Category: Hope

The Learning Curve

Yearning Enough

Sunday, July 13, 2025

To Go Out As The Sun Goes Down

To Pray: God Save Us!

Isaiah 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

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Mark 1:35

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Oh that it were so.

Or so.

So that we could climb the steep curve to learn justice.

And that we could make justice be equal for all, and life be abundant for all, and all be able to enjoy the basics of life, and …

well, that God’s will were on earth as it is in heaven!

We yearn for lots of things,

but our greatest, rightest, most worthy yearnings are that God’s judgments to be applied for all on earth,

for we trust God’s mercy and abounding steadfast love, to forgive when we need it, and when do we not need it!

Yet

so much interferes

each day

so

we seek the calm of the approaching dark to beg God

to come

and save us

also this day

and this night.

The Last Hope

For Life Lost

Friday, July 4, 2025

Where Will You See It?

Waves Come In and Go Out

Washing Us Free.

Psalm 119:114

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

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John 6:40

This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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How do you find that precious slice of time-place-tempo-song that gives you

everything to live for,

that gives you hope,

for another day, week, year, decade?

In the lives of those who have found a way to move from desperate-despair-loss-end

to become someone for someone, and maybe for a few more than one or two, maybe even for us all?

In the words that inspire one to dig deep?

Or in the faces of sounds defying the obvious end, despite the great loss getting into tomorrow from here?

Or in the safety of laughter and joy with children not yet stained by the short-harsh-brutish?

…

in the turmoil that is inevitably life,

the only hope for all kinds of life is

…

knowing that God is with us, for us, and

more than eager to redeem us, renew us, and give us renewed life each day.

Get Going, To Good

While You Still Can

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Time Will Ravage Also You.

Don’t Be A Chicken And Run Away!

Face Life and It’s Challenges

Each Day.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

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John 21:18

Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Getting old is not for sissies, and it’s not for everyone.

Just look at all the people who die young, who will die young because they live hard lives. I’m not talking about those who are caught in a hard life. That’s most people who have and will ever live. I’m talking about those who choose to live fast, furious, stupid, pleasure seeking, danger seeking, alcohol or drug or nicotine or sugar induced entertainment until it becomes an addiction.

Getting old is tough.

Real tough.

So while you are young,

start doing what you know is right.

If you don’t who is going to do what only you can do

to help the helpless

to feed the hungry, in famines and wars and poverty cages,

to bring water to those caught in droughts or dry areas because someone steals their water,

give clothing to those without, who suffer the environmental dangers and risks each day,

give homes to the homeless, as their number multiples year after year,

give peace to the troubled, whether they’ve made their own trouble or had it dumped on them,

give hope to the hopeless, for what else is there!

Give love to the loveless, for to be unable to love is a curse greater than any other.

And receive God’s thanks, for as a servant, this is what God gave you life for.

God will reward you with straight paths,

straight to heaven on earth,

or, if you resist and refuse and deny and turn away and rebel against the Holy Spirit, there will be a path straight to hell on earth, a hell of your own making.

…

So he said to himself, as he rose to another day, wishing for youthful energy, fewer challenges of age, and a long list of must-do’s and should-do’s

and little opportunity to help others

much.

…

What about you?

Need a word of encouragement? Heaven or hell? Which is it for you today?

The End

Averted or

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Coming

Is the Bulldozer come to build

or raze?

Isaiah 56:8

Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

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Matthew 24:14

And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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It’s okay, maybe fun, to watch in films or read in books as the End of All life is portrayed, brought on by forces unstoppable …

and then averted.

Who doesn’t want to know we have ingenuity and heart enough to avert the End of All Ends?

It’s okay, maybe fun, to watch in films or read in books as the End of Love is portrayed, brought on by forces that should have been stoppable, but selfish choices still brought on the end …

only to have true love inspire and move a simple person of heart to express love in actions that cannot be denied so that

…

love

wins

and lives on in hearts that were hardened.

But in real life …

all that is not fun to watch or be involved in.

In real life the stakes are higher,

for everyone involved.

The only thing that saves us

each day

is

the Holy Spirit working in us

to love where there is no room for love.

Only God saves us from ourselves and other people’s wish to hate us.

What Do You Do

When It’s Got You?

Saturday, June 7, 2025

The Darkness Steals Everything Away?

No One Sees Much

In Our Dark

Small

Worlds.

Second Chronicles 20:5-6

Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, “O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you.

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Luke 4:29-30

They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Jehoshaphat cries to God, knowing that no one can stand in the way of God doing what God wishes to do. So save me, he cries.

The people, enraged by Jesus’ claims to be somebody, drive him out of town to a cliff and …

Well Jesus is God so he simply walks through the middle of the angry mob, and goes on his way … to bring God’s Word to people who will receive him.

In an episode of West Wing, Josh has been shot in the chest. Only surgery that lasts all night saves his life. He relives the trauma, over and over again, triggered by … music of all things. He’s out of control, angry, yelling, hurting himself breaking a window … all while he is unaware of his real surroundings and the memories replay in his mind as if real … again.

A counsellor comes, talks him through his experiences. Gets him to admit what is happening to him. Session done. Josh is not healed, but able to start healing.

Leo waits outside the session for him. Tells him a story:

There was a guy walking down the street who fell into a hole with sides so steep he couldn’t get out. The guy cried for help. A doctor walked by and heard his cries. The doc wrote a prescription and through it down the hole. The guy kept crying for help. A priest walked by and heard his cries. He wrote a prayer and tossed it down the hole. The guy kept crying for help. A friend came by and the guy cried to his friend to help him. The friend jumped down in the hole. The guy said to his friend, ‘that was really stupid. Now we’re both stuck down here.’ The friend responded, ‘it’s ok, I’ve been down here before and I know a way out.’

Leo, the recovering alcoholic, says to Josh, ‘As long as I have a job, you will have a job.’ Then he sends him off to the hospital to get his hand looked at. Josh cut it by breaking a window during one of his PTSD episodes.

Trouble is, there’s lots of people caught in dark holes.

They all could say:

I’ve been crying. I’m not even sure where this hole is. I’ve had prescriptions thrown down on me, and more than a few prayers. Many have yelled at me to stop crying. I’ve been called all sorts of things. I’ve had everything taken from me. I’m still in this hole. I don’t cry for help anymore. I try hard to pretend I’m not really in a deep dark hole alone. I work hard to stay alive. I try to help other people but I don’t trust many people at all. Mostly I cry quietly to myself. Sometimes I think that God is here with me in the darkness. It seems to make it less painful. I still cry. It’s still dark.

Who is going to jump down with all of them, in all of the deep, dark holes the world has?

Who is going to be Jesus, walking with them in the dark, showing them the way out of the darkness, the way to walk through the angry mobs to freedom, to the people who also want to walk in the light?

Who is going to even notice, when they are too tired to cry for help any more?

And who is going to help all those who walk by those holes, not noticing, not caring, not seeing beyond their own small darkened worlds of misery?

Lord, you know no one can stand against you, not even the Devil of darkness.

Save us all.

Send someone to lead us out,

Someone whose been here before.

Give us Light.

Is There A Balm In Gilead?

For it is desperately needed

Monday, June 2, 2025

here and now.

Like Grass, We Dry Up,

And Die,

except Jesus brings the Water of Life

Jeremiah 8:21-22

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?

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Luke 19:9-10

Then Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house, because you too are a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Always we humans have had cause to cry:

is there no balm in Gilead,

pleading really, is there no balm here for us and all these people in our time.

…

So much illness.

So much injustice.

So much loss.

So much sorrow.

So much death.

So much grief.

…

To these cries, God answers with Jesus, living among us, a human, who will heal many, teach with great wisdom, and sacrifice his own life that all people may live.

We do not need so seek Jesus out.

For Jesus came to seek out and to save the lost,

which is all of us,

whether we know it or not.

There is a balm in Gilead,

and here and now,

for our every ill.

What a life Jesus offers us, to fully live, healed

and then sent to share the Good News

that God is for us,

for us all!

Thanks be to God.

In the Days to Come ….

Oh, That It Were Already Today

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

When Peace Prevailed Everywhere

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A Canada goose and a bald eagle battled in Burlington, Ont., on Feb. 23. Photographer Mervyn Sequiera captured the fight and posted it on his Instragram account @msequeiraphotography. (Mervyn Sequeira)

God Does Not Save Us From Our Trials,

But In Our Trials.

Isaiah 2:2-4

In days to come …

nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

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Hebrews 12:14

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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The World is in chaos, again, or rather still.

John reports that Jesus says he will Leave Us Peace. What a promise!

On the 8th of May Germany’s 2nd TV service (ZDF) broadcast the Worship Service for the 80th Anniversary of the End of WWII in Europe, a memorial of being liberated. In the service the Germans remembered, with thanks for the end of war in 1945, yet still with endless guilt, for war did not just break out. It was begun by Germany’s Nazi Party. Even more, they remembered the efforts made to rebuild for decades after hostilities ceased. And they gave thanks for the prosperity and peace that Europe has enjoyed since.

Meanwhile violence, destruction, and death in Ukraine, just 100s of km east, remind us all that the lack of war is not ever guaranteed.

But peace in this world, which they celebrated, is more than just the lack of war. This peace is also to have institutions that honour all people, freedom to worship as one chooses, and a social contract wherein all are free to speak their mind, but no one is free to harm others, not even with words. Where justice is striven for earnestly by all, for all. Yet, nothing can guarantee peace.

Here in Canada, as the US has thrown chaos and fear at the world order, as global powers grow in strength and threat, and as extremist militias and failed states create chaos in our world, we must remain vigilant, and continually strive for those things that make for peace in our world, our nation, our province, our communities, and in our homes. Ignorance and apathy, fake news and heated rhetoric, extreme ‘solutions’ and the status quo can have no place in our lives, if we wish peace to continue, if we hope to avoid the complete loss of prosperity that we have enjoyed for many decades. Peace requires work and sacrifice to give it to the next generations. That work begins with each of us.

Yet, John reminds us that peace in this world, peace that we must work for every day, is not the kind of Peace God offers us. God offers us a more powerful, more life-changing, more effective kind of Peace. It is the Peace that the Holy Spirit gives us and teaches us to share with all people.

This Peace is already here today. Trust it. Live it. Share it.

Singing With Cause

For God is Good

Thursday, April 24, 2025

to each of us in God’s own way.

sometimes it’s hard to see

Psalm 13:6

I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

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Mark 7:37

They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Jesus walks from village to village with his disciples following along. Dusty roads. Wise sayings and guidance, and challenges to the powers that were. And miracles healing the incurable. And giving renewed life to the worst sinners (or were they the best sinners? That always catches me.)

As we realize that, though Jesus is not healing us of our incurable diseases as record numbers of people die from disease (mostly because there are more people than ever trying to live on earth,) – though Jesus may not be healing us of diseases, Jesus is freeing us from our sins and sending us out with purpose: to provide all people with the food of life, and the living water.

For that we can sing God’s praises, each day and each night.

Pick a melody, the hills and the planets provide the harmony.

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.

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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 2nd 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.

Confirm

Or conform?

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

And Get Squashed

No more able to conform to the badlands

than to the devil’s wishes

and yet ….

Joshua 24:22

Then Joshua said to the people, ‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses.’

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2 Peter 1:10-11

Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.

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Words of Grace for Today –

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Standing in the crowd, most people bow to the emotions and direction of charismatic rulers, as those leaders promise to provide better days for the crowds, even as those charismatic punks steal everything and everything possible from the crowds for themselves and those who pave the way to power for the weak people desperate to be rules.

So the crowd conforms.

So the crowd confirms.

So the crowd gives weak people power over them, to let themselves be robbed of life, hope, and peace.

On this necessary journey of Lent,

seeking to find the reason for all this chaos,

we remember God chose and called us,

equipped us and sent us out to

the most vulnerable

with the most valuable words

the Word of God,

the promise

of life

for

all.