Things

For Life

Friday 19 January 2024

No Matter How Many Planes We Have ….

Proverbs 30:8

Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need,

1 Timothy 6:7-8

… for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

The things of life are many,

but the things necessary for life are far fewer:

clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and love (the ability to love others and that others love us.)

All these are things that we receive as gifts from God, added to the gifts of life (given to us at birth) and the Holy Spirit (given to us at baptism), forgiveness and renewal (given to us each day as God promised us and made clear in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection).

We have since the beginning of time fooled ourselves into thinking that we possess many things in our lifetimes, and that these things make a great difference in our lives, for ourselves and among other people.

But

all that we think we possess are really only things entrusted to us by their owner, God. So many things God entrusts to us, that we will be good stewards of them, giving life to as many people as possible, with our voices, hands, and feet, working, working, working

working out God’s love and mercy, grace and generosity, forgiveness and renewal for all people.

What works against life for all people are lying and falsehoods.

If only we could leave them out of life!

Like all people, what we really need is

everything God gives us

to share.

Fear

And Love

Monday 15 January 2024

No Matter the View,

Far or Near,

God Deals With Us ….

Psalm 147:11

… the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Romans 8:15

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’

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Words of Grace For Today

…

God, the Almighty, – if we recognize the power God can wield – rightfully strikes fear into our hearts.

And, so many people attempt to strike as much fear into other people’s hearts … all so that they can force their will on others … always to detriment of the one striking fear and to the detriment to those who fear.

We have more than enough reason to be fearful of these people, and of the future yet to unfold for

so much in our recent past promises worse days ahead.

God works to save us from such fear and worry,

saving us

and all creation

so that we might

live, blessed and capable of working within what is, not what is not that is so fearful, and with God’s greatest blessing as our basic mode of being for ourselves and with others:

love.

God is to be feared, but even more-so to be loved, for God loves us with a steadfast and unending love that is more powerful than all the fear of all time stacked up together against us.

Such is God’s power

to be used

wondrously

each day.

Do Right

(if we can.)

Sunday 14 January 2024

Make No MIstake,

Most of Life is This Clear,

as Our Choices Are,

As wELl,

make no mistake?

Isaiah 56:1

Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.

Matthew 3:14-15

John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.

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Words of Grace For Today

…

How to do what is right, when so many people stand in the way of anyone doing right, for they have turned truth upside down, hidden it under the foundations of their straw houses, and gone on to create their own ‘truth’.

Only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we do right,

but it’s a nice piece of advice

to keep in mind

if and when

we think

are free to choose.

For Doing Right gives others life, and makes obvious the false ‘truths’ that so many people live out in their lives.

Thanks to God that the Holy Spirit gives us the awareness that we are made free

free to choose

to do right

free to share

all that life is

free to give

thanks to God

for all that is good.

Guests?

We Are All Guests

Some Desperately Need Homes, NOW!

Friday 12 January 2024

globalnews.ca/news/10213526/edmonton-rowland-road-homeless-encampment/

“Edmonton police officers and city crews could be seen at a homeless encampment in the area of 95th Street and Rowland Road on Tuesday morning [9 January 2024]. Police and cleanup crews were met with resistance from people who live in the camp and from advocates who showed up to support them.” Global News

Psalm 119:19

I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me.

[or another translation: I am a guest on earth.]

2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

Just because we know that we have a home waiting for us

after life

even if the earth is destroyed

even if the universe is destroyed,

does not give us an excuse to destroy

life

the earth

this universe!

These are gifts from God

to be treasured.

Life to be lived with integrity, kindness, and mercy for others.

The earth to be used and guarded from destruction so that future generations have a better earth to live on.

The universe to be explored and admired and guarded from destruction of all kinds, because this is our home now

And God said life, the earth, and all the universe are Good.

So we ought to keep it all that way.

Instead of bulldozing tent cities, the last, most secure place for many people who find themselves homeless in the cold of winter and the heat of summer,

How about making a home for them as well,

a good, safe, nurturing home

on earth?!

Fire

Of Life

Thursday 11 January 2024

Fire,

The Destroyer, Saver, and Refiner!

Which is it today for you?

Isaiah 48:10

See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of adversity.

Colossians 4:2

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.

…

Words of Grace For Today

…

An easy life, without many challenges, just interesting events that turn out wonderful, with an ability to help others without taking too much trouble to do good …

is that what we wish for?

Baptized in water, by the fire of the Holy Spirit, with God’s Word (the same Word of such power that in the beginning this Word created all that is out of chaos), we might wish for an easy life.

This is certainly not that, for which God has saved, freed, and renewed us.

Instead it is the furnace of adversity that God sends us into, each day, that we may not only be saved, freed and renewed, but that we may also offer God’s Word to others

with our voices, feet, and hands.

It would be impossible to enter into the fray

and remain as God saved us to be, ambassadors of Hope, Love, and Grace,

if we do not also each day begin, continue, and end with prayers of thanksgiving for all God gives us

to share

with the most desperately needy, hungering, and thirsting people on earth.

A small task each day it is not,

and that with the fires of adversity lapping at our feet, hands, and breath.

Epiphany!

New Year’s Resolution Worth Making (an eye opener)

Saturday 6 January 2024

Finding Our Way Through the Brambles of Life,

Alone?

Psalm 25:12

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose.

Matthew 2:12

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going a different way.

I suppose New Year’s resolutions are the imagination and statement that one will go a different direction going forward.

The three wise men, being warned in a dream, take a different route on their return home after presenting gifts to the child Jesus.

How many times are we going to try to ‘go it a different way’, forward or back, and it will be merely another futile attempt, a classic demonstration that we are not quite in complete control of our lives, not even when we make choices to become better people.

Thank God,

like the dreams sent to the three wise men, like the Law given to the people new to the Wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, like the Prophets sent to guide the nation Israel and it’s people overrun by more powerful neighbours, like the science that can tell us the consequences of our actions (like burning fossil fuels in the extreme we have and still do, and seemingly cannot stop doing),

God does send us notice and guidance.

But that is never enough.

We need to be convinced that 1. God will forgive us our failures (or else we are frozen by guilt past, present and especially future), 2. God will renew our spirits so that we can possibly do something right and good, and 3. God will help those, who we harm and those of us who are harmed by others, to heal.

A New Year’s Resolution worth making each year:

We will pray: God help us to accept forgiveness and boldly go out to do your work in this precious creation, and help us all heal from all the harm we’ve done and is done to us.

And then go boldly into the days’ ‘breach’, so to speak, bringing God’s grace to bear on others’ lives.

Return,

Repent, Believe the Good News

Friday, December 29, 2023

Our Well Worn Paths, Beckon,

But God Calls For Us To Turn,

And See Anew.

Deuteronomy 30:2-3

… and return to the Lord your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you.

Mark 1:15

… saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

We think all too often that we do not need to repent and return and believe anew the Good News.

But

in this in between time

we remember

humbly

that

we need start each day

with confession,

followed by repentance,

Then returning to God

and believing anew

the Good News,

That

promises us that God is eagerly waiting for us to repent, return and believe anew.

Another day

A new beginning

again.

Crying

For Help

Weeping With Thanks

Thursday, December 28, 2023

What Wonders God Works, As the Sun Rises, Beginning a New Day!

Psalm 104:14

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth,

Ephesians 5:20

… giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

…

Words of Grace For Today

People in desperate situations hope that someone will make a difference, help them, provide the basics of life and security.

Trapped on an island overrun by the enemy in a world wide war, the doctors and nurses and voluntold helpers (having found their way to the camp of the resistance fighters) have bound up patients for months or is it already years with old strips from old clothes. Everyone is malnourished if not starving. Everyone’s clothes are tattered and torn. Uniforms for soldiers cannot be required since no one has them. Spotty communications begging for supplies bring at most ‘Stand bye.’

Then, wrangling with all sorts of resistance from the infighting and egos of the top generals and admirals, a small group of 4 soldiers disembark from a submarine in rubber boats and paddle through the surf. Met by members of the resistance, more rubber boats are dispatched from the sub with supplies. Not enough, but something.

Visiting the ‘hospital’ the new soldiers still in black dyed fatigues cut open the new ‘plastic’ sealed packages of sulphanilamide, a new antibiotic and dressings. Weeping with joy and relief the doctor orders the nurses and helpers to take off all the bandages on the patients and to pour the sulphanilamide on and cover them with new dressings. Patients with fatal infections now have a chance at life.

(paraphrased from W.E.B. Higgins’ Behind Enemy Lines)

Ahh the immense tears-of-joy outpouring when assistance arrives for those subsisting as they irritate the enemy.

How many more people on earth this day could cry ‘Would that assistance were brought here!?!’

And we carry on, giving thanks for all that we have, all that keeps us alive, and all the blessings each day that come our way. It may not be supplies, clothes, and food, or shelter sufficient to stand the new normals of weather wind heat and cold, but it is all we need to know joy.

Christmas!

Blessed Christmas!

Monday, December 25, 2023

The Light At Noon,

Is Enough To Show Us

God’s Bright Love.

Isaiah 38:14

Like a swallow or a crane I clamour, I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upwards. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security!

Luke 2:11

… to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Blessed Christmas,

May we not get lost in our efforts,

and let God’s wonders wash over us,

transforming us

and our views

or this world

with love.

The Short Version

Saturday, December 23, 2023

Colour Your World Whatever Colours You Wish,

But If It Isn’t Coloured With God’s Love,

It’s Nothing.

Hosea 6:6

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.

Romans 13:10

Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Love is the short version of all the law.

Love of God, along with fear, for that is proper and right.

Love of neighbour, for that brings us to do right by them all.

Love of enemy, for that saves us from hate, and provides hope for the lost souls of this world.

Love of self, for that is to reflect God’s take on us.

Lots of other things are demanded of us by others, others who do not love God, neighbour, enemy or self. Lots of things that are not good for anyone in the end.

So let us hope this Advent,

that we will learn again each day to love

as God loves us

steadfast

and

sure.