Weather – Page 8 – This Life

Awe

An Awesome Thing

Friday, June 23, 2023

Like Sunshine Reflected

Precious, Golden

Off The Ice-glazed Snow,

So God’s Great Works

Reflect Off Our Hearts and Minds

To All Around Us.

Exodus 34:10

He said: I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Matthew 4:23

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Words of Grace For Today

There is much in life that can surprise us, but nothing blows us away like the works that God does among us.

Take …

Well take any old day, of any random person, such as yourself.

Look closely.

Perhaps it is filled with unpleasant or downright terrible things.

Look past all that.

Look at how, in spite of it all, you still breathe.

With breath in and out, you can smile.

And with a smile in the face of all the terribleness of any old day of any random person like one’s self,

one can know that God has worked yet another awesome thing.

Awe is the reality of seeing God at work,

Smiling with gentle steadfast love for us, for us all.

At Sunrise

And At Sunset …

Saturday, June 17, 2023

The Sun Sets,

Through the Smoke From Wildfires.

Psalm 50:1

A Psalm of Asaph. The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Luke 17:20-21

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 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

The sun rises.

The sun sets.

Life on earth goes on (for some of us, but for many not!)

Climate change, and other troubling developments, lead us easily to say we are seeing the end of all time, the Apocalypse, the Parousia.

Yes, climate change is human created destruction of the environment that sustains life on earth, at a rate never seen or heard of before.

But this is not a sign of the end of time. It may well be the end of life on earth as we know it. Already the severe weather of last year has become the norm for this, and it scares any sensible person about what the future may bring, for it will get much, much worse!

Even in this time, with crises of wildfires and pervasive smoke across Canada, Jesus is already with us.

Jesus is already with us.

Jesus is here, with us, suffering with us, celebrating with us, and showing us how to care for each other, the earth, our environment,

and pointing us to the mercy and grace of God which will give us renewed life each day, in such bounty that we can share it just as bountifully with everyone.

The sun rises.

The sun sets.

And God makes it so, also mercifully giving us new life as the sun rises and as the sun sets.

God’s Face

Shown and Not Hidden

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Even in the Deepest Darkness

and

in the Thickest Fog,

Like This Moon on a Wintry Morning,

God Does Not Hide From Us.

Ezekiel 39:29

… and I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God.

Romans 8:16

… it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ….

Words of Grace For Today

When God shows God’s face …

Ancient times knew that when one saw God’s face, that was the last thing one would see. One died, and quickly.

God visits Moses, calling him to lead God’s people from slavery to freedom. God hides in a burning bush that is not consumed. Moses is convinced it is God.

Moses climbs Mount Sinai and God shows God’s face to Moses giving him the ten commandments, twice since the people have put up a golden calf to worship. Moses has disappeared up the holy mountain. That’s where God is, and surely Moses has seen God and … of course died. So the people move on, insisting Aaron make a godlet for them from their most precious gold. Moses sees this and throws the stone tables of the ten commandments down, breaking them on the rocks. After the people’s sins are dealt with, Moses climbs the mountain again, and chisels a new set of the same ten commandments.

Moses sees God, twice. And Moses’ face shows it: he has turned ashen white from the exposure.

So when God promises to never hide God’s face from the Israelites again, after God returns to them, is that a promise or a threat?

Will the people turn ashed white from the exposure, or die?

Or …

is something else afoot?

Will God show God’s face and bless the people?

When God’s Spirit gives witness, to our spirits (the German translation interprets the genitive ‘our spirits’ as ‘to our spirits’, instead of the English which interprets it ‘with our spirits’, the ‘to’ makes better sense), then we can know that we are God’s children and …

children need not fear seeing their parent, not if the parent is a good parent as God is.

So …

We can give God thanks and praise that God is with us, and does not hide God’s face from us, children of God that we are.

Gentleness,

Or Arthritis, Or …

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Like Nighttime Snow

Freezing The Pine’s ‘Green’,

Arthritis Grips One’s Thumbs

(and other parts)

Without Warning

Psalm 34:3

O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Words of Grace For Today

A low pressure area (weather) approaches and the barometer drops like lead balloons or truth entering a courtroom.

Lifting a 22’ post to vertical to be packed tight in a hole yesterday leaves me cautious with my back.

But why are my thumbs complaining so loudly. Ah, yes. The lifts, only a few inches at a time, were many over hours … and I used a small but still heavy and very sturdy tree top with many side branches to lift the post and then to support the post between lifts. The best grip (well the only workable grip) put my left thumb in a vise below one of those side branches. So today, screaming out with pain, it wants heat and it’s cool in here since I’ve cooled it down to 13⁰ with the night air to prepare for the coming heat of the day (over 30⁰).

Lots of things, aggressive things, could be done, like turbo pain relievers. But how is one gentle with pain.

Well, one is gentle with arthritis if one has any good experiences with it. Aggressive hardly ever works and is more likely to make it worse. So the coffee press is filled from the hot water pan with a cup. That task done the cup automatically gets held just a few minutes longer in that hand and then is run around the outside of the thumb to warm it. Still the pain.

So after breakfast, the coffee press always has about 3/4 cup of coffee in the bottom with the grounds that does not pour out without extreme measures and then always with grounds in it anyway, so it’s hot after the last cup is poured and it gently, carefully (it’s almost too hot to touch) serves as a heat pad, and finally the the pain subsides enough so that I can write (well type.)

And the day is good.

When it’s not one’s own body that’s screaming in pain, but another person cursing in anger, the same kind of approach works best, if one knows what is good for oneself and others. Find what soothes the pain that is behind the anger, since all anger at it’s beginning and core is pain, is being hurt.

And that hurt allowed to grow into anger. And that anger left to fester by someone who does not know what hurts them grows to nearly fill or actually overfill, the person’s every hour. And that overfill of past pain become anger gets set off with a small spark of pain way too often. And the frequent fire of anger (without any obvious cause) grows until the person is in full out rage … every hour of every day, until ….

So when you encounter an angry person it’s almost impossible to deal to any good effect with the anger that grows out of the present situation, … because, well, that isn’t the pain the person is ‘venting’ with anger or rage.

And the only way to calm the current situation is …

you got it,

with gentleness

that soothes not only the current pain but all that pain built up under the surface.

Gentleness goes a long way, everyday,

with everyone.

Even me.

Even you.

How could God not advise us to let everyone know our gentleness?

How can we exercise gentleness even today?

Or is everything a nail since we are always hammers!? (Hurts my thumb just to think that!)

Bus u. Bet Tag

Begging Day

Monday, June 12, 2023

With the Heat Above 30⁰ Now For Days

Remembering -38⁰ Doesn’t Help.

Begging God for Deliverance Does.

(It motivates us to chill. A little heat is nothing compared to the heat, smoke, drought, floods, storms, and disasters of all kinds, which others suffer already, and we may well suffer soon enough.)

Psalm 25:18

Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.

Luke 15:7

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

Words of Grace For Today

Hah!

I’d like to meet even one of those 99 people who do not need repentance!

…

Of course I’d like more to see one of those 99 in the mirror each morning, noon, and night.

But it just ain’t so for me.

Nor for any other living human being, or for any now dead, when they were still alive (since after we die, it’s too late for repentance.)

What is wonderful is that there is great joy in heaven when we do repent.

So today, call it Buss und Bet Tag, (day of repentance and prayer)

In our prayers and repentance we can beg God for mercy, for Christ promises us God will be gracious with us

again

and again

always.

Inherit

This Mess!?

**No *&^! Thanks?**

Saturday, June 3, 2023

The Beauty of Creation

Messed Up

By Climate Change=Wildfires=Smoke=Can’t See,

And Can’t Breathe!

Zechariah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Words of Grace For Today

The world seems to be totally messed up.

Lies take the day.

Fake news creates convictions that there is no climate change, just normal evolution. (Really!?)

Politicians that believe their own lies and fake news.

And middle classes that think the fake news politicians are going to actually work for them, and not the special interests and big businesses that support them in exchange for decisions that favour their businesses, or hide the reality of their raping the planet and our future.

The meek shall inherit this!

As one of the meek I will say a resounding, “No Thanks! Keep your messes and give us the New Jerusalem without you or your messes!”

(Maybe that is too much for a meek response?)

…

and then even this sometimes meek and sometimes not so meek person gets to remember that what appears to be a total mess is not beyond God salvaging great good from, and us inheriting it just may be the best thing this world will ever see, other than that God came as a meek saviour, riding on the foal of a donkey. Not the ride for a great leader, eh?!

But exactly the ride for God. For God would show us that great rides, great pomp and ceremony, wild parties of excesses, and shows of great power, force, and privilege, and not even the joys of wondrous comforts in life … all this is not what God created us in creation to be able to experience.

God created us to be able to give. To give life to other people. To restore, protect, use sustainably, and enjoy all of creation.

I guess us meek people (and the not so meek among us) can celebrate today all that God gives us, as we share it with as many people as we can.

When It All Hits

The Proverbial Fan …

Friday, June 2, 2023

Red Beauty?

Or Fire Burning Us Out?

Or Smoke

Taking Our Breath Away?

Haggai 2:9

The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.

Colossians 3:15

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Words of Grace For Today

When, though one knows one has done everything possible to make things right, it all hits the fan and gets blown to bits, one has to ask, why?

Happens to all of us, some more than others, always too often.

So how do we proceed through our days, having this happen to us, and knowing it will surely happen again?

Shall we resign, capitulate, and end our days in despair?

Shall we rise up to fight more viciously than ever imagined – hard for pacifists to fight, yet alone viciously – but shall we abandon being pacifists all together and fight like everyone else, and be more vicious now so that we can win, finally!?

Shall we plod on, actually or pretending not to notice how others run us over like bugs on the road of life?

Thankfully God knew it would be like this for us.

God sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit (all God, Three in One, anyway) to demonstrate life on earth for us, and to guide us with God’s power of self-sacrificial love through all that comes our way.

This provides an unwavering peace, the peace of Christ, that we can claim for ourselves at all times, in any circumstance, no matter who stands against us.

Further, though we may fear the result of all the things we have lost as we move forward in our days breathing, God promises that what is taken will be not only replaced (better than insurance of any kind) but that what we receive will be of far greater value. God’s gifts are always greater and more precious than any thing could be.

Today, ask for peace. It is ours. Trust God’s promises, they are sure. Never are we bereft of life’s best and most precious. God sees to that.

Taking Ownership

(Really!??)

Monday, May 29, 2023

Who Can Say

They Own

This Tree and the Snow On It?

Haggai 2:8

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.

Acts of the Apostles 4:32

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.

Words of Grace For Today

That God owns the precious metals, and they do not belong to any human is quite the thought. As is the report that the early Christians were of ‘one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.’

We may wish that things were so, but even among Christians, things are given value and claimed to be owned by individuals. Oh, sure, for periods of time ownership may be shared or given over to an entity representing the whole group (as in communes like the Hutterites) but us humans always strive to have it for ourselves. It is not easy for most of us to simply share all we have, and it is even harder for us to share everything with a large group all the time. It just does not happen.

The difficulty with making a claim that God owns all the precious metals (gold and silver are just two of many) is that it starts with the premise that some metals are more precious than others. That degree of preciousness is a human construct. We are the ones who say that silver and gold, platinum and rare-earth metals are more valuable than just plain dirt and rocks. And we are the ones who give an upgraded value to concrete, sand, oil, gas, (and on goes the list).

So when we say that all the gold and silver (and all the precious metals and elements) belong to God, we start by acknowledging and giving assent to the claim that some things are more valuable than others.

Everything belongs to God.

Even we belong to God.

The rest of what is on earth is all stewardship, not ownership. But we quickly ‘forget’ that we are mere ‘renters’ on this earth.

The proper perspective is that we are stewards, providing care for what is God’s. And God has always wanted us to share with everyone, so everyone has enough to live abundantly.

We only sort of imitate that with our ‘good deeds’ and charity. If we could actually share with everyone, holding everything in common with all other people, the world would look entirely different, and we would live differently.

We pray that this day we can do another bit of imitating Christ, giving to those in need.

The Rock

Sends the Unseen

Saturday, May 27, 2023

What Are We To Do

When The Morning Sun Hides

It’s Warmth and

Life-Giving Rays?

Deuteronomy 32:4

The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he;

1 John 3:24

All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

Words of Grace For Today

As Julius and his community worked and waited and struggled to survive in their hunting camp, overfilled by themselves and their many guest, not only the New Iblers, Julius opened Sotorous’ journal and found this passage, an old passage that Sotorus had copied from the time when the earth held nearly 8 billion people and wars and climate change started to displace people:

While our worlds turn upside down on us, through wildfires, smoke, floods, droughts, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, melting polar ice and permafrost, or through conflicts (personal and geopolitical), or through loss of health, homes, security and peace, or death, how are to know that all is well with us and the world.

We lose all and any sense of orientation that there is an order and rhythm to life that we can rely on, waking in the morning, and sleeping in the evening.

The creation story that begins in Genesis 1 has a rhythm to it, as it lays out the rhyme and reason that God creates the universe, our world and all that is in it: God calls it good.

What are we to do when we no longer sense or can find that rhyme and reason, that rhythm of each day and night, and God’s presence and purpose to create a universe and life in it that is good?

We are helpless on our own.

God planned for this, too.

God let it be written again and again that God is not a God filled with deceit and scheming against us. If only we could hear those words and trust them. But even that kind of trust is gone.

What are we to do?

There is nothing we can do. It not only appears that way, it really is that way.

And we do not need to do anything.

God sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. It is the work of the Spirit that allows us at any time in our lives, to sense God’s rhyme and reason, God’s rhythm and order, God’s Grace and Love.

When all sense of any order is gone from our lives, it is not up to us to make it right. God will do that.

God will do that.

God wills that God’s Spirit will do that in us.

So we live each day, that we have a sense of God’s rhyme and reason, filled with thanks and praise.

So when that order is gone, we wait and hope beyond hope that God’s purpose and order for our lives will be given to us again.

So we pray in our chaos: help us God!

Trusting that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

Julius read this to the gathered community on their day of rest.

Led by the New Iblers and God’s Spirit the community responded in a cacophony of voices: “Help us God! Help us God! Help us God!”

Julius ended with: “This the Spirit shows us: All will be well! All will be well! All manner of things will be well. – Let us give God’s Thanks.”

Faith

God’s Gift

Thursday, May 25, 2023

When the Sun Don’t Shine

But a Tinge

of Orange

All Around,

Then What?

Micah 5:1-2

Now you are walled around with a wall; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek. But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

1 Timothy 3:16

Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory.

Words of Grace For Today

In times of trouble, in desperate times when all hope is drowned by the fires of time eroding like tsunamis burning the coastlands of all inhabitants and buildings, when our lungs burn with the smoke of fires about to consume us, when our feet are already soaked by the waters that will drown us, when the earth continues to shake after all our buildings are rubble, after missiles still explode with more arriving though there are no more cities left on earth, when life withers away, when love grows cold, where all laughter is lost …

Then what ARE we to do?

God knows these times will come in every generation.

God knew we needed more than what we could see or know or demonstrate to be true.

God gives us faith,

Faith in the saviour who will rise from the least of us all, a saviour who speaks not to the realities that we cannot change (for conquering enemies or oppressive rulers only makes way for other enemies and other cruel rulers).

No, God gives us a saviour who lives as one of us, teaching, healing, and showing us how to live lives of peace, joy, hope, grace, and love … even as the evil of the world swirls around us.

Jesus lived.

Jesus lives.

By faith we can live as well, even in these days.