Month: October 2025

Gone Degenerate and Wild

Will Anyone Plead for Us?

Friday, October 10, 2025

Surely Someone?!!

Sunset Glory.

The Colours Are Not Real.

But God’s Blessings Are!

Jeremiah 2:21

Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?

.

Romans 11:2

God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

If we are at all honest with ourselves we know that we have at least taken the good vineyard God planted in us and chosen to bring in wild weed seed, and degenerative thoughts, words, dreams, and deeds,

to much so that they choke out life in and around us.

…

Elijah, as powerful as he may be, cannot save us.

Thankfully, God has not rejected us and deserted us to ourselves and all the evils we dream up.

Instead

God sent Jesus to save us

and save us he did and does

each day.

…

Thus we may live this day

as the ones God blesses,

all in order that we share those blessings will all.

…

Breathe.

The Spirit

Always in and around us, for life.

For This Reason

And What Reason Is That

Thursday, October 9, 2025

That God Would Bless Us?

The Spirit Works Where God Wills

Genesis 12:1-3

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

.

Galatians 3:9

For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

God calls and says “Go!”

God promises a great nation, blessings to be blessings to all.

And Abram and Sarai, go, and manipulate, cheat, and lie their way to wealth, security, and fame (or infamy to their victims). But they cannot make a great nation, starting with a family unless God blesses them with a child, and for that …

well they are humbled, most humbled. They cannot do it on their own.

Late in life, they finally have a child, and the rest is history.

A history of a nation growing and strong, then corrupted and overrun, and reestablished but still weak, then dispersed across the earth, and oppressed, killed and driven out.

…

Do we want to join that family?

Maybe not so much, eh!

…

Yet, by baptism into Jesus, the Christ, we are made a part of that family of God, a family larger than just Abraham’s blood descendants. A family bound together by the fire-wind-spirit of God, pouring gifts upon us all

…

all so that we can be blessings to others.

And how are we brought into this family? Do we do what is right and good and just and earn our way in. Not on your life.

We, like Abraham and Sarah, can do nothing, except wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to bring us home, into the family of God.

…

For this reason, namely, that we are saved not by our works, not by our own hands, not by our own hearts or minds; that we are saved by faith given to us by God;

for this humble reason, that we do none of it on our own, that God must do it all for us.

For this reason, this humbling reason, we are blessed

not for our benefit

but that we can be a blessing to others, many times over.

Coming Up Short In Life?

Look!

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Even Zacchaeus Is Invited to the Feast!

Success Is Not Finding the Right Path and Reaching the End.

It is Loving Everyone Along the Way, No Matter How Far We Get.

Psalm 10:17

O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear.

.

Luke 19:5-6

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

We measure life

in money

in power

in popularity

in relative privileges and comforts

in things of this world,

– ignoring those who come up short.

…

And so many must come up short.

…

God has always given special attention to those measured as coming up short:

the meek

the widows

the orphans

the slaves

the servants

the handicapped

the ill,


– which pretty much leaves no one out, except those that insist on staying out.

Jesus reaches down where we think people don’t even count, and invites us all to come to the feast of knowing Jesus at home, and in the feast of life (purchased with his death.)

…

For God measures life

in empathy

in forgiveness

in helping

in serving

in love

in joy

and in hope,


– and in seeing everyone as they are.

…

and the Holy Spirit makes sure no one comes up too short for God to notice!

Betcha Can’t

Betcha God Can!

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Thwarts and All Cannot Stop God’s Love

Canoe at 72?

Possible.

Be Saved Yet Again?

For God All Is Possible!

Job 42:2

Job to God: I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

.

Luke 1:37

For nothing will be impossible with God.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

Trusting that God will not be stopped, that all things are possible for God, is the first good half of trusting God.

The other half is knowing, from experience (one’s own and those of the God’s people since the beginning of time) that God intends good for us, that God indeed loves us like we can only dimly imagine possible.

That’s seemingly impossible:

loving such miserable sinners as us,

mere blips in time,

vulnerable to

the smallest

bugs,

and so capable of

ugly and hateful destructive things

against the earth that supports life for us all,

towards people different than, and especially those so like, us,

and even to ourselves!

Yet there it is to see: God loves us, forgives us, and does the impossible:

God gives us life, and then renews life for us when we botch it so badly.

Even, Especially, Now

God’s Goodness

Monday, October 6, 2025

Hearing, Seeing, Trusting

Life Without Trust

Life With Trust

Psalm 27:13

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

.

James 5:15

The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

…

Words of Grace for Today –

…

It’s all good and fine to live life waiting for life after death, dismissing how miserable life is here for oneself, or how miserable it is for others, while oneself enjoys comforts and privileges unimagined even 100 years ago.

Well, that’s not good or fine, really.

Our lives are more determined by what we hear, see, and trust than the actual things we experience. The same mundane and boring or dire and desperate circumstances can be experienced completely differently by different people, usually depending most (not considering various vulnerabilities due to health and age) on their value-reality framework, which they live with each day.

If one hears the autumn winds blow, and does not take the time to actually see beauty of the yellow leaves against the deep blue skies, the marvels of the waters reflecting the wisps and billows of clouds, and the freedom from bugs the cool temperatures provide, how can one trust that even as winter approaches one’s preparations for the darkest and deepest of cold days will be enough?

If one hears the words upon words spoken, presented, and drilled into the fabric of our lives these days, and does not take the time to also hear the Words recorded by the saints through the ages of God’s love for us, and then to see the wonders the Word has brought to all peoples of all times, how can one trust that in the darkest and coldest of days to come God will walk with us?

The wonders of God’s love for us are not reserved for only after death. These wonders spring up and blow about each day around us. Today we can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Today we can trust that prayers help those who are ill, and that God already pours forgiveness to all people, hoping we will hear it in God’s Word, see it in lives past and present, and learn to trust it today, and in each day to come.

Wonders to hear, see, and trust abound.