Grace – Page 14 – This Life

Confident

Humility

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

A newly discovered cache of internal documents reveals that the sugar industry downplayed the risks of sugar in the 1960s. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/09/13/sugar_wide-c334d683622a1f40a8f97f8acc8199a44f233e68-s1200.jp

Mounds of Sugar,

Taste Great?

Deadly?

Exodus 19:4

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

Hebrews 10:35

Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Confidence.

Confidence brings rewards.

Yes, confidence brings rewards, but

are those

good rewards

or the rewards

of the foolhardy.

As far as having seen what God did to the Egyptians and how God bore us up on eagles’ wings,

that is a piece of history now, one we have not seen ourselves, and the record shows that the people were not so easily convinced that being brought out into the wilderness with no water or food was such a great thing.

In fact they were abundantly confident that Moses had made a huge mistake, bringing them out in to the wilderness to die of thirst or starvation, and then of boredom with no meat to eat and then always the same old same old to eat, morning, noon, and night. God did not provide them with Kellogg’s, General Mills, Malt-O-Meal, Nestlé, Quaker Oats and Post Foods to produce a great variety of breakfast cereals that will eventually kill anyone from sugar poisoning. But at least the sugar addicts do not complain as they eat themselves to death!

So how are we to be confident,

yet not too confident,

and confident in the correct things that make for life,

instead of in things, like sugar, that provide for our slow deaths after miserable lives?

I think best is to be quiet humble, not so confident at all, but fully dependent on God’s good grace.

Or one can fall in love, which seems to ‘fix’ life quite well.

And then one wants more and more of that sweetness, which may or may not ‘fix’ life at all. The potential is there for great blessings and great curses, just like all else that is sweet as sugar.

No One

Not one

Came to my defence!

Monday, September 11, 2023

Martin Niemöller (1952)

Psalm 118:8

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in mortals.

2 Timothy 4:16-17

Paul wrote: At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

…

Words of Grace For Today

As many before, as many since, as many will until the end of time, I was falsely convicted of a crime. For me it was a crime that never happened, for many others it is a crime perpetrated by others, for so many the definition of ‘crime’ is set to include whole swaths of innocent people simply for being born or living honestly, or seeking justice for all.

Fortunately for me, one did speak out for me, futile as it was, it was still a sign of God’s speaking for me, against all the lies brought to the Courts.

…

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

(Martin Niemöller)

…

There is no sure security that humans can offer each other. This only God can offer, and God gives it freely

through humans ready to fight with words and actions for all others’ rights to the basics of life.

The message Paul carried is the key to life lived well … okay we can’t live life well, and that was Paul’s message of Jesus’ Cross: We can only accept that God has paid the price for our messing up life so bad we are beyond hope or rescue (except by God’s intervention), forgiven us, renewed life in us, and sent us out to be that ‘rescue’ for others.

So we must speak out!

… well, no, it is not so that we ‘must’

for we cannot on our own and we are under no obligation.

It is that we get to speak out, and the Holy Spirit makes us able to do so.

This is also our task today:

To speak for those whose basic rights to the basics of life are denied them.

Small challenges fill our days, eh?

Ephraim

Fruit in the land of misfortunes

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Ephraim By Francesco Hayez (1843)

Genesis 41:52

The second he named Ephraim, ‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.’

Romans 5:3-4

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

…

Words of Grace For Today

Just because suffering can be identified as bringing good effect (eventually) in our lives, there is no justification for foisting suffering on others, or seeking it out ourselves.

Suffering is, as Joseph knew quite well, not the choice one made for oneself, nor the thing to be celebrated. Rather one celebrates that one survives suffering and moves on. The end of suffering that is replaced by much more than the lack of suffering is what is celebrated.

Thus Joseph names his second son Ephraim. Ephraim, of two word-roots: depleted and fruitful, lingers not on depletion nor jumps merely on fruitful, but in the combination of fruitfulness from depletion.

Death brings an end to suffering. This we do not celebrate. The dead do not celebrate, right?

What we look for is life that has delights in each day, comforts to our ills, and reasons to see our children’s children and their children live well.

The challenge to a comfortable life is that until we know we may lose those comforts and indeed life itself, and not just a theoretical exercise but knowing it from our own experience, we really do not know how to live well with comforts. We take them for granted and surrender even our own thinking minds to have comforts — and then some fascist ruler takes not only our minds but our lives and that of our children’s children and their children.

So we pray, may our suffering (which is inevitable for all humans) be of a kind and duration that we may survive and therein learn the value of truth, compassion, and shear joy in the simple things of life — and most of all that we will learn from our suffering the true value in life is less our comforts but in our helping others survive their suffering to be able to enjoy life with us. Thus we set off a cascade of events that will bring many in the coming generations to know the true value of life, and how to find delight in the small things, and compassion for others.

We can but hope

for that for us

and for our children

and their children

and many generations to come.

Gifts

And Promises

Forever … or Not.

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Everything Points To …

Psalm 105:8

He is mindful of his covenant for ever, of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,

Romans 11:29

for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God remembers and does not revoke God’s promises for us, for more than thousands of thousands of generations.

God does not revoke the gifts given, nor the call to us to share those gifts, the requirements of life abundant, with others.

But we surely can deny those gifts in us and the call given to us.

And from that immense dismay, hurt, sorrow, and destruction have covered each generation.

Let us pray today that God will guide us to share the gifts with those in need, so that our hearts may know the peace that surpasses all understanding.

Breathe,

Breathe In

And Take Share in Adam’s Atoms Yet Again.

Friday, September 8, 2023

We Walk Short Distances,

But the Atoms from Our Breath Circle the Globe,

in a year.

Isaiah 26:19

Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.

Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we breathe in we breathe in atoms that have been breathed in by all creatures who breathe up to about a year before we breathe. When we breathe out, in little more than a year, our expelled atoms will be breathed in by every living creature that breathes in air.

That’s a connection.

That’s a significant reliance.

That’s a dependency.

That’s … scary, considering what we are doing to the air around planet earth!

When we realize that the atoms we breathe in integrate into the bodies we are, which when we die decay back into the earth (one way or another), it is not difficult to acknowledge that when any new life is born or hatched or otherwise begun, it contains part of all who have gone before. So out of the dead rises new life, just not quite like themselves, usually.

This happens almost no matter what we do. Cremation or burial both lead to the same thing, just in different ways on different timelines. If we shipped our body off in a spaceship towards some distant galaxy, only then would our atoms not reenter the life stream on earth.

Laying aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, as the writer of Hebrews admonishes us to do, is on the opposite end of possible for us; it’s impossible on our own.

This we can only appear to do as the Holy Spirit accomplishes it for us. So we ‘run with perseverance the race’ before us, knowing that even putting one foot in front of the other is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Our place in the race is a rather humble one; God runs us for us.

For that we can be thankful this day, again.

Of course, we always have the choice to stop running. God does leave us freewill. Stopping God’s walking us is something to avoid each day.

But we don’t avoid it, not at all, not at all. So God needs to rescue us many times each day.

Thank God, God does rescue us; also this day, again, and again, and again.

Hurry!

Hurry Hard!!

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Yell All You Want,

Or not.

God Sweeps Just Right,

To Free Us From Our Sins.

God Nails It!

Isaiah 44:22

I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.

Colossians 2:14

… erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We pile up so much shtako, bad deeds, ugly thoughts, dark wishes, and even perverted prayers. They hold us down in the shtako, leaving us lost in the loneliness of life.

Until God comes to rescue us,

sweeping away the shtako

and lifting us into

the house

God

has made for us.

God nails all that crap to the cross, so that we can move freely through life, wondrously reflecting God’s works

that always show us the house

as God’s home for us.

God tosses the rocks out of the way,

down the sheet,

and knows exactly

how they should lay.

God nails it every time,

…

for us!

Truth

They say truth is relative.

That’s a lie.

Monday, September 4, 2023

Each Moment, Even at Sunrise, the Truth is There to Be Seen, Heard, Lived.

Exodus 23:1

You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness.

Ephesians 4:25

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.

…

Words of Grace For Today

In today’s world, like in all generations past, it is all too easy for dishonest people to lie, destroying people all in order to get ahead.

And they do get ahead, in ways the world’s relative truths are twisted so that hell is ahead of life.

For a lie is always a lie, even if one gets away with it to start with. It will always come back to bite the life right out of you. It starts by taking something life-giving out of the people you live with, yourself and then those closest, and it spreads to include all of humanity. The bite back, though, comes back at the liar(s) like she/he/they have laser targets painted on them by none other than God.

Truth may be a bit aggravating, but it is life giving, after one learns to confess one’s own sins and accept forgiveness for them.

Truth is only relative in that all of us are related and anything taken from the truth with a lie costs all of those involves, and all of their relatives.

Truth may be hard to discover among so many lies, but it is there to be paid attention to. It is there in each moment, for those who wish to live in it.

That’s where God blesses us heartily, also this day.

Orphaned

Not

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Feeling Abandoned, Alone, Like the Moon, an Aside on a Cold Landscape … Is that us?

Psalm 42:6

My God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

John 14:18

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

…

Words of Grace For Today

We fear being abandoned by all who love us, of being desperately alone. Like orphans bereft of loving parents, with no one to care for us.

So, remembering God’s promises, we pray always that God will be for us.

God of Paul and Peter, of Jeremiah and David, and of all the saints who have gone before us, guide us as your Church to genuine love for all people, and all creation, passing on to others your bounty of gifts in service to you, who showed us the way of the Cross as your way for all whom the Spirit calls to follow you. O God, You know: Hear us.

God of all the wonders of this planet, remind us that from the beginning of creation, you knit together a world meant for harmony. Protect and restore the wasted places to joy and gladness. O God, You know: See us.

God of all peoples, stir the leaders of nations and towns, militaries and courts, to listen for you. Let your call for justice reach all people and bring deliverance where there is oppression. O God, You know: Guard us.

God of steadfast love, show your love and faithfulness to those in despair. Increase their strength, care for all who feel low, keep safe any in the midst of trouble, protect vulnerable people from harm, comfort all who are ill and those who care for them. Today we especially pray for …. O God, You know: Hold us.

God of our hearts, encourage those who offer their gifts and talents in service to your church. Energize this congregation’s leaders, musicians, teachers, greeters, and administrators so they may be transformed in sharing your grace. O God, You know: Call us.

God of all the saints, death is overcome in Christ’s resurrection. We rejoice with the faithful departed (especially). Sustain us in hope until we come at last to our heavenly home. O God, You know: Carry us.

Your mercy is great, O God, and You know us better than we know ourselves. Into your hands, O God, we commend all for whom we pray, in the name of the one who reconciled all creation to himself, Jesus Christ our Savior.

Let it be so also this day.

God Abandons?

No, God Engages

Always, to save us from ourselves

Saturday, September 2, 2023

When it seems the world closes in on us, as if God has abandoned us, hope carries us back to trust God always walks with us.

Isaiah 63:15

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.

Galatians 5:5

For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

…

Words of Grace For Today

God provides all we need to live, fully, abundantly, graciously, and generously with others.

It is not that we choose to be good and live righteously. It is a gift given to us in our baptisms and renewed many times each day. So we live as saints.

We can and so often do (thus the repeated giving of the gift) deny the gift, turning away from God to follow our own path, which always leads us straight to perdition.

Thank God, God saves us from ourselves.

And so this day also we live as saints, despite having chosen perdition again and again.

Thank God.

Who

Who can we listen to?

Friday, September 1, 2023

In the endless sky, voices come at us from everywhere in this digital age.

Many voices deceive.

One voice is true.

Isaiah 47:13

You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you.

Romans 12:16

Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.

…

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many voices in our heads, from all over repeated again and again, telling us what we need to do to live life fully.

A young Bob arrives home late from work one day – much later than the time it normally would have taken him to walk the five blocks from the bus stop. His wife, Doris, asks him how his day went. He says all has gone well. Her curiosity wins out. “What kept you late?” she asks.

With sparkling eyes, Bob tells her. “When I changed buses, I saw a new vehicle in the car dealer’s lot. I heard a little voice on my shoulder telling me, ‘Go take a good look.’ So I did.”

She jumps in, “So you missed your bus for that?”

“Well …”, Bob continues, “I walked all the way around the car, looked under the hood, read the information sheet and looked at the dealers tag. Then I heard that small voice say, ‘Get in. Sit in the drivers seat. Get a feel for it. See what it looks like from the inside.’” So I did. And then I heard the small voice from the dashboard, “Bob, rhis is a fabulous car! You look good sitting in that driver’s seat.”

Doris broke in, “Well did you tell that little voice, ‘Get behind me Satan?’”

“Yes I did’” the husband answered. “And then I heard the small voice from the back seat say, ‘Bob, you look good from behind too.’ So I drove that car, my car, home … for us.” (original Flip Wilson, mod TL1995)

If we think we can listen to the back seat voices and to Jesus’ voice, and follow Jesus when it is convenient for the rest of our lives, we have not listened well to all those who have gone before us in faith.

Following Jesus is not like a compromise to our way of life, the kind we hope it might be, like putting on a new set of clothes. Instead following Jesus takes everything we’ve got. C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, writes “It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through . . . (God) meant us for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. . .” (BOOK IV Chapter 8)

When the Holy Spirit ‘hatches’ us out, life is completely different, even if it looks the same.

And then the voice of the Good Shepherd that we recognize always points to considerations for loving others (without consideration for our selves.)

So too, today: listen to the Good Voice. It’s not the one in the backseat of the self’s car.