Category: Breathe

Whatever

Cup we are given

Thursday, March 30, 2023

No Matter the Beauty,

or Ugly Evil,

God Is With Us

In Every Season.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

Luke 18:31

Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.’

Words of Grace For Today

Have a great day!

So we wish others, and wish for ourselves.

But

the world does not always comply with our wishes.

Some days are not great.

In fact some days are some of the worst in our lives, even the worst days in history!

While we may wish for easy, comfortable, luxurious even, days that we can slide through without any great challenges, life is not that way.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

And that means, come what may, it is all going to eventually come our way, too, the good and the evil.

How can we prepare?

For the greatest evil there simply is no preparation that would be sufficient.

We can at best lean on God to accompany us, whatever comes our way.

To take even the bitterest cup with sure hands, knowing that even death cannot conquer us, for Christ is for us, is with us, and will always welcome us home, even in death.

Today may be a normal day, or a great day, or a day that astounds us with amazing things. Or it may be the flip of that, and astound us with the amazing destructive power of evil.

May it be, that we are led to trust God’s presence with us, whatever it may be.

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.

TRUTH

Seekers or Spinners?

Friday, March 24, 2023

Wikipedia’s Thucydides

He was Certainly Not Blind.

Are We?

Jeremiah 35:14

The command has been carried out that Jonadab son of Rechab gave to his descendants to drink no wine; and they drink none to this day, for they have obeyed their ancestor’s command. But I myself have spoken to you persistently, and you have not obeyed me.

Luke 11:28

But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Words of Grace For Today

God speaks.

Some obey, others not.

Well, some try to obey, and everyone fails. That’s human nature.

From CBC Ideas: About 2,500 years ago, Thucydides travelled ancient Greece, gathering stories about a brutal war that plunged the ancient world into chaos. He set high standards for accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness in his reporting.

His observations, so different compared to the ‘histories’ told as legends and myths, biased towards the speaker-author’s loyalties, are worth hearing any time, and surely today as ‘fake news’ and ‘spin’ and destorying of so many people polarize the populous into camps deaf-to-the-heart to each other.

First would be the horror that he saw every human would descend to preemptively commit murder and destruction against an ‘enemy’, even if it were a previously good neighbour or child or parent. When law is laid waste by corruption from within or out right destruction leaving all sense of security spinning in the wind for every person, then every person is easily capable of the worst atrocities. For 27.5 years the Peloponnesian War pitted not only Sparta and Athens against each other, but they drew every city-state into the fray. 27.5 years of horror and in the end the result was the destruction of every city.

That’s the result of humans ‘not obeying’.

That’s the result of ‘fake news’ and polarized citizens.

That’s the result of little and big lies accepted and created by Courts as facts, for it corrupts all of society’s trust in the law to maintain order, especially the trust of those who benefit from the corruption of the law by the Courts.

That’s the result of every little lie told out of greed, avarice, covetousness, hatred, fear, and revenge.

Where are today’s Thucydides, tellers of accurate, objective, and thorough stories reporting real events, and us little people dedicated to truth at all costs?

What will we be today?

Truth seekers and tellers?

Or

Spinners and corrupters of truth?

Blessed are those who God helps to find and to hold on to the truth, one day at a time.

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.

These 40

Years

Thursday, March 9, 2023

Hardly Wilderness,

Always Barren Living,

When We Try To Abandon God

Deuteronomy 2:7

Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.’

Luke 22:35

He said to them, ‘When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘No, not a thing.’

Words of Grace For Today

If we live life in order to have more money and a full purse,

If we live life in order to have the best bag of everything,

If we live life in order to have the best footwear,

… If we live life in order to have things, power, status, …

Then …

Well then we will always not have enough and we will lack for what we think we need.

This is the way of the world, and it brings more destruction, disease, and destorying to others and to oneself, always more, but not goodness, always evil running others and oneself closer and closer to meaningless and death. If you want an eye-full of that watch Succession, the HBO series, or simply open your eyes to see how so many people live in the world around us.

This is not a fun way to live, no matter if people party hard and seem to be enjoying themselves. In truth this kind of living can only be pursued if one hides from one’s self, one’s real self.

God created us not to take from the world and claim it all to be ours. God created us to receive enough and share everything we have with others.

Jesus sends the disciples out with everything they need: kind hearts and a message of God’s love for all people! They lack for nothing.

God leads Moses who leads the people into the freedom of the wilderness, out of slavery, and though they barely have enough to survive, and it’s touch and go more than a few times, they always have enough … as long as they remember that God has led them and accompanied them all their years, even their ‘40’ (which is a symbol for ‘lots and lots – more than enough to count’).

Today we live in circumstances that outwardly do not appear to be wilderness: there are roads, vehicles, cities, barns and houses in farm yards, and industrial sites of many, many kinds. We call it civilization, but no matter what it looks like from the outside, if we do not have hearts ready to share God’s Word of Grace, all this is mere cover and running, running hard in the barbaric wilderness of humans bent on destroying, making ill, and destorying one another.

What will our day be like today, if not another blessed journey with God walking with us? Breathe. Give Thanks. We lack for nothing.

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.

Just Coffee?

Or Mysteries Requiring A Seer’s Interpretation?

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Can You Smell That?

That Oil Processing Plant?

That’s Progress, We Used to Say!

Really!

Daniel 2:47

The king said to Daniel, ‘Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery!’

Acts of the Apostles 26:27-28

‘King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.’ Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?’

Words of Grace For Today

King Agrippa had a question for Paul. Mine is not that important but I’ve asked and not even gotten to the meat of the question yet: what is it about that skunk smell everywhere, anyway? It’s not really a question or a mystery that needs a seer to explain it is it? Not like Daniel revealing the mystery of God’s power to save him from the lions, … or?

There was only one other time I had to deal with such a strong smell as that day when the skunk decided stepping into the squirrel trap would be it’s last step.

That was when I was building a house for our family of four to live in and a skunk decided to come for a visit. It had encountered a porcupine. I’m not sure what the porcupine suffered in the exchange, but this poor skunk had a snoot and chest full of quills. It was not doing well. It fell into the trench I was laying water lines, in to bring the well water from the old house up 200 yards to the new house. For hours as dusk approached this stinking thing wandered up and down the trench with the pipes already laid into it. That meant I could not shoot or attack the skunk while it was down there. I had to keep working. So while it wandered up and down that trench I’d work in the trench where it was not, getting the final things in place for the pipe including finishing a junction. So it wandered. I worked. Finally I was ready to fill the trench with the backhoe, and wonderfully it wandered out by itself. As it continued up the hill our youngest son followed it, feeling sorry for it. Finally our son came back. All was good. The trench was half filled in. And then the skunk came back following our son, and it wandered right back into the trench down to the end near the old homestead house with it’s leaky roof, mice galore, and barely any insulation which kept the old oil furnace working hard in the winter and the fans futilely spinning in the summer to keep it cool enough to live in.

I finally stoned the poor creature. Not with pot, but with two large rocks, carefully dropped so as not to damage the plastic pipes I’d so carefully laid. The pipes and the skunk got buried as I finished filling in the trench with the backhoe. A respectable burial as any for a stinking skunk. And then, on went the work on the new house.

That strong, terrible, debilitating skunk smell hung around outside our kitchen and bedroom windows in the old house and the construction site for more than a week. And for a month there remained a hint of it that we only noticed when we came back from being away in town or flying pipeline patrol, which was my income back then.

So when I opened the Starbucks coffee and more than a hint of that same smell wafted at me, it made me stop and wonder:

What is it with this skunk smell anyway?

Is it a deterrent as the skunks use it? Maybe a good warning for those smoking pot? Maybe for us all around the world who drink coffee, all those 2.5 billion cups each day!?

Or is it a stimulant, great in coffee in tiny doses, but nearly lethal in large doses like in some pot or in skunks’ defence systems?

What is it with this skunk smell anyway?

Can’t be all that good, can it?

Yet, I’m having a cup or two of that coffee this morning.

And I count it as a good start to any day, as do billions the earth over, not that that makes it right, eh?

What will we do with it otherwise anyway, the coffee and more importantly, each day that is a gift from God? That seems a bit of a mystery each morning, that gets answered by the time we fortunately lay down to sleep at night.

Ask

Or Not –

Here It’s Near Perfect

Saturday 25 February 2023

Just Cold Enough

Just Warm Enough

Just Calm Enough

Just Bright Enough

…

Clearly Peaceful Enough

To Be Perfect.

Hosea 4:1

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.

James 1:5

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.

Words of Grace For Today

If ever there were evidence ….

It’s one of those perfect winter days, it occurs to me as I make my way down the path, having climbed up for exercise after the peak ‘heat’ of the day is past, but still lingers. Earlier at sunrise to be out would be possible, though the air would bite at one’s face after just a few minutes and one would have to bring extras, like scarves, to warm the air to keep from torturing one’s lungs with the dangerous air. Now though, the air has warmed up a good 20⁰C from -35⁰ to a mere -15⁰ or so.

And that sun, now a month short of the equinox, shines with a mighty effect, warming one’s face (when one looks towards it) to take away even the pleasant reminder of cold from one’s cheeks and nose. Low in the sky, for it really doesn’t get all that high anyway, it tosses rays through a lot of air to get here and gets a bit confused so that against the bright blue sky it reflects off the snow with a golden touch even as it casts long, marked shadows across the different ‘elevations’ of the snow tracks left by a moose and many deer … and me.

It’s peaceful. The only sounds are the occasional wood pecker here and then there ‘knocking to come in’, though she’s already in after the bugs on her own. No engines. No people messing about, except for my tromping through the woods. Not even the oil processing/electric generators of the nearby plant is making noise. The wind is almost not at all, just a touch that moves the wood smoke from the chimney in a lazy pattern.

Inside above the stove it’s nearly 75⁰C, and mid way up the wall it registers in at 55⁰C, keeping the critical things from freezing and providing enough heat that by regulating it with the door more or less closed it stays nearly 31⁰ at the ceiling and 19⁰ at the floor. Warm socks and long underwear deal with the chill down there and the occasional open ceiling vent keeps the head-space from overheating and the air fresh and replete with oxygen.

As I said, it’s a nearly perfect day, a nearly perfect winter day, one that in the heat of summer with bugs and mosquitoes and wasps and bears and lots of people and party noise one only dreams about. For all that nothing can be done. A little cold though, and even a lot of cold like-40⁰ can be dealt with using wood, a wood-stove, and good insulating tarps.

Here there is no question that God walks with me, and that God is faithful and loyal!

If you don’t see God each day, if you don’t have the kind of wisdom that gives you that visual, then ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.

I didn’t even ask, but I needed this near perfect day, and it was given.

No sense in suffering. Go ahead, ask God for what you need. Ask even if you do not know what you need.

Trust God’s generosity and grace, even for you.

Why Sing?

Or Dance?

Wednesday 22 February 2023

It’s Cold.

It’s Dark.

It’s Frosty.

It’s Brambles even!

It’s Just the Moon.

And It’s God’s Gift of Beauty

For Us Again!

Jeremiah 20:13

Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

Luke 1:46-48

And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;’

Words of Grace For Today

The world is in trouble, and it appears more dire than ever before. War, Climate Change’s storms and upheavals, Nature’s Fight Against Human Overpopulation with Disease new and old, More and More Lies and Deceptions that Polarize Populations into Chaos Making Room for Fascist Rulers, Greater and Greater Inequity Between Peoples, Swings for Correction like Me-Too that have become just as destructive as the horrors they try to rectify, and on goes the list!

And personally for us all. I’m sure that you have your own list of disasters just waiting to blossom like nuclear mushrooms in your life, just as I do: thanks to a justice system gone amuck, and drugs and greed bending weak minds towards homicidal endings of me like I’ve never encountered before.

So why should we sing thanks to God?

Like Mary, when God steps into our lives in a visible and undeniable way it usually does not produce wealth, power, and privilege the likes of which we’ve only dreamed. On the contrary it usually brings great hardship to our mornings, noons, and nights.

So how on earth are we to sing God’s praise for all this?

Simple. Start by recognizing that the everything we are and have and can do, starting with breathing, is a gift from God – that we invariably mess up – and that we only continue to breathe at all because God’s wondrous Grace and Love reach out to us to forgive us and give us new life, as God has done for all the needy in every generation …

no matter what comes our way, or we throw in our own way.

So sing, and give God praise, and dance a jig of thanks

again this day.

And breathe, wondrously.

So Long!

So short

Monday 20 February 2023

Dark Days, Dark Decades!

Hope Forever?

Job 14:1-2

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.

Hebrews 13:14

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Words of Grace For Today

Of all the projects she could have undertaken, Risha knew this would be her legacy. She’d earned her degrees in political science, biochemistry, philosophy, law, and her PhD in Oceanography.

She had designed the filter system and now led the corporation in charge of implementing the system in 100 locations around the ocean shores. While filtering and cleaning pollutants out of the ocean’s waters, effectively restoring water up to 500 miles around the filter, it would siphon off fresh water and provide irrigation and drinking water for areas that had gone dry and deserted over the last 30 years due to climate change.

The real ‘miracle’ of the filtering was that it could be set to consume carbon dioxide at huge rates. Turned and left on it would leave the air for 100 miles unbreathable, but if turned on and then off again, in cycles, the 100 filters could clear enough carbon dioxide from the air in 10 years to undo the carbon increase from the last 50 years, at least in their locations.

If she could just get 10,000 of the filters up and running within the next five years, they could reverse climate change completely, back to the re-industrial age.

That was her project!

Until the truth of Job was borne out again:

A mortal, born of woman … comes up like a flower and withers.

Risha, in the third year, well on her way to the 5000th filter location, came down with cancer. She had blossomed so brightly and so many people had seen and put their trust in her. And then within a month she was gone. Because so many people wanted to get rich from Risha’s project and were fighting with everyone for their own advantage, something she kept at bay while she was alive, the projects ground to a halt, and even the established filters had trouble staying in operation.

Five years later, the last filter shut down for lack of funding.

How had it come to that!?!

There was so much hope for this to save us all, and now our only hope would be in the New Jerusalem.

What a loss? What a typical self-destructive development from miracle and cure to fighting and decay and destruction that would continue as long as one could imagine surviving the onslaught of climate change that had already destroyed a tenth of all the coastal lands, cities and people. Living inland was not easier. Storms and precipitation or droughts had made another 30% of all the land masses uninhabitable, and everywhere else it was more or less a futile struggle to keep going.

God, will we humans ever learn?

Save us!

(yesthereishopealways)