Category: Winter

Knowing

Knowing Power

Or Knowing God?

Tuesday 9 January 2024

Do We See the Power of Machines,

or the Beauty of Nature,

as Gifts from God?

First Samuel 2:10

The Lord’s adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed.’

John 1:29

The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

It is one thing to recognize power that overcomes one’s adversaries with might, thunder, and violence, and then to attribute that same kind of power to God.

It is a completely other kind of thing to recognize the power that God exercises for us all.

Of course, God could exercise that power might, thunder, and violence, again and again and still not bring us to know peace or a blessed life.

Instead God, sends Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Only when we know we are free from the guilt and destruction of our sins are we able to know peace and live a blessed life, not just for ourselves but for all other people as well.

That is the kind of power that God has and exercises,

for us all.

So with that freedom each morning, what will we do?

Epiphany!

New Year’s Resolution Worth Making (an eye opener)

Saturday 6 January 2024

Finding Our Way Through the Brambles of Life,

Alone?

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Matthew 2:12

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going a different way.

I suppose New Year’s resolutions are the imagination and statement that one will go a different direction going forward.

The three wise men, being warned in a dream, take a different route on their return home after presenting gifts to the child Jesus.

How many times are we going to try to ‘go it a different way’, forward or back, and it will be merely another futile attempt, a classic demonstration that we are not quite in complete control of our lives, not even when we make choices to become better people.

Thank God,

like the dreams sent to the three wise men, like the Law given to the people new to the Wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, like the Prophets sent to guide the nation Israel and it’s people overrun by more powerful neighbours, like the science that can tell us the consequences of our actions (like burning fossil fuels in the extreme we have and still do, and seemingly cannot stop doing),

God does send us notice and guidance.

But that is never enough.

We need to be convinced that 1. God will forgive us our failures (or else we are frozen by guilt past, present and especially future), 2. God will renew our spirits so that we can possibly do something right and good, and 3. God will help those, who we harm and those of us who are harmed by others, to heal.

A New Year’s Resolution worth making each year:

We will pray: God help us to accept forgiveness and boldly go out to do your work in this precious creation, and help us all heal from all the harm we’ve done and is done to us.

And then go boldly into the days’ ‘breach’, so to speak, bringing God’s grace to bear on others’ lives.

Boxing Away

Boxing Day Failure

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

One Day In and

Our Memory of Jesus

is More Faded

Than the Morning Moon

Setting

Isaiah 60:16

You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall suck the breasts of kings; and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

2 Timothy 1:9b-10

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Boxing Day

brings to the fore the obvious

necessary

failings of Christmas.

It’s when the commercial xmas takes over, crowds rush to the stores, sales and stock are piled high and wide, and money flows like smoke from a huge, hot wildfire.

Many retail stores turn a profit only because of the huge boost in December, and particularly on Boxing Day. Large stores turn extreme profits on this day, adding to the wealth they collect for stock holders and executives with huge bonuses.

Year after year, we attempt to remember that God is the sole source of our well-being. That God is the only source of a life worth living.

Christ comes as an infant, a sign that God’s true power is not in force or wealth or in possessing or possessions accumulated, but rather in the love that is pure, true, and steadfast.

We gather with small candles lit in the darkness and sing our faith on our sleeves of God’s wonders for us all, and then …

we run to the store the second day of Christmas to spend and get and possess all that we can.

What a huge failure we all are.

Our only rescue is in God’s Grace. God’s forgiveness.

So much for sucking life from the nations of the kings of the world. All that is is poison for our souls.

Pause, amid the hectic, and remember

God’s goodness in the simple, pure gifts of love

that sustain us each day.

Christmas!

Blessed Christmas!

Monday, December 25, 2023

The Light At Noon,

Is Enough To Show Us

God’s Bright Love.

Isaiah 38:14

Like a swallow or a crane I clamour, I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upwards. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security!

Luke 2:11

… to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Blessed Christmas,

May we not get lost in our efforts,

and let God’s wonders wash over us,

transforming us

and our views

or this world

with love.

Not to Come Up Short,

Remember!

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Remember How God’s Grace

Lights Up Our Lives and

God’s Whole Creation!

Psalm 103:2-3

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,

1 John 4:10

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

…

Words of Grace For Today

As the days get shorter and shorter and the darkness longer and longer, it is time to remember:

remember how hard we’ve all worked to get where we are.

How arduous the journey has been.

How competitors and enemies have taken possibilities and resources from us, leaving us with so much less.

And still we have come out okay, or so we say.

For we could have gotten more if we’d been like our enemies, vicious, uncaring, unscrupulous, deceptive, and downright dishonest about anything and everything that would give them an advantage, damned by the cost to others.

But we did not.

Some would say we suffer now because of it.

They are right of course.

Kindness, honesty, and fairness are always rewarded with suffering, even being cast out and labelled as abominations.

But remember

remember

remember

that we have come so far by God’s Grace alone,

and this day we survive only by Grace,

and living in God’s Grace is more wondrous than all the advantage our enemies have stolen from us, as we have worked to save the most vulnerable from destruction and disaster.

Remember

That we live in the love of God for us, enabled only by that love to be anything good at all, and able to love others, creation, and God above all.

Short days, long nights.

Remember

God’s love shines brightest in the darkness.

Smaller and Smaller

Sunday, December 17, 2023

The Pile of Thin Pieces, to Fill Between.

Everything provides some heat.

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 fulfill it?

2 Corinthians 1:18-19

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ 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

Out to stoke the fire, and split some short chunks of wood.

Amazing how things get smaller in the process of heating with wood.

First there is a tree, tall and strong, which dies or gets knocked over by the winds, ferocious as they are at times.

The tall and strong tree loses the ability to grow branches and the old ones are the first to break off, some when the tree comes crashing down, all 2000 to 3000 pounds of it.

Then slowly the ants and other processes eat at the tree until it is no more than dust dissolving into the dirt of the ground, unless …

unless I find it and cut off the branches that will be in the way, and sometimes cutting the log into two or three long pieces so I can pull it out of the woods.

In the yard I buck the log into short pieces, short enough to fit in the wood stove. Those full-stove-sized pieces get stacked for cold days, when I toss them into the stove, they burn producing the heat I need and end up as ash, which collects at the bottom of the stove, and from there I dump them in a pile to be used for various things.

There are all those not quite full-stove-sized pieces, which I set aside to split, or thinner sticks that I gather to cut up and stack for filler beside fatter logs.

Today those short, fat pieces were the ones I split (or chopped as it were) into pieces to cram in the wood stove to burn when I do not need the maximum heat the stove can produce. The climate change weather this winter has mostly been that kind of cold, barely below zero, not yet colder than -15⁰.

…

The Devil goes at us like I go at logs for heat, except the Devil’s purposes for us, cut into ever smaller pieces of anything good is to merely destroy every good thing God created.

Thankfully, God, knowing more force would only reduce us to smaller pieces for the Devil’s work, uses steadfast love and forgiveness to rescue us, bind us, heal us, and make us able to live out that same love and forgiveness for other people.

Another day, getting cut up smaller, but healed and sent out ….

Ready?

Ready of not, God’s working on us.

A Maze

Or

Amazing

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

The Maze of Bush Can Trap Us.

God Sees A Way Through For Us

…

Forgiveness.

Psalm 139:4

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

1 Corinthians 4:5

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Too many people think they know everything.

‘If everyone would just listen to me, I could straighten them out!’

…

or so they all say.

And then go off doing all sorts of crazy things, based on lies and partial truths, and biased views of things that might have, or might not actually have, happened.

Thankfully God sees, knows, and will judge all according to truth. No partial truths, false confessions, or desperate defence strategies needed. God knows everything already.

Thankfully.

So there is that to look forward to becoming plainly evident to all those people who think they know everything,

and

actually have it all wrong.

So we can rest, peacefully, at the end of each day, and step confidently into the beginning of a new day,

assured that God not only knows everything,

but judges us with compassion and steadfast love.

Just another day in the bushes.

Resting

Resting in God’s Peace

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Like the Moon,

We Reflect Christ’s Light in the Darkness,

Spreading Living Colours For All.

Genesis 2:3

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

Philippians 4:7

… and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…

Words of Grace For Today

There are times in our lives, more as we age, where we do not have what it takes to make it through a day, and we suffer.

Sometimes it is thirst, or hunger, or danger because we do not have proper clothes or shelter.

(Yes, many have not experienced that, yet, for the assured, protected, and luxuries way of life that many live – which is far beyond a dream for most people – can be taken or disappear without warning or cause, such are the realities of life on earth, especially when others are evil enough to take them from us, and more and more people are able to do just that!)

Sometimes it is a matter of having the ability to think clearly enough to make it through the day. Our thoughts are muddled. Our memories tainted or lost. Our decision making capacities escape us. Out of fear or failure we freeze, fight, or flee, or even act, and those actions or lack of actions place us in more danger than before.

Sometimes, though it is much worse. This happens to people the world over. Has happened-Happens-Will happen to people through all time, past and future. Standard of living does not make one immune, in fact the higher one’s standard of living the more likely it will overwhelm one, so ill equipped one becomes at dealing with such tragedies: we lose our spirit, or our spirits darken to the point we do not see the Light of God, not at all, not at all.

This darkness of the heart invades also our minds and our bodies and can literally kill us, or maim us to such a degree we might as well be dead … and may wish that were possible.

Into this darkness, like the Advent Wreath’s candles growing in number and brilliance each week against the increasing darkness of our days, the Light of Christ comes into our hearts,

into our bodies,

rejuvenating our spirits,

and giving us more than enough light to share with others,

as

we

become

instruments of God

spreading the Light of Christ to those

caught in the darkness,

unjustly denigrated and cast out by others,,

forgotten,

until

…

until

the Light of Christ

brings them and us God’s Peace,

and

proves their preciousness,

our preciousness,

to God

once

again.

Another miracle, whether we are ready to see it or not.

Dead Man Walking

and Dead Woman Walking

No More

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Many or Few, Our Steps Will Not End With Death.

Psalm 30:4

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.

John 5:25

Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

…

Words of Grace For Today

‘Dead man walking’ refers to those on death row in particular as they walk their last few steps from their cell to the execution room. It also is used by extension to describe those who are targeted to die soon for their ‘misdeeds’.

It is a hell of a term,

not least of all because every human alive is walking their last steps alive on earth. Some have a few decades of walking, some a few years, some a few weeks, some a few days, some a few hours, but we are walking towards our deaths.

Jesus turns the meaning of that hellish phrase around. Those who are dead will be called some day to walk again. Properly we should say it’s dead people not only walking again but living again,

and living most fully,

in the grace and light of God.

For this God promises also us all, even those who still walk our few remaining steps, so that we need not fear death.

For death will not have the final say. Neither will the devil nor those who seek our deaths.

Already today then we sing and dance and praise God for the life abundant God has given us for this day, as yesterday, as every tomorrow.

Ask and …

“What the #*^%&#^$&$^$!! Happened!?!?” ?

Sunday, November 26, 2023

The Lake Sings The Morning In!

Another Gift From God,

so precious.

Nahum 1:7

The Lord is good, a stronghold on a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him,

Matthew 7:7

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

All of us have asked for things to be a bit better,

or a lot better.

And

it seldom

turns out to be better,

especially if we get exactly what we’ve asked for!

Thankfully God

hears our pleas, our cries, our wailings, our dreams, or requests,

and

God most often only gives us what we need

to

offer life abundant to others.

So much for getting

it to be a little bit better for ourselves.

So we could say, following Jesus really is a bummer, right?!

But,

What God provides that we seldom ask for is

everything we need to live life abundantly.

It is certainly so that living with everything hunky doory and with an abundance of what the world would have us chase after, is not

God’s life abundant

that we receive.

Instead

we receive hope, the ability to love and be loved, the ability to be kind and honest, the ability to give

to the most needy

what they desperately need.

And then God gives us the ability to say thanks and enter each day

confessing our sins, and relying wholly on God to bring us to do good things for others.

.

.

.

Or, when God does not give us exactly what we asked for (that would be so bad for us) we can pretend to be astounded and selfishly ask,

“What the #*^%&#^$&$^$!! Happened!?!?