Category: Abuse

Conflict

Resolution-ers?

Saturday, March 25, 2023

We All Throw Shadows In the Brilliance of Christ’s Light!

What Effect Does Our Shadow Have On Others?

Proverbs 16:32

One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.

Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Words of Grace For Today

The basic human attitude when we allow ourselves to become wholly unsure of ourselves or anxious is to become angry. Well not in one step without options. We can count to 10 or 90, breathe, and subvert the panic. We can learn to acknowledge hurt, even hurt when we know the source as another human, and then divert our impetus to anger in more constructive, less destructive (to others and ourselves) attitudes.

We can learn, guided by the Holy Spirit and the saints, to be peacemakers for ourselves, turning what could become anger and escalating internal and external conflict, into a peaceful manner of living with all the hurts, disappointments, attacks, and great losses that life and other people will throw at us.

As we learn this, and practice it, for no one is ever perfect in maintaining even one’s own peace, then we can reach out to others caught in anger, anxiety, pain, loss and others attacked by other people; we can, by God’s Grace alone, guide them to find peace with themselves and with all life offers, both good and bad.

The world needs peace, as desperately now as ever.

How will we hang on to truth and share peace this day, even with our enemies?

More Light work for the saints.

Finding Us

In the Fog

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Freezing Fog Is

God’s Painting

Beauty

In The Cold and Dark

Ezekiel 34:16

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

Luke 15:6

And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Words of Grace For Today

The bones are dry, dead, gone.

God assembles them.

Breathes on life into them again.

And we live.

…

The cantankerous ram is lost, yet again.

He’s found by the dedicated shepherd caught in a thorn thicket, unable to free himself.

The shepherd suffers cuts and tears and blood and time … rescuing the ram from the thicket.

And then the walk home, the ram limping along, not able to fight or think of running off again.

And we celebrate.

…

The enemies are strong and attack from afar.

The powerful and rich are greedy and corrupt and rot the nation from within.

Many people suffer lives of agony without the necessities, yet with joy that God is with them. They are the winners, even as the corrupt bask in their wealth and power, for

God comes to rescue the lost, the ones suffering, the ones denied life, and the fat, corrupt, unjust, and cruel powerful and rich are brought to their knees and left destitute on this earth and still devoid of a soul.

…

These we know as surely as the fog of the night is captured in beauty in the morning light on all the tree limbs and brush of the wilderness.

So our hearts, though suffering oppression and abuse, are filled with the free beauty of God’s creation and the cold of the night,

While God warms our hearts, minds, and spirits by the fire.

…

How shall we enter this day if not with unending thanks to God, and clarity of our mission to share life abundant with all people.

Wishes

And Curses

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

No Matter

How We Whitewash Our View,

God Remains Our Only Hope.

First Kings 8:57

The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us,

2 Thessalonians 3:5

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

“Good Luck,” we say.

To curse another person the Chinese supposedly will say, “May you live in interesting times.”

“Break a Leg,” we say to a person heading out into a performance, superstitiously saying we wish them ill, so that we do not curse their performance with words wishing them well. Now ain’t that more than a little crazy, since everyone knows we are actually wishing them well?

Trying to find our way in the world we have come up with many ‘interesting’ ways of taking steps forward with our words.

God made a step forward with a Word: and creation came into being.

Another Word and God’s Son is born to live as a human among us.

Another Word and we are sent out into the rough and tumble world to share God’s blessings with all people.

Today the excerpts from scripture are words that move us forward into our day: The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors. Words of blessing for ourselves, and for others: May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

These words do not pretend that our time in the world will be anything but ‘interesting’, by which we mean filled with rough and tough challenges that can do us in faster than we can take a breath.

These words assume that the Devil is at play always, and always we need God’s presence and protection to make it through each day, each challenge, each dead-end.

These words are confessions that on our own we cannot make it through even the simplest challenges, and that God has through all time accompanied God’s people, our ancestors, and blessed us to be blessings to other people.

So this is a new day, and the same old, same old is true. Devil always, God everywhere, blessings flowing.

Ahhhh, see, hear and feel the Spirit? Breathe deeply, and then dig in.

Prison?

or Free?

Saturday 11 February 2023

The Horizon.

God’s Gift,

one of many.

Psalms 142:8

Bring me out of prison, so that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

John 8:36

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

Words of Grace For Today

Of course, you, yes proud, upright, self-righteous you, have never been in prison, so to be set free, and to be free indeed is nothing, right! Not to you.

But let me tell you as one who spent time in prison, put there by lies about a crime that did not even happen, by judges, prosecutors, lawyers, RCMP, and witnesses who all knew they were lying, for it was that blatant, being set free is an experience one does not ever forget. Nor does one forget the time spent as an inmate. Life threatened in various ways at least once a week, by real violent inmates prompted and setup by guards, and by nurses, and by the brass, but protected by real criminals and maybe even a few honest guards … and by God and God’s people. Food and medication that were not tolerated by my system. The noise. The predictable and irregular inspections and demands and new impromptu ‘rules’ and the lack of horizon and photography and intelligent conversation … and the boredom.

The real prison that we find ourselves in does not have brick and mortar walls and evil people attacking us, and uncommitted crimes dumped on innocent scapegoats, and other ‘real’ criminals (guards include) so unpredictable and demanding. The real prison we find each find ourselves in is the one we make out of our own sins. Lies that corner us. Deeds that destroy others (as we intended) but that also haunt and destroy us. Words that we used to try to create a new reality for ourselves, and in denying God’s real creation we step right into the Devil’s playground, where a physical jail would be millions times more preferable!

This is the prison that God has always offered to free us.

This is the prison that the Devil has sent so many ambassadors to, to offer us yet again another way out, which is really another shackle to add to the many that choke the life right out of us.

This is the prison that we try and try and try to free ourselves from, and too often delude ourselves that we have succeeded, only to see the Devil’s playground has expended again around us and our lives and around those we love.

This is the prison that Jesus frees us from. And when Jesus frees us we are free indeed.

So we breathe.

So we dance.

So we take photos.

So we enjoy the horizon.

So we delve into intelligent conversation when it is possible.

So we worship each day to begin the day.

So we sing God’s praise and give thanks for all that keeps us alive, by God’s grace alone, for obviously we do not deserve any of these blessings.

Our task is simply to extend these blessings to as many other people as we possibly can.

That’s life lived richly, abundantly, as God created us to live.

So on this day, what will we do?

What will you do?

Three Star Joy

Thursday 19 January 2023

In Our Darkness,

We May Only See The Evil,

as here the pollution

of an oil processing plant.

Job 28:24

For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens.

Matthew 18:14

So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

Words of Grace For Today

There are plenty of times-events when we can well wonder if God sees what is going on, if God cares about what is happening to us or to others, if God will ever intervene and stop the horrendous evils that are perpetrated against us or against others.

Just look at what men get away with doing to women. It’s all over the news. And then don’t forget to look at what women get away with doing to men. It’s not all over the news, and it should be. Instead women can freely lie to the courts, and just as effectively as men kill women, women kill men. It ought not be so easy, for men or for women to kill others. But that’s how it is. And no one seems to care that women are as effective at killing men through lies in the courts and outside the courts as men are at violently killing women with force!

Does God care?!

Just look at what rulers have done and are doing (like Putin among so many evil rulers) to people with their military. Bombing apartment buildings, city-cide, scorching the earth ahead and behind them, attacking electrical and energy delivery networks and systems … and don’t forget the forced conscription or abduction of young men and women into the military, swiftly brought to the front without sufficient training, fodder in their unjust wars.

Does God even notice?!

The atrocities are not new or suddenly present in our times. The atrocities are as old as human life on earth (maybe before!)

The scripture passages remind us that God does see everything that happens, good, bad, ugly, and atrocious. God cares and wills not that even one little person will die before their time.

We could go with that assurance and bury our heads, but …

But many little ones are being killed even this day, again! Many men (and women) will be killed today by violent or subtle means, many with courts, cops, and the community playing a part in their deaths and in the cover ups.

So what are we to do, say, or think?

As in all our responses to all evil, close at home and far away in place and time, we can but trust that God not only sees and cares, but accompanies us and all those who suffer, and when we die, God calls us home.

Having a home on earth is enjoyed by many, but it’s taken from many more, even this day, again. Having a home in eternal time (having begun before we were even born!) with God is a basis for great joy and thanksgiving in life, even this day … even if this day were the day that we would finally succumb to our enemies’ ongoing attacks against our lives.

With great joy and thanksgiving, then we go into this day and each day. What more can we ask of life?

…

Well, let me make a list … it’ll be a few hundred pages long so hang on to your hats.

Or …

We can rest in God’s blessings already given to us each day and again this day.

Christ’s Light Shines,

like three stars,

even in this darkness.

It’s too unbelievable to not be true?

Friday 23 December 2022

Even at -39⁰ the morning

starts

again

with

Eucharist

&

breakfast.

Psalms 21:13

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength! We will sing and praise your power.

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

There are stories that are just too unbelievable to be made up. My ex, a bunch of women, the cops, and the courts gave me such a story. If I had not been so lied about I would never believe what happened, being kicked out of apartments for no good reason except someone was trying to frame me, being arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison for crimes that never happened (yet alone were committed by me!), and financially sent into debt so far I’ll never see my way clear in this lifetime.

That’s the evil done to me.

Then there is the rest of the story, of people quietly acknowledging what they saw happening as corrupt and unjust, of life criminals going out of their way to protect me from real harm in jail (while guards and other inmates certainly sought to kill me – without getting caught), of opportunities and circumstances that provided me enough to survive on, and the skills to better and better protect myself from the elements and the ever-present criminals, … and from the on-going lies others tell about me which are then used in court over and over again, even though anyone with half a mind knows what is said are lies, yet again.

And the mystery, not that I can survive in spite of it all, which is substantial enough, but that God has blessed me, walked with me in very visible, tangible and life-giving ways, and protected me from all harm that would do me in.

Jesus’ story is like that, too. Every story of God making things happen in spite of evil people working to ‘get ahead’ is like that, too.

There are countless stories like mine. People are dealt with unjustly by people intentionally doing evil. And God providing a better life for them in the midst of all that evil.

Makes one stop and contemplate, how Advent calls bring us to prepare, and Xmas culture lays great expectations on us, and yet God reaches into our lives and brings to us each Christmas (in spite of all the things we do to avoid noticing God at work) the wonder and awe of God being everything for us, even as a young infant child born in poverty.

Thank God for that, again.

And again this day, we stop to wonder in awe, and give God thanks for the simplest things that show us God walks with us.

What To Do With That?

Monday, October 24, 2022

The Root of It All …Is God’s Faithfulness To Us.

Nehemiah 9:33

You have been just in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

The simply terrible reality of our lives is that we always have acted wickedly, even if we do not admit it, especially when we do not admit it.

Some of us do things that we all recognize as wicked, like murder (sometimes quick, sometimes slow over years of culture-denial & assimilation, neglect, false accusations, exile, displacement, lack of health care, destructive ‘health care’, abuse, and the list goes on), or theft, or giving false witness, or adultery, or attacks on our bodies with drugs and alcohol, or disregard for the environment (which is most of us alive in the ‘developed’ countries), or lying, or -well we all seem to know what makes us the really obviously wicked things that humans all too commonly do.

It’s the myriad of other things that we do that are wicked, that we think go unnoticed by others and God, which are for our benefit, supposedly, at a cost to others’ lives. These are most wicked, and almost every human that has lived or ever will live does these wicked things. They are the ones the really ‘get’ use in shtako, with ourselves, others, creation and with God.

The simply reality of our lives is also that God deals with us faithfully, and even spectacularly gracious.

God forgives us.

Not that we deserve it, or sometimes even know that we need it.

It is that we get a clean slate to begin again, each day, each hour, each minute.

Now what will we do with that?!

God means for us to be faithful and to give that same kind of undeserved grace to others so that they may live abundantly.

Now what will we do with that?!!

The Cloud

Saturday, October 22, 2022

The Great Cloud of Saints,

Coloured by Their Blood,

Surrounding Us

with

Indefatigable Hope.

Second Chronicles 20:12

O our God, will you not execute judgement upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Words of Grace For Today

It is one thing to be overwhelmed by a mass of people coming against you. It is another thing to have the state, in the form of the Police and the Courts, come against you.

What can one do against such odds: the whole power of the state fuelled by lies created at every level, against one who speaks the truth, which no one wants to hear?

There are enough words from prophets and disciples who lived and died under the same circumstances.

It is in that great cloud of witnesses to the truth that one can take refuge, for these are God-made, and God-sent saints, who have ‘fought the good fight’ and run the race set before them, the race of putting God’s Grace, Love, and Hope before all else, giving witness to God’s great powers, powers so much greater than all the powers of all the states ever to have stood for a time on earth.

Come what may, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, we can lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and live each day to it’s fullest, celebrating God’s great goodness for us and those who come up against us.

Another day on planet earth when millions will unnecessarily die, and millions will be born into a hope that does not disappoint.