Category: Grace

Thanks Eight

Friday, October 13, 2023

What Is It?

Daniel 4:32

You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will.

1 Peter 5:6

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this past week and a day.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

Too often we think how great we are,

forgetting, as Martin Luther said, we are at best beggars,

beggars all,

beggars always.

What are you thankful for today?

Can you see it clearly?

Answer 5

A water tank which provides enough water that I can, when it does not freeze, wash well with water flowing, a small, precious thing.

Thanks Seven

Thursday, October 12, 2023

What Is It?

Psalm 109:26

Help me, O Lord my God! Save me according to your steadfast love.

Matthew 14:30-31

But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

We often try to do great things and then realize we’ve ‘bitten off more than we can chew’, that we have gotten ourselves up a creek and lost our paddles. We can be thankful for God’s steadfast love that saves us, again and again,

and again.

What are you thankful for today?

Answer 4

A simple thing, a door, to come through to get inside. For years I did not have one, so I am always reminded of how good simple things are, if we just but notice.

Thanks Six

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

What Is It?

Isaiah 25:4 (– 5)

For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,

(the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.)

2 Corinthians 4:11

For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Day is done. And still we give thanks for days. Why not?

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

The blasts of winter at these latitudes are never like blasts of heat, hardly ever rain, and if then it’s ice. But those who speak ruthlessly against us and others abound at all latitudes.

From all that endangers us, God gives us refuge and offers us to little deaths so that others may find refuge as well.

Christ is in us, and we know how that ended for him, right? For this we were created. For this we are redeemed. There is no better life.

What are you thankful for today?

Answer 3

This rain barrel converted into a water hauler has made so many trips, bringing clean, life-giving water to my camp.

Thanks Five

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

What Is It?

Zephaniah 3:12

For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord—

1 Corinthians 1:28-29

God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

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Words of Grace For Today

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

Out of the lowest God brings the most precious.

Humble and helpless we come into the world, humble and helpless we age in our last days before death (if we are so fortunate to live that long.)

What are you thankful for today?

Answer 2

A simple hand cart which I use to move wood, once it’s cut to length, an essential to surviving, since my back surely cannot haul all that is needed, not even close. It hauls lots of other things as well, and every two to three years it needs new wheels. The bearing just give out. Not the most robust design, but it works hard for me.

Thanksgiving Four

Thanks For It All

Monday, October 9, 2023

What Is It?

Proverbs 10:2

Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.

Luke 19:8

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Today, but for me Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

What abundance can we use as stewards to point to the Owner of it all?

What are you thankful for today?

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Answer 1

Ice in the water bucket: thanks for the freeze that put the mosquitoes and black flies to an end. Makes working outside so much easier.

Thanks Three

Thanks 3

Sunday, October 8, 2023

What Is It?

Psalm 16:6

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.

2 Corinthians 9:8

And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week started the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

The boundaries are set, and leave ample room to give thanks!

What are you thankful for today?

Thanks Two

Saturday, October 7, 2023

What Is It?

First Kings 18:37

Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.

Luke 22:32

… but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week starts the Friday before, why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

With thanks we start ask, then we ask, and having already received, we turn to give to others the strength that only can come from the Spirit.

What are you thankful for today?

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So a sneak preview of the answer to Thanks One, but the explanation will wait until Thanks Four:

Answer 1

Ice is nice?

Thanks One

Friday, October 6, 2023

What Is It?

Jeremiah 7:23

But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’

John 8:31

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;

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Words of Grace For Today

Thanksgiving Week starts the Friday before (today), why not?

So I am thankful for these things shown in photos this week.

Can you tell what they are?

Four days later the answer will be shown here.

A week of giving thanks for being able to take photos.

Continue Giving Thanks.

What are you thankful for today?

Promises and Shame

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Remember the days of wildfire smoke that turned the sun orange?

Even then we stilled breathed!

And survived.

Joshua 21:45

Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Luke 13:17

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

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Words of Grace For Today

I’m not so sure that all that God has promised has come to pass. There are many words of condemnation, promising the demise of all God’s people, which may have come to pass, but certainly not all of them, as God has relented and rescued God’s people, again and again, from the folly that we get ourselves into at the hands of our opponents.

Jesus, on the other hand, put his opponents to shame, with all the great works that he does.

Even this day, the wonders continue:

The air is breathable, free from smoke.

The water is drinkable, processed by systems designed by people building on the wonders of science and technology of this and previous generations.

The food is edible. Or sort of, maybe. Some of it in the grocery stores makes one question whether a huge source of cancer is not all the processed food we eat, with all the poisons in the packaging, and all the poisons that are on and in the food grown and sold … and eaten by so many people, us included.

But we do not go hungry. We just suffer all sorts of weird illnesses and diseases and decays of life. Of course the wealthy have ways of getting food that is less poison-laden, and us poor are left with no choice but to take what no one else wants. But at least we eat, right?

That is the promise that God has kept for us, that we will eat.

The shame is ours when we forget how blessed even our lives in poverty are.

Even moreso when we do not realize how others struggle to survive on so much less. Our poverty would be a dream come true for them!

So we practice this day giving thanks again:

Thank you God for all that keeps us alive!

Good Land

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

The Good Land?

Deuteronomy 8:7

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,

Acts of the Apostles 14:17

… yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.’

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Words of Grace For Today

Perhaps if we develop ‘warp drive’ (space flight faster than light) we can anticipate that God will bring us into a good land, flowing with water and all goodness, but until then

we’ve ruined the earth so much that it is hard to imagine a ‘good land’ somewhere under these skies.

The water flows alright, as the glaciers and ice caps and land mass ice melt, and it collects in the oceans and they rise, and what used to be ocean front property is underwater.

Or the water does not flow and the rains do not fall and the crops do not grow.

Or … you name it, the climate of earth has gotten mean.

What did we expect?

Okay, it’s not really all all that bad.

There are blessed places where the water flows, the rain falls in good amounts, the sun shines, and the crops grow.

And if one has lived in an area that was marginal to good before climate change, conflicts and disasters, but it has become uninhabitable or unsafe then coming to a land where crops grow and people live in relative safety, then one can count that as a blessing.

Typical is, though, that if we’ve always lived where the crops grow reasonably well year after year, then we easily forget how blessed it is that God has brought us to this good land.

It is easy to forget how others yearn for such a land to call home.

It is easy to think we deserve it … and others do not.

When life is hard, survival in question each day, then each breath is precious, and with each breath we can say, thanks for such wondrous blessings. These are the blessings that make life possible.