Christ Is Risen!

Christ ist erstanden!

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Hallelujia!

God Chooses Life

For Us All!

Luke 24:1ff

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Today with great joy we proclaim:

Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!)

What’s For Breakfast?

Winnie the Pooh and Piglet take an evening walk. For a long time they walk in silence. Silence like only best friends can share.

Finally Piglet breaks the silence and asks, ‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’

Pooh answers quickly, ‘What’s for breakfast?’ and then asks. ‘And what do you say, Piglet?’

Piglet says, ‘I say, I wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?’

Billy Strayhorn, Easter Heart Burn, www.Sermons.com adapted 2025

What wondrous things God has in store for us today, just as God had the most wondrous thing in store for the women that first Easter as they made their way to Jesus’ tomb with their spices.

As for the women that day and for Christians ever since, Easter morning is the most joyous time of all our lives! But this day’s joy cannot be truly appreciated, if we do not remember what has brought us to this day.

Easter Only After …

After Advent calls us to be alert, to wait for Jesus’ Christmas’ birth, long promised. After, in Epiphanies unending, God reveals Christ’ Light come to shine forever in our darkness. After Jesus draws us up to the mountaintop-wonder of his glory revealed, so astounding!

After all that and more in this year so far, we were marked with ashes. Ashes bring us back to the humble reality of who we are: sinful people needing to repent, to be saved … again and again. So Jesus calls us to repent, to turn to God.

Repentance though is a root problem, not a problem of what fruit we produce. It lies at the root of who we see ourselves to be. “I can” statements cannot form our repentance, such as “I have sinned God. I am sorry God. I can do better.” Repentance contains our “I can’t” and “God can” statements: “I have sinned, God. I am sorry, God. I’ve tried and tried and tried but I just don’t produce good fruit. I can’t do better.

I need your Vine dresser to work on the roots of my life. Turn me around to your will. Give me a new life, God. Give me your life. I can’t. You can.”

(Richard Jensen, Preaching Luke’s Gospel p. 147, via B. Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes, adapted 2001 & 2025)

No matter how hard we try, we cannot save ourselves. Only God can. So we turn to Jesus, who bends down to wash our feet at his last meal. And we protest like Peter that it should not be so. We try to protect Jesus, with swords, but Jesus tells us to put them away. We stand by, waiting, in grief, and, like Peter, we deny we know Jesus when others threaten us for being his followers, (or because we feel uncomfortable following such a demanding Saviour.) We watch as he is crucified, most torturous. Jesus is thirsty as one in three people on earth are today. He receives sour wine. Most receive nothing. And Jesus, the hope of all nations, of all generations, dies…

and is buried

in a new tomb

spices and linen covering his body.

It is the greatest victory for Evil, for Evil has wielded death against God’s own Son and won.

Our hope has died as well, for what hope can we possibly find? There is none. There is none. There is none … without Easter.

Jesus Gives Us The Badly Needed …

Early in the morning on that third day the women go to the tomb with spices for the body, but Jesus is not there. He has risen from the grave.

The story is more than one resurrection; for others, like Lazarus, have been resurrected before. With Jesus’ resurrection all evil, even death, is defeated, for all time. And with that defeat God promises us all resurrection to new life.

For Jesus’ story is not just standing at home plate and hitting a home run out of the stadium. It’s standing at the plate, in the bottom of the thirteenth inning, with a full count, down three runs, bases loaded, having been put up at the plate in desperation by the manager, after you are mostly recovered from a chemotherapy treatment three days ago and surgery on your left shoulder last month, at 65 years old. You will never be here again, ever, even if you beat cancer.

Then you hit a home run to the utter amazement and benefit of a home town desperate for a team that could finally win.

That’s Jesus, not only on the cross, but risen on Easter morning for us, giving us all a badly needed win over Evil and Death itself.

What appeared to be Evil’s greatest victory, using jealousy, ridicule, plotting, bribery, riotous crowds, false testimony, weak leaders, a false conviction, and that most terrible symbol of Rome’s power, the cross …

What appeared to be Evil’s victory over everything good, over all hope, over all love,

is denied!

Instead God works love in a most demonstrative way, and Jesus returns to teach, call, and send us, his disciples, out to share the Good News with the world.

But we’ve heard all that before, haven’t we?

More Precious Than A Sweet Orange

In East Germany in the early 1980s fresh fruits were so scarce that a simple orange was a very special Christmas gift. Imagine (if it could be found and then afforded) one simple and always imperfect orange was the most precious gift one could give … and so sweet to receive!

Jesus’ Easter story is more precious than any gifted orange, and still, like the bags of oranges now available to us in grocery stores, we take it for granted. Yet, as we hear the familiar story once again, it is God’s promise to each of us, that we too can live again. That promise is more precious for us today than that scarce and costly Christmas orange.

That promise is not just for 2000 years ago, nor only for all the sins of our past. It is a promise that we will never be separated from God’s love, not by any sin, not by the most powerful Evil, not even by death itself. And don’t we know there’s enough sin and evil and death going around still today!

This is the ‘home run’ we most need again today.

As Christ’s new creation forms around us and in us, we proclaim:

Christ is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Amen

Being Exalted or Halted

In God’s Good Time

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Meanwhile, Serving With Humility

Living the dream,

solitude

surrounded by green pastures

beside still waters.

First Chronicles 29:12

Riches and honour come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might; and it is in your hand to make great and to give strength to all.

1 Peter 5:6

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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I prayed, God give me a billion dollars. (It used to be for a million but with inflation, well you know….)

God answered, “In a minute.”

Nothing happened. I’m still as poor as ever. So I asked a wise person why God did not follow through with God’s good promise.

The wise person said, “God will in God’s good time. For God a billion years is like a minute, and a minute is like a billion years. In a billion years your billion dollars will be yours in heaven. It’ll be worth a dime today, and worthless in heaven. God always keeps God’s promises.”

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Oh, it’d be great, wouldn’t it, to be great

With riches and honours beyond number!?

God calls us,

not to make ourselves great,

not in anyway,

but rather to serve others

so that even the poorest

have the basics of life,

blessed life,

life abundant.

That can cost us everything.

It did Jesus.

It did numerous saints who have gone before us.

It will us

if we serve Jesus, by humbly serving others, as the Spirit guides and equips us.

In God’s good time.

In God’s good time God gives us wonders upon wonders to enjoy each day.

From Scarcity & Zero Sum

To Precarcity

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Fearing the Fragile Future

Take the Less Travelled Road,

Return to God

Psalm 138:3

On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

Luke 11:10

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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In the newsletter from 19 March 2025 of the transcript of their podcast titled “Moving from Me vs You to Us vs Them” the Missing Middle Initiative initiated a new word, ‘Precarcity’.

We’ve all searched for strength to deal with the threats to our communities and even our own lives as so many struggle to afford the basics of life, clean water, food, clothing, shelter. Add to that the ever greater damage and further threats to human existence the world around from climate change’s alarming ever more vicious storms, … all that and many of us have been overwhelmed.

Where can we found strength?

Some have turned to their own finances as their security. Their own homes, and investments, and income seem to provide enough security for themselves and the people they care about. That, of course, requires a harsh and uncaring blindness to others’ suffering and the effects that swiftly spreading plight has on all our lives, and even more on our futures. For example, though one has a comfortable home in Edmonton or Calgary, far from the melting Arctic, or the burning forests, the wildfire smoke still invades our summers making breathing a challenge on more and more days. And the supply of fresh water in our rivers, the glaciers in the mountains, is dwindling. No amount of wealth can provide fresh water when there simply isn’t enough to supply a city, yet alone all of us.

Others have turned to a pseudo faith that says God will let those others suffer, but will always provide for us, if we are ‘good’ enough. So they work harder at being better. Which is of course futile. We are all always really good at one thing, sinning.

The podcast makes that point that we’ve know scarcity fears: affordability for food, housing, and other basics of life. They say now that has shifted in Canada to a fear of the fragility of our future. They call that precarcity. (A new word formed from the root precarious, combined with the ending and idea of scarcity.) Precarcity brought on by the threats from Trump making chaos in the world and setting many givens on edge or on the brink, like the existence of Canada, along with Greenland and Panama, as countries not part of the USA.

So how can we deal with this ever growing, spreading threat to our lives. The ground seems to be shifting under our feet, no matter where we stand.

Denials (like ‘climate change is not real or new or anything we can do anything about’), escapes (like alcohol, drugs, hedonism, travel, privilege, luxury comforts, poverty comforts), misplaced anger and rage (such as blaming others, with slogans like ‘ax the tax’, and f- Trudeau, damn orange amoebae in the White House, or with boycotts and curses of the USA), all provide no solution while degradign the life of those who try such responses – which is all of us to some degree at times.

The only solutions are not solutions but remembrances of who we are and whose we are:

God has created us and, knowing we would sin as we have, collectively and individually, God brought Jesus to live among us, teach, heal, and sacrifice himself. Therewith God demonstrates so clearly that God offers us all 2^nd chances over and over again to repent, not just during Lent. And then we can surrender to accept what only God can give us: redemption, new life, and mission worthy of life itself. The mission is to be God’s generous Grace, forgiveness, and love for all people, thus bringing hope out of this precarcity, for ourselves and for all people. Yes our strength to deal with it all comes from God, and God alone.

So we say with the Psalmist: On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

And we trust Jesus’ promise that Luke reports: everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

So we pray: help us in these times of growing fears to call for strength. Help us ask, search, and knock on the door that opens life abundant for us all.

Drowning

Monday, March 10, 2025

Drowned in our own arrogance

Drowning with creation

in the pollution of

arrogance, CO²

Psalm 4:9

I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Drowning in violence staged by uber-hubric arrogance.

Drowning in hate that robs life from so many around the world

and us here, without a home.

Drowning is troubles and horrors, that should long ago have been eliminated from human lives, hearts, minds.

Drowning

Drowning on this obligatory journey.

So we cry, save us, God.

Save us and give us peace at night and through our days.

Save us.

Save

us.

The Cup

Too Full

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Even Paradise

Can Seem

Too Much!

Psalm 94:19

When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

Luke 22:42-43

Jesus spoke, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Too often there are just so many things competing for attention and accomplishment and concern and and and

and

where do we find the energy, time, and heart to

well

anything?

Only then when the Holy Spirit intervenes do we find peace

and

heart

and

energy

to move onward in the day

doing what is necessary and good,

thanking God for everything that keeps us alive

and praying that God will forgive our sins, too many as they always are.

So then

we move into the day

ready to bless all we encounter

with God’s Grace,

God’s costly Grace.

Which sometimes is a cup we would rather not bear, not at all, not at all.

Yet we move into the day trusting that God’s will will be done, and God

will

walk

with

through it all.

Breathe?

Give Me Air!

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

For All That is Good!

We Give God Praise and Thanks!

Psalm 111:1

Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

Revelation 19:5

And from the throne came a voice saying, ‘Praise our God, all you his servants, and all who fear him, small and great.’

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Words of Grace For Today

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From the smallest things to the grandest things, always it is good and right to give God thanks and praise.

There are so many challenges, onslaughts, attacks, failures, bullies, liars – there are so many reasons to wonder if God has any good planned for us still,

but breathe in (carefully if there’s heavy smoke about).

If we live, we have the greatest reason of all to give God thanks and praise,

for none of us deserve the goodness of life

and if we breathe, God gives us new opportunities to confess our sins, to repent, and to return to God, to put our whole trust in God’s steadfast love.

Breathe.

And sing God’s praises,

giving thanks

for the smallest and the grandest of things that contribute to our survival and that give evidence of God’s love for us, for ours, and for everyone.

Bugs, Heat, Smoke, Liars, Rain, Snow, Dark, Cold

Nothing Changes Our Trust and Hope In …

Monday, September 9, 2024

two winter months, two summer months are HARD, right?

the rest is up to us?

No, it’s all up to us?

Psalm 40:4

Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.

John 1:41

He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed).

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Words of Grace For Today

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Winters are harsh. When one does not have a home, an apartment or house, to shelter one from the weather, then one would do well to prepare, and to prepare well …

first to keep the rain and snow in all forms from one’s living area, whatever that may be.

For if one is wet at -40⁰, one will not survive long. If one has to continually shovel snow, that may provide good exercise, but after a while, and as one ages beyond one’s working years, that may indeed provide a requirement for survival that one may not meet.

Putting one’s trust in oneself is a fool’s life, a fool’s mistake.

There is summer to prepare for winter, at least those days that are neither too hot nor too smokey, during which one can construct whatever one can to keep water and snow that will become water when warmed out of one’s living area.

Putting one’s trust in one’s own efforts, necessary as they are, to keep water and snow at bay, and all the other challenges of winter, like dark and cold – putting one’s trust in one’s own efforts is also a fool’s life and a fool’s mistake.

The harsh days of winter like the bugs, smoke, and heat of summer, can simply drive one mad, in all senses of the word. One can be angry at the days, at life, at the circumstances that have led to one living without proper shelter, or at the way that the environmental challenges are more extreme than when one was young, or that age has limited one’s abilities, or that last year’s extremes have become this year’s normals.

One can become insane trying to understand the cruelty of people that have contributed to one’s circumstances, and the stupidity of those who continue to make it more difficult than it is already. But that kind of stupidity, cruelty, and the worldviews that support them as if they were normal simply cannot be understood.

Not any more than it is possible to understand clearly the insanity of the pursuers of violence, in wars of aggression (taking another country’s land), in civil wars (attempting at the cost of the civilian population to rule over the population), in bullies who use fists to communicate and insist on their own way, or of those who in such refined manners serve up lies to ensure they get their own way.

One must, facing the insanity of people and the harshness of the human messed up environment, place one’s hope in a gracious God, who can and will deliver one from all threats.

Following the invitation of the saints through the ages, we know we have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Saviour of the universe and of all souls therein.

So we say, too, also this day: Come and see, for we have found our Saviour. Nothing will make this trust waver. Not bugs-heat-smoke. Not rain, snow, dark or cold. Not bullies, liars, corrupt individuals or systems. Not even our successes, small as they are, of preparing as best possible for the coming days.

For we know, through all our trials and tribulations, God’s steadfast love and protection have accompanied us, and seen us through to green pastures and still waters, and peace no matter what the turmoil that swarms around us and the world.

Oh! Lordy, Lordy!

Save Us from Stupidity and Senselessness

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Which Is Less Senseless,

Smoke from Careless Fires

Intentional Fires?

Psalm 119:66

Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.

2 Timothy 2:23

Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.

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Words of Grace For Today

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There are no stupid and senseless controversies today, are there? Ha!

What else is polarizing our countries, bringing in populist, fascist leaning, power hungry rulers, and dumping us all in despair

reviewing how Hitler came to power and brought the world into a war which no one could win, in the end. Everyone except the money-hungry war-profiteers.

Steady.

Do not let self-prophecies come true, nor lose oneself into despair and hopelessness.

So we beg God to teach us to live out wisdom

at every turn,

bringing grace to bear on all circumstances.

For only Grace lived out for all people

can keep us from losing

losing

again.

God, teach us your commandments, but even more, teach us to live out your Grace for all people.

The Difference

God’s Because-Therefore

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Can We See Through the Fog Of Demands Laid On Us, To See God’s Love for Us ALL!

Malachi 3:17

They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.

Matthew 5:9

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

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Words of Grace For Today

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They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts!

The Ten Commandments start with BECAUSE. Because God is our God. What follows is many THEREFOREs. Therefore we will keep the Sabbath, honour our parents, and so on, showing us that our relationships are most important. God’s “Because-Therefore” laws begin with God’s love for us, followed by a guide to how we can return God’s love and love one another.

When we live, assured of God’s love for us – not striving to meet the demands of the Laws as if they were all and IF-THEN proposition: If we follow, then we are God’s people. And if not, then not! When we live, assured of God’s love for us life becomes a project of bringing God’s love to all people, and that converts us into peacemakers, those people who bring peace, by assuring people that they are loved, and can love one another,

no matter their differences.

What a blessing to be able to share in today’s polarized and fractured world.

Dismal, Desperate Visions

Of Renewed Creation

Monday 22 January 2024

Hungering For

Creation Renewed,

As Fresh As New Snow

Covering Every Past Evil

Isaiah 45:8

Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness;let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it.

2 Peter 3:13

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

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Words of Grace For Today

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While the reality of everyday life is quite dismal, more so for many than for us, even the poor and homeless in Canada, for war and famine are things very few of us struggle with and many across the globe face that and worse …

So dismal is life, as it can be seen by any set of eyes, for travails is something humans are always able to create no matter their circumstances, good or bad …

So dismal is life when all is going so well and nothing is satisfactory, for we humans always dream of more, and more and more until we out dream the possibilities of being anything at all …

So dismal is it all

that the vision of water pouring down from on high on the parched earth and into our parched hearts, bringing blossoms and crops to grow in abundance, abundance to feed all our hungers and pains of dreams unmet …

that the vision of showers raining down righteousness and justice for all so that no more do any suffer the evil of lies and greed of others, stealing life out from under us …

that the vision of God bringing from this old creation, so corrupted by our collective and accumulated evils that we have a hard time finding the goodness God declared was there when God created it from the void and chaos – God bring from this old creation a new creation, a creation good from the beginning to the end, untainted by our sins and evils done to others …

that the vision of God’s hand extending into our lives and making things right is so yearned for and dreamt of that we are like the parched land starved for more than 40 years …

So dismal is it all and our God given vision of God putting it right almost takes our breath away …

and then we realize that God has already accomplished this

and this dismal world is already redeemed and made new by God’s mercy and steadfast love, so clearly demonstrated in Jesus’ life, healing, death and resurrection, that

we can only remember now

to breathe in the fresh air

that has renewed what

we saw as so dismal

and made it new

wonderfully

new.