Word-Wise

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Like the Beauty All Around Us,

God’s Word Permeates Everything.

Trust It.

Isaiah 55:10-11

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

John 15:7-8

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ‘hot air’ blowing around these days, climate change not the cause. It is the age old thing about humans that deceit always seems a nice short cut to achieving what is desired.

So much ‘hot air’ (lies, deceit, fake news, perjury, corruption from the lowest to the most ‘trusted’ levels of everything – even courts, bishops, and … well everywhere!) floats around one has a real case to say that the case of global warming is due mostly to ‘hot air’.

In fact all the climate change deniers producing fake science, fake news, and fake intelligence kept the obvious from happening sooner, ie the reduction of everything that causes climate change.

But boys will be boys, girls will be girls … OK it’s really lying boys will be lying boys even when the get old. Mean girls will be mean girls even when they get old, and the Devil’s temptations to ‘short cuts’ that destroy the doer and many others keep catching more and more people meaning the increase in ‘hot air’ outstrips any incident of inflation ever.

Our words are very effective, at destruction of life, and at healing life.

No question which God intends for us to use with our words.

Thank God everything is not determined by our words, or there would be no hope for any of us.

God’s Word determines everything, even that we are capable of such ‘hot air’ destruction. God’s Word is simple: life is intended and best lived by accepting our sinfulness, confessing them always, repenting (turning back towards God’s will for us), and accepting God’s sending us out to be imitators of Jesus the Christ: sacrificially giving of ourselves (exercising compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love) so that others may live as God intended us to live.

In a Word: God’s Word for us is that we love God, ourselves, and our neighbours, even our enemies.

Today, as each day, that’s more than enough to keep us busy, focused, and working on making the world a bit better around us for us all.

Inversely

Proportioned Grace

Monday 6 February 2023

We, at our best, are like the moon,

(that shines fullgolden, mysteriously down on us)

wondrous reflections

of God’s Light.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

Galatians 6:9

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.

Words of Grace For Today

Francine gave most of her bountiful produce from her raised garden beds each year to others in need. But one person received the most. He lived in an old folks home. She would visit him each Sunday afternoon. During the harvest she’d bring bushels of produce and set them in his room. She would tell him each time that the vegetables were good for him, he should eat and enjoy them and the life they gave him. This old man had not lost any of his sharp mind, though his body was slowly giving out on him so that his mobility and daily care were always an increasing concern.

As she left, his friends would come to visit him. She was glad that they did, though she knew that this visit was more than a visit. It was an exchange. For her fresh produce he would trade them for all sorts of treats, sweet breads, pastries, and chocolates. She had known this was the deal for almost as long as she had been bringing him the produce. But what was she to do? He was a grown man, still with a sharp mind. It was his choice to give away the good produce for food that the dietitian strictly denied him, but which he’d always enjoyed too much, as he had all his life, and as was poisoning what life he had left. It would not be long now.

What was she to do? Her mother had died decades ago, and this man was her father, who had raised her, cared for her, protected her, and taught her to be generous with everything she had. Her Pappa got everything she could give while he was still alive. He certainly did not need ‘advice’ from her. He’d call it and it would really be nagging.

He had also taught her that many people in many ways would try to teach that everyone got according to what they did, good for good, bad for bad. But he had shown her that this was blatantly not true in life, and also not true according to Jesus. For God was always more generous, gracious, forgiving, and merciful than anyone ever deserved or earned.

The only way that we can understand that God gives us according to our ways and the fruit of our labour is the simple truth:

The worse our ways and the more evil the fruit of our labours, the more merciful and hopeful God is that we will turn, confess our bountiful sins, repent, and return, so that God can demonstrate how loving, forgiving, and life-giving God is to all God’s people.

Not that we need go out of our way to sin so that God can make a good demonstration out of us. If we are honest with ourselves and confess our sins, they already are more than enough for God’s demonstration to be an amazing display of the power of forgiveness, so as to astound anyone who cares to pay attention!

So this day, yes, we give it our best effort. Most of all we trust that God will bring from us all that God wishes: that we might reflect Christ’ light, mercy, and love to all people.

Proud Potters

Or Humble Clay

Friday 3 February 2023

The Potter Makes Beauty Like This,

And We Mess It Up Real Bad!

God Planned For That, Too!

Isaiah 29:16

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?

Ephesians 2:10

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Words of Grace For Today

We are the clay, God is the Potter.

We are created to do good works, God is the one who demands it of us, since we are made that way.

Well, not quite so. That is all upside down!

If one wants to control others and make demands of them that they cannot fulfill and thus make them guilty and thus all the more susceptible to one’s control, then this is the right thing to say and teach and demand.

But Jesus came not to lay an impossible guilt trip on us, yet again, as the writer of Ephesians does so well.

God created us so that we will be demonstrations of God’s Love, Grace, and Compassion for all people. That is by our visibly, humbly, and gratefully accepting God’s forgiveness for our inevitable sins, failings, imperfections, and downright ornery stubbornness at wanting to the the Potter instead of the humble moulded clay, God makes us into demonstrations for all other people of how God works. God works not by demanding perfection or good works. Instead God makes us free to choose to love (and also then free to choose not to love – which is to sin). In our freedom we lose life and all that is precious in it, because we simply cannot always choose to love. God also made us to strive to be better, and in that striving we inevitably choose to be Potters of our world, and then of our own lives.

Ahh, if we were made just to do good works, then God did not need to give us freedom to love and not to love.

But God created us to love. And knowing we would choose to sin, inevitably, terribly, wretchedly, God planned for that, with compassion, forgiveness and unbounded love.

We were created to receive that love, and share it with others, first in being demonstrations of God’s love for us and all people, and then in being that love for others,

which is to do good works …

It’s just cutting it down to that we are created to do good works would make our lives impossible! That is the curse of scripture that asserts we are not potters of creation, and then tries to lay the guilt trip on us that we are made to be doers of good works, ie. good little potters and putterers.

That leads us to futile living (trying always to do good works), and at the same time surrendering our ability to choose to love (replacing it with blind obedience to others who tell us what good works are), and inevitably trying to become the ones who tell everyone what good works are … and there ya go, right down the rabbit hole of everything that is not love.

So simple. So complicated. So impossible.

And for that God planned the power of love, which is self-sacrificing giving so that others may live with the freedom to choose

to love or not to love,

and be forgiven when it is so often needed.

With

Monday 30 January 2023

Wherever the paths and tumbles of life take us,

God is with us,

Our Shining Light

Joshua 24:17

for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed

Matthew 28:20b

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Words of Grace For Today

A pilot, a rather sane, sober and sombre individual most of the time, lands after a transatlantic flight, just a routine flight. But he expects in New York that day he will find an answer to a puzzle that has challenged his sanity. It even sent him banking a plane for no good reason (apparently) to avoid another plane that was not there, a ghost plane as it were. But today, he knew he would unravel the mystery and his life could return to normal.

As he steps off the plane he realizes that, in stark contrast to his regular orderly and stayed mood, he is rather giddy. More than giddy even, an over-drive of exuberance he could call it. And that makes him wonder, yet again, if he really has, perhaps, started to go insane. Not something too attractive in a pilot who is trying to move from the right seat to the left seat, or stay in any seat at all.

Then he realizes, whatever is going on with him, whether he really is mad or not, he is no different than everyone else, we all have to work with the equipment we are given, Right!?

Sounds of Wings, paraphrase from p. 79 and before, Spencer Dunmore, Tom Dohetry Associates, 1984

It’s just some of us are given some very special equipment that makes being a pilot possible. And for a few of us it makes us extraordinary pilots, the creme of the creme as it were.

In the rest of life, and maybe even for us gifted with equipment that makes flying possible, the real ‘equipment’ that counts is hardly our brain, our hands, our coordination, or our heart. What really counts is the gifts God gives us that help us recognize how God has accompanied us, as God did our ancestors through the generations, even as they ventured into foreign and hostile lands, as God does for all the saints.

Knowing that God protects us along all the ways, with their twists and turns and setbacks, that we journey in live, gives us a piece of unequal ‘equipment.’ It is God’s presence each day, which guides us, and picks us up when we take a tumble into horrendous sins, and heals us, and walks with us out into the world of …

everything.

Again today, we work with the equipment we are given, right!

The DawnShine

From On High

Sunday 29 January 2023

Blues, Peaches, and De-Light

Psalms 80:20

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. ’

Words of Grace For Today

After a long, dark night, after many days of snow and clouds, freezing rain and wind, nothing quite compares to the light of the dawn breaking in on this life with blues, peaches and golds spraying the white snow-laden ground with all colours of the rainbow.

These are reminders of God’s promise not to abandon us, not to the floods, nor to the disasters of any kind, nor to the darkness that can creep up on us and catch us, drawing us down, down, down.

God’s promises renewed, our hearts buoyed once again, and our minds set on what lies ahead, even the shadow of death cannot steal the peace from us. Our enemies that would do us harm have no chance, nor have they had any chance of succeeding in bringing about our demise.

Instead we have found refuge in God’s great light, in God’s great forests, and beside God’s great waters. The sun powers our shelters, wood heats our bones, and clean water refreshes us each day, as we feast on simple foods, enjoying every bite.

Even as the cold winds blow, there are moments to find the solitude warming our hearts, bodies and minds as we work outside to provide the basics for the coming days.

And writing, writing, writing keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, as we explore the truth of the past, present and future.

This is the light of Christ, God’s countenance that shines brightly here on us, and everywhere.

May the light find you today filled with gratitude for God’s gifts and the opportunities to share life with those in need (which is pretty much everyone.)

Giving Up!

Surrendering to God With and For Us

Friday 27 January 2023

The colours of dawn show the glory of God,

whether we see it or not.

Psalms 1:3

They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Jonathan worked hard everyday, as he had since he was 5. He remembered what his mother had taught him, that you had to work hard to make it in life. He had definitely wanted to make it in life. First he had wanted to make his mother proud. He may have wished something of his father, but he had left them before Jonathan knew anything about him. Then as he grew older he saw that people with money got to do what they wanted, so he decided that he would have lots of money by working hard.

A quick three years earned him his first degree, another two his PhD and he was on his out working hard everyday. At first he worked for someone else. After a year he figured out that the only way to be wealthy was to have people working for him, so he quit his job and started his own little design and engineering company. Just five years later he had grown it to 1000 employees in 20 different cities. He’d sold that company for his first real billion in his own bank account. He’d invested half in safe stocks and the rest into a new company, this time architecture, engineering, and construction. Within 3 years he had more than 3000 employees in 30 different cities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then he’d met Michelle on a worksite in Vereeniging and again on a project outside Dar es Salaam and all the sense of his working everyday dissolved like his nightly antacids in hot water. He’d taken a year to be with her, working every other week or so, getting just as much work done, still adding to his assets and investments, and the value of his company, all privately owned. They’d been married in Cape Town, had a week long honeymoon in Stockholm, Oslo, and Sankt Peter Ording.

Then he’d gotten back to work, even as the children arrived. First Olevia, then Petrus. When he came back from working in Hebron on a new project, his first in Israel, he found Michelle in the hospital. No one knew what made her ill, but she could barely lift her head or hands, and she whispered at most a few words each day. He’d sat by her for 4 straight days, as her condition got worse and worse, until ….

Looking back on the week that had followed, Jonathan could not remember what had happened. He sat on the edge of his hospital bed now. People told him he collapsed at Michelle’s funeral. He had no memory of it at all, or of the previous days in the hospital.

He rubbed his forehead. It did not help the headache or the dizziness. He tried to stand, but the room spun and he sat back down. Minutes later he woke up laying on his bed.

All the money that he had, and he could not save Michelle, and now he could do nothing for himself. Give him a building project and he’d excel, but this! What was this!?

When he found these verses (Psalms 1:3 and Philippians 1:9-11) beside his bed that night, he thought, yes, he’d prospered, but to what good end? He thought his love for Michelle had overflown all limits, and he had acquired great knowledge and wealth. But had he any insight to help himself determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ he would be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness?

It was like another test, and he was failing this one badly.

The pastor that visited his roommate the next morning talked about how we could not do anything good without the Holy Spirit guiding us to do that good. Otherwise it all turned to dust and hopeless evil. We could, of our own freewill, choose to do evil and turn from God; but only God could help us live in God’s good grace.

He was more confused than ever. How could he do what was right if that was impossible? But he could still do what was wrong, because that was fully possible for him?

His roommate got up later that day, and saw that he had not even made it to the bathroom at all that day. He walked over, and saw Jonathan’s confused, hopeless look, and simply made the sign of the cross on his forehead saying, you are marked with the cross of Christ, and you are precious to God. Be at peace.

And then it all changed for Jonathan. He died.

They revived him. A month later he went home. He spent hours, days, weeks and months making no sense at all of what the pastor or his roommate had said. Not until Olevia walked into his study and told him that God walked with her, whether she liked it or not. But it didn’t help keep the bully girl out of her face at school. So she was reading about Gandhi and nonviolence. She knew that what seemed to be weakness was going to be her strength.

And it clicked for Jonathan. He stopped trying to do everything right, to earn enough money, to read the right things, to think the right things. He just prayed to God that he surrendered.

He woke the next morning and for the first time ever, doing nothing except waiting to see the sun rise, paying attention to the glorious colours of the dawn slowing push the darkness away until the deep blue sky shone bright above the pink and cream in the clouds on the horizon … and he knew that God was with him, and had been his whole life, even when he had never paid attention or cared.

For the first time ever life looked wonderful, even while he felt profound guilt for leaving Michelle so often and the grief of her leaving him with an un-fillable hole in his heart.

Dance, Dance

Dancing to the Music of God’s Spheres

Tuesday 24 January 2023

The Moon Dances,

At Sunrise,

Inviting Us

Into God’s Dance of Life

for All

Psalms 91:9

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place,

John 14:1

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.

Words of Grace For Today

Were it so simple, that we could make God our refuge, and then we would always dwell in God’s Most Wondrous City, home for all the saints.

Were it so simple, that we could just choose to believe in God and in Jesus, and then our hearts would not be troubled.

But life is not like that. Nor are we able to always seek God as our refuge or choose to life in God’s wondrous city. Nor are we able to set aside all that troubles us and rest secure in our belief in God and in Jesus.

God planned for that.

God sends the Holy Spirit to guide us

into the city of God

into the care of God’s loving hands,

into God’s refuge

into a firm belief in God and Jesus the Christ,

and away from all that troubles our hearts.

Yet we often choose the trouble of this world as our dwelling place and our hearts contents!

God planned for that, too.

And sends the Holy Spirit again and again,

even today

to guide us into God’s dwelling for us, and life abundant, by moving us to share all we are and have with those who are in need.

This day, a wonder-filled day it is, as always, because God walks with us, through our darkness, and gives us hearts that sing and dance and fly

with grace to the mysterious music of our Creator, always with us.

A waltz if you will,

so dance, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three ….

Not AGAIN!

Monday 23 January 2023

The Ideal, Which Sadly Exists Seldom:

A Church and

The Rock,

And Christ’s Light

Psalms 25:20

O guard my life, and deliver me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.

Matthew 7:25

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s snowing again, and whether, due to weather, the house falls is not really an issue, since the flakes are teeny, but after a few storms and 3 feet of snow like we have now, though some has melted into ice, the weight of all that gathered on the tarps may just put the tarps on the ground and ‘the house will fall.’

So we cry again in the drabness of yet again more days of snow, deliver us!

We take refuge but the rains and snows continue to fall, the winds will blow hard, it will beat on the house we have built.

Then our only hope will be the house that God has built for us, built on the Rock, Peter, the Church of Jesus the Christ.

But it’s been corrupted as well, so we are left, in the teeny flaked snow falling on tarps that we have to clear by hand, waiting for the sun to shine to give solar power so we can write more gratitude-filled words, words of grace.

Stand by

for better weather and the light.

(But there’s still work to do today, so have at it, with all we’ve got, as we wait for the light.)

Great Foundation of ‘Foolishness’

Sunday 22 January 2023

Do We Follow In Other’s Footsteps,

Or Forge Ahead Where the Spirit Leads Us?

Many Saints Have Gone Before Us,

Without Them We’d Know Nothing

of the ‘Foolishness of the Cross’

Giving Life Abundant!

Jeremiah 10:6

There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might.

1 Corinthians 3:11

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Christ laid a foundation of God’s power in weakness, of sacrifice for others being the way to an abundant life. At baptism we enter into that way of living as the Holy Spirit gives us such great gifts … all so that we can share God’ Grace with others. And then so often we turn it right back upside down and try to make it on our own as saints!

Another Adaptation of Mother Teresa’s “Anyway”

Mother Teresa wrote in her piece titled “Anyway!” that no matter the cost we should still choose to do the good things. I’ve adapted it to reflect that life following Christ is not about making the right choices. That’s a futile way to live, because the problem is that we never keep making the right choices! Jesus showed us instead that God intends that we surrender in our weakness and sinfulness to what the Holy Spirit makes us able to do: living out the foolishness of the cross, bringing Christ’s light into every darkness.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centred. – We get to forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. – We get to be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. – We get to succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. – We get to be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. – We get to create anyway.

If you compassionately listen to a poor person tell their story, it’ll wrench your heart and cost you a bit of life – We get to really listen anyway.

No matter how many poor people you help, there will always be another in great need. – We get to help the poor anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. – We get to be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. – We get to do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. – We get to give our best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God, and God promises to love us, no matter what. God gives us more than we need, so we get to give our all helping others see that God’s Grace is for them, too.

No matter how we fail or what comes our way in God’s great goodness, God created us to love compassionately, live vibrantly, and give unabashedly everything we have so that others may live knowing God’ Grace is for them, too!

Small wonders fill our days, if we but look and listen, and share them.

In Whose Sight?

Friday 20 January 2023

Our Paths

Windy and Steep

.

.

.

.

.

.

By Grace Alone,

Bring Us Into

The Light.

Leviticus 25:14

When you make a sale to your neighbour or buy from your neighbour, you shall not cheat one another.

2 Corinthians 8:21

For we intend to do what is right not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of others.

Words of Grace For Today

It is not possible to do what is right in God’s sight. We are not so constituted, not even after our baptisms transform us by the power of the Holy Spirit into saints.

We are even less able to do what is right in the sight of others, for what others consider ‘right’ spans the whole spectrum from pure good to pure evil.

That is the curse of living with other humans (and with ourselves, for none of us are free from getting it all wrong, really wrong!)

But there are ways that we can live, not cheating our neighbours in any manner, and not doing what we would not want others to do to us.

It’s a goal anyway, that we get to pursue.

Since negative goals are near impossible to comprehend under the pressure of life in real-time, we can state the Golden Rule in the positive:

We get to do to others as we would have them do to us!

It’s not a command, as much as a realization that, by God’s Grace alone, we are free to choose to do what is right, according to God and that’s good enough for all people, too.

A lively and blessed life we get to live, loving ourselves, our neighbours near and far, and even our enemies.