Category: Holy

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.

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.

Purple

Rules and Rulers

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Purple Blossoms, Precious,

OR

Weeds

Run Amok?

Judges 8:23

Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.’

Matthew 23:11

The greatest among you will be your servant.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Purple.

Purple rules.

Purple rules over others.

Bishops

Royalty

Pharaohs

Presidents

Prime Ministers

Premiers

Governors

Druglords

Warlords

Despots

Bullies

Power gone amok!

…

Purple

Purple is precious

Purple is soft

Purple is comfort

Purple is a spectrum

Purple is God’s colour of grace

Purple is exquisite.

…

Purple is the colour of lord and servant turned right-side up by God’s Word calling those who would lead to be servants, not rulers.

What kind of servants of Christ will we be, will others experience us to be?

Will we live out the Holy Spirit’s gifts enabling us to be

a precious spectrum of comforting colours

for all around?

Remember?

Remember Me?

Remember Us!

Monday, July 31, 2023

Memory Fails Us

Both by Forgetting

and

Remembering

Psalm 25:7

Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!

John 3:7

Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

Words of Grace For Today

One of the most difficult things in life is to accept that we will be forgotten, and worse, that we will forget other people and events, both good and bad.

Truth disappears when we cannot remember.

And only truth provides a guide through the weeds that lie ahead.

So we pray:

God, remember … Remember me. Remember us.

But then we realize that much of what we have been is not something we would have anyone remember, least of all God.

Yet, God alone remembers everything about everyone.

God remembers everything, including the things that make for nightmares as our subconscious lifts up issues and conflicts and problems and failures and shame into our dreams, dreams that haunt us, and dreams that supposedly will free us from our past we would forget.

So we pray: God, remember … Remember me. Remember us. Remember not our sins, sins of our youth and sins of our middle age, and sins of our present old age.

Instead God, please we beg of you, remember us according to your steadfast love and mercy.

And in God remembering us thus, we are born from above, in the record of all time for all time for all people and for God remembered as if we were without sin.

And to be remembered so is a gift most precious

for it allows us to set aside our fear of being forgotten, or remembered as sinful as we are.

Instead we are freed

also this day

to live out God’s steadfast love and mercy for others,

as impossible as that is sometimes.

Getting It Right

Or Esle!

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Think You Can Find The Right Path?

Fools Alone Think So!

Isaiah 43:11

I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no saviour.

John 17:3

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent ….

Words of Grace For Today

I really like this kind of message, so common in scripture and from the lips of so many people:

Get it Right!

OR EXLE. opps

OR ESLE!

Opps again

OR ELSE!

So the demands come at us, as foolish as ever a human word can be.

So the the interpretation of God’s communications (revelations) to us are made by humans, and they miss the mark of all God’s Words.

To demand that we get it right is to demand something beyond our abilities.

Stuck in sin, Slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves, sinful by nature, human nature is flawed, Evil will have it’s ways, Boys will be Boys, Women will be manipulative and devious.

It all has many different names and endless permutations in humans history, permutations that each generation repeats many times over.

Knowing Jesus is to know God’s Grace, is to trust that God rescues us when we certainly do not deserve it (for the umpteenth Millionth Billionth Trillionth [infinite] time.)

Of course demanding of others (and maybe ourselves a little) that they get it right, is to play right out of God’s hands into the Devil’s.

Trying to be right.

Never works.

Start with humility: confessing who we are as sinners, trusting God’s mercy and grace to save us and renew life in us. Then accepting that Jesus sends us out to exercise that same mercy and grace for others.

That’s a good minute, a good start to any day, a wonderful way to be all day long, if only we could.

But God has the rest. God is our Saviour.

Sometimes.

Sometimes God!

Sometimes God Simply Astounds Us.

Friday, July 21, 2023

The World’s Wonders Are Visible In Just A Drop

…

Of Love.

Second Chronicles 5:13-14

… it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever’, the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

Revelation 21:2-23

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Words of Grace For Today

The dull-drums of ho-hum life are never more persistent then when problems overwhelm us and we see no progress towards improvement. We have no hope, so we struggle to make ourselves get out of bed. We struggle to get on with any task at all. Getting to work is necessary but we barely make it. Getting home is an insurmountable chore, day after day. Especially if we have no home! Finding a reason to sleep is beyond us.

Not every life is this way. Not every day is this way for most of us.

And then God

Then God shows up in awesome splendour!

Then God shows up in awesome splendour and astounds us!

The trumpets and cymbals may play, but God out plays them all, with stars dancing, winds singing, and creatures humming along.

And the light show prickles our skins and pierces our hearts with colours we’d forgotten if ever we’d seen them.

Just a bit

of God

dancing

for us

to break the dull-drums

off of us

and get us back to thankful living.

Remember Us??

God Never Forgot!

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Even on the Coldest, Toughest Winter Days,

God Remembers Us!

(See the Light.)

Do We God?

Psalm 74:2

Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.

Matthew 18:20

Jesus said, For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

Words of Grace For Today

We often pray to God to do something for us, to remember us, when things are ‘going straight to hell in a hand basket’ and we find ourselves ‘up a creek without a paddle.’

Most often there are things we ought to be doing to help our own situation and the situation of the other 8 billion people on earth, or a good number of them that we can make a difference for.

Instead we do little to nothing and pray. Not that prayer is a bad thing; rather it is a quite good thing indeed! But prayer without action is just laziness of heart, mind, and hand.

Praying to God when we feel abandoned is exceptionally good. Praying that God remember us misses the point all together. God never forgets us. We forget God. I suppose it’s terrifying to realize that in the worst situations we get ourselves into (or put others in or others put us in) God certainly is remembering us, and letting all that is bad happen to us, to smarten us up, or to (and I think this is the best explanation) allow us freewill: free to choose to love God, Creation and all Creatures; AND free to not love God, Creation and all Creatures, especially those 2 legged humans that seem so hard to deal with … and then suffer the consequences of our choosing to not-love what God has given us.

It’s easier to fool ourselves into thinking that God has abandoned us.

But God has not. God is here all the time, remembering us and all other people always.

God always offers us mercy, steadfast love, and hope.

So let’s hope we come up with some good ideas on how to FIX the MESS before the earth eliminates us as the fix.

A small start to another day, eh?

Seeing

The Light

Friday, July 14, 2023

Looking To The Stars …

Deuteronomy 14:2

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

… for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

The James Webb Space Telescope looks into the universe, back in time, displaying light of many kinds captured, processed, and presented to us in our visible spectrum of light and colour, in our time.

It’s images have changed our view of the universe around us, all around us, and in that we have come to know ourselves differently.

Yet, we are the same.

We are the same God chosen, blessed people.

We are the same God chosen, people of the Light and Colour.

(See https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/james-webb-telescope-marks-1-year-of-peering-into-far-corners-of-the-universe-1.6904609 for details of each photo, including credits, a series that summarizes the first year’s photos from the JWST.)

Miserably Dumb

Or Thankfully Joyous?

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Break Life Down,

Like A Coffee Press, To It’s Many Pieces,

And One Misses

The Wonder and Spirit

Given To Us!

Like Coffee,

It’s The Joy and Thanks

That Matters Most.

Ecclesiastes 3:22

So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?

Colossians 3:17

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Words of Grace For Today

Ecclesiastes always is a rather big downer. Think of a way to take the joy out of living and the writer found a way to explain it and pound it home.

It’s our lot to work, might as well enjoy it for who knows what comes next! And even if we knew how could we, the hoi poloi, actually understand what was told us!?

Great words of comfort. Work hard. Die miserably. Such is life.

How could a writer so off-base with God’s goodness and steadfast love for us be considered significant; and then significant enough on top of that to be included in scripture?

Colossians, written in the style of Paul, at least knew the perspective to take: one where God is creator and we God’s creatures:

whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I’ll take that for this day, and each day. There may be lots of work, hard work, this day and each day, just to survive. I’d rather go about it aware of all God’s blessings, with a thankful heart, joyous spirit, and busy hands. Ok, with arthritis in the hands, two out of three will have to do for today and the rest of my days.

Joyous spirit and thankful heart is a good start to … to anything.

Dreams

And DREAMS

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Dreams Draw Us

Through the Fog of the Future

Into Many New and Wondrous Days

Psalm 138:2

I bow down towards your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness; for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Words of Grace For Today

I have a dream

I have a dream: I have a dream that one day I will live in peace, away from the chaos of people, industry, and commerce.

I have a dream. I have a dream that I will own land as far as the eye can see, with lakes and mountains, where I can travel to camp among the wonders of creation, in solitude and in peace.

I have a dream. I have a dream that my home will have a zero carbon footprint, with solar, wind, and hydro power abundant, with insulation and design to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and be built to last for more than two hundred years.

I have a dream that fresh water in will be filtered and fed under pressure by gravity so that no pumps are needed to provide water, and that waste water will flow out by gravity power alone so that no pumps are needed.

I have a dream that I will have an airplane powered by electricity from my carbon-free power generation, with skis in the winter so I can visit remote places with a camera.

I have a dream that my friends will come to visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that I will actually have friends, at least two or three. I have a dream that my family will come and visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that at least a few of my family will actually be kind and honest, and that they will be the ones to visit and the others will come only every ten or twenty years to visit, if then.

I have a dream.

I have a dream, but I know God has other plans, at least God certainly has so far in my 60 plus years on this earth and there’s not much time to make any part of my dream come true, so what am I to do?

Knowing that I am born anew, not of perishable things but of the eternal Word of God I know God’s Word creates dreams for me.

So I have these other dreams. They grow from God’s faithfulness and steadfast love, from God’s Word of grace for me and for others, and they guide me to find the peace of God in the chaos of people, politics, conflicts, and storms. God’s Word guides me to value, more than my dream for myself, the peace that I can offer to others. God’s Word inspires me to take photos of where I live, to show people the beauty of creation that they often miss seeing: like a bright yellow flower in the meadow that belongs to a tenacious, invasive species of weed, like the play of light at 4 am as the sun rises above the smoke beyond the foothills seen from a mountain meadow (which is hardly a meadow since it’s a decommissioned oil well site,) like the trickle of water sliding down the rope holding the tarp in place over my ‘home’, a camper, a tarp that leaks so that the water drips everywhere, just not yet inside the camper, like the creek flowing in just one spot amidst the curves of snowbanks at -30⁰ just beyond the dry road to town that the grasshoppers own in the summer.

God’s Word guides me to write as I can, words that share the Good News of God’s steadfast, unconditional love for us all, words that inspire people to remember God’s dreams for us, for us all.