And Curses
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
No Matter
How We Whitewash Our View,
God Remains Our Only Hope.
First Kings 8:57
The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us,
2 Thessalonians 3:5
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
“Good Luck,” we say.
To curse another person the Chinese supposedly will say, “May you live in interesting times.”
“Break a Leg,” we say to a person heading out into a performance, superstitiously saying we wish them ill, so that we do not curse their performance with words wishing them well. Now ain’t that more than a little crazy, since everyone knows we are actually wishing them well?
Trying to find our way in the world we have come up with many ‘interesting’ ways of taking steps forward with our words.
God made a step forward with a Word: and creation came into being.
Another Word and God’s Son is born to live as a human among us.
Another Word and we are sent out into the rough and tumble world to share God’s blessings with all people.
Today the excerpts from scripture are words that move us forward into our day: The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors. Words of blessing for ourselves, and for others: May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
These words do not pretend that our time in the world will be anything but ‘interesting’, by which we mean filled with rough and tough challenges that can do us in faster than we can take a breath.
These words assume that the Devil is at play always, and always we need God’s presence and protection to make it through each day, each challenge, each dead-end.
These words are confessions that on our own we cannot make it through even the simplest challenges, and that God has through all time accompanied God’s people, our ancestors, and blessed us to be blessings to other people.
So this is a new day, and the same old, same old is true. Devil always, God everywhere, blessings flowing.
Ahhhh, see, hear and feel the Spirit? Breathe deeply, and then dig in.