Looking

Through Sun Rays and Time

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Looking Through Smoke and Mirrors,

to the Divine.

Psalm 99:5

Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!

Acts of the Apostles 4:31

When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s a marvellous contraption, prayer is. Not that many see it that way, yet in the beginning there was no prayer, and for many millennia humans had forgotten about this contraption. The rediscovery of it has changed lives and the way the world works. God knows we need it as we face a fourth world war.
Sotorus

That from Sotorus’ paper journal, discovered with 11 others in the year 4391.

But back to the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.

God spoke and the universe was created.

Humans spoke. Sometimes they spoke to God and they called it prayer. A contraption that allowed mortal beings to speak directly to the immortal creator of the universe. But most often when humans spoke all sorts of chaos ensued, tainted as every good intention was with intentions to make their own lives better, the cost to others be damned. And the humans damned the whole universe with their words and by their actions until in the year 2302 the earth ceased to support the 12 plus billion humans on it. Viruses wiped out 7/8^ths of all people and half of what was left of other animals, birds and fish. In that same year earthquakes ripped every continent in pieces and violent ‘climate-changed-vicious’ storms wiped out what was left of every city within 50 miles of the new coastlines.

There wasn’t a city left with any building more than two stories high. No services existed anywhere.

Life became brutal for everyone …

Until groups of people gathered to live and work together. One group collected in an old warehouse area next to some of the only remaining arable land next to one of the new lakes fed by the new rivers the earthquakes created. They called themselves the Iblers.

This was not the only group who gathered. There were hundreds of them across the earth as it was the only way to survive against the wild storms and the few vicious animals left alive who survived by preying on the dead and the living, somehow not contracting any of the deadly viruses, or at least not suffering from them.

The Iblers had an old book in an old language that only one person could read. She taught others. In it they read of a thing called prayer, talking to God the creator of the universe. They practised it three times each day, twice alone at waking and sleeping, and once in the noon light gathered together. Slowly this practise changed the people, almost imperceptibly. Their transformation was slow and steady so that years later they were a content, hardworking, and thriving community, with children everywhere, with struggles galore, conflict still, but always great effort to sustain hope through love and grace. The book’s torn cover identified it as an IBLE.

Now in the year 5402 we give thanks for the Iblers and their rediscovery of the contraption called prayer, for with it we sustain hope, and love, and grace, and …

life itself

morning

noon

and

night.

Editor’s Note: Maybe I got the dates all wrong; the records are quite smudged and the air is smokey more often than not leaving a permanent haze in my eyesight, yet it is clear that contraption prayer is powerful and to be used daily, with thanks.

Did You Find

Your Way To A New Day?

Friday, April 14, 2023

Late to the Day’s Beginning,

As the Light is Already Bright and White,

But Still A Good Beginning.

Jeremiah 23:5

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

Words of Grace For Today

The dream of justice for the people, justice based on truth and righteousness, is as old as the hills.

And in these days it surely has not been accomplished, as tyrants and despots rule in many lands across the earth, and even in democracies, which give the appearance of some sort of justice, special interests (and international corporations with profits greater than many governments) corrupt the processes that are designed to be (or at least look to be) just.

Money gets its way, so to speak, and everyone suffers.

That hope for a just government is not what Jesus came to provide, as much as we hope that some day it yet will be accomplished.

Jesus came to free us from fear of death. That fear is what lies underneath almost all injustices, but to be free we have to allow God to work that freedom for us and in us. It is not something we simply choose, or can accomplish on our own. It is a gift. It is only a gift.

What we get to do with that gift is find the beginning of each day and the end of each day as God intends us to find them: free from fear of death, free from fear of guilt, and free from fear of God’s judgment (since God works with mercy for us.)

Did you find the beginning of this day?

Creation

Melting Away

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Spring Melt is A’coming.

Will we melt away,

or melt greed and violence away

with kindness?

Isaiah 45:12

I made the earth, and created humankind upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.

James 1:17

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Words of Grace For Today

While God made earth in six days and rested on the seventh (as the song goes), and God in that time created all life on earth including us humans, it’s taken us about 200 years to run the earth from sustainable into the ground so that the future looks bleak indeed, bleak indeed.

The only thing to do, since we cannot take on the ‘repair job’ needed by ourselves if in any way at all, is to be kind, even kinder, merciful and compassionate, so that others become that as well.

Life without kindness, mercy, and compassion is always a competition to get more, a greed race to the bottom of hell. While we can hardly engender enough kindness, mercy, and compassion to change how humanity as a whole engages in life now or in the next 200 years (if we have that much time left), we can create small pockets of kindness, mercy, and compassion with our families and friends, and if we are lucky to move about in society, we may also create a wake of kindness, mercy, and compassion wherever we go.

For that God created the earth and us humans on it.

These acts are not of our own doing. We can rise to the occasion day after day only when God works through us, spreading light into us and through us to the earth and life on it around us.

Shine … Shine this day … Shine this day with kindness, mercy, and compassion.

(Why not? It’s a whole lot more rewarding than greed’s death race!)

Walking

With

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Walking, Running, Crawling: God is Right There With Us.

Psalms 91:9-10

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.

2 Corinthians 1:5

For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a very, very tempting take on the world: If we do the right things for God, like make God our refuge, then nothing bad will happen to us, like scourge in our tents and evil falling on our heads.

But God does not work that way, nor did God create to make it so. All that because – therefore agency-consequence is taken from the daily doings of providing for our survival. If you do not hunt, kill, and eat, well you will go hungry. Unless of course you’re a vegetarian at least for a while. Trouble is we take that because therefore thinking into our relationships and come up with If I do this, then you must do that! And we call that love. Which is nothing like love at all. It is coercion, plain and simple coercion that demotes the other from being a full person in order to elevate one’s self to something more. Which is pure bull and foolishness.

God protects us from evil by walking with us right into it … and back out again.

So we suffer, rarely as much as Jesus, but we suffer greatly, God with us, too. The strength we have is what God provides. And the consolation is as powerful as any love can be, for it is divine love for us poor creatures.

That’s the kind of love we can aspire to give to others on this good planet: walking with, suffering with, consoling with love so powerful it ‘moves mountains.’

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.

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.

Alone

Forever?

Sunday 19 February 2023

Sometimes Both Paths and

All Choices Lead

…

Nowhere!

Psalms 42:9

I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?’

Matthew 14:23

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

Words of Grace For Today

There are, as Henri had experienced in spades, junctures in life’s torturous winding ways, when one has nothing left but to beg God:

Why have you forgotten me?

Jesus finds himself alone many times, and seeks God’s assurance in prayer, except the last time Jesus cries out that he knows that God has forsaken even him!

So if we experience the same abandonment, it should not shock or surprise us … and yet it does, and it overwhelms us, and it leaves us lost.

Better would be to live on, as a leaf fallen from a tree in autumn blown about until one comes to rest on terra firma, good only for fertilizer for other life forms.

Here we are though, abandoned by God and the sun may shine, but not for us. The winds may blow gently and the rains may fall softly, but not for us. People may smile and celebrate, but not for us, and certainly we are not smiling and celebrating!

We live on, but as shells lost in the primordial chaos of void before creation. Living is groundless, meaningless, directionless, purposeless, and dark. Oh so dark.

In those hours, days, weeks, years, decades even, our only hope (completely unaware of this hope’s possibility – so detached, forlorn, and empty as we remain, totally hopeless) is

that others will pray for us,

that Jesus will pray for us, and

that the Holy Spirit will do everything to save us, for we have nothing to give towards such a rescue, confession, repentance and possible renewal to life lived abundantly.

Yet that is what God does for each of us, each day, especially in our darkest times.

Ah, God would so delight in demonstrating how God can save even the most lost among us!

(Like you!?

Like me!?)

‘Final’ Translation

And As A New ‘Morrow

1) Lord, you are life’s hope when life withers away,
in clay and on rocks grow full in us,
be germinating seed, be a secure place,
Bring forth buds and bloom bright in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, in this new growing day, blossom in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your strong, good hands and bless us all,
bless us all and this your planet.

2) Lord, you are life’s goodness where loving breaks down,
in our coldest times, breathe into us.
give generous spirits, be our warming light,
be hot flame, be burning in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
warming again this new day, burn bright in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firm in your good gracious hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

3) Lord, you are life’s joy where all laughter is lost,
in our deepest dark, live on in us,
be joyous dreams dancing, be comforting sight,
be voices and sing on in us.
And as a new ’morrow breaks on this good planet
forth, a wonder filled new day, sing on in us.

Ref- Keep us safe, securely, firmly in your loving hands, and bless us all,
bless us all and your good planet.

Music from The Mass “Lied vom Licht” by Gregor Linßen

Und ein neuer Morgen (Herr, du bist die Hoffnung)

1) Herr/Gott, du bist die Hoffnung, wo Leben verdorrt,
auf steinigem Grund wachse in mir,
sei keimender Same, sei sicherer Ort,
treib Knospen und blühe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, blühe in mir.

Ref.: Halte mich geborgen,
fest in deiner starken Hand und segne mich,
segne mich und deine Erde.

2) Herr, du bist die Güte, wo Liebe zerbricht,
in kalter Zeit, atme in mir
sei zündender Funke, sei wärmendes Licht,
sei Flamme und brenne in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, brenne in mir.

3) Herr, du bist die Freude, wo Lachen erstickt,
in dunkler Welt, lebe in mir,
sei froher Gedanke, sei tröstender Blick,
sei Stimme und singe in mir.
Und ein neuer Morgen bricht auf dieser Erde
an in einem neuen Tag, singe in mir.

Das Lied stammt aus der Messe “Lied vom Licht” vom Gregor Linßen
Die Original-Chornoten sind über den Verlag www.edition-gl.de erhältlich.

Original Choir sheet music is available (in German) from the publisher at www.edition-gl.de

Text from:

https://www.evangeliums.net/lieder/lied_und_ein_neuer_morgen.html

YouTube:

This is the best rendition I’ve found.

In a Worship Service:

https://www.zdf.de/gesellschaft/gottesdienste

Fear Filled?!!

You better bet your little … until …

Thursday 16 February 2023

The Waters Now Calm,

Without Warning,

Can Churn

and Consume all Creation into Themselves.

Jonah 2:1-2

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Luke 12:7

But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Words of Grace For Today

I don’t know about you but if I were thrown overboard by a fearful ship’s crew, who saw me as the cause of a storm that threatened to take their ship to the bottom (where the people of that time understood it was the primordial chaos of precreation void!), and I ended up getting eaten whole by a huge fish, I might have good cause to be a tad frightened. Okay, let’s be honest I’d be in a full out panic once or twice over.

I’m not so sure I’d have time to pray in any coherent manner.

Life for the common folk in Jesus’ day was no different in analogous ways, tossed ‘overboard’ by the ruling foreigners, or by the religious lackies, and then ‘swallowed up whole’ in the morass of being poor, where nobody cared for the poor, except what could be gotten out of them to make the rich and ruling classes more comfortable in their exquisite lifestyles.

Life for most people today is really still the same.

So how are we not to be filled with fear? At any moment life can be torn from us for no good reason other than we are in some rich or powerful person’s way.

That can happen in a blink of an eye, getting pummeled in any number of ways by bullies (that hide even as respectable people), being pulled over by a cop, or falsely accused by a woman (who in this ‘me-too’ attitude is always to be believed – unfortunately the truth is some of what women have suffered more than deserves getting brought into the spotlight and dealt with. But the lies do not deserve the same blind acceptance as truth. Not ever, no matter who tells the lies!) or slowly ruined by jealous others who wish not to see one’s success for against it they measure themselves as utter failures (which they are, worse than they imagine!)

So how can we not be afraid?

God has ‘counted the hairs on our heads’ since before we knew how to remember from generation to many generations later with writing.

Of course, it has to do with today. Does God counting our hairs do any good for us? It is less a question about our hair, without which we can live. It has to do with whether God walks with us, carries us when we falter, and revives our hearts when they have succumbed to the chaos and evil of life all around.

And to answer whether or not God does that, God sent Jesus, whose story makes clear that God treasures us, each and every one of us.

So take that, you agents of evil who would try to teach us poor masses that we do not count. God has taught us to dance, even as we count, 1,2,3; 1,2,3; … in celebration for life renewed … by grace alone.

And It Begins

And It Continues As Before.

Tuesday 31 January 2023

Since the Murky Mists Of Time’s Beginning,

We and Creation Have Evolved

From Generation to Generation.

Only One Never Changes!

Psalms 102:26-28

Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

Revelation 1:4

John to the seven churches that are in Asia:Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne …

Words of Grace For Today

The week is underway.

The news reports things that have long since been: football wins with the last play, a field goal; inflation giving way to recession and jobs underpaid and worker shortages and ticket scalping, which are all the chaos of capitalism or called more honestly, futile efforts to limit legalized and unchecked greed; movies that win awards which makes money for more greedy people; and fear of the survivors and refugees in Canada as those, who darn near succeeded in finishing them off in a nearly ‘successful’ genocide, return to Canada; and the weather forecasts a dip to below the mid minus 30’s tonight.

John starts his writing with a greeting, one that had been underway for sometime: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come …

But these people John writes to live under great oppression and threats to their lives, thus the coded manner in which John writes.

After pleading that his life not be cut short, as he has taken ill, the Psalmist honours God as the creator long ago of creation. God will endure always even as people age and die and are replaced with others. In this cycle God has established the children of God’s servants, of God’s people, and the children of the children, and the children of each generation as it passes from life leaving the living to the following generations.

And this has been underway for quite some time now.

Not that getting ill and anticipating ones early death is easy or to be taken lying down (so to speak.) Nor that getting old and anticipating one’s timely death is easy nor should be taken ‘lying down’, if one can ‘stand’ at all any more.

But there is comfort in knowing that God provides for all God’s people, and all their children. The future, as we have seen it come to be our history, is and was in God’s hands, as it always will be.

So even the particulars of this day are in God’s hands, even as the temperatures drop near -40⁰.

Still, there is work to be done, to prepare, to survive, and to flourish in this life abundant that God provides for us, holding us always in God’s hands.