Category: Sunrise

How the Crap Flies!

Thursday, November 23, 2023

How Bright The Light Of God’s Grace,

That Leads Us On Through Life,

Blessed.

Psalm 69:6

Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, O Lord God of hosts; do not let those who seek you be dishonoured because of me, O God of Israel.

Ephesians 1:7

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we sin, especially when we aim it at other people in anger, the effects of that evil just keep getting bounced around, spreading further and further.

A wise old pastor said once among friends looking back on their lives as pastors, “I hope that I have not hurt anyone.”

Today that could easily be improved on with, “God, I pray you will forgive me for the people I have hurt, and that you will help them heal.”

When Leonard Cohen wrote, “If the sun would lose its light And we lived an endless night … And no one that you hurt could ever heal, Well that’s how broken I would be, What my life would seem to me, If I didn’t have your love to make it real.”

One of the real things about life is that watching other people, many whom we love, suffer because of what we have done, takes all the goodness of life from us.

So we pray with the Psalmist Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me; do not let those who seek you be dishonoured because of me….

For when others are put to shame or dishonoured because of our sins, the stain it leaves on them is not simply a matter of them healing. It is also necessary that the communities around them learn to free them of the shame they have put on them, and restore their honour to them.

That healing is much more complex and often nearly impossible.

So we pray, counting on the forgiveness of our sins, in the richness of God’s grace.

Grace upon grace from God, and through others empowered by the Holy Spirit, provides us our only hope in life,

that all may be well,

all may be well,

all manner of things may be well.

…

…

Even as the crap continues to fly all around us.

With A Little

Help From …

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

As A New Day Dawns,

Remembering From Whom Our Help Comes.

First Samuel 7:12

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’

Acts of the Apostles 26:22

To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Going it alone, or with our own family, or friends, or company, or kind is typical for us as we meander through life towards, well, we like to deny it with all our efforts – but it’s still towards death.

And we get there in the end, successfully, whether we like it or not.

The journey is usually fraught with failures and detours and disasters of our own making.

As we get to the end of any day, or the start of a new day, best is to recognize that we have nothing new to offer the world,

but the old stuff we have received from the saints before is precious.

Each day, ending or beginning, it is helpful to remember that we cannot make anything good happen for us or anyone else, unless we let God have at us and guide us and perform miracles in us so that out of our pathetic efforts some good will come.

So, to give thanks, to God,

who helps us on our way,

blessing us

and through us others,

well

that’s a good start and a good end to each day.

Waiting Through

The Long Dreadful Days

Monday, November 20, 2023

No Matter How Obscured Our Vision Becomes,

God Keeps the Light On For Us

Psalm 90:13

Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!

John 14:3

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

…

Words of Grace For Today

The days have come and gone and will come again.

The days of all kinds,

for the one true statement that applies to every day and every moment is:

This too shall pass.

So when the days of trials cloud over us,

when the evil of our neighbours spills over into our yards,

when the temptations seduce us to ‘make it good on our own’,

then

we are assured that these, too, shall pass,

and in the end,

the place Jesus has prepared for us will be ours again,

in the heart of God’s steadfast love,

which is the only thing that will not change or pass or leave us desolate.

So our solitude is blessed, and our days of communion are blessed,

and even our days of challenges are blessed

with God

Walking with us.

Gimme, Gimme

Make Meself Safe and Secure! ?

Saturday, November 18, 2023

What Will We Endure To Give

Our Enemies Peace?

Psalm 33:17-18

The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love …

Philippians 3:3

For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

In what do we put our trust and hope?

In money, privilege, and might?

The war horse looks strong. It will indeed aid the killing of many enemies.

And then what?

Winning a war is never a solution. It only changes and most often multiplies the problems.

The deeds, by which we are known as followers of Christ, have always been of sacrificial love. Helping in plagues ensuring one’s own infection and death. Working as caregivers on the battlefields and in the poorest of poor areas of life. Loving one’s enemies so completely that they capitulate to join in loving their enemies, for that is life, where hating one’s enemies is death, even if one continues to walk the earth.

So in what will we put our trust this day?

Our Measure of God

As If!?

Friday, November 17, 2023

Is Our Measure Ever Any Better At Reaching the Light of Life,

than counting our steps in the snow?

Isaiah 55:8

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:25

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

…

Words of Grace For Today

That God’s thoughts and human thoughts are not the same is obvious, and quite a relief, if you think about it.

If God were to think like humans, with all the evil and shtako humans come up with, we would be in great jeapordy, and that not just as we are now from other humans (ourselves included), but from God. With God’s power that threat would be unbearable, un-survivable, and deadly, even if God did not act out the threats.

When we apply a measure to our wisdom and compare it to our measure of God’s foolishness, that of sacrificing Jesus on the Cross to save all people, if our heads are not buried in the sand or some place else, then we will quickly notice that we humans have a hard time measuring ourselves with any measure that would recognize the greatest power in what we call the greatest weakness, ie. surrendering to death our of love for those doing the killing.

And that is what is so spectacular about Jesus’ story, told over and over, from generation to generation. We start to recognize the sinfulness of our measuring the world, confessing that sin and it’s horrible consequences for all, and turn to God begging for mercy,

for mercy,

for mercy.

We are left each day begging, thanking God for God’s great generosity in forgiving us and renewing life in us (yet again, and again, and …), and learning to sing God’s melodies and harmonies of love and life abundant for all – made possible through our sacrifices.

What’s your measure for today?

All Ears?

And No Brains?

Monday, November 13, 2023

All Eyes, Yet Totally Blind to the Light!

Is that us,

like many on earth these days

(as always?)

Isaiah 50:5

The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backwards.

John 10:16

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Sometimes we know we ought to not just pretend,

pretend to hear what is said to us,

to actually listen to

God’s Word.

On our own it is next to impossible.

Thankfully the Holy Spirit opens our ears, hearts and minds to hear, really hear, listen to and understand

God’s Word.

Like Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength. And love your neighbour as yourself (especially your enemy.)

Now that’s a word for every day, worth every little bit of effort we can give to listening, and then

pray like mad the Holy Spirit will enable us to actually hear it,

and live it.

That’s when things get beautiful

no matter how ugly people make the world around us and across the globe.

Sigh!

Sigh, Again

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Morning Arrives,

The Crescent Moon Accompanied by A Star,

a helper light,

which is actually the planet Venus.

Psalm 31:23

Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.

Romans 8:26

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

…

Words of Grace For Today

The challenges of every day are more than enough to dampen our energy available to even cry for help to God. How does one pray when one’s loved one is gone, one’s world is ripped out from underneath one, and even in the morning the light does not help clarify where or what one really ought to do?

How does one pray when one’s home is destroyed and one survives only because one was away that day, working on a project that required it? Where does one go?

How does one pray when rumours, nasty and dirty rumours, are spread by deceitful, arrogant, fearful, cowardly bullies, and they grow so intense that people want to kill you?

How does one pray when everything seems to be okay also this day and yet your heart tells you that your life is doomed, maybe the whole world’s, maybe just those you love and all the honest and good people (if there are even any of those left!)?

When our light has been snuffed out by the chaos and hatred of people lost in their own darkness, we are not abandoned.

The Holy Spirit, with sighs too deep for words, blows in again as a fresh morning breeze, reviving us, and giving us the words for our prayers,

the priority of meaningful tasks for this day,

and a direction for our lives, even as we walk yet in darkness.

Like a sliver of a moon, with a companion star, walking the sky as the morning sun pushes back the darkness in the east, God winds us through our days, sometimes with just enough light so that we do not stumble

too often

and we can find once again

the light by which to love

even those who want to be our enemies.

Fear

Or Freedom

Sunday, October 29, 2023

The Path Following Jesus is Narrow,

and Leads Us

to the Light of Life.

Isaiah 57:11

Whom did you dread and fear so that you lied, and did not remember me or give me a thought? Have I not kept silent and closed my eyes, and so you do not fear me?

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!’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Fear grows out of many different kinds of circumstances. Perhaps the worst is real fear from people and circumstances that will kill or maim one’s loved ones.

In slavery everything about one’s life circumstance is determined by an other. Today things may be quite tolerable. That holds no promise for tomorrow.

That can drive one to real fear.

Being a slave to sin, a slave to the Evil One, is as high as the stakes can get, for not only is life here on earth at risk, but all life, after death and eternally, as well as life of one’s spirit, which normally can thrive even as one’s body does not.

This slavery is a valid, urgent, and critical reason to run through life in fear.

Caught in that slavery, as we all are born into it, leads to to no end of absolutely terrible things we do to try to deny that slavery, or to counter it’s effects on us and our loved ones. All our efforts are in vain, but the Devil has many ways of getting us to hide that truth from ourselves.

This is not that for which God created us to live, that we would run ourselves and others ragged out of fear, lying and deceiving even ourselves about the reality of life in God’s creation.

Hard to get that message across to us thick-headed humans, God sent Jesus, God’s own Son, to teach, heal, and guide us, and to be an example of love, even love so profound that one sacrifices oneself so that others can live, and live well.

Adopted into Jesus’ disciples we are at baptism, and then …

well life goes on and unfortunately so many of us forget all God has done for us, and we allow the Devil to consume us with fear,

and we lie

to ourselves and others

and destroy others and ourselves and those we love

and

…

it seems that nothing is better than before God adopted us in baptism as God’s own children.

Thank God, God knew we’d do that, and planned for that, so that Jesus’ forgiveness applies to us anew each day, each hour, each minute, freeing us once again from that fear and all fear that would drive us back into the Devil’s devious and destructive hands.

So we are free.

Free to follow Jesus’ example of

being slaves to God’s Will for us,

that we would love one another as God loves us,

even to sacrifice ourselves so that others will live, and live well,

live abundantly,

and joyfully.

…

Many have done this for us, so we live abundantly,

and can joyfully give all God has given us so others may live abundantly and joyfully.

For this we were created and given even this day.

Delights?

or Despair?

Friday, October 27, 2023

A drab morning, snow falling, making wood collecting more difficult.

Or delight in the cool that makes working outside a bit easier

than with countless bugs looking for a meal from your skin?

Psalm 27:1

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Courage is hard to come by when one is down and out, beaten again and again by enemies, lies, deceptions, and others’ greed.

At times one has to agree with Thomas Hobbes when he said about life being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.

God answers that and all our other despairing with a simple reassurance: God is with us through it all.

Like walking in a sunset alone, still unable to do anything but despair how tough life is, ‘going it alone’ is always a recipe for struggles without end.

Like walking in a sunset with a loved one, the experience grows beyond itself to convince you two that life is a wonderful, marvellous adventure, with promise unending of things good and better.

So God walking with us through it all, turns life inside out with joy, delights, and hope.

And when God walks with us, we need not be overcome with fear of yet another enemy taking more of life from us, for even if that does happen, God will show us how to find joy and delight in all that life is for us.

Today, as the snow falls again, and then hard cold of winter is coming, the joy is in the warmth provided by a hot fire in the wood stove, held close by many insulated tarps. It may not be much, but it is as much a home as I have, and in it I find endless delight even as the challenges never cease to more than fully occupy my days.

So what will we see today? The enemies efforts or God’s Grace and delights for us?

Listening

Listening and Speaking To Breath

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Like Smoke From the Fire,

Always Present, Always Needed,

The Holy Spirit’s Breath Voices the Word of Christ

Each and Every Day.

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Acts of the Apostles 16:14

A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.

…

Words of Grace For Today

In desperate times and circumstances we hope,

we all hope,

for we can only hope,

that someone will have a word to sustain us through our weariness.

We hope that someone has listened to the Word of Jesus, well enough, to understand how to provide a word that sustains us.

And

when others are caught in desperate times and circumstances they hope,

they all hope,

for they can only hope,

that someone, like us, will have listened well enough to the Word of Jesus that we will have a word to sustain them through their weariness.

Do we have ears to hear, and hearts to listen, and minds like Christs to understand?

Today, like each day, the Word of Christ is all around us. Will we listen as the wind-breath of the Spirit speaks to us?