Hope – Page 3 – This Life

Knowing From Whence

Sunday, November 19, 2023

No Matter The Obstacles,

God Clears the Way to the Light

Malachi 2:7

For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

1 Peter 3:15

… but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

As the days wear us down,

closer to the grave each day

assisted by the evil of other people

directed at us

or just spewed into the universe around us all

are given hope

that does not fail.

Then when the testing days arrive yet again, we are ready to provide an account of whence comes our hope:

The steadfast love and grace of God,

that carries us when we are down and

guides us in days of joy

to celebrate what is of ultimate value,

not this world’s

but

God’s great gifts.

Begging

For a Future

of Peace

Saturday, November 4, 2023

*Palestinians cross to the Egyptian side of the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in Rafah Wednesday [Hatem Ali/AP Photo]*

Looking for a Future.

Isaiah 66:13

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We are baptized, all that we were to that point drowned out, dead.

So we learn that in the Kingdom of God what we thought was valuable is worthless. In there go all our dreams of greatness and grandeur. Instead what we thought was nearly bereft of worth or even notice without scorn is actually what God treasures and would have us treasure as well.

We learn to set aside our ambitions, hopes, and dreams in order to understand and embrace God’s ambitions, hopes and dreams for us. We learn not to ask for anything, but to beg to see and understand God’s will for us.

Not that our past dreams and expectations die out or that baptism actually kills off the great sinners that we were (and still are.) We live on dreaming, expecting, and hoping for our own ‘success’ in life. And God keeps bringing us back down to the reality of Jesus’ way of sacrifice for others, so that others will share God’s blessings (as we give to them what God has entrusted to us as stewards.)

Now Jesus reminds us, that we are not totally lost to our old sinful selves, lively as they may still be. In us the Spirit moves and we can and should ask for what we see is needed … by and for others,

…

and sometimes even by and for ourselves.

beg

this day

for peace

especially in the Middle East,

that we may be comforted in also Jerusalem, in the West Bank, and in Gaza,

for all people there are also God’s people,

with hopes, dreams, and expectations of a future

that is

better

than this today.

The Broken

Weary, Kingdom Workers

Thursday, November 2, 2023

A general view shows smoke as it rises following Israeli strikes in Gaza, October 9, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/live-updates-whats-happening-in-the-israel-hamas-war-as-israeli-airstrikes-hit-gaza-refugee-camp-for-second-day

Out of Sinners,

God Makes Saints,

Is that us, today?

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Matthew 25:39

And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

…

Words of Grace For Today

As I write this it is All Saints’ Day. The Hamas – Israel war continues, and continues to kill civilians, and Hamas continues to use civilians, even hospitals as shields.

There are few prayers which are sufficient. One prays that God will remake the catastrophe into something life-sustaining. It seems only God can do that.

In the future a few years a young family of three will tour the ancient cathedral in Gaza with it’s wonderful stained glass windows. Bombed in 2023 the windows were cracked, some missing pieces. One stained glass artist works on the second to last window, repairing, but not removing the signs of the damage, filling in the gaps and repairing the cracks with silver, gold, and blue glass pieces and structural materials. As the family looks at each window, the parents will explain the scene and name the saints depicted. Afterwards, the young daughter will burst in on grandma and grandpa sitting at home and exclaim, “Grandma we saw the saints today!” Grandma asks, “Who are the saints that you saw?” Without pausing the daughter responds: “The saints are the broken people the light shines through.” (decades old story, reworked)

What God does as always, is call broken people to shine the light of Christ on all that is, and all that can be.

Let us so shine, even in our brokenness.

Even though those in need are so many and the needs so great and our help seems so little.

Like Yeast

Just a Little Yeast

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

What little light can we add

to the ‘crescent moon’ light of other’s struggles,

so that the Light of Christ shines

brightly for them as well,

and for us?

Psalm 22:26-28

The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live for ever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

Matthew 13:33

He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

This news came Monday in the CBC newsletter brief:

N.W.T. coastal communities walloped by weekend storm

October 23 , 2023 • 04:44 PM CDT

It was a weekend to remember for people in some of the N.W.T.’s coastal communities, as a storm system brought high winds and massive, crashing waves — and people scrambled to save boats and cabins from washing away.

I read news like this, disasters that others struggle through, with a huge bit of distance in my mind and heart, until

I realize that some day for some reason news like that will be reported about this area, and I will be the one to struggle to survive through it.

The Psalmist repeats a promise often reflected in scriptures, that God will look after the poor, hungry, thirsty, and the desperate.

Matthew reports Jesus’ words on how God works for the people: God works through the little works of our hearts and hands, giving aid to those in need. Just a little from one person inspires another to do something as well, and that inspires another, until the help is sufficient.

Today, how can my small capacity (not so deep in poverty as months past when I had $69 a month to live on!) to help others to bring to them what they need.

I’m not sure that those in the affected N.W.T. communities still need anything I can deliver, nor that I can deliver anything to Ukraine or Gaza or Israel or any of the other distant places where people hope against hope to survive another day, another night.

There are those who struggle just as hard living not far from us, maybe without real shelter, without anything to call ‘home.’

How can I help them?

What can I do today to help them?

What I have to give is not much more than words, yet who can I inspire with a word today, as I get water, visit the library, pickup at the food bank, stop at a store where I cannot afford what I really need?

What can any of us do this day? And every ‘this day’ to come?

Get Up!

Get Going, The Devil Is A’Coming!

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

So Idyllic,

until

storms decimate the beach

and all within a half kilometre!

Psalm 91:11-12

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

Matthew 2:13

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

If only we knew when to get up and run from danger

in time to make it to …

well where can we run to nowadays.

Earthquakes threaten so much of the earth. Island paradises are either disappearing under ocean levels rising or conflicts raging or can be decimated by hurricanes stronger and more numerous each year. Coasts and shores can flood without warning! Wildfires can rip through any wooded area. Tornadoes, derechos, and plough winds, or droughts or torrential rains can get most anywhere else.

And still the greatest danger is not from storms and climate change induced extremes. The greatest danger, as always in human history, is from other humans set on getting what they want or working to keep what they have.

We all need angels to guard us

and fearless hearts

assured of God’s mercy,

if not to save us from disasters and evil humans,

then to help us recover and live again.

…

Answer 9

Just Air,

Clear Air, Blue and White with Clouds, for that I am thankful everyday, as I breathe

and

out.

And Live!

Promises and Shame

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Remember the days of wildfire smoke that turned the sun orange?

Even then we stilled breathed!

And survived.

Joshua 21:45

Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Luke 13:17

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

…

Words of Grace For Today

I’m not so sure that all that God has promised has come to pass. There are many words of condemnation, promising the demise of all God’s people, which may have come to pass, but certainly not all of them, as God has relented and rescued God’s people, again and again, from the folly that we get ourselves into at the hands of our opponents.

Jesus, on the other hand, put his opponents to shame, with all the great works that he does.

Even this day, the wonders continue:

The air is breathable, free from smoke.

The water is drinkable, processed by systems designed by people building on the wonders of science and technology of this and previous generations.

The food is edible. Or sort of, maybe. Some of it in the grocery stores makes one question whether a huge source of cancer is not all the processed food we eat, with all the poisons in the packaging, and all the poisons that are on and in the food grown and sold … and eaten by so many people, us included.

But we do not go hungry. We just suffer all sorts of weird illnesses and diseases and decays of life. Of course the wealthy have ways of getting food that is less poison-laden, and us poor are left with no choice but to take what no one else wants. But at least we eat, right?

That is the promise that God has kept for us, that we will eat.

The shame is ours when we forget how blessed even our lives in poverty are.

Even moreso when we do not realize how others struggle to survive on so much less. Our poverty would be a dream come true for them!

So we practice this day giving thanks again:

Thank you God for all that keeps us alive!

Walk!

Walk it off?

Not a chance.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/covid-19-and-fungi-a-nightmare-in-the-making

John Hopkins: Fungi Nightmare in the Making

Lamentations 3:58

You have taken up my cause, O Lord, you have redeemed my life.

1 Peter 2:21-23

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

…

Words of Grace For Today

CBC health newsletter reported how a man came home for a long weekend, walking up his drive he vomited blood on his driveway, ended up needed a new liver (cause of cirrhosis unknown), four years later went in for a liver transplant, and spent more than a month on IVs with multiple superbug infections (infections resistant to antibiotics).

And this is more and more common. Surgery is getting to be dangerous, because of the killer infections that come with it. Covid should have woken us up to the huge risk we are at, across the world, to unstoppable infections. Instead people want Covid to be over so they say it is over and behave as if it’s over, but it’s not. We will suffer greater death and losses of health because of it. People don’t want that to happen, so they live as if it is not already happening. Wanting it to be, does not make is so.

A walk up one’s drive, after a long, hard work week is supposed to be the beginning of a kind of rest and recuperation. The walk is the beginning of ‘walking it all off’, so that one is ready to be with one’s family, and then ready to return to a productive work-week.

Sin is worse. We cannot just ‘walk it off.’ We can pretend it does not exist, which only deepens the sin’s ravaging in our lives, like superbugs denied and thus let loose to run havoc more freely in our midst.

Only God’s forgiveness can save us from sin.

Also from the sin of denying Covid, and the dangers of super bugs: bacteria, viruses, fungi.

Without God’s forgiveness, redemption, and renewal of us, we cannot engage to help one another survive come what may.

So we celebrate each morning, noon, and night (and also this day) with the writer of Lamentations: ‘You have taken up my cause, O Lord, you have redeemed my life.’ And we pray that we may be delivered from diseases that cannot be cured, again today.

Confident

Humility

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

A newly discovered cache of internal documents reveals that the sugar industry downplayed the risks of sugar in the 1960s. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/09/13/sugar_wide-c334d683622a1f40a8f97f8acc8199a44f233e68-s1200.jp

Mounds of Sugar,

Taste Great?

Deadly?

Exodus 19:4

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

Hebrews 10:35

Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Confidence.

Confidence brings rewards.

Yes, confidence brings rewards, but

are those

good rewards

or the rewards

of the foolhardy.

As far as having seen what God did to the Egyptians and how God bore us up on eagles’ wings,

that is a piece of history now, one we have not seen ourselves, and the record shows that the people were not so easily convinced that being brought out into the wilderness with no water or food was such a great thing.

In fact they were abundantly confident that Moses had made a huge mistake, bringing them out in to the wilderness to die of thirst or starvation, and then of boredom with no meat to eat and then always the same old same old to eat, morning, noon, and night. God did not provide them with Kellogg’s, General Mills, Malt-O-Meal, Nestlé, Quaker Oats and Post Foods to produce a great variety of breakfast cereals that will eventually kill anyone from sugar poisoning. But at least the sugar addicts do not complain as they eat themselves to death!

So how are we to be confident,

yet not too confident,

and confident in the correct things that make for life,

instead of in things, like sugar, that provide for our slow deaths after miserable lives?

I think best is to be quiet humble, not so confident at all, but fully dependent on God’s good grace.

Or one can fall in love, which seems to ‘fix’ life quite well.

And then one wants more and more of that sweetness, which may or may not ‘fix’ life at all. The potential is there for great blessings and great curses, just like all else that is sweet as sugar.

Ephraim

Fruit in the land of misfortunes

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Ephraim By Francesco Hayez (1843)

Genesis 41:52

The second he named Ephraim, ‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.’

Romans 5:3-4

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

…

Words of Grace For Today

Just because suffering can be identified as bringing good effect (eventually) in our lives, there is no justification for foisting suffering on others, or seeking it out ourselves.

Suffering is, as Joseph knew quite well, not the choice one made for oneself, nor the thing to be celebrated. Rather one celebrates that one survives suffering and moves on. The end of suffering that is replaced by much more than the lack of suffering is what is celebrated.

Thus Joseph names his second son Ephraim. Ephraim, of two word-roots: depleted and fruitful, lingers not on depletion nor jumps merely on fruitful, but in the combination of fruitfulness from depletion.

Death brings an end to suffering. This we do not celebrate. The dead do not celebrate, right?

What we look for is life that has delights in each day, comforts to our ills, and reasons to see our children’s children and their children live well.

The challenge to a comfortable life is that until we know we may lose those comforts and indeed life itself, and not just a theoretical exercise but knowing it from our own experience, we really do not know how to live well with comforts. We take them for granted and surrender even our own thinking minds to have comforts — and then some fascist ruler takes not only our minds but our lives and that of our children’s children and their children.

So we pray, may our suffering (which is inevitable for all humans) be of a kind and duration that we may survive and therein learn the value of truth, compassion, and shear joy in the simple things of life — and most of all that we will learn from our suffering the true value in life is less our comforts but in our helping others survive their suffering to be able to enjoy life with us. Thus we set off a cascade of events that will bring many in the coming generations to know the true value of life, and how to find delight in the small things, and compassion for others.

We can but hope

for that for us

and for our children

and their children

and many generations to come.

God Abandons?

No, God Engages

Always, to save us from ourselves

Saturday, September 2, 2023

When it seems the world closes in on us, as if God has abandoned us, hope carries us back to trust God always walks with us.

Isaiah 63:15

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.

Galatians 5:5

For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God provides all we need to live, fully, abundantly, graciously, and generously with others.

It is not that we choose to be good and live righteously. It is a gift given to us in our baptisms and renewed many times each day. So we live as saints.

We can and so often do (thus the repeated giving of the gift) deny the gift, turning away from God to follow our own path, which always leads us straight to perdition.

Thank God, God saves us from ourselves.

And so this day also we live as saints, despite having chosen perdition again and again.

Thank God.