Month: January 2023

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.

With

Monday 30 January 2023

Wherever the paths and tumbles of life take us,

God is with us,

Our Shining Light

Joshua 24:17

for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed

Matthew 28:20b

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Words of Grace For Today

A pilot, a rather sane, sober and sombre individual most of the time, lands after a transatlantic flight, just a routine flight. But he expects in New York that day he will find an answer to a puzzle that has challenged his sanity. It even sent him banking a plane for no good reason (apparently) to avoid another plane that was not there, a ghost plane as it were. But today, he knew he would unravel the mystery and his life could return to normal.

As he steps off the plane he realizes that, in stark contrast to his regular orderly and stayed mood, he is rather giddy. More than giddy even, an over-drive of exuberance he could call it. And that makes him wonder, yet again, if he really has, perhaps, started to go insane. Not something too attractive in a pilot who is trying to move from the right seat to the left seat, or stay in any seat at all.

Then he realizes, whatever is going on with him, whether he really is mad or not, he is no different than everyone else, we all have to work with the equipment we are given, Right!?

Sounds of Wings, paraphrase from p. 79 and before, Spencer Dunmore, Tom Dohetry Associates, 1984

It’s just some of us are given some very special equipment that makes being a pilot possible. And for a few of us it makes us extraordinary pilots, the creme of the creme as it were.

In the rest of life, and maybe even for us gifted with equipment that makes flying possible, the real ‘equipment’ that counts is hardly our brain, our hands, our coordination, or our heart. What really counts is the gifts God gives us that help us recognize how God has accompanied us, as God did our ancestors through the generations, even as they ventured into foreign and hostile lands, as God does for all the saints.

Knowing that God protects us along all the ways, with their twists and turns and setbacks, that we journey in live, gives us a piece of unequal ‘equipment.’ It is God’s presence each day, which guides us, and picks us up when we take a tumble into horrendous sins, and heals us, and walks with us out into the world of …

everything.

Again today, we work with the equipment we are given, right!

The DawnShine

From On High

Sunday 29 January 2023

Blues, Peaches, and De-Light

Psalms 80:20

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. ’

Words of Grace For Today

After a long, dark night, after many days of snow and clouds, freezing rain and wind, nothing quite compares to the light of the dawn breaking in on this life with blues, peaches and golds spraying the white snow-laden ground with all colours of the rainbow.

These are reminders of God’s promise not to abandon us, not to the floods, nor to the disasters of any kind, nor to the darkness that can creep up on us and catch us, drawing us down, down, down.

God’s promises renewed, our hearts buoyed once again, and our minds set on what lies ahead, even the shadow of death cannot steal the peace from us. Our enemies that would do us harm have no chance, nor have they had any chance of succeeding in bringing about our demise.

Instead we have found refuge in God’s great light, in God’s great forests, and beside God’s great waters. The sun powers our shelters, wood heats our bones, and clean water refreshes us each day, as we feast on simple foods, enjoying every bite.

Even as the cold winds blow, there are moments to find the solitude warming our hearts, bodies and minds as we work outside to provide the basics for the coming days.

And writing, writing, writing keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, as we explore the truth of the past, present and future.

This is the light of Christ, God’s countenance that shines brightly here on us, and everywhere.

May the light find you today filled with gratitude for God’s gifts and the opportunities to share life with those in need (which is pretty much everyone.)

Be Transformed,

To Discern

Saturday 28 January 2023

As The Dawn Brings The Light,

And The Moon Dims,

May We See God’s Light

Transforming Our Hearts And Minds

So That We May Discern God’s Will

For Us All.

First Samuel 17:45

But David said to Goliath, the Philistine, ‘You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.’

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Words of Grace For Today

The world teaches us to be proud, to make something of ourselves.

God created us to live abundantly, and that is not how we do that!

We have heard:

Life is 10% what happens to us, and 90% how we respond, that is what we do with it.

BUT that is not how God intended us to live life.

God’s plan is more like life is 110% what God makes us able to do to give God thanks & give everything to others.

Life lived as God intended us to live it is not what we make of it, rather life is a gift, such a precious gift that we get to do so much with it, giving thanks and sharing the gift with everyone in need of God’s grace (which is pretty much everyone!)

It is as if my dream came to life again —

Despite the Darkness that presses in on all sides,

I saw two pillars,

which turn out to represent two different ways of living,

two totem poles representing real lives lived.

The totem poles are not static, finished, nor are they simply in the stage of being carved, instead like living trees they grow and are carved by the experiences of the person’s life they represent.

Both totem’s emerge from the ground with imperfections.

One looks nearly perfect, because cosmetic fixes are applied to the imperfections soon after they emerge from the ground, as well as to any other imperfections that appear on the totem (and there are so many), are touched up.

The other looks a mess with all it’s imperfections treated with a salve, but left clearly visible as scars, dents, and deep punctures. Some are so deep, going through and through, that one starts to wonder how the totem remains standing.

Then, in the dimly lit darkness we’ve been in, a brilliant light starts to rise over the horizon, and one sees clearly now the imperfections of the first totem, just as deep, just as scarred, just as ugly as the second, no uglier now for –

in the dawn of the light we see that the cosmetic fixes and the deep hole patches of the first totem are only webs of weak sour crystals. Inside the patch material has turned to acid and seeped down to eat out the core of the totem, and then settled to eat through to just under the visible surface and there formed a bulge of powder from collapsed crystals.

in the dawn of the light we see that what we thought was salve on the second totem is actually pieces of a living being, spattered over its wounds. It is both revolting and somehow peacefully settling as the light starts to interact with these living pieces, which come alive and fill in but do not hide the scars, dents, cuts, and gaping holes.

When the light breaks the horizon the light shifts. Had it not we would not have been able to see anything at all, our eyes being consumed by such intense pure light as powerful in reverse as a black hole. The light itself becomes invisible, though its effects are blatantly obvious and … astounding.

The first totem, which was patched up to look wonderful, starts to disintegrate. First the light permeates the crystals and turns them into a fine powder, which collects at the bottom of the totem that is left as it has been for a long time, barely anything at all. Then in the light, what is left of once grand looking totem, begins to burn from the inside out, until it crumbles into a pile of dead ash that disappears back into the earth.

The second totem, perfect in structure as the ‘salve’ has made it, though still as ugly as the sin that marred, scarred, and punctured it at its heart – this totem also starts to come apart, not a disintegration but a reintegration, as from the top it peels off into pieces of the living ‘salve’ of healing, which seek out the wounds of so many other totems that we now see in this invisible light.

We see in this light, that though we can try to make our lives something more than the ugly sin that scars and wounds us, it is all for nothing. The only hope for us is when Christ, the healing salve for the world, claims us, touches us, heals us, and makes us able to be the healing presence in the world for other broken, sinful beings.

When the invisible light of truth and grace starts to set, again we are astonished and delighted to see all the totems, whom the healing salve from us all has touched, start to dance … one, two, three; one, two, three; one, to all the Three in One that creates life so blessed.

In the dance we see, instead of dents, scars, cuts, and holes, the astounding power of our Creator to heal with Grace. The wounds become reflections of the Light itself, more precious than any gem we’ve ever imagined, and the dazzling light show of life on earth in this dance cannot be compared to anything other than ….

well than life at its absolute best, as God created us to live it.

And that is how God allows us to discern what God intends for us and all people, by the healing, saving power of Jesus the Christ via the cross and our sacrifices to give life to others.

May the light shine for us, even in the darkness of our days and lives.

Giving Up!

Surrendering to God With and For Us

Friday 27 January 2023

The colours of dawn show the glory of God,

whether we see it or not.

Psalms 1:3

They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Jonathan worked hard everyday, as he had since he was 5. He remembered what his mother had taught him, that you had to work hard to make it in life. He had definitely wanted to make it in life. First he had wanted to make his mother proud. He may have wished something of his father, but he had left them before Jonathan knew anything about him. Then as he grew older he saw that people with money got to do what they wanted, so he decided that he would have lots of money by working hard.

A quick three years earned him his first degree, another two his PhD and he was on his out working hard everyday. At first he worked for someone else. After a year he figured out that the only way to be wealthy was to have people working for him, so he quit his job and started his own little design and engineering company. Just five years later he had grown it to 1000 employees in 20 different cities. He’d sold that company for his first real billion in his own bank account. He’d invested half in safe stocks and the rest into a new company, this time architecture, engineering, and construction. Within 3 years he had more than 3000 employees in 30 different cities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then he’d met Michelle on a worksite in Vereeniging and again on a project outside Dar es Salaam and all the sense of his working everyday dissolved like his nightly antacids in hot water. He’d taken a year to be with her, working every other week or so, getting just as much work done, still adding to his assets and investments, and the value of his company, all privately owned. They’d been married in Cape Town, had a week long honeymoon in Stockholm, Oslo, and Sankt Peter Ording.

Then he’d gotten back to work, even as the children arrived. First Olevia, then Petrus. When he came back from working in Hebron on a new project, his first in Israel, he found Michelle in the hospital. No one knew what made her ill, but she could barely lift her head or hands, and she whispered at most a few words each day. He’d sat by her for 4 straight days, as her condition got worse and worse, until ….

Looking back on the week that had followed, Jonathan could not remember what had happened. He sat on the edge of his hospital bed now. People told him he collapsed at Michelle’s funeral. He had no memory of it at all, or of the previous days in the hospital.

He rubbed his forehead. It did not help the headache or the dizziness. He tried to stand, but the room spun and he sat back down. Minutes later he woke up laying on his bed.

All the money that he had, and he could not save Michelle, and now he could do nothing for himself. Give him a building project and he’d excel, but this! What was this!?

When he found these verses (Psalms 1:3 and Philippians 1:9-11) beside his bed that night, he thought, yes, he’d prospered, but to what good end? He thought his love for Michelle had overflown all limits, and he had acquired great knowledge and wealth. But had he any insight to help himself determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ he would be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness?

It was like another test, and he was failing this one badly.

The pastor that visited his roommate the next morning talked about how we could not do anything good without the Holy Spirit guiding us to do that good. Otherwise it all turned to dust and hopeless evil. We could, of our own freewill, choose to do evil and turn from God; but only God could help us live in God’s good grace.

He was more confused than ever. How could he do what was right if that was impossible? But he could still do what was wrong, because that was fully possible for him?

His roommate got up later that day, and saw that he had not even made it to the bathroom at all that day. He walked over, and saw Jonathan’s confused, hopeless look, and simply made the sign of the cross on his forehead saying, you are marked with the cross of Christ, and you are precious to God. Be at peace.

And then it all changed for Jonathan. He died.

They revived him. A month later he went home. He spent hours, days, weeks and months making no sense at all of what the pastor or his roommate had said. Not until Olevia walked into his study and told him that God walked with her, whether she liked it or not. But it didn’t help keep the bully girl out of her face at school. So she was reading about Gandhi and nonviolence. She knew that what seemed to be weakness was going to be her strength.

And it clicked for Jonathan. He stopped trying to do everything right, to earn enough money, to read the right things, to think the right things. He just prayed to God that he surrendered.

He woke the next morning and for the first time ever, doing nothing except waiting to see the sun rise, paying attention to the glorious colours of the dawn slowing push the darkness away until the deep blue sky shone bright above the pink and cream in the clouds on the horizon … and he knew that God was with him, and had been his whole life, even when he had never paid attention or cared.

For the first time ever life looked wonderful, even while he felt profound guilt for leaving Michelle so often and the grief of her leaving him with an un-fillable hole in his heart.

Gladness In Our Hearts

Thursday 26 January 2023

So Many Steps To Take,

To Preserve Creation

For The Next Generations!

Psalms 4:7-8

You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Former Calgary mayor, Naheed Nenshi, in his November 2022 ‘In Defence of Democracy’ speech for the Samara Centre for Democracy’s at the Toronto Public Library outlined five simultaneous crises that we face, which threaten more than just democracy, but also democracy:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/keep-fighting-to-build-strong-communities-naheed-nenshi-1.6679094

Public Health, which the pandemic showed us all too clearly is broken so badly and so unfairly and so unjustly.

Mental Health, which is buried, hidden and denied, yet officially effects 1 of 4, and realistically is a crisis for every single one of us at some time in our lives.

Economic Injustice, which is fuelled by systems that we rely on, which as much as slavery did[does] needs to mistreat so many people in order to keep our societies functioning.

Environmental Crisis, which has shown us that we’ve used up most of our ‘carbon budget’, climate is changing in years (changes that used to take millennia), and change cannot come soon enough, though the wrong changes will leave us worse off than we are now and will be otherwise.

Inequity, which is the fundamental crisis underlying all the others, so that while some live opulent lives now, most of us live in the dregs of their leftovers, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is getting wider, faster than ever before.

Of course, in the past year we must add a sixth crisis, that of inflation and the rising cost of borrowing money, of paying for housing, of buying groceries and gasoline and everything else that is basic to life as we live it.

…

These crises are familiar to anyone who has not been ‘asleep at the wheel!’

Nenshi provides illustrations: from an immigration system that promises educated, certified, even practising professionals entry to Canada, where we then deny them the right to exercise their professions and instead relegate them to hard, manual labour like long-term care work, or the new driver’s lecture for youth of colour that concludes: always keep your wallet out and visible so that if/when you are stopped you do not need to reach for it, do as you are told, and do not resist: do not let being pulled over be the last thing you do!

So what are we to do?

Nenshi offered three ways to get to an anti-racist culture: empathy, sacrificial service, and love.

Nothing new there either.

So if we’ve know and practised these things, while we may not have made any progress, we know personally and communally that the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That God has put gladness in our hearts more than when grain and wine abound. Therefore we will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make us lie down in safety.

Yet, there is so much that God’s good creation needs from us still, while we still have breath, before it is too late!

‘Work with us, again this day, God!’ we pray

‘Bring gladness to our hearts once again.’

Ah, Life Done God’s Way

Wednesday 25 January 2023

God Plays A Great Tune

With Every Possibility

Are We Listening and Watching and Praying

And Giving Thanks?

Proverbs 11:19

Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but whoever pursues evil will die.

Matthew 5:6

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Words of Grace For Today

The ordinary ways and means of life are simple: do the stuff right, do the righteous stuff and you will live well.

But if you do the wrong stuff, you will not live well, you will suffer, and die miserably.

The other thing is, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, then you will be fine.

But …

Jesus is God’s message to us that God intends life to be otherwise for us.

Not just any other way, but the ‘foolishness’ of the cross, that upside down way from our view, of God’s greatest power being in sacrifice in order to forgive and give new life to all us sinners who deserve nothing other than … well, nothing other than all bad, not even breath for life.

Yet we get all that God has that is good for us, given freely to us, to make life wonderful. Of course all that we get from God is not for us, it is for us to give away to others, especially others in need in order to actually keep living.

What a way to live, eh? Everything upside down from the rest of the world, and everything blessed, even when others think we have lost our minds.

But we know how we are blessed in the greatest of ways, even if we are hungry, homeless, and lies have ruined our reputation.

The sun rises, the sun shines or snow falls or rain drops like buckets, and then the sun sets. During every minute God shows us the simple joys of breathing, writing, taking photos, and being gracious, kind, and forgiving.

That’s the stuff of life as God intended us to live it.

Dance, Dance

Dancing to the Music of God’s Spheres

Tuesday 24 January 2023

The Moon Dances,

At Sunrise,

Inviting Us

Into God’s Dance of Life

for All

Psalms 91:9

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place,

John 14:1

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.

Words of Grace For Today

Were it so simple, that we could make God our refuge, and then we would always dwell in God’s Most Wondrous City, home for all the saints.

Were it so simple, that we could just choose to believe in God and in Jesus, and then our hearts would not be troubled.

But life is not like that. Nor are we able to always seek God as our refuge or choose to life in God’s wondrous city. Nor are we able to set aside all that troubles us and rest secure in our belief in God and in Jesus.

God planned for that.

God sends the Holy Spirit to guide us

into the city of God

into the care of God’s loving hands,

into God’s refuge

into a firm belief in God and Jesus the Christ,

and away from all that troubles our hearts.

…

Yet we often choose the trouble of this world as our dwelling place and our hearts contents!

God planned for that, too.

And sends the Holy Spirit again and again,

even today

to guide us into God’s dwelling for us, and life abundant, by moving us to share all we are and have with those who are in need.

This day, a wonder-filled day it is, as always, because God walks with us, through our darkness, and gives us hearts that sing and dance and fly

with grace to the mysterious music of our Creator, always with us.

A waltz if you will,

so dance, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three ….

Not AGAIN!

Monday 23 January 2023

The Ideal, Which Sadly Exists Seldom:

A Church and

The Rock,

And Christ’s Light

Psalms 25:20

O guard my life, and deliver me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.

Matthew 7:25

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s snowing again, and whether, due to weather, the house falls is not really an issue, since the flakes are teeny, but after a few storms and 3 feet of snow like we have now, though some has melted into ice, the weight of all that gathered on the tarps may just put the tarps on the ground and ‘the house will fall.’

So we cry again in the drabness of yet again more days of snow, deliver us!

We take refuge but the rains and snows continue to fall, the winds will blow hard, it will beat on the house we have built.

Then our only hope will be the house that God has built for us, built on the Rock, Peter, the Church of Jesus the Christ.

But it’s been corrupted as well, so we are left, in the teeny flaked snow falling on tarps that we have to clear by hand, waiting for the sun to shine to give solar power so we can write more gratitude-filled words, words of grace.

Stand by

for better weather and the light.

(But there’s still work to do today, so have at it, with all we’ve got, as we wait for the light.)

Great Foundation of ‘Foolishness’

Sunday 22 January 2023

Do We Follow In Other’s Footsteps,

Or Forge Ahead Where the Spirit Leads Us?

Many Saints Have Gone Before Us,

Without Them We’d Know Nothing

of the ‘Foolishness of the Cross’

Giving Life Abundant!

Jeremiah 10:6

There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might.

1 Corinthians 3:11

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Christ laid a foundation of God’s power in weakness, of sacrifice for others being the way to an abundant life. At baptism we enter into that way of living as the Holy Spirit gives us such great gifts … all so that we can share God’ Grace with others. And then so often we turn it right back upside down and try to make it on our own as saints!

Another Adaptation of Mother Teresa’s “Anyway”

Mother Teresa wrote in her piece titled “Anyway!” that no matter the cost we should still choose to do the good things. I’ve adapted it to reflect that life following Christ is not about making the right choices. That’s a futile way to live, because the problem is that we never keep making the right choices! Jesus showed us instead that God intends that we surrender in our weakness and sinfulness to what the Holy Spirit makes us able to do: living out the foolishness of the cross, bringing Christ’s light into every darkness.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centred. – We get to forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. – We get to be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. – We get to succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. – We get to be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. – We get to create anyway.

If you compassionately listen to a poor person tell their story, it’ll wrench your heart and cost you a bit of life – We get to really listen anyway.

No matter how many poor people you help, there will always be another in great need. – We get to help the poor anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. – We get to be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. – We get to do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. – We get to give our best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God, and God promises to love us, no matter what. God gives us more than we need, so we get to give our all helping others see that God’s Grace is for them, too.

No matter how we fail or what comes our way in God’s great goodness, God created us to love compassionately, live vibrantly, and give unabashedly everything we have so that others may live knowing God’ Grace is for them, too!

Small wonders fill our days, if we but look and listen, and share them.