Love and Hope – Page 11

Sour Grapes:

Tossing ’em Out?

Or Waiting to Save ‘em?

Thursday, May 11, 2023

Are the Sour Grapes Worth Saving?

Isaiah 65:8

Thus says the Lord: As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, ‘Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it’, so I will do for my servants’ sake, and not destroy them all.

John 3:16-18

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Words of Grace For Today

While fires rage, and smoke billows and spreads turning sunsets and skies red, and sunrises muted, and people coughing, sneezing and wheezing, eyes watering, where do we turn for help?

Do we think that God has turned against us? It is not hard to turn that corner and blame our creator for the mess we are in. Climate change! Well surely (we could say) God knew that would happen and could have made things better for us all! But No! God turns against us and will destroy us, by fire or ice, by flood or drought, by raging storms or shifting earth. Surely God is out to get us and destroy us all, whether we are innocent or not!

God knew we might say these things, as often humans have through history. So God sent Jesus, God’s own son, to show us that God intends for us and all that world to be living blessings for all around. God does not wish to destroy us, though we may certainly deserve nothing else.

God is like the good vintner who sees the potential in each cluster of grapes, and allows the good to grow, and hope that the bad will ripen into something quite usable, if only vinegar.

So God hopes for us, too. God hopes that we might be saved from ourselves and all evil.

How that changes every day, eh?

Crying!

Crying To God

Or Languishing Away …

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Even The Animals There Were Barely Alive,

Starving Like the People.

Isaiah 50:2

God spoke:Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer when I called? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? By my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water, and die of thirst.

Matthew 8:2

… and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’

Words of Grace For Today

When Julius travelled to the south, climbing the steep cliffs and crossing the miles of barren rock, he found (as he had heard he would) a community of people so poor and poorly prepared for anything that would come their way that it astounded everyone who saw their community that they had survived this long.

Julius stopped at house after house offering to help heal anyone who was sick, to share words of encouragement, to offer advice on how to prepare better for the winter yet to come, and more desperately to increase their food stores if just a bit. Yet at every house he stopped at, he was told that he could not help them, that they would have to make do such as life was for them. He could move on if we knew what was good for him.

So he moved on to the next house, and the next, and the next, and …. After finding almost every house in the community he turned back north for the journey home that would take him through two nights.

He reached the barren rocks and stopped for that first night. As he setup camp and started to prepare for his light meal, such as it was, for he was nearly out of food himself, unwilling to take anything from such a poor community, a voice called out.

He stopped, surprised and then astounded as one of the community he’d just visited cried out to him to help them. He went, met the person, and heard that a house outside the community, a house he had not found was over-filled with people all sick, cast out of the community. The wanted to be healed, if he could take the time to help them.

So he went.

He saw even in the dark of night with the few lights from burning torches.

He diagnosed them with a simple malady of fungus.

He showed them how to grind up the root of a plant that grew nearly everywhere around them, to boil it in a tea. Within a day they would notice a difference as they started to heal. They scoffed at him and told him he must leave to that he did not become sick, too. They insisted.

So he left, camping not far away.

The next day as he was a short ways across the barren rock plateau, he heard a cry again.

He turned to see a young boy of about 11 running towards him. He stopped. The boy who he’d noticed among the sick, already had started to heal. Then the boy danced towards him, knelt in front of him, and begged him to allow him to come with him.

After a long conversation Julius sent the boy back home, instructing him to help the others. He also promised that he would return before the harvest, and then each year at least once, and begin teaching the boy to be a wise healer for his own people, and anyone who was in need.

Orienting

Ourselves

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Through the Thick of Life,

Christ’ Light Orients Us

To Life Abundant,

by giving life to others

Genesis 28:16

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’

Luke 24:32

They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’

Gospel for Today: John 10:1-10

‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’

Words of Grace For Today

Jacob wakes and is convinced (after his struggle with the angel) that God is in this place, and he did not notice.

The disciples on their way to Emmaus walk along with a stranger who opens their eyes to the truth, from the scriptures and all of life. Yet they do not recognize this person, not until he shares bread and wine with them and in the eating the recognize that this is Jesus, risen from the dead.

Many times in life we do not recognize God or God’s works, as we are so engaged in trying to ‘fix’ our own lives, and to compensate for our sins and the sins of so many people around us, and who have gone before us.

On this, the Good Shepherd Sunday, we read that Jesus is the door, a door that is always open to us all, each and every one of us, though we certainly do not deserve such a welcome in the flock of Jesus. We also read that Jesus has the voice that we recognize, sometimes not in our busy minds and hearts, but always in the foundation of our being.

By this voice, by this Word, our lives can be oriented. Orient, the East.

Martin Luther called it the ‘morning land’.

As by the sunrise of each morning we orient ourselves for the day, so by Jesus’ Voice and Word, by Jesus’ Light rising out of every darkness, we can orient ourselves, not by our own strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

Thus oriented for this day, we have plenty of work ahead of us, sharing all Jesus’ openness to us sinners, God’s grace, and the precious gifts of the Holy Spirit to share with so many people.

Short

Of breath?

Saturday, April 22, 2023

All Things Die, Even Us. That Is Not The End?

Psalms 39:5

You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Selah

2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Words of Grace For Today

The ‘fountain of youth’ is a the blatant example of how we strive to reach beyond our own limits. Life is short and we would like to live forever, or at least longer, much longer, with good health.

No one really wants to live on in an increasingly vegetable state for decades and centuries longer than one would otherwise have lived.

So we strive to maintain our health as long as possible, and wish that we could find ‘the key’ or ‘the keys’ to give us better health: a pill, a surgery, a diet, an exercise, a meditation ….

The gift God gives us is a life, in today’s terms in Canada, which can last at most just over a century, and for most of us about 8 decades. (79.49 years for men and 83.9 years for women (so https://www.cpp.ca/blog/what-is-the-life-expectancy-in-canada/).

As if the gift of life were not enough, we yearn for more, and some of us do more than yearn. Some of us go to great extremes to have more life and more from life for ourselves at cost to others, even as far as taking the goodness of life from others, even taking life itself from others (as in killing for organs to transplant) in order to lengthen our own lives.

Yet God gives life as we receive it: blessed.

Normal for us is to fear the loss of life, not only the end termination in death, but the loss of abilities while we live on and on and on. Perhaps the worst example is Alzheimer’s from which one fades in and out of remembering even one’s own identity, while, in one’s more lucid moments, fully knowing the loss of memory will return.

The healthy, God-given response to that very legitimate fear, is to accept death in all its forms and trust that God planned for that, too. God planned for that by promising us that we will live on even after death, and not in the imperfect-dying manner in which we live now, rather in the perfect way that God makes possible at our creation (well limited by our sinfulness – greatly limited): eternal, perfectly healthy, and gracious: living in peace, with joy, and loving one another as God loves us.

Life remains short for us all (though longer than almost all of our ancestors). Life is nonetheless blessed!

Certainly, specifically because it is short we have the opportunity of recognizing that life is blessed.

So how do we choose to live this day:

Will we continually complain that life is short and that we slowly lose our health with age, all the while striving to live longer and better?

Will we live out the blessings that God pours so freely on us, and share them with others?

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.

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!)

Easter

Resurrection

Celebration of Life,

Again.

Sunday, April 9, 2023

And There IS Life, and Light, And Hope … Again!

Psalms 3:6

I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

Mark 16:9-10

And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.
Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping.

Words of Grace For Today

Only when we understand the darkness that God suffered by dying on the cross, and the darkness that permeated all creation, pushing, shoving, and sucking everything toward uncreation,

can we then truly celebrate

that Jesus is Risen, indeed!

And we can live, and laugh, and pray thanks, and dance, and hope, and reach towards others

with the same grace God has extended to us, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross,

offering them life, laughter, prayers of thanks, dancing, hoping and community so precious.

We can but overflow with prayers of joy and thanksgiving, for all of creation can live again.

As Long As

The Earth Endures

Thursday, April 6, 2023

A Reclaimed Oil Lease Is Scattered With Dead Limbs.

That’s Nothing Compared to the Chaos of Our Future.

Genesis 8:22

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

Luke 22:19-20

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’

Words of Grace For Today

The earth will not last forever. It will collide inside the Milkyway galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy, if nothing else so disasterous occurs sooner, in about 4.5 billion years or so.

Don’t hold your breath. In a few more hundred years we humans may have made the earth unfriendly for any kind of human life, along with so many other forms of life. Many, many are already extinct, and so many in just the last few decades!

How can we explain this to our descendants, who will struggle more and more just to survive? Will we say, well we enjoyed the power oil provided for our lives, our civilization … even while we corrupted truth at every turn to get the best, the most, the greatest comforts for ourselves while other humans starved to death, died of thirst, succumbed to curable diseases?

The debt load we carry would be unbearable … were it not for Jesus’ sacrifice that we recall every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

God knew how we would be, what we would take from the earth, other life forms, and other humans. So God set it all right with God’s own sacrifice. Jesus gave himself.

And we live free!

Now if we could just get it through our heads that we ought to provide the same amount of love and care to this planet as God has shown us, we might just live as a species for the greater part of 4.5 billion years, and even then we might, through some great miracles and wondrous discoveries, travel to a safe planet in another galaxy that is not set to collide with one of it’s own kind.

…

Each day let us pray, after we have confessed our sins and begged again for forgiveness, that God will give us ears to hear, hearts to learn, and faith to know God’s Grace for our enemies (us among them.)

REAL

Joy from Real Sorrow

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Our Justice can be as perverted as the crimes committed.

God’s Justice is perfect based on truth.

Jeremiah 31:13

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Words of Grace For Today

Listening to the great jazz music from the soundtrack to the movie Chicago reminded me how that movie portrays how perverted the justice system is.

Most devastating is the song of the many inmates in jail, all woman, all telling tales of how they just had to kill the man they were with. They just had no other choice. They had it coming.

While widows normally grieve the death of their husbands, these women had their supposed sorrow turned into joy. They were glad to be rid of their men. One man just chewed his food too loudly. One was caught in an affair. One was just too slow. One looked the wrong way.

God did not provide this ‘escape’ from real sorrow for these women, nor the thousands like them that exist in real life. When you meet a woman like this, who grieves not a bit for her dead husband (as she says to the children, “we are survivors”) one knows one has met the work of the devil that disconnects a person from the real world and sets them loose to destroy others without feeling a thing. Psychopath, sociopath, or borderline personality disordered … it matters not the ‘proper’ designation we give them, they are sick and the devil uses them well, all too well.

God would rescue even them, were there a way we too would rejoice.

God’s work recounted in the passages above is not about these women. God’s work is the real and very desperately needed rescuing of so many people who experience real sorrow, grief, and mourning. This is what God does. God turns the impossibly dark days of mourning (in which no light can penetrate, or so it surely seems) into days of rejoicing and celebrating and hope.

These are the things we celebrate, too, along with those who come back into the light from the darkness.

These are the things we celebrate, today …

with a smile, a peel of laughter, and a heartfelt thanks lifted to God

who walks beside us through all our dark days

…

bringing us into the light.

Delivered

From Our Enemies (Mostly Us)

Friday, March 31, 2023

Our Paths Are Never Without The Shadows of

…

our own evils.

Judges 3:9

But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

Luke 1:68

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.

Words of Grace For Today

God delivers us

mostly from ourselves

as the agents of evil that permeates all our lives

in surprising and oft denied ways so that we may too easily think all is coming up roses

when in reality the things we do stink more than the sewage pipe from the city dwellers before the first treatment plant.

Which is to say, collectively we make quite a stinking mess of the world.

Lately we see how the world comes back on us and all life, trying to stop us from destroying everything. Wild climate change storms and events that threaten all life on earth.

What are we thinking

other than only for ourselves, the future be damned.

Well it is. The future is quite damned by what we do and fail to do.

We need a saviour, not so simply as a warrior to defeat the enemy soldiers attacking us to rule over us and make us slaves.

No, this saviour needs to save us from ourselves. From our greed, avarice, and wilfulness that leaves us willing to destroy others (and ourselves and all our futures) just so that today (and a few of our tomorrows) may be ours to ‘enjoy’ in comfort.

Ahh! What was God thinking when God created us so capable of such destruction and evil …

if not

that God also created us capable of equally such great love, care, respect, and goodness.

Today, which will we choose to live out?