Category: Cold

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.

Blessings

By obeying?

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Think We Can Find Our Way To God’s Light

Passed All Obstructions?

Think Again!

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

John 15:10

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Words of Grace For Today

Sheila worked hard every day as a nurse, and made sure she took at least one day of rest per week, when she recuperated, worshipped with the Eucharist, and prayed. Her prayers also included assembling a list of things she was thankful for that she would read each morning before even getting out of bed and people she would find time to pray for each day.

She knew that she ‘abided’ in God’s love, and that obeying God’s commandments she was blessed, and certainly not cursed. She had given up on all her family and friends, one by one, as they did not ‘obey’ God’s commandments to her standards.

Then …

Sheila had a small seizure on her way to work after weeks of 16 hour work days and a small celebration with ice cream cake the night before for her 35th birthday. It wasn’t a big seizure. Just long enough that she veered into an oncoming semi. Both were only going 50 kph, but it was enough. She woke up days later in the hospital, not working as a nurse, but as a patient in the ICU.

After the first long and dreadful chaos and confusion of getting her bearings and understanding that she could not move her legs or her arms, panic set in and she understood from the inside what a curse was. That barely subsided through the whole 7 days it took before she was finally able to speak her first word, and ask what had happened to her.

So much for obeying God’s commandments and avoiding curses!

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

Peaches and Cream

It Ain’t

Friday, March 10, 2023

How to Get To Our Goals?

Yep! Lots of Reasons to Fret!

Yet,

Worry

Won’t Help A Bit!

Psalms 121:4

He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

1 Peter 5:7

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

Words of Grace For Today

Each day has challenges, worries, and failures waiting to overwhelm us, if we care to take note.

God sends us into the world, knowing that we will succumb to the evil One if we go it on our own. So God walks with us.

And keeps watch over us, without pause.

And listens to us, giving us an ear to hear our anxieties, fears, and trepidations.

We need not bear the weight of life on our own.

Not this day.

Not any day.

Wafting

Justice and Coffee, with Mercy and Milk

Monday 27 February 2023

As the Sun Begins To Shine,

Is It Coffee Time?

Who’s To Judge?

Psalms 98:9

at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.

Revelation 15:4

Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed. ’

Words of Grace For Today

I’ve read recently that coffee is the most popular drink in the world.

2.25 billion cups a day are swallowed by all kinds of people. It’s all kinds of coffee, from black to expresso to au lait, and of the many kinds of coffee beans only two are most used to make coffee that we drink, Aribica and Robusta.

I drink mine out of necessity the au lait way. Cuts the acid which is wickedly painful, even cancer-forming and deadly, on top of GERDS. But it’s still strong coffee I’m told, but it’s what I’m used to from my year in Germany. Thin tea-translucent coffee just doesn’t seem right. That’s what my old sponsor taught me while I visited here in her smokey apartment. She was the head of the German American Club that did their part in providing the scholarship I’d been given for a whole year free to study in Germany.

Now that bag of coffee is of course not just coffee. Can’t just be plain coffee from the food bank. It’s Starbucks’ Expresso. Now I never did feel I could afford Starbuck’s coffee, and certainly I can’t imagine now wasting that kind of money on a cup of coffee since the same money can buy me a week’s worth of SILK, soy milk, since I’m allergic to dairy. What a change, no SHOCK (might come closer) that was, giving up dairy and paying twice as much for ‘milk’!

Of course with GERDS I cannot drink and never have liked my coffee black. I always cut the acid with milk, and now with pricey SILK. I start out half SILK and half coffee. Drink half that and fill up the coffee and continue until after soothing my stomach with more SILK the last cup is a strong cup of coffee with 3 dollops of SILK.

But back to that skunk smell that started all this.

While we choose many things about how we live, in the end the One that judges us all and everything about us, from coffee to skunk smell, from good works to evil intentions, and from kindness to malicious hatred is still and always will be God.

God will judge, and we rightly fear God’s name, and rightly so love God and God’s name, for God judges with equity all the people. And before God judges, like adding milk to the acid of coffee to make the taste even milder than Arabica (the most consumed coffee bean) compared to Robusta (essentially the ‘other’ coffee bean that has more caffeine in it and is more bitter) God’s mercy, gracious forgiveness, love, and will to save us is to be trusted, as Jesus taught us.

It’s not at all related, or maybe it is: I trust coffee with milk (or SILK nowadays) but I trust God’s mercy, gracious forgiveness, and love even more than anything else.

Tends to make for good days, good enough for this day as well.

So how do you like your coffee and your trust in God’s judgments of us all?

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.

God’s Word

Forever Yes

Friday 24 February 2023

Over Us All,

And All Our Endeavours,

God Brings

Light

and God’s Life Affirming Word

Isaiah 55:3

Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

2 Corinthians 1:20

For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes. ’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

We all know too well the ‘no’s that the world throws at us and so many others. We are well practised at tossing our ‘no’s into the mix … where they do not belong (for they rebound back on us more than they impact others).

God has always had a contrary way (contrary not to the universe, but to our perverted way of being in it) of working with creation and us creatures.

God says Yes! Yes! YES! And forever YES!!

To all of life’s goodness and to us in it (though we are full of so much that is not good) God says YES! And forever God says YES!

While we waste away life filling it with ‘no’s, God calls us to be those who also proclaim God’s YES! to all people.

And that starts by confessing our sins, accepting forgiveness and renewed life, and accepting that we are God-sent to say AMEN! to all God’s YES!’s.

Just another little challenge for this day, too, again, and again, …. forever.

Amen. (may it be so.)

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.

Honestly

Getting Our Numbers Straight

Tuesday 21 February 2023

More than preparations for these kinds of numbers,

We prepare for God’s Gifts

with God’s Number One for us.

Second Samuel 24:10

But afterwards, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.’

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

David, the hero, warrior, leader, blessed by God, and revered ancestor of the country of Israel, takes time to confess his sin.

He counted the people, taking a census.

Now I’m not able to wrap my head around that as a sin, so why is it recorded. We all know that David had other much more spectacular sins that are recorded, not least is his affair with Bathsheba and murder of her husband and one of David’s soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, along with his confession of that sin after his son dies, a dancing down the streets in sackcloth in his grief.

It seems to many that such sins and admissions of sins, and blatant displays of guilt are not at all in the make up of real heroes, especially among those that are God’s own people! Yet this is the record for us.

When Jesus, like so many before and since, taught us to confess our sins, the hope is not that we would somehow imitate the greatness of David by such confession. In fact real confession is rarely displayed as David did. He was the King after all and the people (at least it seems David thought) needed to see that their King had confessed his terrible sins.

Why such a thing as confession? It is avoided by so many people, even pastors and congregational leaders, dismissed as something people are not comfortable with, something that will cut down on the number of people who come to church.

So instead of beginning worship with confession, it is avoided at all cost. Mention of sin is avoided as well, unless it is a hurled at others as a spear to indict them before God, and to justify their exclusion from worship, community and God’s favour.

Yet, Jesus calls us to confess our sins.

Without admitting and confessing our sins we have not begun to understand our place in creation, and our place before God, and our place before each other. We are not perfect. We are not ‘good enough’ even. Not for creation, God, or each other!

As we confess our sins, we start to see the wonder of God’s Grace for us: God forgives us, as God forgave David. God uses us imperfect creatures (and great sinners) just as God used David. We may not be kings, but we are people, precious in not only God’s sight. When we confess our sins we begin to find our humble place in creation, before God, and with others: we breathe only because God forgives us, and hopes for us and all people that we will learn how to forgive others.

What forgotten things have we ignored, forgotten ‘skeletons in our closets’ that eat at our spirits, forgotten or ‘wished forgotten’ sins again others and against God that in the ignoring of them incapacitate us to proceed through even a minute, much less a day, as God’s witnesses (object lessons, really) of God’s amazing love, grace, and forgiveness?

So how to start each day?

How to start each worship service?

How to start each significant conversation and project and hope and dream?

Sin is already there. No need to provide more. It’s always confession that starts us out right.

That’s number one.

Separated

from the Love of God?

Saturday 18 February 2023

Sometimes Even the Next Step

Is TOO Large!

Psalms 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

It seemed so simple to ask others to join in his outlandishly expensive garden project gone amuck. Truth is it took Henri a full day and a half to decide he’d take Francine up on her offer. Then it took him a half day again to actually get himself to start the process by calling people.

If one knew what Henri had gone through in those two days one would wonder that he even could come to the decision to invite other people to his farm and was able to start calling people he did not know.

Decades earlier, when Henri was a young man he’d met and fallen head over heels in love with Suzanne, and she with him. They dated all through college and were married a week after Henri’s graduation, to the relief of all their friends and family who wondered if either would dare to take the obvious leap. Both Henri’s and Suzanne’s parents had divorced, and died in their late forties. A trauma for both teenagers that seemed never to end as their siblings then took up to fighting over the inheritances, slim as they were. One would not blame them, their friends thought, if they avoided marriage and commitment and everything requiring trust. Even when Suzanne took a year off with their first child before she finished her degree and graduated suma cum laude with a double major! But there they were, married, joyously so, with 3 children as they broke into their 30’s.

Then … Suzanne had picked up Bert, May, and Zerish, 9, 7, and 5, from school, and headed back out to their acreage-farm. She’d stopped at the railroad tracks for a train when a drunk driver plowed into them shoving the car onto the tracks and into the oncoming train. The drunk driver survived with a few scratches but Suzanne and Bert were instantly killed. Miraculously the other two children were alive when the ambulance arrived. Then May died during the operation to repair a punctured lung and Zerish dwindled off into a coma during surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. Two long years Zerish hung on before he woke up, for two days, before a seizure and a massive bleed into his brain stopped everything. His organs simply shut down in unison.

Henri knew what St. Paul had suffered: arrest, jail time, beatings, whippings, having to run for his life, and how Paul was so certain nothing could separate him from the love of God. But Henri knew then and there that God had deserted him, not just a huge bit like when Suzanne and Bert had died. Not even the colossal bit when May died. No this was complete and ultimate abandonment.

He withdrew. He could trust no one. He went on with work, burying himself in it and became (almost in spite of himself) wealthy. Still he blew off anyone who tried to befriend him. Didn’t Francine know! Even 25 years later in his mid-fifties, Francine would get just a bit too close and bang the door would close in her face.

So when Henri called people to take on his garden project with him, it was beyond difficult for him. It was nothing short of a life-altering miracle. Many people knew it was out of the ordinary for Henri. Everyone, after all, knew of Henri. But Francine was beside herself with wonder. What had God done to Henri, anyway?! She realized that Henri had given up on God, but why had God waited so long to show him God had not given up on Henri? So why and how now?

Same question, she realized could be asked about most of us in our lives.

Even for you and me, today.

Valentine’s Love?

Hardwork?

Valiant with Tiny or Great Expectations?

Tuesday 14 February 2023

Burning Hot, As Hot as 2000 Cherry Red Chimney Pipes,

Love is Wonderful and

Dangerous?

Psalms 73:1

A Psalm of Asaph. Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.

Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Words of Grace For Today

Valentine’s Day, the day we celebrate love, and think seriously about what it means in life for us all.

It is rightfully described as that which holds life together, that which covers for so many shortcomings enabling us to live joyful, thank-filled and hopeful lives, that which is not cheap but rather will cost us daily irritations, immense pain, and sometimes even our lives.

Yet this is what God created us to live as: those who are sustained by God’s love, which enables us to love others with self-sacrificial love. The wonders of ‘being in love’ are wonderful, but short-lived. It’s a human body chemical thing at first. However long term one remains ‘in love’ only with tremendous work, growing self-awareness, and so much forgiveness.

Those who expect love to be easy or only beneficial to themselves, toss out the other either by taking them for granted or by leaving them … and thus they deny themselves the opportunity to love and be loved. Then one lives a short changed life, and all kinds of futile efforts are expended to try to achieve what is missing, for loving others at great cost to one self is an essential for life.

Those who work hard at love, and are willing to humble themselves to being the ones who forgive, not only the other, but themselves, are blessed, for they will find the Holy Spirit has given them the gift of a pure hearts, and that’s a wondrous blessing, each sun rise, sunset and all the moments between.

And for us all, love remains a dangerous thing, as dangerous as life itself: no one gets out of it alive.