Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.
Luke 8:24-25
They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’
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Words of Grace For Today
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Life has all sorts of challenges.
Many would do us in.
More would just make our lives a whole lot more difficult, leading to an earlier death.
How do we hang on to our faith in the midst of these challenges?
…
If faith were our own making, the news would be devastating. We could not hang on to our faith. We’d lose it. We’d be toast.
Thank God, the Holy Spirit creates faith in us, and through our experiences collected from our forebearers and our own experiences, we can learn that there simply are no challenges to us, not even imminent death, that need create fear in us that we are on our own, that God has abandoned us to the deep and deadly.
For God stands as sentry to our hearts, minds, and spirits, protecting us from all that would do us in. For, since God has made us sinners into saints (though we also remain sinners), we are therefore spiritual beings on a human journey, not mere humans on a failing spiritual journey.
Death is not our end, just an end to this journey, and then comes …
well that we will find out, but God promises it will be more wondrous than this journey as humans.
For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace.
Romans 12:9
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
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Words of Grace For Today
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We’ve all heard again that famous, or infamous, Rant, I am Canadian. With quiet music building to swells of patriotic music Joe states his case:
Hey, I’m not a lumberjack or a fur trader
I don’t live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dogsled.
and I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I’m certain that their really, really nice.
Uh
I have a prime minister, not a president.
I speak English and French not American
and I pronounce it about, not aboot.
I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my backpack.
I believe in peacekeeping not in policing.
I believe in diversity, not assimilation.
And I believe the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat.
And a chesterfield is a couch.
And it’s pronounced Zed, not Zee, Zed.
Canada is the second largest landmass
The first nation of hockey
and the best part of North America.
My name is Joe
and I am Canadian.
Reality
Given Trump and his threats and actual tariffs that will do great damage to our economy, one can understand the call to be patriotic.
At the core of our problems, though, we do not find economics or politics, but good old fashion love, faith, and hope, expressed as empathy and care for all people, especially the poor.
So ours is not a rant but a chant backed by any number of great pieces of music, for example “Canticle of the Turning” (ELW 723) by Rory Cooney, to the lively Irish folk tune used as a rugby match song:
Hey, I am not a crusading knight, nor a desert ascetic.
I don’t hold exorcisms, live in Corinth or Bethlehem or Nazareth.
I have a pastor and a bishop, not a coach or a guru.
I speak many native languages, but not Latin or Sanskritic.
I proudly were a cross on a fine chain around my neck.
I believe in peace not in war or violence.
I believe in respecting and welcoming diversity, not excluding strangers or foreigners.
I believe the fish is a wonderful symbol of faith, as is the boat.
I’m not concerned with how people pronounce words, but that we share the radical Word of God.
God’s favour is not won by what we do or say or believe, but is God’s free gift given to us.
We can refuse it and we do, sinners that we are. But God keeps saving us over and over again, making us saints able to do miraculous things for others, especially the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outcasts, refugees, strangers, and especially children.
Christianity may be worldwide and messed up in many places, sometimes even here at home, but it is the gift of life,
the gift of life abundant for all people.
We may be getting fewer in number, but being a follower of Jesus is the best part of life.
My name is not important because God knows it and everything about me and still loves me. I’m not ashamed of my name, yet it’s not what I’m proud of.
I’m proud that I bear Jesus’ cross and Jesus’ name,
Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
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Words of Grace For Today
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Everyone wants to know what happens after we die.
Just think if one could guarantee that one’s information about what happens to us after death were absolutely true! One could control the hearts and minds of many people with that information.
But dying is what we know.
After that it is wild guessing.
Some call that hope, but it really is still a feeble hope built on wild guessing.
Real hope is
to know that God loves us, promises to forgive and renew us in this life (which we need desperately each day, hour, minute, second), and gives us so many gifts we do not deserve, all so that we are equipped to share life abundant with others,
and knowing that
we can
trust that whatever comes our way in this world,
whatever would zap life-energy from our bones
to lay us low and take life from us
God will respond by reviving us
and renewing our spirits:
God will walk with us,
and help us continue
to help others,
and if we die
to bring us
home.
Hope in that, instead of some wild-guess based description of what happens after death,
so that when we lie on our deathbed, we know from so much experience
Although our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake; our apostasies indeed are many, and we have sinned against you.
Matthew 6:14
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
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Words of Grace For Today
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Sin is a hard thing to live beyond.
It has a way of haunting us,
even when we do not know it,
creeping into our fears, our nightmares, our reactions to stress, our hopes,
eating at us
like locust eat a landscaped dead, one bite at a time
times millions
like the number of our small sins.
How do we find freedom from these living, consuming, deadly haunts in our minds and souls?
…
God knew we’d need help,
so God sent Jesus, to free us with his sacrifice, so dramatic, less we miss out what God does for us,
and each day God promises to forgive us,
no strings attached!
God asks (non-binding is the request, but it completes our freedom) to forgive others as well.
Not doing so is another sin,
which eats at us again.
Are there really any circumstances – consequences of another’s sin – that cannot be forgiven?
Very definitely, and yet God forgives us for all of them, and asks us (non-binding is the request, but it completes our freedom) to forgive others these atrocities as well.
two winter months, two summer months are HARD, right?
the rest is up to us?
No, it’s all up to us?
Psalm 40:4
Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.
John 1:41
He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed).
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Words of Grace For Today
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Winters are harsh. When one does not have a home, an apartment or house, to shelter one from the weather, then one would do well to prepare, and to prepare well …
first to keep the rain and snow in all forms from one’s living area, whatever that may be.
For if one is wet at -40⁰, one will not survive long. If one has to continually shovel snow, that may provide good exercise, but after a while, and as one ages beyond one’s working years, that may indeed provide a requirement for survival that one may not meet.
Putting one’s trust in oneself is a fool’s life, a fool’s mistake.
There is summer to prepare for winter, at least those days that are neither too hot nor too smokey, during which one can construct whatever one can to keep water and snow that will become water when warmed out of one’s living area.
Putting one’s trust in one’s own efforts, necessary as they are, to keep water and snow at bay, and all the other challenges of winter, like dark and cold – putting one’s trust in one’s own efforts is also a fool’s life and a fool’s mistake.
The harsh days of winter like the bugs, smoke, and heat of summer, can simply drive one mad, in all senses of the word. One can be angry at the days, at life, at the circumstances that have led to one living without proper shelter, or at the way that the environmental challenges are more extreme than when one was young, or that age has limited one’s abilities, or that last year’s extremes have become this year’s normals.
One can become insane trying to understand the cruelty of people that have contributed to one’s circumstances, and the stupidity of those who continue to make it more difficult than it is already. But that kind of stupidity, cruelty, and the worldviews that support them as if they were normal simply cannot be understood.
Not any more than it is possible to understand clearly the insanity of the pursuers of violence, in wars of aggression (taking another country’s land), in civil wars (attempting at the cost of the civilian population to rule over the population), in bullies who use fists to communicate and insist on their own way, or of those who in such refined manners serve up lies to ensure they get their own way.
One must, facing the insanity of people and the harshness of the human messed up environment, place one’s hope in a gracious God, who can and will deliver one from all threats.
Following the invitation of the saints through the ages, we know we have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Saviour of the universe and of all souls therein.
So we say, too, also this day: Come and see, for we have found our Saviour. Nothing will make this trust waver. Not bugs-heat-smoke. Not rain, snow, dark or cold. Not bullies, liars, corrupt individuals or systems. Not even our successes, small as they are, of preparing as best possible for the coming days.
For we know, through all our trials and tribulations, God’s steadfast love and protection have accompanied us, and seen us through to green pastures and still waters, and peace no matter what the turmoil that swarms around us and the world.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28
so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.”
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Words of Grace For Today
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Trying to escape from the Wildernesses
of poverty
of hunger
of harassment
of threats
of apathy
of depression
of other people’s wildernesses
of the desert of a parched soul;
We’ve all tried at one time or another to escape
or at least minimize the parched heat, or the soppy wet floods, or the thunder, lightening, and wind storms of an angry planet or soul that seems out to do us in.
While we may try on our own, in real desperation, as even the least of believers to seek God,
yet God is not to be found, for God is before us, behind us, above us, under us, and to each side of us, walking with us through all the deserts and wildernesses that we traverse.
For we are God’s children, also this day, with all it’s challenges and things to be rightfully feared.
No other solution is needed, and we do not escape at all. God gives us what it takes to make it through, for even if death finds us, and takes us, there God gathers us in
to a home like none we have yet known. Home.
Be nice to have a home even in the wilderness, or maybe especially in the wilderness, eh?!
