Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!
Acts of the Apostles 2:11
[On Pentecost people of many nations Cretans and Arabs gathered to hear the disciples said:]in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.
Words of Grace For Today
While jealous, and greedy, and wilful peoples of all generations have claimed that God loved them and hated their neighbours (today we call it xenophobia which results is so many disastrous deeds done to others even xenocide) God has a different message, over and over delivered in many and various ways. God loves, works through, and claims all kinds of people,
especially sinners.
So, while many would like to say they just do not understand God calling them to embrace their neighbours and enemies with love, but rather that God favours them and them alone among the many peoples, God speaks clearly so that every person can hear the Good News proclaimed in their own language.
Of course that often takes lots of work on the part of translators and other dedicated people who wish to share the Good News with all peoples.
Today will we be those who exclude others, with all sorts of twists of logic that somehow we are better and better enough compared to others to have received God’s favour when others have not?
Or
Will we be the ones to welcome with open arms all kinds of people, especially the sinners, whom we have to acknowledge we are definitely counted among.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God, much less this house that I have built!
John 1:18
No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Words of Grace For Today
Finding the meaning of life is an unending challenge every day of every life, unless …
unless one fools oneself.
That usually ends badly for that person and many around them, sometimes nations and continents and even the whole world.
Now if we could only meet God, talk with God, and have God tells us what our lives are supposed to be like, to what end God created us, and what the purpose of our lives actually is, then …
Then life would be peachy, right?
Not really.
God did send the Law, the Prophets, and then Jesus to teach us all that and more about God and what God intends for us.
But we so easily hijack and pervert to our own ends all God’s efforts to communicate with us. That’s corrupt human nature. It leaves many puking out any idea that God actually exists, or talking at all about God is helpful. Perverse ideas about God are more destructive than almost anything else people can come up with, after all!
So many people have tried to contain God inside their own buildings, their own ideas of God subjugating others to their own whims.
God planned for all that, and in each generation God sends us saints, saints who see and hear the saints from previous generations, and who share with us God’s purpose for us.
The purpose of life is not that hard to see and know and live by: to love one another as oneself, and even to love one’s enemies, and to give God all praise and credit for the goodness and beauty that permeates all of life.
Living that out each day is the challenge of each day. Light work, it is, also for this day.
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
Luke 1:69-75
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
Words of Grace For Today
Sotorus sat to copy his father’s (Peter’s) journal entry, which really was copied from Peter’s father, Isaac, and Isaac’s sister, Galilea, about Sotorus’ great-grandparents, Doug and Dawn, from the old digital disk to his paper journal with great care.
First he wrote:
“20 June 2299: All the digital records are disappearing into thin air. Though no one knows why for sure everyone suspects it has something to do with those deadly latency rifles used to end the last war on earth. Loaded with specific human traits, the charge would sit for years, even decades, before going off when it’s target came within 10 metres. Now two decades later so many people had been killed, even after the war, and the accumulation of the residue from billions of charges seemed to spread and wipe out not only their targets, but all nearby digital storage in the bio-memory chips used in everything for the last 90 years. So copying what we have as records of the past onto paper is the only way to preserve them at all.
“Albert Einstein was correct in many ways when he said, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’
“While explorers like my grandparents were off to Andromeda, those remaining on earth had reduced it to a thinly populated wasteland. No one had the energy or means to fight.”
What Sotorus could not know was the will to fight would return in 1450 years.
Sotorus’ journal entry continued with Peter’s entries from 3 October 2264:
“This from Isaac’s (my father’s) journal of 21 March 2246:
“This is about the day in November 2213 when my grandfather and grandmother, Doug and Dawn, and a stranger, made a quick and desperately simple decision that saved my life and the life of my sister, Galilea.
“This is what I knew about my grandparents decision to leave earth. Doug and Dawn had studied the beginnings of the universe all through university and wrote separate but related PhD dissertations on the doomed first expedition to Mars in 2029 compared to the more recent successful unmanned expedition to Andromeda’s closest star with planets in 2183. It was a no-brainer then when they were offered the opportunity to travel on the first peopled expedition to what people were calling the ‘Andromeda Earth’. In 2210 they packed their few possessions into storage and reported to train for intergalactic travel certificates. In 2113 they launched from earth to the moon, and two days later from there to Andromeda’s ‘third planet from the sun’.
“Eleven months after their three month long trip to A-Earth, as they called their destination planet, they and the other 45 mission specialists, had established the core of a settlement. The rich air and moderate gravity among the most interesting lush and vibrant plant and animal life forms seemed almost a paradise. They had hardly had time to consider more than their work studying the evolution of the plant and animal life that seemed to ‘teem up’ from the planet each day. Yet in those years they had also had us two children.
“I had not kept a journal but Galilea had. Her journal is lost, but I remember it pretty clearly, because we sat and read it often in her last year, as she suffered dementia, common among the most brilliant minds in their later years.
“Isaac was a spunky athletic 6 year old and his sister, that’s me, Galilea (Peter added, that’s my aunt), well I was not yet 2 but I was up and running, reading and writing already.
“This morning, an hour before sunrise, in the dark and bitter cold, the alarm had sounded. Everyone was told they needed to report to the spaceship, refurbished, refuelled and resupplied, and waiting for such an emergency these last four years. The Aearth’s crust had buckled up into a new mountain range on the far side of the planet and we had maybe 6 hours before the air would be poisonous. ‘Bring no more than 150 lbs with you!’ Everyone knew the fuel was not as combustible as the fuel they had used to lift off from earth so weight was indeed a problem.
“Our dad, Doug, called us children, from our studies in the ‘backyard’ near the river, started packing a small backpack, while Mom and us children fretted and argued about which things we could bring: a photo of our house, a rock from the riverbed that glowed at night, our computers and studies and papers, a favourite game made of wood and rocks, and my teddy bear. Finally Doug put his foot down and said we had just enough time to get to the spaceship, or we’d be left behind. With no more thoughts we grabbed only what was packed and headed off.
“At the spacepad, we registered and weighed our bags. We could have tossed in another 20 lbs. The security guard looked at us, checked off Mom and Dad’s names, Doug and Dawn. Then he looked at us children, Isaac and Galilea. He asked our parents if they had weighed us? No! Did they have to? Of course! So back to the scale we went. Together Isaac and I weighed 159 lbs. We all tossed our bags aside and, with the guard telling us we were out of time- others were waiting and time was tight, we two children stripped off our clothes until the scale stood at 154.
“The next person in line (we didn’t even know her or find out her name later) saw the chaos and offered to give up 10 lbs if the guard would let us children take our clothes along. A nod from the guard, a quick ‘thank you! thank you!’ and off we went through the gate to the loading queue as the woman behind us started tossing out big books from her case.
“Later Galilea wrote in her journal:
“Today, I’m not sure of the date, it’s been so confusing, we left a whole crowd of explorers and their children on another planet in the Andromeda galaxy, at a planet everyone called ‘Andromeda’s other third planet from the sun.’
Sotorus, grandson of Galilea, continued his paper journal below the above entry:
“Today is the last day of this millennium, 2299. It’s a day of freezing fog. We heard from many that those who lived at Aearth’s farthest bounds were awed by God’s wondrous signs all around them. They affirmed, and we can certainly affirm now as well, that God has shown to us all the mercy promised to our ancestors, to grant us that we, being rescued, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days.
“We can be thankful, that though the years have not been easy since the last big war, we (my two sisters, my three cousins, and I) are alive because Isaac and Galilea did not weigh more than 10 lbs too much, and an anonymous woman sacrificed her precious books for our grandpa’s and his sister’s lives.”
Sotorus could not know then, but his journal would be only one of a dozen that would survive the next 1500 years of ‘sticks and stones’. Without it no one would remember Doug and Dawn, Isaac and Galilea, Peter, or Sotorus. Nor would anyone remember that people had migrated to Andromeda and back, or that half the explorers had chosen to stay at another inhabitable planet in one of Andromeda’s star systems.
…
What will we weigh to take with us today?
What out of our past given to us by our ancestors?
What of our baggage and sins and horrible mistakes?
What of our joys and hope and dreams?
What of our lives?
From the Saints?
Of our spirits?
Of our love?
…
What we choose will give or take life to more people than we can imagine, in ways only God can show us!
There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
1 Peter 1:15
Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;
Words of Grace For Today
It was just a four day outing into the Boundary Water Canoe Area. The first day the sun shone bright and warm, the winds were light and mostly at their backs. Camp that first night was everything they’d dreamed of for their honeymoon. What neither could know was that it would all dramatically change soon enough.
Brent and Nellie had this planned since they were seniors in High School. During University they’d continued to date, except for those few months when they’d fought and broken up and tried to imagine life without each other.
It was the last thing each had wanted, but in their chemistry class the professor had assigned them to work together on a lab and demonstration to teach the complex events of nuclear fission compared to nuclear fusion. It had nearly cost them their sanity as they tried to work on the project without being anywhere near each other. It was that fusion part that had, ironically, brought them together to film their presentation to a class of High School students and their parents.
After they got over their awkwardness and moved into the presentation everything started to flow, like it had for them before. Then the slide presentation simply quit. The computer died. So without missing a beat they started to really click and work together, one talking while the other drew on the presentation paper they had for ready to record questions on, then switching roles as each led with their strengths. That paper and their voices were their only presentation medium. Like a dance couple they had pulled it off with grace, and in fact their impromptu final demonstration of fusion, a completely unplanned kiss, drew applause … and their chem prof used the video of their presentation as a demonstration for their class and for years afterwards of what an A+ presentation looked like!
That kiss rocked their worlds, providing balm for so many hurts.
Within days they both knew from their own experience so much more about God, their Rock and Salvation, than ever before … most of it was about mercy and forgiveness.
That’s God’s holiness in motion, even for us today.
He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.
Or perhaps better pro-nouned:
God sustained the people in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; God shielded them, cared for them, guarded them as the apple of her eye.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
Led out of slavery, across the land of a hostile despot, pursued by well trained, deadly soldiers, saved by a miracle crossing the Red Sea into the wilderness, and then?
What good is it to be freed from slavery only to end up in the wilderness to die of thirst, or hunger, or empty hearts and souls unable to imagine God’s grace?
So God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people in the barren howling wasteland. God sustains, shields, cares for, and guards the people with love, for there is nothing so powerful.
Seeking to establish a democracy leaders of the country (politician, banker, and publisher) arrive at the White House for a week of consultations. The brilliant writer leads them to craft a wonderful constitution. The President ‘interferes’ by bringing two of the greatest minds into the room with them. The greatest minds are from opposite parties and from opposite ends of the spectrum of thought, especially about how a democracy should function … except for one basic foundation.
Stymied by the constant arguing that prevents any consensus about what should and should not be included in the new constitution, the writer finally seeks out the President to silence the arguing. They only have one day left to finalize their document!
The President advises the writer that the goal is not a constitution, written and sealed for adoption. The goal is to teach by example, and in that example reach into the leaders’ hearts, minds, and souls to show them that the foundation of democracy is not any written document or anything else, except for the willingness to listen with respect to one’s opponents. If this small group of leaders learn to respect that one foundational principle, not in writing, but in their hearts, minds and souls, then they will teach others by example back home. With that principle they will be able, not easily, but successfully, to write and adopt … and the hardest part … and to follow the constitution with respect for all opinions honestly presented for consideration. (From West Wing)
Our foundational principle for life is not merely for the worst of all forms of government, (except all the others). Our principle for life is what God gives us, love. Living that love, trusting that love, listening to each other with that love, these are the things that Jesus does for us setting an example, so that we may live, trust, listen with love for others, so that they may learn to live, trust, and listen with love. With this miracle, for it can only happen by miracle transforming our hearts in spite of ourselves, God brings us through every barren wilderness to the Promised Land.
Today we get to live out the love that God has for us.
That’s Light work, spreading God’s miracles with abandon across the landscapes of all creation. Ready or not God already has sent us.
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.’
Luke 22:35
He said to them, ‘When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘No, not a thing.’
Words of Grace For Today
If we live life in order to have more money and a full purse,
If we live life in order to have the best bag of everything,
If we live life in order to have the best footwear,
… If we live life in order to have things, power, status, …
Then …
Well then we will always not have enough and we will lack for what we think we need.
This is the way of the world, and it brings more destruction, disease, and destorying to others and to oneself, always more, but not goodness, always evil running others and oneself closer and closer to meaningless and death. If you want an eye-full of that watch Succession, the HBO series, or simply open your eyes to see how so many people live in the world around us.
This is not a fun way to live, no matter if people party hard and seem to be enjoying themselves. In truth this kind of living can only be pursued if one hides from one’s self, one’s real self.
God created us not to take from the world and claim it all to be ours. God created us to receive enough and share everything we have with others.
Jesus sends the disciples out with everything they need: kind hearts and a message of God’s love for all people! They lack for nothing.
God leads Moses who leads the people into the freedom of the wilderness, out of slavery, and though they barely have enough to survive, and it’s touch and go more than a few times, they always have enough … as long as they remember that God has led them and accompanied them all their years, even their ‘40’ (which is a symbol for ‘lots and lots – more than enough to count’).
Today we live in circumstances that outwardly do not appear to be wilderness: there are roads, vehicles, cities, barns and houses in farm yards, and industrial sites of many, many kinds. We call it civilization, but no matter what it looks like from the outside, if we do not have hearts ready to share God’s Word of Grace, all this is mere cover and running, running hard in the barbaric wilderness of humans bent on destroying, making ill, and destorying one another.
What will our day be like today, if not another blessed journey with God walking with us? Breathe. Give Thanks. We lack for nothing.
With Great Effort and Big Machines (and cruel words)
We Destroy and Destory,
Doch God Saves All Creation
and Us In It
With A Word.
Psalms 33:9
For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
Matthew 8:8
The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.
Words of Grace For Today
It’s cold again this morning. Not the coldest, but enough that one needs take care before one goes outside, care to dress warm enough, not to leave any skin exposed, even a piece of one’s face that cannot be warmed quickly.
When crises rise up in our path, blocking our way forward, it is perhaps not so heart wrenching as to watch one’s daughter fall ill and no doctor’s efforts can save her. It may be worse, as war or earthquake or rising oceans, or other people rip us out of our lives and leave us with nothing more than the clothes on our bodies, if that.
Baptized in water and word, born of the Spirit from above, we can find our way to God’s promises, for when God speaks it is so.
So God created the world.
So Jesus cures us of our every ill.
So it is.
But when we cannot find our way back to God’s promises, and we flounder in waters too deep, cold, and wild for us to survive in, then what?
Then God accompanies us into the deep, cold, and wild, and finds us with a Word holy and simple: I love you!
And that is more than anything else in all the universe.
For no matter what happens to us, God welcomes us home … with a Word.
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.
Ephesians 1:18
so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,
Words of Grace For Today
The greatest distress that any human can face (since it covers for so many lesser distresses as well) is to not be,
to not be seen,
to not be heard,
to not be known,
to not be remembered,
to not be loved,
to not be anything at all.
…
God promises to protect us from the evil that would make this be for us.
God sees us.
God hears us.
God knows us.
God remembers us.
God loves us.
And God makes sure we are something to God, and
that many other people
see, hear, know, remember, and love us.
And God sends us out to see, hear, know, remember, and love all people,
so not one person need cry
Lord, see me, hear me, know me, remember me, love me.
Makes for a full day every day, and a full life lived,
when we work so that all people are seen, heard, known, remembered, and …
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.
Take good care to observe the commandment and instruction that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.
John 12:26
Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
Words of Grace For Today
Getting around to serving Jesus, following him, and therein loving and serving God is not something for the faint of heart. If it is left up to us, none of are able to ‘get around to it’. Not on our own.
So why all the wasted words about trying to ‘get’ us to make these choices?
Nothing good comes of those words and nothing good goes into those words, no matter how many people and how many times people think that they are ‘encouraging, commanding, or inspiring’ others to follow Jesus and love God.
We are sinners. Simple start for each day is to admit that as best we can, and then pray for mercy.
Then maybe God will give us sight to see, hearing to hear, and heart to love God and God’s creation.
For today, how does it start?
Again, simply: confession, mercy, and hard work on our part, praying that God will make something good out of all our efforts.
