Category: Sunset

If Only …

If Only It Were So Simple!

Saturday, November 25, 2023

Thinking We Can Make Things Beautiful On Our Own,

Ruins All Our Efforts

Exodus 24:7

Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.’

James 1:22

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Yes, we will do it!

We will be obedient!

(until we are not, of course, which is always bound to happen, since it is built into us humans to explore, push the limits, and rebel against authority.)

Oh, if James were anything other than a straw gospel, one that is blown away by even the slightest wind of adversity.

Then we could not just be hearers but doers as well of the Gospel.

But

life is much more complicated than that,

and so much more interesting.

We not only need to listen and hear and attempt to do, we need to start by confessing that we cannot on our own follow Jesus’ way of self-sacrificial love.

We need to beg for help from the Holy Spirit.

So, also this day,

we wish to be followers of Jesus, doers of God’s Grace, obedient servants of God Will,

but since we know we cannot ever,

we confess our sins,

trust we are forgiven,

and move into the day

knowing we are fully dependent on God to do anything good or worthwhile.

Just beggars, we are,

just beggars,

by Grace alone, saintly beggars.

Begging Low

Before God

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

As the day comes to a close, begging again, that all will be well.

Job 9:2-3

Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.

Luke 15:18

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

We would like to think that we can justify ourselves, before others to be sure, but also before God.

Yikes!

So much trouble comes from that thinking.

Starting a new day

one begins begging

again

and

again

for God’s mercy and forgiveness,

for we cannot make ourselves righteous,

nor free from our sinful past.

That only God can do for us,

and God promises to do just that

if we but just ask.

So begging it is

to start and end each day.

Unless, of course, it is an ordinary day when we try to justify ourselves to ourselves and God,

which leads to more disastrous days than we care to remember.

So

what are we waiting for?

God promises us ….

Angels for the Trickster?

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Shall This Place Then Be Called

Not ‘NearSite’ but

HereWalksGod’ or

‘AngelsAlways’?

Genesis 32:1-2

Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him; and when Jacob saw them he said, ‘This is God’s camp!’ So he called that place Mahanaim.

Hebrews 1:14

Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

…

Words of Grace For Today

Jacob, the trickster, after twenty years in hiding from Esau (from whom he stole his birthright), 14 serving Laban for his daughters and 6 for his flocks, sneaks away from Laban out of fear. Laban pursues him, and only a warning from God in a dream keeps Laban from doing Jacob harm. Instead they make a pillar of stones and make a covenant that neither will cross this point to do the other harm, nor will Jacob take other wives. Laban leaves Jacob, and Jacob continues on towards his birth home.

And then this passage: God’s angels meet Jacob so Jacob call the place Mahanaim, meaning two hosts or two camps.

If God sends angels to watch over and protect the trickster Jacob, then surely God sends angels to watch over each of his people, his broken and redeemed, sanctified people,

which is us.

Where will you see God or God’s angels watching, protecting, guiding you this day?

Why

Why Believe?

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

The Secret to Life is Simple: Believe in …

But There’s a Cost.

Psalm 118:26

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.

John 1:12

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God ….

…

Words of Grace For Today

Many of this world’s 8 billion people really do not welcome those who come in God’s name. Instead they gang up on those who are not willing or able to fight, cheat, and lie their way through life,

While this goes on to the detriment of so many people, God offers life abundant

to those who believe in Jesus name as the Son of God, the one who demonstrated God’s sacrificial love and eagerness to forgive, heal, all of us, and then to send us out to others, so they may know God’s grace.

Children God calls us.

Children of God, God calls us.

Children of God, God calls us and blesses us with life abundant as God created us to live.

So why do people not choose to believe in Jesus’ name?

First, to be clear, it’s not a choice anyone can make without the Holy Spirit empowering us to make it. It is gift, pure gift.

And then, according to the world’s standards and values, it is a losing proposition. One gets to give up and give away everything that God has given as gifts to us. God intends them to be shared. It’s humans who think they are to be hoarded and used as status, power, and leverage over others.

So why believe at all?

Most do not.

A few do.

And the saints live on from generation to generation, sharing the secret to life: sacrificial, gracious, abundant love.

Getting Around to

Righteousness

Monday, October 30, 2023

On Our Own, We Allow So Much To Block Us From Seeing,

Yet Alone Being the Light of Christ.

Isaiah 32:17

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.

1 John 2:29

If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who does right has been born of him.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Life, seems for many, a struggle to see how much they can ‘get ahead’ of others, or how much they can have for themselves.

Doing things right goes out the window along with truth every morning, if they were even in the building at all.

God offers another way.

Following Jesus offers a way to not ‘get ahead’ and take everything one can get, depriving others of the necessities of life. Instead, following Jesus’ example we give God thanks for all that we receive from God, and then use it to give those same blessings to others. Always doing things right is just a beginning. We go beyond that to do what is best for others.

Sometimes that means we sacrifice some of ourselves, some of our life.

Always it means we freely surrender any claim or right to ‘possess’ anything for ourselves. We are always stewards of God’s blessings, blessings intended for everyone.

And when that is how we live, then righteousness prevails, peace, quietness, and trust grow and lasts … forever and ever.

Thanks alone we give to God for working in us, for on our own we could not even start to follow Jesus, nor grow righteousness in our midst.

HOMƎLAND

or PICARD?

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Looking to the Future: Do We See Doom or Hope!

Isaiah 38:17

Surely it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but you have held back my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.

1 John 3:19-20

And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

…

Words of Grace For Today

How we see the world around us and our lives in it is the result of many choices we make in response to what happens around us and to us.

In ‘HOMƎLAND’ the TV series, the challenges of deciphering deception, love, and despair never resolves in any episode. Instead (no matter what answers are revealed) the persistent looming doom ends each episode and season and we are left craving a resolution, so we return to more of the same. The beginning setting is not great. The end is still not great. Evil prevails like onions still present no matter how many layers we peel back to ‘see’ what is happening. Always people die along the way.

In ‘Star Trek, PICARD’, we see the old heroes of past series of Star Trek play again against all odds, against old and new enemies that would do them in. Each episode may or may not resolve some challenge, but within a few episodes (though wider threats continue) each ‘life or death’ situation is resolved, and as always our heroes live on (or at least most of them!) What we know, even before we start watching, is that no matter the evil that threatens life on earth and in the Federation, at the end, because humans and aliens can and do work together, the goodness of life will prevail. Not all challenges to goodness will be eradicated. Life remains filled with loss, death, and sorrow, but in the balance the goodness of life is restored and celebrated.

How do we play out our days?

How will we play out this ‘today’ and our many ‘todays’ to come?

As we trust that God is greater than our hearts, and that God has put our sins behind God’s back, to allow us to move on, the greatest evils are not eliminated from life for us, but they have no power over our ‘todays’.

Our hearts may continue to condemn us, and convince us that tomorrow will be worse, that ‘hell is other people’, but God is greater and God promises in so many ways that our lives are good and will be filled with goodness, and that other people (damned good sinners that they may be) are not ‘hell’, but rather God’s choice for love, life, and joy …

also for us

today.

So today, let God’s Will be for us, as well.

God’s Kindness,

And Then What?

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Our View Of Wonder Is Not in Nature, Wonderful As It Is.

It is God Given.

First Samuel 2:30

Therefore the Lord the God of Israel declares: “I promised that your family and the family of your ancestor should go in and out before me for ever”; but now the Lord declares: “Far be it from me; for those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt….”

Romans 2:4

Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

…

Words of Grace For Today

Listening to CBC’s Ideas: Astrophysicist Hubert Reeves on The Origins of Us (the Big Bang Theory), a popularizer of science little known in the English world, but famous in France, who died Friday, 13 October 2023:

The world began with a bang.

A very big bang, a theory that is ‘proven’ by 10 things that it predicts, which have since been discovered to exist.

We have messed it up royally.

God is kind, dealing with us with forbearance and patience.

So what then?

Snippets for the conversation with Reeves:

The universe is strange, more strange than we think, more strange than we are able to think.

Our way of thinking does not need to reflect reality. Reality is very counterintuitive.

We think in an operational way, that provides for our survival.

What is the power of our way of understanding the world.

We have limited intelligence.

There is no guarantee that our way of thinking is able to go the profoundest depth of the universe.

Our way of thinking is operational. There is no guarantee when we apply it to the universe. There is no guarantee that we can understand everything.

Can we understand at least that God’s kindness, forbearance, and patience is exercised for us for a purpose: that we will find our senses, and confess, and repent.

For while there is no proof that we know everything, and especially everything about the universe, we can know God’s Grace, and respond with humble confession and repentance.

That is not so far out in the universe that we cannot get around to God’s kindness leading us to repentance and understand it well,

or well enough to trust God will be patient with us as we figure it out.

A day’s task.

Every day’s task.

The Meek and the Poor Say

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

The Days of Autumn Redeem Much!

Psalm 140:13

Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name; the upright shall live in your presence.

Luke 6:20

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God….’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Well, the meek, who will inherit the earth, have taken a good look at it and said, ‘no thanks!’

So the poor, who have the Kingdom of God, have taken a good look at what they have, and have said, ‘If this is it, what’s it worth anyway? How about some clean air and water, nutritious food, enough clothing and sufficient shelter, meaningful work and love? Then throw in some food security, and real security, and peace, and justice, and equity!’

Well, some of the poor, anyway, and by far not most of them.

Many more have given God thanks! Thanks for every little thing that makes for life and love and joy and hope.

It’s not that the rich have more and so they always give more thanks, nor that the poor have so little so we either have nothing to be thankful for, or that we are thankful for even the smallest of things good.

But having been on the wealthy side, and now on the poor side of life, I can tell you that being poor has taught me to say thanks to God for more and more of the things that I used to take for granted.

I guess knowing how to and actually giving God thanks makes the Kingdom of God more visible.

So here it is: the Kingdom of God, in this blessed hermitage beside a lake, with the hard cold of winter coming, after the wildfires, smoke, heat and bugs of summer. Autumn is a lovely time, with many fewer bugs, no more wild parties or crazy campers next door, cool temperatures for working hard in, and plenty of dead wood to collect to feed the wood stove so that the cold hard winter days are still warm inside the insulated tarps.

If, out of 365, 60 or more days are like today, then I see things are real good.

If there is a balance in life at all, then these days of autumn convince me that the balance has tipped in my favour, if just every so slightly.

But I’ll take what I get, with thanks, love, joy and hope … hope that life will continue as well far into the future.

…

Answer 10

The map of North America of the Wildfire Smoke that has taken our breath away this past summer … and it’s all clear across Canada, with a few spots in of light smoke west, south, and south east across the US. Only a few areas are bad enough to be noticed. None are more intense than the light blue.

Get Up!

Get Going, The Devil Is A’Coming!

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

So Idyllic,

until

storms decimate the beach

and all within a half kilometre!

Psalm 91:11-12

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

Matthew 2:13

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

If only we knew when to get up and run from danger

in time to make it to …

well where can we run to nowadays.

Earthquakes threaten so much of the earth. Island paradises are either disappearing under ocean levels rising or conflicts raging or can be decimated by hurricanes stronger and more numerous each year. Coasts and shores can flood without warning! Wildfires can rip through any wooded area. Tornadoes, derechos, and plough winds, or droughts or torrential rains can get most anywhere else.

And still the greatest danger is not from storms and climate change induced extremes. The greatest danger, as always in human history, is from other humans set on getting what they want or working to keep what they have.

We all need angels to guard us

and fearless hearts

assured of God’s mercy,

if not to save us from disasters and evil humans,

then to help us recover and live again.

…

Answer 9

Just Air,

Clear Air, Blue and White with Clouds, for that I am thankful everyday, as I breathe

in

and

out.

And Live!

Good Land

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

The Good Land?

Deuteronomy 8:7

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,

Acts of the Apostles 14:17

… yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Perhaps if we develop ‘warp drive’ (space flight faster than light) we can anticipate that God will bring us into a good land, flowing with water and all goodness, but until then

we’ve ruined the earth so much that it is hard to imagine a ‘good land’ somewhere under these skies.

The water flows alright, as the glaciers and ice caps and land mass ice melt, and it collects in the oceans and they rise, and what used to be ocean front property is underwater.

Or the water does not flow and the rains do not fall and the crops do not grow.

Or … you name it, the climate of earth has gotten mean.

What did we expect?

Okay, it’s not really all all that bad.

There are blessed places where the water flows, the rain falls in good amounts, the sun shines, and the crops grow.

And if one has lived in an area that was marginal to good before climate change, conflicts and disasters, but it has become uninhabitable or unsafe then coming to a land where crops grow and people live in relative safety, then one can count that as a blessing.

Typical is, though, that if we’ve always lived where the crops grow reasonably well year after year, then we easily forget how blessed it is that God has brought us to this good land.

It is easy to forget how others yearn for such a land to call home.

It is easy to think we deserve it … and others do not.

When life is hard, survival in question each day, then each breath is precious, and with each breath we can say, thanks for such wondrous blessings. These are the blessings that make life possible.