It May Look Bleak, Until We Remember How God Has Walked Every Step With Us To This Blessed Time.
Deuteronomy 2:7
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.
John 1:16
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
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Words of Grace For Today
When the frenetic struggles overload our senses and memories, limiting our ability to make choices fully informed, it’s good and difficult to
stop
and
take
stock
of
the
whole
picture
of what God
has done and still does for us each day:
giving us breath and bread, longings and love, health and hope,
among so many other gifts
we certainly do not deserve.
While we may wish for more, God has and will always provide us enough to find our way home
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Hebrews 13:16
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
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Words of Grace For Today
When we struggle to achieve a bit of the dreams (from years past) that are still possible in the old life we live,
Sometimes one’s muscles, joints, bones, and brain just hurt too much to do more than the bare minimal for survival.
Then, after a life of not being compensated as agreed one would, and struggling to provide for children as well, when one already goes to the food bank for food, suffers astounding injustice, has no house (just an off-grid camper and wood stove), and few kin want to see one, yet alone help one (even hide, though that is so far from possible nor desired) what can one do to offer God the pleasing sacrifice:
to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke, to share our bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our house; when we see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide ourselves from your own kin?
Ah … is that not the rub. We always have explanations for why and how it is not for us to provide to others less fortunate than ourselves.
Even this day, we pray, help us see all God gives us, which is all we have to share with those in need greater than ourselves.
But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.’
James 5:7
Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
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Words of Grace For Today
With wildfires in the Northwest Territories, thousands of people have evacuated, mostly south, way south even to Calgary. Smoke swirls and flows across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan as the NWT fires’ smoke combines with those in BC to wreak havoc on breathing, which last I checked is still a basic function required for staying alive.
It’s not unlike all the other evils that come back to haunt us from our pasts, evils that we blithely contributed to, thinking the day of reckoning would not come, not really. It’s a shame. Almost all of the severe weather events we suffer now could have been avoided if we would have listened, believed and made changes back when changes would have made a difference. Oh, they still will make a difference, but we are in for a lot of suffering for the next few centuries. A lot of suffering.
Though forecasts of rising temperatures, no rain and shifting winds continue to be a worry, fire experts are taking several days to do infrared scans of several of the largest blazes, including the one outside the capital city, said Jessica Davey-Quantick, wildfire information officer for the Department of Environment and Climate Change.
The scans will provide information that will allow wildfire teams to plan next steps in the fight, she said.
If only we could have scanned into the future five decades, back in the 1980’s, eh?!
But we do now what we can:
“In coming days, we’ll have more information as these fires are assessed and our next steps are established. Right now it is not safe to return to these communities that have been evacuated,” she said.
Most of all we have to remain hopeful, and remember how we’ve survived in the past, and how we can help each other now:
“For now the best we can all do is just wait and see what’s coming. We’re going to get through this. It’s going to get better. Eventually,” she added with a smile, “it will snow.”
Thank God, literally, for knowing things like ‘it will snow’ which give us hope, hope for all the challenges we face in the midst of all the evil we have contributed to form our days,
And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’
Acts of the Apostles 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
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Words of Grace For Today
Bonhoeffer wrote Who am I? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. … and he ended with:
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
That is for all of us the most determinative thing to know about ourselves, that God knows us!
God knows us, every nook and cranny, all our good past-present-future, and all our terrible, hidden, denied, covered up, destructive acts and wishes and thoughts. It can be more than scary to think God knows all that! It can be downright debilitating, making us want to give up entirely,
EXCEPT
God demonstrates again and again, not only that God knows us inside and out. God shows us over and over again that God also loves us, as we are!
Knowing that God loves us, makes us able to love ourselves, and to love others (even though we never are very good at knowing ourselves or knowing others completely).
Knowing that we can love ourselves and others is liberating.
Knowing others do love us is marvellous, if entirely suspect, at times.
Knowing that God loves us is everything!
And of us miserable sinners (actually we are rather good at sinning) God brings us to be those who bring God to be glorified, by us and others, awestruck by God’s works for us all.
I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
1 Peter 2:3
if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
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Words of Grace For Today
We can observe 93 billion light years of universe, though we estimate the universe is more than 7 trillion light years huge.
Why did God create all this?
Before creation it was only void, emptiness, and we can anthropomorphize that God easily could have been lonely. But lonely for such small creatures so capable of evil as us? Really!
The earth’s diameter is only about 13 km, and it’s circumference is 40,000 km. In other words from here to the opposite side of the earth is only 13 km, straight down through the core and back up. Or we can travel from here to the opposite side and back in about 40,000 km. That’s only 42 billionths of one light year. In other words we live our whole lives within 42 nano seconds of a light-year.
Why would God create the entire universe, just for us to exist? Or did God? Maybe we were an afterthought, or a mistake, or a side-effect. (The juries would then be out on whether we are a good side-effect or a bad side-effect or even a deadly side-effect.)
Like a medication that tastes bad but is supposed to do us good, except it turns our stomach so that we cannot hold it down: Maybe that is the kind of side-effect we are in God’s plans for the universe?
Except
when we have tasted how marvellously good God is to us, forgiving us, loving us, renewing us, and sending us out with a purpose grand enough to take more than all the life we have to give, then
we, small as we are, can do none other than go out
recounting the gracious acts of God for us,
for us all.
So it is we go out also into this day, whatever it may bring.
The Lord your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.
1 Corinthians 10:13
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
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Words of Grace For Today
Follow, Obey, and Live!
It’s great to follow a wonderful leader.
One who give us good life in following!
If only we can find one, identify one, and know with surety that we are not wrong.
I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
Colossians 4:3
At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison
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Words of Grace For Today
Green.
Green growth.
Green growth of life
Green Spring rains
Green Spring rains cleansing
Green Spring flowers, grasses, trees, …
Green Spring sprung rains renewing what was once dying.
Green Spring sprung rains renewing .dying .. hope for life to continue well
or
Green growth of envy and moulds.
Envy and moulds that cover and choke spreading spores that can destroy us from the inside.
Green.
Will we grow green to renew hope in us and around us?
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Ephesians 4:15
But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
Matthew 5:19
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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Words of Grace For Today
Blue
Blue Blues
Blue Dark Blues
Blue Dark Blues because we’ve blown it.
Blue Dark Blues because we’ve blown it, and it is the most important thing in all of life, the most important thing in all of everything that ever was or ever will be.
Deep, Dark, We-Blew-It-Biggest-Time Blues!
If ever there were a more hopeless situation it could not be known: Happy are those who keep God’s decrees and seek him with their whole heart, for God is the source of happiness and all that is good in life – BUT not one single person can ever keep God’s decrees and seek him with their whole heart. No one has. No one does. No one ever will be able to. Except Jesus.
For the rest of us, we are doomed, and there is no better reason
to not only sing the blues (for we’ve lost out on happiness and life and goodness, totally)
but
to be the blues,
stuck in the blues,
lost,
alienate from God,
in the blues forever.
…
Except
that
God’s work in Jesus Christ to demonstrate that God extends Grace to us all,
forgiving us for not seeking God with our whole hearts and
breaking God’s decrees though we would do otherwise
