Category: Love and Hope

Making

Making Things Right

Sunday, October 22, 2023

When the neighbour fills in the wetlands,

taking away a carbon sink and water purifier,

how does one make it right?

Leviticus 19:17

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself.

Galatians 6:1

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.

…

Words of Grace For Today

It is more difficult than it sounds:

making all things right with someone who has done you wrong.

Yet,

because

we have done God plenty of wrong,

and

God

though we certainly do not deserve it

makes all things right with us,

We OUGHT

to spend the effort to

gently make all things right with those that do us wrong.

A little sounding task, that can take a whole life’s effort.

That’s what today is all about.

Each day’s today.

Bridges II

Bridges to

The Light

Best read AFTER yesterday’s Devotion – below.

Monday, October 2, 2023

When We Think We Are Done In And Gone,

The Light Reveals Another Day

Another Way …

Isaiah 30:26

Moreover, the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, on the day when the Lord binds up the injuries of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

1 Peter 2:24

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

…

Words of Grace For Today

As the Light of Christ shines brighter than the brightest sun, clearer than the clearest moon, then all our wounds he heals, all our wounds he makes strong. Where we thought we’d lost it all, where we thought we’d come to our end, exactly there the Spirit finds us, frees us from our past, transforms us into saints sent back into the darkness, into the darkness to share Christ’s Light and life, for all.

.

1.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I looked for them in this quiet hermitage and there were so few,

maybe one, maybe two?

I’d done nothing to set the fires,

Truth I’d spoken at all costs,

I’d been breathing their smoke for years.

Where were all the bridges in my life?

Where were all the bridges in my life?

Was blessed solitude all … all I had left.

2.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I thought I’d moved beyond the need for bridges in this home sweet home,

maybe still, maybe not?

Yet here they are bridges of my life,

Truth stands firm beneath them all,

standing solid, reaching far shores.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude thrives all in all.

3.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I look for them in this quiet hermitage and there are countless,

surely one, surely all?

Streaming across, seeking this here peace,

Truth attracts in all kinds and ways,

Many struggle to make their way.

I’ve been breathing their smoke for years.

Here lead all the bridges in their lives.

Here start all the bridges in my life.

This blessed solitude is sought’n shared by all.

4.

Where are all the bridges in this life?

Where are all the bridges in this life?

This blessed solitude covers us now.

All is peaceful, all is still,

From it rises melodies of God’s Truth.

From it rises harmonies of God’s love.

Alone and connected through blessed music, dance, prayer

Bridges bring us all home at last,

across all rivers, obstacles, and dark valleys,

Bridges bring us all home at last,

where blessed solitude is sought’n shared in all,

where blessed solitude is sought’n shared all in all.

…

Truth Be Told,

By Grace Alone,

All is well at Last. All is well at Last. All manner of things are well at Last.

Bridges

To Peace At Last

Sunday, October 1, 2023


https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.xcl_uFXzEe3mTcZmZdGoewHaHa&pid=Api&f=1&ipt=d5fc09d5d836e816dc82041152b3433cc2854ae5406d45e2ed1f8de69c42ebea&ipo=images

One More Goes Up In Smoke.

Jeremiah 9:23

Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth;

James 3:18

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

…

Words of Grace For Today

A friend’s daughter has a song out, listen to it (buy it) here.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=_PmAmmbmRXI

or

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJYD87ZJ?tag=fndcmpgns-20

Which made me ponder bridges, and write these words.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

1.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

I look for them in this quiet hermitage and there are so few,

maybe one, maybe two?

I did nothing to set the fires,

Truth I spoke at all costs,

I’ve been breathing their smoke for years.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is all I have left.

2.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

Why’s the truck I drove ‘cross them run hard aground, broken down again,

maybe faults, maybe sin?

I did nothing to break the wheels,

Truth I held at all costs,

I’ve been sinking in the mud for years.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is all that remains.

3.

Where are all the bridges in my life,

My legs are stopped moving, my arms crippled up, pains alone remain,

finger free, maybe a toe?

All I could do is get ancient,

Truth I lost into the mists,

My heart’s not doing for what it’s meant.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude is my future,

It’s only a few days now.

4.

Where are all the bridges in my life?

Where are all the bridges in my life?

This blessed solitude covers me now.

Truth is hidden far and deep.

All is quiet, all is still.

There is one blessed bridge across I come,

home at last, sweet home, at last I am home.

…

Peace at Last

Yearning,

Doing,

Thanking

But Only For God’s Gifts.

Friday, September 29, 2023

Thinking of Eating What The World Offers?

It Can Kill Ya From the Inside Out.

Zechariah 8:23

Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’

Romans 10:14

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?

…

Words of Grace For Today

Dreamers we are,

seeing all that is wrong,

yearning that it would be better,

giving great efforts, sometimes amazingly persistently powerful and heroic even,

until the day we see how empty our hearts are and that despite even the accumulation of all humans’ greatest efforts,

we are still lost

to a future

of despair

& doom

& death.

Until

we see clearly

how full our hearts are, and we can give thanks for all that we humans have achieved through the generations,

and we can give our greatest efforts all our concentrated energy and time so that all will be made right in our world.

…

Until we realize that our hope in ourselves is an empty, deceptive hope, so that, empty or full as we may see our hearts and world, the reality is our sin drives us further and further from anything good at all.

…

only then

can we accept

that we need not just to give thanks for humans’ great efforts,

but that we need give God thanks for all that we have received, which we certainly do not deserve, and never can earn.

Then,

with our hope, our lives, our everything

based on what God gives us

we can see the immensities of what is not right

and not despair,

we can see the humongous efforts made by humans through all time and the little differences that all makes,

and not depend on false, empty hopes nor despair,

And

Give

God

Thanks

for all that is Good.

Therefore we go as God sends us, back to the world that is so flawed, which we cannot fix, and give everything,

not to make our world right on our own,

But to give all people all that can be right,

most of all the relationship God makes with us

which is the only thing that can truly be right in our lives and in our world.

Longing and

Yearning

To Make It Right

Sunday, September 24, 2023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portland_Pudgy_safety_dinghy,_rowing.JPG

Not All Life In ‘Dinghies’ Involves Life Jackets and Singing Joyfully,

OR Might It Best Be So?

Leviticus 19:18

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.

Luke 10:33-34

But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Yearning, Working For Our Dreams …

and hopefully Giving Thanks.

We yearn and long to make life right for ourselves.

If we are at all alert to the reality of life we yearn and long to make life right for others as well.

Covid vaccines are a great example. If just the privileged receive vaccines the virus continues to spread among those who have no vaccines, and it mutates, and it spreads to even those who are vaccinated. We are in the same boat, but not really. Some are in luxury yachts, others in sturdy ocean going vessels, some in small dinghies and so many others hanging on to pieces of flotsam, hoping for rescue! But the virus spreads quickly, efficiently from the flotsam and dinghies to the luxury yachts and sturdy vessels.

So we hope we will work not for vengeance, but for love of neighbours all, even offering what we cannot easily give, as the Samaritan does the man robbed and left to die. One can ask, is it this Samaritan, a relative, or a friend, who contracts leprosy and then is healed by Jesus?

Life is hard.

The only way to keep yearning and longing for things to be better for others is to recognize how much one already has to give –

to give to others in need,

and

to give thanks for.

Staring with

that we

breathe,

also this day.

Closing Time

The Last Dance Is Done and …?

Friday, September 22, 2023

The Day Is Coming To A Close.

Now What?

Isaiah 55:5

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we wake up to the reality of what we have done with our lives, as the carouser wakes from the ‘Johnny Walker wisdom’ run out, leaving us with no more than a dark hangover,

the question is what can we do, now that the ‘party is over’, the last dance danced, and it’s long since been closing time, in so many ways?

Time to return to the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

It’s not a jump into an alternate reality or timeline.

It’s not a huge jump across the ‘pond’ to another continent.

It’s not a huge trip into the Hinterländer.

For God has walked with is into every hell-hole party, through every good and bad dance, and through every closing time.

God is right there with us, in us, around us; we are not alone, and it’s never closing time for God’s Grace for us.

That is the one thing of goodness and life that never closes down on us.

Thanks be to God.

Shake!

When the Foundations of Earth Shake

What are we to do?

Sunday, September 17, 2023

When the Foundations Dissolve Beneath Us,

May We Have Loved Ones,

Made Solid With God’s Love.

Isaiah 33:24

And no inhabitant will say, ‘I am sick’; the people who live there will be forgiven their iniquity.

Revelation 1:17-18

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Earthquakes take most everything we take for granted and undo it. Gravity rapidly oscillates, solid ground becomes liquid, protection over our heads become threats to our survival, …

What are we to do?!

In life, there are more things like earthquakes than we wish to admit. More things change the very foundation of life for us. Evil has free run at the foundations of life we create for ourselves, even those who we love can turn against us without warning.

What are we to do?!

Like Isaiah we turn to God, when the world under us seems to flow away, and we pray: We must be sick! Save us.

Only God can reach out to us, and assure us that life is solidly grounded in Jesus’ love for us, love that is not selfish or guile or facile. Even death cannot shake God’s love for us.

Here is our solid foundation, upon which our love, hope, and breath rely.

May it be so also today for us.

Forever Judgment

And Doom, OR?

Friday, September 15, 2023

God’s Hammer of Judgment Looms Over Us

—

OR?

Hosea 11:8-9

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

John 12:47

I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Through all the generations the fear of God is fomented in and among us by threatening us with God’s judgment. “In the end everyone will be judged according to what they have done, said, and thought! Therefore be good lest you end up in hell – suffering – forever!” And so go the similar admonishments and threats.

It just about scares the living daylights and joy and hope right out of each one of us. For the result is not a great effort to be good. Rather it drives us to deny our own sins, and create great facades of being good enough.

All that drives us, individually and as a community, further and further from the goodness that God created us to be for each other and all people.

Then we read these passages: God is in our midst and does not come in wrath to judge and condemn. And Jesus comes into the world not to judge it and all in it, but to save the world.

Which will this day be for us?

A day wherein we strive to be good or rather to create the illusion that we are at least good enough to avoid God’s wrath?

Or

A day wherein we rest assured of God’s saving efforts to forgive us our own sins, and set us free to extend God’s grace to others?

…

If our record is any indication then more the former than the latter.

…

If we accept God’s record as determinative then God’s forgiveness will bring us out of the former into the latter

and

life will be a miracle of goodness,

also this day.

Children

Get hammered by Evil,

And rescued by the miracles of Goodness.

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Do we pick up the hammer of evil and hand it to our children?

Psalm 103:13

As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.

Matthew 7:11

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

…

Words of Grace For Today

Giving good gifts to one’s children does not mean giving them everything they ask for, not at all. It takes some great courage, wisdom, and empathy to understand what a child finds interesting, challenging, and overwhelming, and then to give what helps the child find her/his way the next step in life.

Living aware of one’s children’s interests, challenges, and roadblocks takes time and focused attention … and kindness, in order that one has compassion for them.

All children have goodness in them, as well as evil. Always one works to reward and develop the goodness. Every generation on earth needs all the goodness it can muster. There are severe challenges to goodness, always something evil tries to hammer goodness back into the ground as dust. It’s a miracle any goodness survives among us at all. It is a miracle we depend on, many times each day.

When the evil in children starts to take over and wipe out the goodness, it breaks one’s heart, especially as the children’s parent. The best a parent can do then is offer the best support, opportunities, and resets — in the form of forgiveness, second chances, or sometimes as developing ignorance of the evil, and sometimes as harsh punishment of the evil, but most often letting the evil run it’s course so the children experience natural consequences for their choices. With the proviso that a parent does try to protect a child from permanent damage or death.

So God deals with us, we pray also this day.

The Answer is

(NOT always)

Love!

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

https://entertainmentmesh.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/deep-red-rose.j

Roses Are Red

And Violets are Blue

But

Love

Can Make You

Dead, Through and Through.

Or make you wish you were.

Psalm 22:23

You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

John 17:22

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,

…

Words of Grace For Today

When we are young (ish) and we search for a mate for life, some of us come up with some real doosies!

No names of course, for that would embarrass us all.

The man who marries a young woman and then, despite conversation and promises to be faithfully monogamous, insists that it is his right to have sex with other woman.

The woman who in her 60’s continues to hoard canned food. Already more than 100 lbs overweight she remains fearful that, impoverished as they are for his having served as a pastor, … that they will run out of food. Her hoard fills all their living space, living room, dining room, extra bedroom and even their own bedroom. It takes an extra moving van to move the cans.

The female synodical bishop who aspires to be the bishop of the national church and uses every means to run off or ruin any pastor or congregation who challenges her autocratic, unjust, and even illegal actions to secure her ‘power’.

The woman, to compensate for her insecurities, who cannot accept responsibility for anything she does wrong always blaming it on someone else (as ludicrous as her reasoning often is), who latches on to a fat man who is ‘going places’, and then ridicules him to his literal death, to avoid a divorce and the loss of half their accumulated wealth (more than a little of it legally gained.)

The senator’s wife (a senator who serves on the committee for space exploration) who all her money and tries to send his to a scam artist, who sends news every month of the ‘little green men’ in their midst and his negotiations with them to keep them from overthrowing the government.

The obscenely rich land developer whose wife never runs out of energy or appetites for other people, without their clothes, who has to be sent to one of their other homes to interrupt her appetites run amok.

…

For some people the blessing that we may be one as Jesus is one with the Father, is not such a blessing.

The words of wisdom certainly apply, no matter for what else you marry someone, marry someone kind.

At least then, no matter how crazy they (or you) turn out to be, at least they will not try to bring about your death.

Best to be humble before God, confident only in God’s grace, for in many awesome ways God demonstrates God’s saving grace for us, not only for the Hebrew slaves escaping across the Red Sea into the wilderness, but for all of us, from our slavery to whatever oppression or sin, into the wilderness where we can learn to serve others God’s own grace, instead of our confidence in things that will always fail us.