Category: Trees

What Was and Is Done

Friday 9 December 2022

Knowing Our Troubles, Even Compared to Others, Is Significant. More Important is Knowing God Walks With Us, and Knowing That Even In Our Darkest Moments Christ’ Light Is ‘Up There On The Treetops.‘

Isaiah 53:4

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

Hebrews 12:3

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.

Words of Grace For Today

Since the beginning of time we humans have taken out our irresolvable-conflict-shame&blame on other innocent people. It’s called scapegoating.

Isaiah’s ‘Suffering Servant’ was such a victim, who bore shame, blame, and execution in order to free others from being made victims of scapegoating. Not that it helped end scapegoating, though it was a model of how many through the ages have sacrificed themselves, even as scapegoats, to save others.

Jesus came as God and as human and was also such a victim of scapegoating, who bore shame, blame, and execution in order to free others from being made victims of scapegoating. Similarly Abraham took Isaac out on the mountain to sacrifice him as an offering to God, and God interrupted and instructed Abraham to use the ram in the thicket instead (the goat definitely was used as a scapegoat, animal not human). That story’s message for all was simple: no more child or human sacrifice. It may have slowed child sacrifice in some ways, though still today children are sacrificed as soldiers in conflicts, as victims of starvation, disease, and climate change. Jesus’ story is a clear message: no more scapegoating. Not that it helped end scapegoating, though it was a model of how many of Jesus’ followers through the ages have sacrificed themselves, even as scapegoats, to save others.

When others attack one, physically, psychologically, socially, with false accusations, and lies to the police and under oath in court, the effects are devastating. When the lawyers, prosecutors, and judges hear and know the lies for what they are and instead of insisting on truth alone, actually pile on layer upon layer of lies, until court records contain so little of anything true, one has the making of a book. But the book has been written many times and nothing changes.

How is one to continue?

Many continue as they only can, in situations far worse, and have since the beginning of human times. So our way forward is not that bad, right?

Well, it is still bad, though knowing how much others, like the Suffering Servant and like Jesus, can give us courage to face each day’s challenges.

Freewill Offering of Ourselves

Thursday 8 December 2022

Finding one’s way past all obstacles, or walking through in all with God at one’s side?

Exodus 35:29

All the Israelite men and women whose hearts made them willing to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done, brought it as a freewill-offering to the Lord.

1 Peter 2:5

… like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

It is one thing to offer up what one has, and then again another thing to offer up everything one has.

But is it a whole other kind of life to offer up oneself along with everything one has and is and can be.

That’s the offering we get to make in response to Jesus work for us.

So we are spiritual sacrifices, living sacrifices, all so that others may know that God is gracious with us and with them.

Not that it is exciting, necessarily, to be stones, even if living stones. For what the world measures as success is not something that stones can achieve. So we sacrifice everything the world would measure as success and trust alone in what God provides.

At-38⁰ one hopes that what God provides is sense enough to prepare well for the deep cold of winter, the hot heat of summer, the bugs, the coyotes, the squirrels and the thieves’ and liars’ intervention in an already difficult life, a life of solitude, off-the-grid peace, and wonder.

There’s wood. And a stove. And water. And food. And not quite enough insulation, but it’ll have to do. Things are freezing. The sun shines brightly.

And there is power to write, and warmth to rest by, and read of wonders wrought by God’s hands, here and in places distant, now and in times far removed.

So it is when God walks with us, never alone even in this wonder-filled hermitage.

And for the rest of y’all? What has God got to offer other than life abundant, free from things and dishonesty and strivings and ‘bettering the Jones’ and false pretenses.

If one but wishes a life, a difficult life, fully blessed, a life offered completely to God’s work of bringing grace and truth to all people.

So what’s on the agenda for today for you?

And How’s That Possible?

Tuesday 6 December 2022

Dark …………………………………………….. and …………………………………………….. Light

Both Permeate Our Views,

Just As Evil and Goodness

Permeate Our Lives.

Only Grace

Gives Us A Chance

of Living Well

Covered By Them Both.

Isaiah 60:18

Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise.

2 Peter 3:13

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Words of Grace For Today

You have heard it said that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. Well I’ll tell you that is that while true they are hardly significant, compared to the two things that are actually for sure in life: Evil and God’s Grace (which makes everything good possible.)

The words of Isaiah are a promise or a call to make something good happen. And I have to say, just because you don’t hear about it does not mean that it is not there, and just because you name something nice does not make it good.

Churches give themselves names that speak the exact opposite of their true nature: a break away congregation after heated conflict that destroys so many people calls itself Peace Lutheran. A church steeped in demanding of each other obedience, pietistic practices, and righteousness (and the covering up of anything that is different) calls itself Grace Lutheran.

The American dollar is printed with ‘In God We Trust’ while those dollars are used to do anything but display a trust in God!

Fanatics call themselves all sorts of things, including faithful, and they are anything but. They become just terrorists.

Presidents like Trump and Premiers like Smith get democratically elected (well sort of), pledge to uphold a constitution and then do everything to set themselves up as sovereigns, dictators without any accountability to anyone but themselves (and their moneyed supporters.)

But God calls us children, and sends us out to be disciples of Jesus the Christ. We need to live acknowledging the full power of Evil, around us and in us, and we need to live embodying the humble and powerful Grace that God provides as a triumphant reply to Evil.

That’s a dance that we cannot find the steps to on our own. Only the Holy Spirit can guide us in that dance, and that guidance comes to us not because we earn it, but because God so chooses to give us broken, sinful humans opportunity after opportunity to hear God’s melody and dance God’s dance of Grace.

May it be, also today, so for us.

Looping Through at -32⁰ C

Sunday 4 December 2022

just a bit more to the left and down

…

opps, too far!

Ezekiel 34:12

As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.

John 10:11

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Words of Grace For Today

Right here. The flock is scattered, but this old ram is not lost. Rather God walks with me each day. This past Friday there was hardly any possibility of getting lost … at least not getting lost and living to tell about it. It dipped down into the dark cold of winter’s depths:

This morning I am out for my usual morning exercise walk down to the lake shore and up to the oil lease reclaimed field. 50 steps down, 75 up, then 22 up, then 48 up, then 48 back down, with lots of steps in between on the level or sort of so.

It’s -32⁰ for the first time this year. The drains have gone below freezing, the septic field is now at -2⁰ as it has been for days. Used water has to be carried out.

I’d forgotten this wonderful world of -30⁰C:

Stepping outside the air hits me in the face and it’s bracing, biting. The hood goes up right away even before locking up.

The snow is loud, squeaking and crunching and even screaming short cries as I step down the the hill into the wood, and then sliding, sliding, and not being able to stop until I reach the bottom.

The light fills the horizon with pastel hues of peach and orange and blue on top the greys and whites and delights of the playful tracks left yesterday in the snow.

Climbing in short steps in the footholds long ago stomped into the first snows, my breath is not as short as it was months ago, but by the time I reach the top I’m glad for a pause to catch with a camera the light painting the poplars with the skyclours bouncing from East to West and down around my lined pants on top of long johns covering already cooled legs. I move on, stopping to catch the light and colours, freezing my hand in the process, warming it inside the parka under my armpit. It takes more time than the walk takes to warm up my hand, mostly because I keep sacrificing it to the work of photo taking. I hope anyway, but since my glasses are fogged over a bit and I do not want to dump heat to take off my glasses, I am guessing from experience what I’m doing with the camera. The results will speak for themselves soon enough.

Just about to the top

Closer

Closer, yes, the sun made it.

Back I step into the heat, what is still inside the insulated tarps, and my glasses finish the fogging. But I’ve memorized the steps in, from this pallet to that, where I take off my boots and put them up on a shelf to be warmed, for the floor is near freezing while the ceiling is above 30⁰ and sometimes 50⁰ or 60⁰ or hotter, though then the danger of burning down increases greatly.

Off comes the cold parka, hung up on a nail, along with the fleece and wool hat, and the rush of warmth is so welcome.

Off come the boots, the lined pants, and I step up to the living area, up higher for better heating. It’s 30⁰ at the ceiling and 10⁰ at the floor.

Ahh, yes, -30⁰ has it’s delights and it’s challenges. Thankfully there is always a warm down duvet over the sleeping rolls, and I can warm up my feet and legs there if I need to.

All is well. All is well with my body and soul. The irregular melody of a hymn (from Gregor Linßen’s Und ein neuer Morgen part of der Messe “Lied vom Licht” that I worked on toward a better than Google translation yesterday) loops through my mind (see 18 February 2023 for my ‘final’ effort at translating it): for the melody, sung in German

1) Lord, you are our hope where life withers away,
in clay and on rocks grow full in us,
be germinating seed, be a secure place,
Bring forth fresh buds and bloom bright in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in another new day, blossom in us.

.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your wonderful hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this good planet.

.

2) Lord, you are goodness where love breaks apart,
in cold and dark times, breathe inside us.
be bless’d spirits sparking, be our warming light,
be hot flame, be burning in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in another new day, burn bright in us.

.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your wonderful hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this good planet.

.

3) Lord, you are our joy where laughter is lost,
in deep darkness, live on in us,
be joy filled dreams and thoughts, be comforting looks,
be voices and sing on in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in another new day, sing on in us.

.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your wonderful hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this good planet.

.

A rather wonderful way to start a day!

The good shepherd has kept this hermit well, safely cared for and provided for, in good company in the solitude that leaves plenty of welcome for God to walk along each step down, up, out and in, in warmth and in cold.

May the Good Shepherd also find you this day, and walk with you to keep you safe from all harm.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Saturday 3 December 2022

Oh, We humans work, and work, and

work wonders with our machines …

but

God works most wondrously,

also in us.

Psalms 102:18-20

Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die ….

John 8:36

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Words of Grace For Today

Arbeit Macht Frei

(Work Sets You Free)

an infamous greeting for the prisoners at the entrances of Dachau, Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.

And it was hardly true, unless the freedom promised was death. For working hard with barely enough nutrition to remain alive put on in the grave sooner.

God’s work among the prisoners, those doomed to die, is marvellously miraculous and not often enough,

for we humans keep multiplying the numbers of people imprisoned and doomed to die, even in Canada where capital punishment is not legal. We just do it surreptitiously, or indirectly, or ‘inadvertently’.

As in all God’s work, as in all our work for God, the purpose is less to save people from death (for death comes to us all eventually) but it is to bring others to see God’s Grace and saving work even for great sinners, so that all people will give God praise.

Our work is best centred on that purpose and goal as well: to give witness to the Grace that saves us and sustains us, and can save and sustain all people, so that more and more people will give God praise.

Another day, more opportunities to work for God to bring God praise. Another full day.

Our work cannot make us free, we are free already, no matter our circumstances, even imprisoned unjustly. For God walks with us, holding us up, and guiding us to live with peace, joy, love, hope … all given to us freely.

Ready?!!

Sunday 27 November 2022

Just an everyday morning?

Only if one is blind!

Deuteronomy 4:23

So be careful not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you, and not to make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you.

Colossians 1:15

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Words of Grace For Today

Since the beginning of time, or at least as soon as humans took note that God exists, we have been wont to ‘see’ God.

So many, unable to see God each day in all that surrounds them, have worked to make an image of God, and then they have turned to worship that image, instead of the awful, awesome, wondrous God.

Christ came for all, and specifically for those blind to God walking each day with them, to be a human who is God, so that the ‘blind’ could see.

Now everyone can see God, in the story of Jesus, the Christ.

Yet so many know the story and fail to ‘see’ God each day.

God keeps trying to lift the blinders, though so many prefer to stay in the blindness to which they are accustom, rather than venture out into the world of wonders that is God’s presence in this wondrous universe.

Still God shows up,

to be seen,

to be heard,

to give blessings,

to give guidance.

Also this day.

Are you ready for an adventure?

If, then open your eyes, ears, and heart …

.

.

.

and hang on for dear life!

Reality Worth Living In

Saturday 26 November 2022

The Sun Rises through the scrub beneath the trees, beginning a new day.

God never ‘sets’,

but walks with us,

always.

Psalms 116:9

I walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

Luke 20:38

Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many times in life when I have been surprised that others do not experience reality clearly.

The confirmation class where others seem to have not the slightest clue what the pastor was talking about most of the time, most often when I would engage him in a serious question.

The step-daughter who always accused me of doing things I had never done, so I wrote up an exchange we had where she had blown up at me. She agreed that what I had written was not wrong, but it was not right because it did not include what she felt. Her accusations were that I was responsible for what she was feeling, even though I had next to nothing to do with what her emotional state was. Her birth father had favoured her among the children and then killed himself, leaving her confused and angry. That anger got directed at me, her step-father. The result was the reality she lived was often quite disconnected from what actually took place.

People in so many different congregations and synods who played power games, participated in church, prayed for forgiveness and reconciliation with those people they saw as enemies (who certainly were not of the view that they,themselves, -those people – were ‘enemies’ of anyone,) and then they would return to their games of false accusations, scheming and disruption of congregational life.

The many people who come to the lake to drink and get high, seemingly unaware of the holy ground they tread upon.

The closest analogy I’ve found comes from being a professional photographer. I see photos all day long, especially at sunrise and sunset, or in storms, or any time the light is spectacularly specular. I’ve spoken with people who can point a camera (well a cell phone, so now everyone has a pretty good camera!) at the world to capture at best a snapshot of trees, lake, and blah, and not even notice that 2⁰ to the left there is a splendid photo waiting maybe only two minutes to be taken before it disappears.

Do people, likewise, go through their days, not seeing God among the living, thinking that God is only for us after we die, and God walks among the dead of all time?

Luke puts it straight:

God is not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

Let us walk this day, knowing that God walks with us.

Or is that something that others cannot experience? Scripture gives plenty of witness that many people have lived, knowing God walked with them.

So this is reality, and reality worth living for.

A Fire-Storm a’Coming

Friday 25 November 2022

The Dawn Fire-Storm Breaks Into Another Day.

Jeremiah 31:35

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day. and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name.

1 Corinthians 8:6

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Words of Grace For Today

Yet for us …

Which make it clear enough that for others it is not so.

We see the world defined by scientific research results and theories developed of millennia.

A universe expanding from an initial big bang, our planet one of 9 or so planets along with numerous asteroids, moons and space dust (so not quite void) revolving around a sun, and our sun one star in many that make up one galaxy among many that make up what we ‘see’ with telescopes and exploratory space venturing probes that speed out of earth’s atmosphere to bring us images and information of the ‘great beyond’ and all it’s wonders like black holes that defy our ability to see beyond their thresholds as they consume anything and everything that gets ‘too close’, being millions of miles and more.

Our ancestors saw the universe differently: the land flat, a firmament hold up the stars (planets only known as stars) and sun on it, with the precreation chaos breaking in from the bottom in the oceans and from above in storms as water of the void beyond the land and firmament poured in chaos and destruction on creation.

There are many other views of the universe, as well, among all humans of all time.

Even now we theorize there may be other universes not in and of this one we know.

Yet … yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

And this God gives the sun for light by day. and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.

Even this day, as we are told to anticipate rain and possibly freezing rain, we see God’s greatness in the blessing poured out on us like unending living waters of stream of life, and light that comes in the morning to give all creatures and plants life potentials.

In this worldview, this universe ‘seen’ and known, we see God and rest assured in God’s promise to walk with us, whatever storms come our way.

For there will be many, no doubt,

yet … yet for us there is one God ….

Looking or Already Seeing?

Thursday 24 November 2022

Looking afar

we may search for

the ‘colour of life’ elsewhere,

Doch God has put all blessings

among us.

Isaiah 49:8

Thus says the Lord:
In a time of favour I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you;
I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages.

Luke 17:21

Nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.

Words of Grace For Today

While the world teaches us to find our way,

our way in the world to success, to happiness, to comfort, to privilege, to contentment, to blessings, to prosperity, to [fill in what we all chase], and to find our way to God,

Jesus turns that all around, inside out, upside down (well, right side up, as it turns out) and shows us

we need not ‘find’ our way,

because God walks with us, and God is among us, and the Holy Spirit leads us, comforts us, provides us happiness, contentment, unending blessings, and all that is good for us, and

because God has claimed us and established among us God’s reign.

This is less for our benefit, than for those who see us

so that they may know

In a time of favour God has answered us, on a day of salvation God has helped us,

so that what is right;
I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages.

so that what is right will also be established for all people and the land.

so that what has been laid to waste will be renewed,

so that what is lost from our pasts, will be redeemed and renewed.

For this is God’s good Will towards all of us who live on this fragile planet earth.

And that is what God gives us to teach the world

about Grace.

Cause and Effect

Wednesday 23 November 2022

Not Quite Roman Roads, but,

no matter how great or small our efforts are,

they are nothing compared to God’s work

for us.

Psalms 24:7

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.

John 1:12

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Cause and Effect: people always want to be in control of the cause and the effect, especially of their own lives and things important to them,

like being accepted by God.

So the one verse from John reflects (in the English more than Greek) that first 1) we believe in Jesus’ name and receive him.

Then 2) God gives us the power.

And 3) we use that power to become children of God.

And that is all backwards and dangerously so.

If we have that power, then we have the power in the end to tell others that they did not receive Jesus, and therefore they are not the children of God, and if not the children of God, then they are not our equals, and … well eventually that leads to us against them, and the killing starts, if not literally then figuratively at first and always in the end, literally. And that is hell. That is not what Jesus came to live on earth as one of us in order to make possible.

It just ain’t so.

In fact taken with the verse before and after we see even in English some very different cause and effect.

John 1:11-13

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

1) Jesus comes to his own, and 2) they do not accept him.

3) others receive him and believe in Jesus’ name,

4) Jesus gives these others the power to become the children of God,

5) but listen: that power is not worked out by us humans, because those children of God are born (not by blood or the will of humans) but by God.

The cause and effect is clear: God acts, we receive the blessings. We get to accept the blessings or reject them.

Regardless of how we respond, scripture shows again and again that God acts again and again, to move us to accept the blessings.

The Psalm can be misread as well.

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.

One could say we must life up the gates of our hearts, our world, our cities, in order that the King of glory may come in.

But

we know God comes whether we act or not.

We pray that God will bring us to lift up the gates, and give witness to the coming of the King of glory. That’s the part we sinners get to play in God’s effort to reach out to so many people who think they are in control

of the cause and effect

in God’s creation.

God’s in control of all the causes and effects and we get to believe, cooperate, and participate, Or not.

God’s still in control of all the causes and effects.

Thank God, for when we think we are in control, that’s when we build ‘towers of Babel’ and start wars to ‘conquer or kill off the unfaithful’ who are in our way for exerting our control in ‘our world.’

Another day to pray we learn also again today to believe, cooperate, and participate in God’s Will.