Category: Trees

Dead Proud

Friday 6 January 2023

Thick Fog Settles

and Departs,

Leaving Glorious Patterns of Crystals.

Our Pride Only Destroys All It Touches.

Second Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

1 Peter 5:5

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. ’

Words of Grace For Today

There is a fast way to orchestrate one’s own demise: pride.

There is a wonderful, enriching way to live blessed and shared those blessings with others: humility.

Today we pray, may we be humble this day, and in every day to come.

Lifelong Living to the Fullest

Thursday 5 January 2023

God’s Blessings Give Life It’s Fullness,

Even in Our Darkest Times,

as the Moon Brightens Our Night.

Psalms 71:17

O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

Luke 2:29-31

Simeon said: Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples….

Words of Grace For Today

Living to the fullest may mean hard partying, drinking, drugs, and sex for some. Or working hard to make so much money one cannot spend it all and playing even harder trying to spend it. Or just about everything under the sun in the extreme to the extreme.

All that as if one’s actions, accomplishments and record were worth something at all, when measure by the one measure that counts at all, God’s measure, our human actions, accomplishments and record are worth next nothing, especially compared to what God does, accomplishes and establishes through us and without us.

The fullest life we can live is to continually, humbly, give God thanks and praise.

Living life to it’s fullest in this way we can be ready to greet our death as Simeon did, with thanks and praise for all God’s gifts, especially the gift of God’s Son living as one of us, God’s communication to us that is so clear we can tell the story over and over again and marvel at God’s Grace and Love for us all.

Mercy Me!

Monday 2 January 2023

A New Day,

A New Year,

Same Mercy and Grace

Sustain Us.

Jeremiah 31:20

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child I delight in? As often as I speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore I am deeply moved for him; I will surely have mercy on him, Says the Lord.

Ephesians 2:4-5

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Words of Grace For Today

New Year’s Resolutions are already being broken around the world. Old sins have accumulated and weighed people down to the point they see no other way ahead than to sin more and more as if digging themselves out of it all, when they actually are digging themselves deeper and deeper into the excrement of sins from generations upon generations.

And how does God deal with this, yet again?

God points out our sins!

And

God is merciful and gracious: God forgives us and frees us from the burdens of broken resolutions and accumulations of sins and sins’ excrementations.

And

God delights in us, as we move forward, not free from sin, but able to be saints in this chaos of life on this precious planet.

And

God adopts us as God’s own children, blesses us beyond our wildest imaginations, and sends us out

to share this mercy and grace with all other people.

Another day beginning another year, come what may, God is ready to walk with us through it all.

Last Stand, Forever Secure

Saturday 31 December 2022

As Sentinels

Against All That Would Do Us Harm,

God Stands

Day and Night

By Us!

Zechariah 9:8

Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.

Romans 8:31-32

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Words of Grace For Today

Looking back at the year bygones and all

I wonder

what will become of

today?

all daze?

looking at the weather

or not to travel on gravel

to the bench the Judge wants order

is not something possible in this world

ways I’ve decided are not to be trusted

thoughts one cannot know so much

is out of my hands

Oi vey! my hands are sore

no more.

…

So we look to a new year, just like the last,

Knowing that God not only walks with us,

but is encamped with us, protected as a guard the doorways,

to the camp and our lives,

so that those set on destroying us

devil and all

will not prevail

not even in the new year.

We will continue to enjoy God’s blessings beyond imagination,

given to us, not earned, signs of God’s grace for others to see that God is gracious to all people,

blessing that cannot be bought with money or time:

love, hope, peace, joy, faith, fullness of life, and purpose.

Vacillations

Thursday 29 December 2022

Whether By Night

Or By Day,

The Beauty Is God’s,

The Pollution

From Making Power for Our Insatiable Striving to Control Our World

is Ours

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 fulfil it?

2 Corinthians 1:19

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

God is not human, vacillating with first this Word and then later a contrary Word, always indecision reflected as the inability to know and control what is to come. Rather God is Omniscient and All Powerful so that God’s Words and Promises are sure, to be trusted, and thus

we are to live accordingly.

Or else!

Right?

Not really. Not really at all, at all.

For God did become human, in Jesus, and in him Paul says all things are always Yes – not vacillating between Yes and No. Paul asserts this when he was caught out by having told the Corinthians of his plans to return to Corinth and then his actually not returning by choice or due to things beyond his control. Paul wants to reestablish his trustworthiness to the Corinthians by pointing out that Paul is, like Jesus, always trustworthy, though not in this case! And, if we are honest, it is never the case for any human.

Though some people intentionally lie and are very predictable in that they will do you harm if it is to their advantage, there is not a person ever who can know the future and control it, try as many may.

So we are left vacillating between our yes’s and our no’s and seem to be untrustworthy and out of control. That chaos evil people take advantage of, manipulating others’ destruction and their advantage.

And that is just how it is,

Right?

Not at all, not at all.

For God’s Word is sure, and while we must not comply with God’s Word, and in fact are woefully incapable of doing so consistently,

By God’s grace and by God’s grace alone, we get to live according to God’s Word, not that it ‘works to our advantage’

but in order that we are examples of how God works with woeful sinners like us, like you, like us all.

What Awaits Us?

How Shall We Proceed?

Wednesday 28 December 2022

As Time Moves On, As Seasons Come to an End, As Canoeing Ended and the Snows Began, So On This Day What Comes to an End?

Psalms 42:12

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

2 Corinthians 3:12

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,

Words of Grace For Today

Looking,

Looking where?

Looking back, forward, in depth, inward, to the stars?

In the in between time we look where it counts:

to God

for hope,

and love,

and life,

and purpose,

and direction, also for this day.

Though hope is based on nothing tangible, and while living based on nothing tangible is foolhardy,

nevertheless we proceed with boldness in everything we do,

for our hope is based on what is not tangible, but what is infallible, and the source of the only security available to any human in life: God’s Word.

So let the day bring what it will, we will hope

to respond with the same Grace God shows us each day.

And

that is a good ending to any year, day, moment, and even life, if that is what awaits us.

Mystery of Between Time

Tuesday 27 December 2022

In All That Is,

We Find Ourselves

In The Between

Jeremiah 31:28

And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.

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

This is the time outside of time,

as it were.

Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, a week of extra-ordinary time.

Time to contemplate the wonder of Christmas, Jesus born as one of us, giving us a clear story of God with us.

Time to remember who we are, and whose we are, and what wondrous, loving, and gracious things God has done for us great sinners to make us saints.

Time to remember the stories that make us live as we do, humble, generous, loving, and bringing wondrous news to all people: that God is for us!

God, the judge of all able to destroy all evil, relents and graciously moves us to plant and build today for a future for all people.

God provides this time for us to wait, again, for a new beginning, just as we sleep at night each night, waiting and trusting that God will forgive us that day’s sins and create in us clean hearts for the start of each new day, and each new year.

Time between,

Time between us being irrational people caught by emotions that confuse and mislead us, between that and rational minds that have no room for wonder and grace, and between all that (and more that we humans are in our feeble ways) and

the miracle that is God knowing us completely, choosing us, forgiving us, renewing us, calling and sending us out to share God’s Good News, the story of Jesus for us, and then God walking with us come what may.

Time

Time between

Time between the mundane and the mystery,

Time to be miracles of God’s making, living with emotions and using rational thought, and surrendering both to the mystery that is life, and God for us in this life.

God Gathers In All Kinds

Wednesday 14 December 2022

At each fork in our day’s path,

which will we choose

as our future?

Zechariah 2:10-11

Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord. Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day, and shall be my people; and I will dwell in your midst.

Revelation 7:9

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

Words of Grace For Today

We humans are generally more comfortable with what we know, with what we are familiar with, and that goes for other people as well. If we know and are familiar with others we are comfortable around them, or so we say.

There are the exceptions where we know and are all too familiar with people who abuse, lie, and take advantage of others (us included) by criminal acts and many not recognized as criminal acts. We stay very uncomfortable around them.

The internet has many ‘social media’ services that push content at us from like-minded people, so that we are comfortable with what is being done to us, as advertisements slowly scratch away at our very being, moulding us into consumers before anything else. Our interactions on ‘social media’ (those so regulated by such algorithms) are ‘heard’ only by those who already agree with us. And the ‘echo chamber’ effect takes our perspective away from us, until we can all too easily think that all good people must think as we do, even when what we think is totally disconnected from reality, fed by ‘fake news’, and wilful people seeking to increase their power and control over others. Via the internet that can be millions and even billions of people, all led like lemmings over the cliffs of reality into the seas of fear, racism, radicalism, and then on to destructive violence, small scale one on one, and large scale as these ‘enlightened lemmings’ seek to rid the world of ‘those’ people. All the while power hungry people (many just as ‘enlightened lemmings’ as their victims) manipulate economies, wars-conflicts, elections, and just about anything they can use to their ‘advantage’ to have more power, whatever the cost to other people.

God sure did create humans capable of great chaos, nearly enough to move the whole precious planet back into pre-creation chaos of non-existence, or at least void of life.

What for?

God has, even as all the ‘enlightened lemmings’ and power hungry corrupters of reality work to create chaos, also created God’s people in the middle of all this chaos. God’s people.

These are not just one stripe of a kind of people. Not one nation. Not one creed. Not one colour, race, gender, or any other category we use to delineate ourselves from ‘those others’ with whom we are uncomfortable.

God’s people come from every nation, every corner of this precious planet, every kind of person, every faith, and every category of people.

That’s pure light made of all colours of the rainbow called together, living in harmony, in peace, serving one another, bringing justice based on truth to bear for all the poor, feeding the hungry, bringing living water to the thirsty, and sending us out to proclaim God’s welcoming grace to all people.

Today, we of God’s people, will choose at the forks in our paths, to serve God, or ourselves. Which will we choose: to participate in creation’s harmony or work of chaos? Small choices mostly: tremendous consequences.

Thirst, Testing, and Reaping: Or Grace?

Tuesday 13 December 2022

We Thirst

Most of All For

Cool, Clear,

Light.

Christ’s Light That Gives Life.

Deuteronomy 6:16

Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.

Galatians 6:7

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.

Words of Grace For Today

The people in the wilderness are thirsty, for there is little to no water for them and it has been so for days. So why did God bring them out into the wilderness? It’s freedom. But freedom can mean being free from the necessities of life and that is not what they thought God would provide for them.

They are ready to rebel. Moses is to be their victim, and then? They would be worse off than before! Or?

And God offers Moses access to water, using the staff that parted the waters of the Red Sea for the escaping Hebrews and then un-parted to drown their pursuers. Water flows from a rock.

Well, God showed those people how water can be had, eh?

Not really. God showed the people that God would provide.

Not that it helps. When they are hungry, having had little to no food for days they demand of Moses and God that they have food, and then even meat!

And that is all reasonable, right?

In Galatians the people are warned that they will reap what they sow. Except that is expressly what Jesus saves us from. We reap what God sows for us.

Somewhere in there is God’s reality and not our confused interpretations used to hammer each other into submission and obedience to our wills (not God’s).

God provides all we need, and asks us to beg, cry, and demand from God what we need. So we pray for everything we need!

God also understands that we are never free from sin. God needs and promises to continually forgive us our sins, exactly so that we do not ‘reap what we sow’ so that we can live free of that burden, a necessity before we can live anything close to thankful, gracious, and generous with ourselves and others, and God’s good creation.

Living free, in God’s grace, does not mean that we will get it right all the time, or even a little bit. It does mean that at the end of the day, and at the beginning of each new day, we can thank God for everything and ask God for everything we need … and even everything we want, knowing God will pare down our what-we-want list to only those things that are good for us and others and all creation.

So likewise today, we give thanks and beg like mad for what we need and want. Often we cannot discern what is which, anyway. But we need not fear God’s response. God walks with us and suffers what we suffer, suffering at the hands of our enemies, and giving us

Assurance that when we thirst, there will always be a rock that flows freely with water for us.

Exodus 17.2-7

The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah* and Meribah,* because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’

When There’s No Morning Light?

Monday 12 December 2022

Morning comes so late and

then in a snowstorm,

barely at all.

Still God’s Light is with us,

more than the oil processing plant’s light

breaks the northern horizon’s

quiet.

Psalms 31:17

Do not let me be put to shame, O Lord, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol.

Ephesians 5:8

For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light…

Words of Grace For Today

‘Let the wicked be put to shame and let them go to hell!’

Which is all fine and good, except that, when we are honest we have to recognize that on our own we are the wicked.

Ahhh, yes, what goes around comes around, so to speak!

We were once the darkness of the world, but now we are light. Once we were the wicked, but now we are the righteous, though we are only light and righteous because God so makes us by removing our own records from us and applying Jesus’ pure record to us in relationship to God and all creation.

So we get to live as the Light, as the Righteous, even though it is not us, but rather the Holy Spirit working in us.

And what are we to do with others who practice wicked ways still? Forgive them, so that they can repent and join the Light and the Righteous. And when they refuse to even recognize their wicked ways, and do horrendous damage to so many people, well …

well then God must deal with them.

We can work on forgiving them, or we can bind their sins, and let them know they are bound so that they know God will judge them according to truth.

As for this day, there is plenty to do to survive the cold of winter, and prepare our hearts, minds and lives for the Christ-child-come-celebration ahead.

Now is time of reflection, sombre introspection, and thanksgiving for all God does for us each day.

So we take time, time to rest and think and pray and sing and …

let God speak to us again,

and to recognize that God walks with us each day, no matter what comes our way.