The Broom

Of God Does Not Sweep Us Away

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

What’s Your Broom Tree Look Like,

Today?

First Kings 19:5-8

Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

Matthew 6:31

Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

No Food.

No Food in the Wilderness.

No Drink in the Wilderness.

No Hope in the Wilderness

Well, after Elijah took on the prophets of Baal, and they (great in number) turned on him, leaving him no choice but to run for his life, it would come to this, wouldn’t it. Elijah gives up and lies down to die.

God planned for that, too. Not just for Elijah but for each and every one of us.

The angel brings him food and drink, two times, since Elijah needs at least that much to continue.

But there are so many times that we worry and fret about what we will eat and what we will drink. The worry is just as bad if not worse than the hunger and the thirst.

God does not have easy, comfort, boredom planned for any of us. God has adventures of the body, heart, and mind … and spirit in mind for all of us, traversing the wildernesses, becoming demonstrations and examples of God’s love providing life for us, becoming those who share that with others in need.

The broom tree is a place to rest. It is not a place where God abandons us, not ever.

Not even today.

Hemmed In

On All Sides

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Finding the Path Home?

Out There Somewhere?

Psalm 139:5

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28

so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.”

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Trying to escape from the Wildernesses

of poverty

of hunger

of harassment

of threats

of apathy

of depression

of other people’s wildernesses

of the desert of a parched soul;

We’ve all tried at one time or another to escape

or at least minimize the parched heat, or the soppy wet floods, or the thunder, lightening, and wind storms of an angry planet or soul that seems out to do us in.

While we may try on our own, in real desperation, as even the least of believers to seek God,

yet God is not to be found, for God is before us, behind us, above us, under us, and to each side of us, walking with us through all the deserts and wildernesses that we traverse.

For we are God’s children, also this day, with all it’s challenges and things to be rightfully feared.

No other solution is needed, and we do not escape at all. God gives us what it takes to make it through, for even if death finds us, and takes us, there God gathers us in

to a home like none we have yet known. Home.

Be nice to have a home even in the wilderness, or maybe especially in the wilderness, eh?!

Fresh Start?

Ailments No More?

Monday, September 2, 2024

Rain Drops Clear The Air,

For a New Day.

Psalm 147:3

He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.

1 Peter 2:24

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

It is an odd, illogical thought, that we can be healed because someone else is wounded. That is the illogic of sacrifice. It is the illogic behind living organ donors (like kidney transplant donors).

The obvious truth is that we all need and want to be healed. Our physical ailments may come to mind first. Old people know ailments of many kinds that seem to multiply as the years pass. Far too many younger people suffer the cruel, random selection of genetic, developmental, and accidental ailments. While medicine makes advances each year, we still cannot heal all these ailments. We simply suffer them.

The most severe, and life-robbing, ailments we suffer are not the physical ones. They are our psychological and spiritual wounds and ailments that reek havoc in our lives, and the lives of many around us. The ‘science’ to heal us of these ailments, or at least mitigate their disruption to our lives makes advances to be sure, but the progress is minuscule for those who suffer.

How can God promise to heal the broken-hearted, and bind up their wounds.

Or to heal us by his wounds?

Yet both the Psalmist and the writer of 1 Peter don’t make that promise. They state it as an accomplished deed.

Oh, to live knowing our broken hearts are healed, and our wounds have been bound, that we have been completely healed so profoundly that it has cost someone else his life.

By faith we know exactly these things to be

how, since our baptisms,

we start each day,

each encounter

each challenge.

Good Morning!

A Fresh Start, Again!

Wounds and sins have no power over us.

To Pray or Not to Pray

Or not to be able to Pray

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Can We Pray For the Weeds Of Life To Be Beautiful?

Psalm 90:1-2

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Mark 11:22-23

Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

it is a wonderful thing to be able to pray.

it is an even more wonderful thing to know that God will take our prayers and make it so!

What of all the people who cannot pray?

What can we give to them

from all the blessings God has given us as stewards in this fragile creation,

if not peace, love, and hope?