing and we are out of ideas.”

But, like the visible evidence of God’s works all around us, there is plenty of evidence there are things, bad things, done, and there are things, good things, to be done.

It starts remembering our place: we are sinful creatures of our Creator God. So confession and repentance start every day (and every thing). Then in thanks for all that is, and for all that we have and are, and for all that will be: we can give God thanks and praise.

I’m not sure if that gives a good start to what can be done to counter inflation with more intelligent efforts than leaving it all up to the central banks and interest rates increases, but

It is always a good start …

a good start to this day,

a good start to every day,

a good start to every thing.

…

It’s a good start also because whatever ideas we then come up with will be ideas to deal with reality: we are sinful creatures and God is our Creator, and Creator of all that is. And God don’t make no junk.

Coming Up Short

Again!

Thursday, July 6, 2023

The Light!

Look,

See,

‘Find’ Jesus,

Standing Beside Us,

The Whole Time!

Psalm 25:1-2

Of David. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.

Luke 19:3

Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.

Words of Grace For Today

With all of our expectations of others, of how we should be able to progress through a day, a week, a year, a life, it is too common that we come up short. Of course we come up short when others measure us or we measure ourselves compared to others. (That’s how we pretend that we are better than others, others who are ‘shorter’ at life than us.) The real challenge is when we come up short according to our own measure.

That can bring on our old friend the blues very quickly, and that trusty friend can settle in for an extended stay, even sleeping on our bed because we cannot sleep well at all.

We all try to compensate, somehow or another. Some pretend to be real intelligent, some very wealthy, some very privileged, some very powerful, some from real old blood –

which reminds me of the guy who showed up to camp. Everything he tried turned out poorly. He couldn’t get a place to rent. Landlords kept renting out any room he showed interest in before he could come up with the first months’ rent. He had a truck. On the truck he had a camper, given to him, laden with black mould that he started to rip apart to get at the mould and get rid of it. Before he got very far the police came and told him he was camping illegally and he had to move somewhere else. But, and this came in a conversation after he told me of all his failings, he asked me how long I had lived here. I said five years, meaning this camp place. He proudly said he was bred and born in Cold Lake.

It didn’t matter that we were standing 25 kilometres from Cold Lake, but this he had done better at than me. That made him worth something! I was a ‘newbie’ and he belonged here … until the police told him to move. –

It really doesn’t matter how we try to pretend to be better at life and in life than we really are, making such claims always makes us look just a tad foolish (well under it all we are through and through fools.)

Like David we may fear being put to shame by our enemies, but like David we often put ourselves in shame faster and more thoroughly than any enemy could. So we cry with David, O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me …

to which we add: save us, most of all, from ourselves.

Like Zacchaeus we may have tried to gather as much money and power as we can (at other’s expense) but we know there is more to life than these empty things we fill our lives with.

We want to see Jesus, the healer, the teacher, the one they say is the Son of God.

We don’t have to climb any trees.

Jesus walks here.

At least Jesus walks here with me wherever I go, even when it’s into a hell of a mess. And Jesus walks with me, guiding me and sometimes carrying me out the other side back into the light.

We may come up short, but we are never too short to see Jesus walking with us. Sometimes we need a saint or two or thousands to show us, but there Jesus is, pulling us out of our self made shame again, back into life where we can breathe and laugh and sing and dance … and share God’s blessings with others. Our only real ‘claim to fame’ is that we were born and bred here, we belong here …

with Jesus in God’s Kingdom. (But that’s not our doing. God chooses that for us!)

Razing

Hell-Raisers?

Friday, June 30, 2023

Solitude,

Morning Fishing,

Until the Hell-Raising SkiDoos

Blow It To Bits

Jeremiah 20:11

But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonour will never be forgotten.

Luke 17:5

The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’

Words of Grace For Today

As a departing word a couple I’d just met wished me health and well-being. I thanked them wholeheartedly. They were kind people. There’s not enough of that kind of folk.

I know too many people who would rather be wished wealth and hell-being, and more and more of it, since they orient their lives towards all the wealth they can get, legally or illegally or blatantly criminally. They want the wealth so that they can continue to raise as much hell as possible, taking all the pleasure from every day that they can steal, usually from others, but also from their own health and well-being.

Being anywhere near those kind of people is dangerous. Even if they do not target you, you are going to fall victim for their greedy progress through life, leaving a ‘scorched earth’ behind them, all too often with lots of people getting burned. These kind of people are persecutors of so many people, many more unintended victims of the wide swatch of destruction they leave in their wake.

We can understand then when Jeremiah celebrates that God will put those who persecute him to shame, letting them stumble and fall into dishonour. Life would be so much better, we could easily think, if God would take all those hell-being-ers and give them a quick exit of shame out of this world.

Yet God doesn’t do this for us. Instead God calls us to forgive these destroyers of life. God wants to be able to rejoice at their repentance. Even when we cannot imagine they even see their sins yet alone consider repenting, God continues to give them breath and hopes. When God hopes, surprising things happen.

But for us to tolerate these hell-being-ers and suffer their destruction that seems to know no bounds?! How can we do this.

Once again we cry with the disciples: “LORD, INCREASE OUR FAITH!”

Skipping

Into The Day

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Learning From the Sun,

Which Even On Smoky Days,

Skips Across the Evening Waters,

Our Days Begin With Celebrations: 1, 2, 3 …

Jeremiah 8:4

You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When people fall, do they not get up again? If they go astray, do they not turn back?

1 Timothy 1:12

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service,

Words of Grace For Today

People fall.

People fall often, sometimes physically, more often psychologically and even more often spiritually.

Getting up again, well that is not always a simple matter.

We’d like to simply say, yes we all get back up. Well-being is restored to us and we walk tall and healthy, full of vigour and vitality.

But it just ain’t so.

Most of us walk wounded, stooped over or even crawling from day to day. And all of us will some day not ever again get up, and we hope that someone will honour us enough to lay us in a grave.

While we breathe, wounded or stooped over, we know that God walks with us and gives us strength for this day, and each new day we breathe. We do not deserve such grace. We count on such grace.

With Timothy we give God thanks, for all the strength we need God provides, and when we need added support, God carries us through the hellish days we find ourselves in, until we come out the other side into the light of love, hope, and grace.

As we can then, we take time to skip into a waltz or two step, celebrating all that God does for us, thanking God for such undeserved gifts.