Category: Roadways

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?

What

Or Who

Have We Lost?

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Is This The Path To Laughing, Loving, and Living?

How Can We Know?

Isaiah 25:8

… he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

John 16:20

Jesus said: Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.

Words of Grace For Today

In the movie Collateral Beauty, the father cannot face the pain of having lost his daughter, so he goes into withdrawal from life, a living death.

He cannot say anything about his daughter, not even her name, the disease that killed her or her age at her death. Nothing. For anything is already too much to bear.

Death is that thing that robs us of …

of everything,

everything that holds life together.

It is, therefore, quite the promise that God will swallow up death forever, that our tears of grief will be wiped away, and our pain will be turned into joy.

When death has taken life and breathing itself right out of us, these are promises we cannot trust, not at all, not at all.

And then God does something, not centre stage,

but off in the wings,

off some place we have to look to see

or we will miss it.

That’s the collateral beauty that God sends our way, not to rob us of our grief and the healing that can come, and the strength from healing,

but rather to start us on our healing path,

a path that takes

forever.

And then

finally

we are home

and

we

get

to

see

beauty

and

breathe in

joy.

In the end the father comes to see his daughter’s face dancing with him and say his daughter’s name, Olivia, GBM (a rare form of cancer) and that she was six.

Those things are not life, but facing death’s reality, …

well that allows us to begin to live ever so slightly

so

that

love can reach our hearts again,

and we can laugh

once more.

If ever so little

and softly.

You Call THIS

Being Saved?!

Thursday, July 13, 2023

The Path Ahead May Not Seem Inviting,

But God Walks With Us

So Nothing

Can Take God’s Blessings

From Us.

Genesis 37:22

Reuben said to his bothers, ‘Shed no blood; throw him (Joseph) into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him’—that Reuben might rescue Joseph out of their hand and restore him to his father.

1 Thessalonians 5:15

See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Words of Grace For Today

Bad things happen.

Bad things happen every day.

Bad thing happen every day to all kinds of people.

Bad things happen every day to all kinds of people who do not deserve any of it.

Bad things happen every day to all kinds of people who do not deserve any of it, not at all, not at all.

God rarely saves us from the trials of life, even the bad things that happen to us that we do not deserve, not at all, not at all.

God often saves us from the trials of life (even the bad things that happen to us that we do not deserve, not at all, not at all) just not in the ways we expect.

God often saves us from the trials of life and sends us down paths that we will have a hard time recognizing as ‘paths of being saved’.

Joseph’s brothers gang up on him. He’s done enough arrogant things, belittling them, gaining (undeservedly) their father’s favour (at the apparent cost to his brothers), and living an easier life than his older brothers … Joseph has done enough to earn his brothers’ ire. They are about to kill him.

Why not? The world is rough and violent, with many vicious animals that could easily have killed their runt brother. They can get away with it.

But Reuben is not quite on board with the killing or the ganging up. He counsels throwing Joseph into a pit and leaving him to die. That way Reuben can return, save him, his brothers will not know, and all will be well.

Then along comes a caravan of traders on camels, and Joseph is sold into slavery.

God saves Joseph.

Not quite the saving we would imagine, though, this slavery bit.

The rest of the story unfolds. We know it as history.

How many times does God save us, but looking into our futures we do not see it as saving at all!

Yet, God’s story unfolds. We are the characters.

Can we learn to be honest, faithful, and wise slaves to Christ?

All in a day, in the life of God’s saints, the people God saves,

Again and again and again.

Coming Up Short

Again!

Thursday, July 6, 2023

The Light!

Look,

See,

‘Find’ Jesus,

Standing Beside Us,

The Whole Time!

Psalm 25:1-2

Of David. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.

Luke 19:3

Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.

Words of Grace For Today

With all of our expectations of others, of how we should be able to progress through a day, a week, a year, a life, it is too common that we come up short. Of course we come up short when others measure us or we measure ourselves compared to others. (That’s how we pretend that we are better than others, others who are ‘shorter’ at life than us.) The real challenge is when we come up short according to our own measure.

That can bring on our old friend the blues very quickly, and that trusty friend can settle in for an extended stay, even sleeping on our bed because we cannot sleep well at all.

We all try to compensate, somehow or another. Some pretend to be real intelligent, some very wealthy, some very privileged, some very powerful, some from real old blood –

which reminds me of the guy who showed up to camp. Everything he tried turned out poorly. He couldn’t get a place to rent. Landlords kept renting out any room he showed interest in before he could come up with the first months’ rent. He had a truck. On the truck he had a camper, given to him, laden with black mould that he started to rip apart to get at the mould and get rid of it. Before he got very far the police came and told him he was camping illegally and he had to move somewhere else. But, and this came in a conversation after he told me of all his failings, he asked me how long I had lived here. I said five years, meaning this camp place. He proudly said he was bred and born in Cold Lake.

It didn’t matter that we were standing 25 kilometres from Cold Lake, but this he had done better at than me. That made him worth something! I was a ‘newbie’ and he belonged here … until the police told him to move. –

It really doesn’t matter how we try to pretend to be better at life and in life than we really are, making such claims always makes us look just a tad foolish (well under it all we are through and through fools.)

Like David we may fear being put to shame by our enemies, but like David we often put ourselves in shame faster and more thoroughly than any enemy could. So we cry with David, O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me …

to which we add: save us, most of all, from ourselves.

Like Zacchaeus we may have tried to gather as much money and power as we can (at other’s expense) but we know there is more to life than these empty things we fill our lives with.

We want to see Jesus, the healer, the teacher, the one they say is the Son of God.

We don’t have to climb any trees.

Jesus walks here.

At least Jesus walks here with me wherever I go, even when it’s into a hell of a mess. And Jesus walks with me, guiding me and sometimes carrying me out the other side back into the light.

We may come up short, but we are never too short to see Jesus walking with us. Sometimes we need a saint or two or thousands to show us, but there Jesus is, pulling us out of our self made shame again, back into life where we can breathe and laugh and sing and dance … and share God’s blessings with others. Our only real ‘claim to fame’ is that we were born and bred here, we belong here …

with Jesus in God’s Kingdom. (But that’s not our doing. God chooses that for us!)

Welcomed

Even When One Is

A Burden?

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

The Refugees Can Come At Anytime,

By Land, Sea, or Air,

in Cold, Heat, or Storm.

Will We Welcome Them?

Deuteronomy 5:32

You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left.

Matthew 22:37-39

He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” ’

Words of Grace For Today

The runners who alerted the neighbouring communities of the coming floods and fires trickled back to Julius’ community, bursting at the seams of their expanded hunting camp. All but the one who went to the furthest community. She did not return for months. They found out she had stayed to help that community prepare as best they could for the water and flames that could wipe out the community. Her advice and their efforts are a whole story in and of themselves.

The surprise, a bit unwelcomed, was that the closest community saw little hope of saving their homes and fields, so they followed the young man who had alerted them, all the way back to the hunting community. Already bursting at the seams in their camp, having spent days expanding it to accommodate all of them instead of just a small hunting party, they people starting to complain and cry in uproar that it was not fair to be take such advantage of by these people. The New-Iblers, as they called themselves, were a sixth the number of Julius’ community. As they waited patiently just outside the hunting camp Julius met with a pair of their leaders.

The request was that the New-Iblers be able to make a separate camp not far away and share protection, resources, and work with Julius’ community. Just as Julius was about to respond, welcoming them, a trio of his community members arrived, protesting to the New-Iblers that they would bring such trouble and burden to them. There simply was not room, nor resources, to accommodate the visitors. Even a new camp would make this hunting camp nearly useless in the future for hunting, marking the human presence so wide that wildlife would avoid the area.

Julius listened. When the intruders were done complaining, he reminded one how the community had come together to help his family when their house caught on fire, building him a new home. Another Julius reminded how when her family’s garden had failed, everyone in the community had donated generously to them so that they had more than enough produce for the coming year until the next harvest. Someone had even investigated why the garden had failed while others had not. And then helped the family rescue their garden from the worms that had multiplied so fast there, so that it continued to produce even to this day. They others he reminded of how the community had helped each of them. They he reminded them how they had all helped others in the community.

Remember the ancient wisdom from the old texts: “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ”

No one could tell what those bringing the complaints of the community were thinking. They waited. Sometimes it takes time to take in wisdom that is not easily welcomed.

Great Works

In A Single Day

For Everyone.

Friday, May 5, 2023

Finding Our Way,

Our Wondrously Blessed Way

Through Each Day.

Zechariah 3:9

For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day.

1 John 2:2

… and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Words of Grace For Today

It is a great challenge to forgive someone who has done great damage to one’s self.

Consider the murder of one’s loved ones.

Consider the foreign ruler who with no just cause invades one’s country and decimates one’s community and livelihood and security … and peace.

Consider the liar who spreads lies and those who believe and retell such lies, until one’s reputation is destroyed and one’s way of life has become impossible leaving one living in the street or bush.

Consider the corrupt police who kill people without recourse. Or the corrupt judge who sentences innocent people to jail and makes decisions that are not even supported by the lies brought as ‘evidence’ to court.

The people so traumatized and ruined by such evil doings is nothing new. It goes back to the beginning of human times. It will continue until there are no more humans to do such things to others. One such new story really is of no interest to most people, since the injustices only can continue to happen when and because almost all people accept these injustices as ‘part of the woodwork’ of life, tolerated as long as they are not directed against them, or protested against (but only by marginalized people, to whom people simply do not listen to.)

God knows all these stories, from the beginning of time to the end of time. God knows such evil destroys not only the victims but the perpetrators. The best of life is still possible for the victims, if they are able to forgive the perpetrators (which is not to simply tolerate that such injustices continue, far from it.) The best of life is only possible for the perpetrators, if they recognize they are forgiven and are on that basis able to amend their lives.

So God provides all that for us, makes it possible.

God forgives everyone, from the beginning of time to the end of time. God makes it possible for us to forgive as well, especially to forgive ourselves. And God makes it possible for us to amend our lives so that we can live lives blessed to be blessings for others.

God accomplishes this again and again in a single day for us all.

What will we do in a single day to forgive the perpetrators who have destroyed our lives, to amend our lives, to share this abundant life with others, and to give God thanks for making a blessed life possible for us?

Waiting

Waiting,

Looking and Waiting

Monday, April 24, 2023

In The Deep Cold and Drear of Winter,

We May Wait for and Look for Spring,

but when hope is destroyed,

can we wait and hope

for life to return to our hearts?

Psalms 130:6

… my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

Jude 1:21

… keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

Words of Grace For Today

How in the chaos of this world, where truth is sacrificed by everyone every minute, or so it seems, can we find the patience to wait for and look for something better?

What I trusted was the foundation of life here in this country, is blown to bits and shambles. Lies were spread like wildfire rumours, devouring truth, leaving angry accusations levelled at me. It mattered not that they were false rumours, for they were taken up as a call to war against an enemy with more lies added at every turn (even by those entrusted to protect us all from evil), and I was made to be for so many self-righteous people the face of that enemy, though I had lived my life standing quietly and effectively against such enemies and against such lies, rumours and false accusations against others.

How can I wait for and look for God to fix this unfixable chaos that has left me so far in debt I will never see my way clear of it, even as I live as frugally as possible, off the grid in the bush (freaky hot in the summer and hellishly cold in the winter), heating with a rebuilt wood stove, insulated by tarps cast off pieces of foam held in place by cast off pieces of lumber, a door rescued for reuse on its way to the landfill, all built, repaired and held together by ropes and duct tape and lots of wood screws – constantly needing repairs and replacement.

And then I read with new eyes from centuries past poetry, psalms, prayers and literature. People have sighed, plead, and cried aloud for help from much worse betrayals of self and goodness and civility and honesty and love and hope. My life goes on with blessing abundant in the peace of life beside a small lake in the relative quiet of the bush (though fighter jets landing at the nearby base shatter ear drums and peace at all hours, and the nearby oil installation – an old, ear splitting loud electricity generator growls and pounds on and off for days on end, and bush parties in the summer — all this noise when it disappears for hours or days or even weeks makes the quiet, peace, and solitude then so much more noticed and vibrant.)

What chaos and destruction we humans have wrought on others, and on ourselves. It is not that we have not and do not continue to work to bring a just order and peace to bear on this chaos. Many give their all towards such efforts from large and even world-wide to small and personal. Many work outside any lime light, go completely unnoticed during their active efforts, and are forgotten even before they die. For every step forward it seems at least a step is taken backwards. Here we ended slavery of black people. But the world around even today, people are still enslaved. Even here people are held in bonds that control all choices and steal away all fruits of their labours.

Where is our hope?

my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

As the sun rises each morning the Holy Spirit creates hope where there is no reason or evidence for it.

The greatest burden we each bear is that (if only we were honest with ourselves) we all participate, blindly perhaps, enjoying the benefits of this continuing slavery, and contributing to the chaos that consumes life at every turn, stealing bits and pieces of life from others, and even finally their lives — all so that we can live on, as it were.

For this burden steals life from us, either in our acknowledging it, or worse in our trying to deny its weight in our lives. We try to swim and still we sink into the chaos. We try in so many ways to try to convince ourselves we can fix it and save ourselves.

keep yourselves in the love of God.

It is futile.

At best we can beg God to keep us in God’s love, save us, free us, and guide us to

look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

Today,

Another day begging God

Receiving from God

Thanking God

Sharing God’s blessings

whether we are so fortunate to live off the grid in the bush or in the tumult of the city.

Resistance

Is Futile (but not stopped)

Saturday, April 15, 2023

We May Ignore The Signs,

And Head Straight for the Moon,

But The Road Turns.

God Planned for That, Too

…

And Picks Up The Pieces.

Job 9:4

He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength; who has resisted him, and succeeded?

Romans 9:20

But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is moulded say to the one who moulds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’

Words of Grace For Today

Why would we argue with God?

Well, let me count the reasons! For there is so much that does not proceed in harmony among creatures and within all of creation.

The harmonies at times are wondrous to behold, but they are rare, or so they seem.

So why would we not protest to God and ask for an explanation!

In fact, to whom else would we bring such protestations and inquiries?

But resisting God, now that is another matter, and even more common than bringing protests to God to vent our frustrations with how creation works and does not work.

Resisting God is to take all that God has created and to deny that God ought to be given thanks for it all. It is to attempt to strike out on one’s own into … well where we think we are headed away from God is always a delusion, and we end up creating chaos in God’s good creation.

Resisting God is to refuse to accept the gifts God so freely and generously bestows on us.

Resisting God is futile, except God does let us turn away. God remains though, inviting us to return to accept all God’s good gifts … and to share them with others, so that there is harmony in creation, if only in small pockets for short spurts of time.

When the end of the day comes, will we recognize God’s gifts given this day and the end of the day that God gives to us as a precious gift? Or will we remain lost in the chaos we help to create, that warps our visions of God’s goodness, mercy, and compassion for us all?

Did You Find

Your Way To A New Day?

Friday, April 14, 2023

Late to the Day’s Beginning,

As the Light is Already Bright and White,

But Still A Good Beginning.

Jeremiah 23:5

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

Words of Grace For Today

The dream of justice for the people, justice based on truth and righteousness, is as old as the hills.

And in these days it surely has not been accomplished, as tyrants and despots rule in many lands across the earth, and even in democracies, which give the appearance of some sort of justice, special interests (and international corporations with profits greater than many governments) corrupt the processes that are designed to be (or at least look to be) just.

Money gets its way, so to speak, and everyone suffers.

That hope for a just government is not what Jesus came to provide, as much as we hope that some day it yet will be accomplished.

Jesus came to free us from fear of death. That fear is what lies underneath almost all injustices, but to be free we have to allow God to work that freedom for us and in us. It is not something we simply choose, or can accomplish on our own. It is a gift. It is only a gift.

What we get to do with that gift is find the beginning of each day and the end of each day as God intends us to find them: free from fear of death, free from fear of guilt, and free from fear of God’s judgment (since God works with mercy for us.)

Did you find the beginning of this day?

Creation

Melting Away

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Spring Melt is A’coming.

Will we melt away,

or melt greed and violence away

with kindness?

Isaiah 45:12

I made the earth, and created humankind upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.

James 1:17

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Words of Grace For Today

While God made earth in six days and rested on the seventh (as the song goes), and God in that time created all life on earth including us humans, it’s taken us about 200 years to run the earth from sustainable into the ground so that the future looks bleak indeed, bleak indeed.

The only thing to do, since we cannot take on the ‘repair job’ needed by ourselves if in any way at all, is to be kind, even kinder, merciful and compassionate, so that others become that as well.

Life without kindness, mercy, and compassion is always a competition to get more, a greed race to the bottom of hell. While we can hardly engender enough kindness, mercy, and compassion to change how humanity as a whole engages in life now or in the next 200 years (if we have that much time left), we can create small pockets of kindness, mercy, and compassion with our families and friends, and if we are lucky to move about in society, we may also create a wake of kindness, mercy, and compassion wherever we go.

For that God created the earth and us humans on it.

These acts are not of our own doing. We can rise to the occasion day after day only when God works through us, spreading light into us and through us to the earth and life on it around us.

Shine … Shine this day … Shine this day with kindness, mercy, and compassion.

(Why not? It’s a whole lot more rewarding than greed’s death race!)