Category: Grace

Treasure That Fear?

Or Mix It With Love?

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Lynx Prowl Here.

Fear and Love

Allow One to Live On Here

Isaiah 33:5-6

The Lord is exalted, he dwells on high; he filled Zion with justice and righteousness; he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure.

Acts of the Apostles 9:31

Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Fear is a great motivator. Some say it is precisely what brings people to seek refuge in totalitarian, fascist rulers, enter Putin and Trump and a host of others not so obvious, (and a long long long list from history) but well on their way to being rulers, not leaders,

and rulers that should be feared rather than embraced! But

what can we do?

Pray and vote, and hope.

As for God, often fear is seen as our appropriate attitude towards the Almighty who judges everyone and condemns more than a few.

But that gets us nowhere in life other than in the same old rat race trying to make our way to goodness and God’s good graces.

Thank God it ain’t that way God put it together for us.

God comes and gives us (as gifts, fully gifts) life, forgiveness, healing, and renewal …

each day.

So Luke adds, the ‘comfort of the Holy Spirit’ and

Martin Luther speaks of ‘fear and love God, so that ….’

Always not just fear, for it paralyzes us and leaves us not so much freewilled beings, but instinctual ‘reptilian’ reactionaries, by fear reducedd to choosing between freezing, flighting, or fighting. Usually not the best options, though sometimes it is.

For those times, let fear motivate us, we pray.

But for all others, let love be the stronger companion of fear,

also this day.

Fine or Coarse

They’re still grounds!

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Was it freewill that brings us to live where this is Spring time?

Psalm 121:7

The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.

John 17:15

I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Coffee Grounds.

Coffee is wonderful, without power the choice every morning is a French Press.

Can’t do milk, so Silk in the coffee mellows the acids, cools it a tad, and makes a smooth, slightly sweetened hot boost to the morning, though not as much when I could drink caffeine and still sleep well at night.

Wonderful morning still, mostly decafe, a bit of the full power stuff, a small boost but still wonderful.

And then there are the grounds.

What a mess.

Try getting them out of the press’ screen using little to no water. Impossible.

Then if I use water it cannot be sent down the drain and where to then?

So I use a paper filter, which helps with the screen, but not completely.

The grounds still need to be rinsed out (or wiped out, but what a mess trying that is!)

And where to put all that water. Plastic bags to be emptied on to the ground is best. Still a labour-after-the-gotta-love-that-jo!

God probably has stories like that involving forgiving and cleansing our hearts. What a delight that people can love. Gave ‘em freewill to make it possible. But oh, what a headache cleaning up their choices not to love!

And no matter what kind of things you provide to make the clean up easier, they always find a way to make it so messy it’s just unbelievable! Or, since it’s God, not so unbelievable as rather

planned for.

Thank God for that, or we’d all be sunk in our own sin all the time, and our only salvation would be to be out of this world away from freewill, sin, and, then of necessity, love.

Or stay in the world and lose freewill, which would make us no more than bi-ped, smart but stupid animals, eh?!

On we go, freewilled, sinning, and saved, into this new day, trying to return God’s gifts by sharing them with others, as fine or coarse as it may turn out to be.

Who Knows?

Really?

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Do We Know

Where The Winding Path of Life,

Through the Cold Wilderness,

Will Lead Us?

Jonah 3:9

Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.

Mark 11:24

So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Who knows if God will relent?

The blind man, the mother of the sick young daughter, the tenth leper, and on goes the list.

Are we counted among those that ask, not knowing how God will deal with our sins, our failings, our desperate needs, our illnesses?

Or are we counted among those who know God’s mercy and steadfast love?

What will we be to other people, those that do not know, or those that trust God’s Word?

Whichever we are, we all can still ask God for all we need. God hears us, and delivers exactly what we need to know God’s mercy.

Speak Forgiveness

Preach It From the Rooftops

Friday 9 February 2024

Out There,

Beyond the Trees so Strong

(like our sins),

Is The Light of Christ,

Rising Majestically,

Beautifully.

Isaiah 40:2

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

Luke 24:47

… that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

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Words of Grace For Today

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The uses we put religion to ought to turn God in his grave, if he ever were in one! (Well Jesus was, but is no more.) But how is it that we put religion’s face on such horrendous schemes and deceptions.

What would the world look like if …?

What would we all look like if …?

If we used religion only proclaimed the Grace of God, that sins were already paid and God has restored us all more than two-fold for all we have lost to our sins?

Remarkably different, peaceful, gracious, generous, and blessed.

So let’s start today …

except

even though we are fully forgiven

we cannot let go of sin

for sin still has it’s ugly-strong grip on us

in us

so

we

must

wait

as

we persevere running the good race put before us

also this day

of beauty

marred

by our sins.

Down But Not Out?

Only by Grace

Wednesday 7 February 2024

Even Healing Does Not Make Us Perfect!

Psalm 118:18

The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.

John 5:5-9

One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.

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Words of Grace For Today

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Thirty eight years is a long time to sit beside a pool hoping to be the lucky one to make it into the water after it bubbled with healing power.

So Jesus heals him, despite there being a ludicrous ban on healing people on the Sabbath and it being the Sabbath.

What other rules do we put in place to keep good things from happening, just so that we can pretend to be in control, and thus pretending get other people to allow us to control them?

What is it about so many people who are so afraid of life, that they are eager to throw away all freewill to follow a dictator (no matter how cruel and evil) who will tell us exactly what to do and when to do it, even when it is obviously evil that we will do to other people?

What is it about us all that we like to put other people down in order to feel like we are better than they are, when in fact our denigrating them just makes us worse?

Thank God, we are not left on our own, but God comes to love and heal us so that we can love and heal others

with the weakness of God’s all-powerful love.

Wrinkles and scars are signs that God is working on and for us, and others.

The Heavy Gift

Of Righteousness

Tuesday 6 February 2024

When Most of Life is Like

a Tumbled

Jumble

of Upturned Roots,

Where is Righteousness?

Exodus 19:6

… but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.

2 Timothy 4:8

From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

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Words of Grace For Today

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If only …

If only longing for something would make it so …

If only longing for something would make it so, the world would experience more chaos than even now.

But if God longs for something, then … well then it is going to happen, well maybe. And if we long for what God longs for then it will surely happen, or?

Then comes into play human freewill that makes love possible, and what God longs for most is that we freely choose to love, which means God does not make it happen, but waits for us to choose love, which can take a long time, too often more time than we have.

And God’s longing in not fulfilled.

Then we can long to love, but not choose it, and we are disappointed that God does not make it happen, forgetting that freewill is an essential part of love.

So we long for the Christ to appear, and that alone does not give us righteousness. Nor does our choosing to love God, our neighbour, ourselves, and even our enemies. Us receiving the crown of righteousness is wholly a gift.

Wholly and only a gift given to us.

Wholly and only a gift from God.

Wholly and only a gift given to us though we do not deserve it.

And that is something to celebrate, for the Christ is already arrived and here with us each day, and the crown that we do not deserve is ours,

though it weighs heavily on our heads

for with it comes the responsibility (response ability) to love

without condition or hesitation

all people and all of creation.

Just a little work for us each day, eh?

Seeing The Light

Living the Light

Monday 5 February 2024

Is It Possible, For Us To Be So Wondrous?

Isaiah 30:18

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.

Acts of the Apostles 15:11

On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

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Words of Grace For Today

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When it comes to knowing God’s Grace, we often think that those who have gone before us have done marvellous things, much more marvellous than we could ever do.

Yet, as we approach Transfiguration John Chrysostom reminds us that it is just the opposite. Jesus brings the greatest in their past before the disciples on top that mountain. Moses and Elijah. Pillars of faith, courage, and wonders.

Christ brings before the disciples the one who had died and the one who had not yet died. Both had lost their life, and had found it. Both had courageously withstood a tyrant: one the Egyptian, the other Arab. Both were simple, unlearned men. One was slow of speech and weak of voice, the other a rough countryman. And both were men who had despised the riches of this world. For Moses possessed nothing, and Elijah had nothing but his sheepskin. Christ brought these men before the disciples, for he wished them to imitate their courage of soul and their steadfastness in leading their people, so that they might be as gentle as Moses, possessed of the zeal of Elijah, and as devoted as both were. He brought these men before them in glory, that the disciples might surpass them. That Christ might uplift their courage against all such dangers, he here brings before them these two men who were such shining lights of the Old Testament.

[John Chrysostom, in Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, II, 54-55]

So we also are brought to see these two and all the other saints who have gone before us so that God my use us to do things even more wondrous, as we face the challenges of our days.

Being First

To Throw Deadly Stones

Sunday 4 February 2024

The Fullness of Life is Only

a Not-Stone’s-Throw Ahead

Isaiah 50:8

… he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.

John 8:10-11

Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’]]

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Words of Grace For Today

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It’s so common that there is no story in it: people gather in mobs (virtual now, or hidden across communities as always, and in physical mobs) to ‘throw’ the deadly stones to kill off their neighbour they have judged to be sinful beyond the pale.

In fact the lynching mobs are seldom accurate and hardly ever just.

What is a miracle is that when Jesus steps in

those so eager to throw the first weapon of death

step away

for Jesus and his followers have always had a way of making reality come into focus

for us all

especially when we surely do not want that focus to reveal

how sinful are and how much evil we have perpetrated on undeserving others,

– as if condemning and punishing them, by shunning, by exile, or by death,

could ever free us from our sins.

– as if somehow putting them on a more terrible rung than us on the ladder of evil-good would somehow make us less evil and somehow good, or at least good enough!

The result of our oh so common ‘stone throwing’ is that our own sins increase and the Devil consumes more and more of our souls

until there is nothing left of good in us.

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Our only hope then (as always) is that God will forgive us.

Are we again too proud to be forgiven, for accepting forgiveness requires an admission of guilt.

That admission is only possible when we trust the promise God makes in so many ways: to forgive us and renew us and return us to the fullness of life (where stone throwing is not even considered an option.) From within God’s Grace we take on the burdens of forgiving others, in order that they may (also) receive the fullness of life as a gift.

Global

Issues

Friday 2 February 2024

Looking at You … and Me … and Us All,

and the Whole World!

Isaiah 2:3

Many peoples shall come and say,‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Matthew 5:1-2

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

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Words of Grace For Today

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At home we have an old globe which usually sits on top of a book shelf, and collects dust. Only rarely do we take it down, dust it off, spin it around, peer into the different colours indicating different countries, some long since with new borders and names.

The world actually has a fever, not unlike so many people suffering from demon possession. Yes, whether we admit it or not, there are demons, even today.

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God’s globe does not collect dust on a shelf. It is alive, though feverishly ill, struggling on into the future. If only we could take it and dust it off it’s and our demons as easily as we can dust off our old globe.

Still God, our creator, is present always with all of us. Every day God works to heal all of creation, including us, so that we in turn can be healers for other people and for all of creation. We do not have any right to think we are better than anyone else. We’ve done nothing to ‘earn’ God’s healing and blessings.

This is what Jesus sat down to teach us all.

Now, how are we going to be God’s healers, today?

Dismal, Desperate Visions

Of Renewed Creation

Monday 22 January 2024

Hungering For

Creation Renewed,

As Fresh As New Snow

Covering Every Past Evil

Isaiah 45:8

Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness;let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it.

2 Peter 3:13

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

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Words of Grace For Today

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While the reality of everyday life is quite dismal, more so for many than for us, even the poor and homeless in Canada, for war and famine are things very few of us struggle with and many across the globe face that and worse …

So dismal is life, as it can be seen by any set of eyes, for travails is something humans are always able to create no matter their circumstances, good or bad …

So dismal is life when all is going so well and nothing is satisfactory, for we humans always dream of more, and more and more until we out dream the possibilities of being anything at all …

So dismal is it all

that the vision of water pouring down from on high on the parched earth and into our parched hearts, bringing blossoms and crops to grow in abundance, abundance to feed all our hungers and pains of dreams unmet …

that the vision of showers raining down righteousness and justice for all so that no more do any suffer the evil of lies and greed of others, stealing life out from under us …

that the vision of God bringing from this old creation, so corrupted by our collective and accumulated evils that we have a hard time finding the goodness God declared was there when God created it from the void and chaos – God bring from this old creation a new creation, a creation good from the beginning to the end, untainted by our sins and evils done to others …

that the vision of God’s hand extending into our lives and making things right is so yearned for and dreamt of that we are like the parched land starved for more than 40 years …

So dismal is it all and our God given vision of God putting it right almost takes our breath away …

and then we realize that God has already accomplished this

and this dismal world is already redeemed and made new by God’s mercy and steadfast love, so clearly demonstrated in Jesus’ life, healing, death and resurrection, that

we can only remember now

to breathe in the fresh air

that has renewed what

we saw as so dismal

and made it new

wonderfully

new.