Category: Weather

The Broken

Weary, Kingdom Workers

Thursday, November 2, 2023

A general view shows smoke as it rises following Israeli strikes in Gaza, October 9, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/live-updates-whats-happening-in-the-israel-hamas-war-as-israeli-airstrikes-hit-gaza-refugee-camp-for-second-day

Out of Sinners,

God Makes Saints,

Is that us, today?

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Matthew 25:39

And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

…

Words of Grace For Today

As I write this it is All Saints’ Day. The Hamas – Israel war continues, and continues to kill civilians, and Hamas continues to use civilians, even hospitals as shields.

There are few prayers which are sufficient. One prays that God will remake the catastrophe into something life-sustaining. It seems only God can do that.

In the future a few years a young family of three will tour the ancient cathedral in Gaza with it’s wonderful stained glass windows. Bombed in 2023 the windows were cracked, some missing pieces. One stained glass artist works on the second to last window, repairing, but not removing the signs of the damage, filling in the gaps and repairing the cracks with silver, gold, and blue glass pieces and structural materials. As the family looks at each window, the parents will explain the scene and name the saints depicted. Afterwards, the young daughter will burst in on grandma and grandpa sitting at home and exclaim, “Grandma we saw the saints today!” Grandma asks, “Who are the saints that you saw?” Without pausing the daughter responds: “The saints are the broken people the light shines through.” (decades old story, reworked)

What God does as always, is call broken people to shine the light of Christ on all that is, and all that can be.

Let us so shine, even in our brokenness.

Even though those in need are so many and the needs so great and our help seems so little.

Delights?

or Despair?

Friday, October 27, 2023

A drab morning, snow falling, making wood collecting more difficult.

Or delight in the cool that makes working outside a bit easier

than with countless bugs looking for a meal from your skin?

Psalm 27:1

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Courage is hard to come by when one is down and out, beaten again and again by enemies, lies, deceptions, and others’ greed.

At times one has to agree with Thomas Hobbes when he said about life being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.

God answers that and all our other despairing with a simple reassurance: God is with us through it all.

Like walking in a sunset alone, still unable to do anything but despair how tough life is, ‘going it alone’ is always a recipe for struggles without end.

Like walking in a sunset with a loved one, the experience grows beyond itself to convince you two that life is a wonderful, marvellous adventure, with promise unending of things good and better.

So God walking with us through it all, turns life inside out with joy, delights, and hope.

And when God walks with us, we need not be overcome with fear of yet another enemy taking more of life from us, for even if that does happen, God will show us how to find joy and delight in all that life is for us.

Today, as the snow falls again, and then hard cold of winter is coming, the joy is in the warmth provided by a hot fire in the wood stove, held close by many insulated tarps. It may not be much, but it is as much a home as I have, and in it I find endless delight even as the challenges never cease to more than fully occupy my days.

So what will we see today? The enemies efforts or God’s Grace and delights for us?

Listening

Listening and Speaking To Breath

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Like Smoke From the Fire,

Always Present, Always Needed,

The Holy Spirit’s Breath Voices the Word of Christ

Each and Every Day.

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Acts of the Apostles 16:14

A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.

…

Words of Grace For Today

In desperate times and circumstances we hope,

we all hope,

for we can only hope,

that someone will have a word to sustain us through our weariness.

We hope that someone has listened to the Word of Jesus, well enough, to understand how to provide a word that sustains us.

And

when others are caught in desperate times and circumstances they hope,

they all hope,

for they can only hope,

that someone, like us, will have listened well enough to the Word of Jesus that we will have a word to sustain them through their weariness.

Do we have ears to hear, and hearts to listen, and minds like Christs to understand?

Today, like each day, the Word of Christ is all around us. Will we listen as the wind-breath of the Spirit speaks to us?

Facing God

Friday, October 20, 2023

Seeing God is Not Like Seeing through Thick Fog.

Exodus 33:11

Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then he would return to the camp; but his young assistant, Joshua son of Nun, would not leave the tent.

John 15:15

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

…

Words of Grace For Today

The tradition was that if one saw God, one would die from the experience of such awesome power.

Then Moses spoke to God on Mount Sinai, returning with a face as white as a ghost.

Along comes Jesus, God’s son, and God as well. People encounter him in everyday settings. Twelve disciples, and probably more, follow him around the countryside, seeing him heal people’s illnesses and despair, teach with authority, and command even the wind and the sea.

Mostly they are, as the Gospels report, only somewhat aware that Jesus is God. Then he calls them not servants but friends, friends to whom he has revealed what God the Father has told Jesus. That’s a lot of divine disclosure.

And we inherit all that, through the Scriptures’ witness and the witness of Christians who have gone before us, teaching us, healing us, disclosing God’s Word to us.

That would make a huge number of people our friends, sharing in the information given Jesus by God.

I am always suspicious of people who I barely know who call me friend, for my experience is they are not about giving to me as their friend. They are about taking everything I might entrust to them, and abusing it and me with it.

That does not distract from the friendship that I have experienced many times from people I do not know, who are Christians, generous, gracious, and welcoming as Jesus was for all the terribly good sinners of his day (and all days since.) True friends do not use it as a demand, an opener and pry bar into one’s life, an avenue to use others to get ahead. True friends are about giving, and giving generously so that others can life, and live well.

That’s how we see God face to face, in the receiving of grace from strangers and in the giving of grace to everyone, even strangers.

Promises and Shame

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Remember the days of wildfire smoke that turned the sun orange?

Even then we stilled breathed!

And survived.

Joshua 21:45

Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Luke 13:17

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

…

Words of Grace For Today

I’m not so sure that all that God has promised has come to pass. There are many words of condemnation, promising the demise of all God’s people, which may have come to pass, but certainly not all of them, as God has relented and rescued God’s people, again and again, from the folly that we get ourselves into at the hands of our opponents.

Jesus, on the other hand, put his opponents to shame, with all the great works that he does.

Even this day, the wonders continue:

The air is breathable, free from smoke.

The water is drinkable, processed by systems designed by people building on the wonders of science and technology of this and previous generations.

The food is edible. Or sort of, maybe. Some of it in the grocery stores makes one question whether a huge source of cancer is not all the processed food we eat, with all the poisons in the packaging, and all the poisons that are on and in the food grown and sold … and eaten by so many people, us included.

But we do not go hungry. We just suffer all sorts of weird illnesses and diseases and decays of life. Of course the wealthy have ways of getting food that is less poison-laden, and us poor are left with no choice but to take what no one else wants. But at least we eat, right?

That is the promise that God has kept for us, that we will eat.

The shame is ours when we forget how blessed even our lives in poverty are.

Even moreso when we do not realize how others struggle to survive on so much less. Our poverty would be a dream come true for them!

So we practice this day giving thanks again:

Thank you God for all that keeps us alive!

Gimme

Gimme

More Money, More Money.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

One Of The Pathways In The Woods,

One Must Traverse

To Knock On My ‘Door’.

Proverbs 15:16

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.

Hebrews 13:5

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

A person came knocking on my door today. Not that it’s really a door, although at one point, before someone had it replaced it stood for a door, with a sliding window, probably a screen (though there’s no sign of what happened to it), even having been scratched by a dog to get out. But now it’s mounted on a wood shipping pallet, at 90⁰ to another door which stands in for a wall, stabilizing this ‘door’, with a shipping pallet on the other side, also at 90⁰ for stability. Insulated tarps are taped and stapled around the door, for those are the real walls of this place that is as much as anything that I have to call home. I live in the woods, under lots of tarps or all kinds, wood pallets as floors and walls, and no connection to the electric grid, or natural gas, or TV, or even a proper driveway. It’s just a string of pathways through the woods to get here.

She came knocking, wanting a donation for the poor. How she managed to find this place is beyond me. How she could not notice that this is how a person below poor is struggling to live, not by choice, but by necessity to survive.

I told her I would appreciate a donation for the poor, me, if that could be possible.

She laughed, and said we are all struggling.

I guess she really did not understand what she saw or heard.

…

A person came knocking on my neighbour’s door. How she found the door I’m not sure, because there is fence all around the property and an electric gate that is kept locked that the drive passes through. It’s not even got a ‘man’ gate for a person to go through. My neighbour has the best car and truck, and mower, and snow clearing tractor (a skid steer on tracks) that are all kept in proper garages for each.

She told me he said he was struggling and did not have any donations for the poor. He had to pay for 3 months in rehab for his son, a drug addict from too little responsibility, too much money, and not enough necessity to work to make a living … and too much playing with his ‘friends’, the addicts that he started hanging with in school because he was bored.

…

A person will come knocking on your door, asking for a donation for the poor. How will you respond?

…

She really is just asking for money for herself. She’s convinced that being a multimillionaire is not enough, that she is poor, that she needs help, with groceries costing more and all now. She’s even had to cut back on her vacation trips. She can only manage 6 each year. She used to go somewhere every month, either for work or play; but both are really just play. The work trips just have a few hours of meetings during them.

So how should one respond?

With pity, condemnation, confrontation, or anger?

Money represents and provides one the ability to exercise one’s will, first to survive, then to excel in luxury and comforts. The problem is once one exercises one’s will for luxuries and comforts there is never enough money to keep up with one’s thirst for more.

Better to make due with little, than be cursed with so much one always needs yet more.

No!

Not That At All. Instead

Go and Tell All …

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Sometimes We Fog Up,

Looking for the Way Out of Our Messy Lives.

God Sends Us Back Into the Mess, to ….

Psalm 31:7-8

I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have taken heed of my adversities, and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; you have set my feet in a broad place.

Mark 5:19

But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

All too often we ask and even try to demand from God something that we want, something that we are sure is what God would have for us, something that is a sacrifice of all we are and can be, and

God

says

No!

Instead God sends us right back where we’ve tried to escape from, from the grind of daily life, from the hell that daily life is (due to other people, usually), from the past that has dragged us so far into to the pit that we can barely see the horizon.

God sends us back, and tells us to

Tell everyone what God has done for us, rescuing us, healing us, forgiving us, renewing life in us, giving us hope again!

It is that we year and long for everything to be different so that maybe everything will be right in our lives.

Instead, God makes us right with God, so that no matter the circumstances that we live in and under, God can work through us to bring Grace to bear on more and more people.

So it is, this day, we enter our daily lives, looking like nothing has happened to us, and yet

everything has happened,

God has happened,

the Holy Spirit has transformed us poor sinners (actually we are very good sinners, just poorer beyond imagination for it) into saints,

those through whom the Light of Christ shines

through all the brokenness of life

into the heart of the matter, the heart of each person, the heart of God’s Kingdom come near.

Just another day for saints

to be God’s miracles

for others.

You,

Are You Alone?

Or Not Alone?

Monday, September 18, 2023

The Sun Comes Up In the Cold.

Are You Cold And Alone?

Ezekiel 18:4

Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die.

1 Timothy 2:1

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone …

…

Words of Grace For Today

We go through life, most of us, most of the time, with our heads in the sand, so to speak, not able or willing to risk taking a clear view of what we are about, what we are really up to, what a chasm lies between what we dream of doing, think we are doing, and what we actually are doing.

‘Thank God, only those of us who sin will die!’ Pretend we do, then that we do not sin, or at least not enough to die.

That death is not just a physical death, but a complete death, GONEERs forever and amen.

Yet we all sin, we all die, we are all GONEERs, not just after our physical deaths, but already now, this day, as we pretend so drastically to be good enough.

In one way we can take morbid comfort in that we are not alone. In fact everyone is in the same boat with us, on the passage into hell, long before our time.

So what to do this day?

Then we realize that God knew we would be like this and certainly did not create us just to be lost to eternal death even before we lived a day of goodness. So Jesus came to rescue the boatload of us, to redeem us from our sins, to renew life in us, and to send us out to do the same for other people.

Thank God we are not alone! There’s a whole boatload of us (taking in all the people ever who have, now do, and will live) that Jesus saves, and sends out.

Tough day, it may seem to be, when we take in how far across that chasm we live from where we thought we would live. Then, as the Spirit demonstrates once again how much God has done for us to give us life, life even on those tough days, we get to celebrate each breath.

We get to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings each day for all other people, as we realize how much God gives us also this day, tough as it may be.

Orphaned

Not

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Feeling Abandoned, Alone, Like the Moon, an Aside on a Cold Landscape … Is that us?

Psalm 42:6

My God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

John 14:18

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We fear being abandoned by all who love us, of being desperately alone. Like orphans bereft of loving parents, with no one to care for us.

So, remembering God’s promises, we pray always that God will be for us.

God of Paul and Peter, of Jeremiah and David, and of all the saints who have gone before us, guide us as your Church to genuine love for all people, and all creation, passing on to others your bounty of gifts in service to you, who showed us the way of the Cross as your way for all whom the Spirit calls to follow you. O God, You know: Hear us.

God of all the wonders of this planet, remind us that from the beginning of creation, you knit together a world meant for harmony. Protect and restore the wasted places to joy and gladness. O God, You know: See us.

God of all peoples, stir the leaders of nations and towns, militaries and courts, to listen for you. Let your call for justice reach all people and bring deliverance where there is oppression. O God, You know: Guard us.

God of steadfast love, show your love and faithfulness to those in despair. Increase their strength, care for all who feel low, keep safe any in the midst of trouble, protect vulnerable people from harm, comfort all who are ill and those who care for them. Today we especially pray for …. O God, You know: Hold us.

God of our hearts, encourage those who offer their gifts and talents in service to your church. Energize this congregation’s leaders, musicians, teachers, greeters, and administrators so they may be transformed in sharing your grace. O God, You know: Call us.

God of all the saints, death is overcome in Christ’s resurrection. We rejoice with the faithful departed (especially). Sustain us in hope until we come at last to our heavenly home. O God, You know: Carry us.

Your mercy is great, O God, and You know us better than we know ourselves. Into your hands, O God, we commend all for whom we pray, in the name of the one who reconciled all creation to himself, Jesus Christ our Savior.

Let it be so also this day.

Morning Dew

Monday, August 28, 2023

The Morning Drips Fresh From Imperfections, Too.

Second Samuel 23:3-4

The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.

Matthew 11:29

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Rulers dominate to make their wishes realities, with people falling into line to make it happen.

Leaders inspire and listen to the people they lead, bringing the best tomorrows into today, for all peoples.

God rules.

But not by dominating.

Rather with gentleness and humility (if we can imagine the all powerful God being humble!), guiding us to life unequalled in blessings.

So each new morning, with sunshine on the grass moist from the night rains or clouds dark over parched lands or cold gripping even one’s breath in a stranglehold [and all things of mornings], we

can smile

breathe

and

hope again

that this day will

bring love and wonders

to play and dance through our hours

until the night falls fully over the grass, trees and dirt

that is our home.

Eh you say again?

And God answers with a fresh smiling breeze of sunshine warm on our hearts.