Month: July 2023

Miserably Dumb

Or Thankfully Joyous?

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Break Life Down,

Like A Coffee Press, To It’s Many Pieces,

And One Misses

The Wonder and Spirit

Given To Us!

Like Coffee,

It’s The Joy and Thanks

That Matters Most.

Ecclesiastes 3:22

So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?

Colossians 3:17

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Words of Grace For Today

Ecclesiastes always is a rather big downer. Think of a way to take the joy out of living and the writer found a way to explain it and pound it home.

It’s our lot to work, might as well enjoy it for who knows what comes next! And even if we knew how could we, the hoi poloi, actually understand what was told us!?

Great words of comfort. Work hard. Die miserably. Such is life.

How could a writer so off-base with God’s goodness and steadfast love for us be considered significant; and then significant enough on top of that to be included in scripture?

Colossians, written in the style of Paul, at least knew the perspective to take: one where God is creator and we God’s creatures:

whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I’ll take that for this day, and each day. There may be lots of work, hard work, this day and each day, just to survive. I’d rather go about it aware of all God’s blessings, with a thankful heart, joyous spirit, and busy hands. Ok, with arthritis in the hands, two out of three will have to do for today and the rest of my days.

Joyous spirit and thankful heart is a good start to … to anything.

Two Things

To Start With

Monday, July 10, 2023

You Don’t Have To Be A Jedi

To Know

The Day Starts And Ends

With

Two Things.

Psalm 95:6

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

1 Timothy 1:17

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

Two things to get straight at the beginning of …

well at the beginning of every day

and the beginning of anything:

First thing is that God is due worship and praise. (I’m not sure about ‘on bended knee’ now that mine are old and do not like to be bent, yet alone knelt on. Kneepads help, but just a bit. – I trust that God knows about that, too.)

Second thing is that we are miserable sinners, or actually we are tremendously good at sinning, and telling ourselves that we have not sinned, not terribly anyway. So confessing our sins puts us right with our reality.

God is Great; we are great at being terrible.

Humble pie and songs of thanks: makes a blessed start … to anything.

As of Old

Old is Not for Sissies With Skewed Memories

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Remember Days Without So Many Mosquitoes, Flies, and Wasps?

And No Smoke?

They Were

Freeking Cold!

Right?!

Jeremiah 30:20

Their children shall be as of old, their congregation shall be established before me; and I will punish all who oppress them.

Philippians 2:1-2

Paul wrote: If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Words of Grace For Today

Yearning for things to return to what they were, in the days of old, is understandable and common enough … and wholly misdirected leading often enough to disasters.

Memory of things in the past is an odd kind of thing. Reality may play a part, and we all hope it plays a large part, though we know more and more people live with a perspective of even their recent past (and also then their current days) that is quite disconnected from any reality – rather it is determined more by what they wish it had been and what they wish the current time would be. Most often how we see some more distant past, that is our ‘days of old’ with more of a disconnect from reality and more and more colouring from emotions, wishes, dreams, and (to be honest) games our own memories play on us.

When we wish for a return to ‘the good old days’, or the ‘days of old’, more often than not we want only a slice of the reality of the past and a huge slice of wishes made to exist when they never have in the past.

Some memories are best left in the past as past and not wished for as our future, lest we end up with less a slice of anything good and more and more disasters created as we try to either force things to be a certain way (which almost always goes awry if not for what we try to force, then for so many other things for us, and most often for other people) or we disconnect further and further from reality as we insist that things not only must be a certain way for us, but that they actually are for us – and usually that entails condemning others (though in reality they have done little to nothing to merit our condemnations.)

So how to move into a ‘better’ future for us and others?

Paul often directed his readers in various congregations to trust God’s promises in Christ as he does for the Philippians: if there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

If we are to accomplish that on our own, just be in full accord and of one mind, then we are bound to fail, and miserably. More disconnect from reality!

When we recognize all that God has given us, sinners that we are, then it becomes not only possible, but blessedly easy. Christ gives us encouragement, consolation from love, sharing with others God’s Spirit, compassion and sympathy, and complete joy.

As we live with and aware of those gifts pouring over us, we need not wish for some ‘days of old.’ Right now is just fine. In fact it’s terrific. It doesn’t get better!

And it never was better!

That doesn’t mean that life now is free of challenges and disappointments. It is that God helps us keep everything in perspective, in the perspective that we are God’s children and God walks with us and protects us.

Each day is, no matter the challenges we face or enemies that pursue us, beyond comparison just plain blessed.

When death comes it too will be a blessing. We will get to go home.

.

.

.

Oh, for the record, keep the smoke and bugs; give me the freeking cold almost any day, as long as I have enough wood to burn in the monster, and … and … and.

Memories

That Rot, Trying to Earn God’s Good Graces

Saturday, July 8, 2023

Among the Weeds, See the Beauty?

Around the Beauty, See the Weeds and Thorns?

Amid All That is Life, See God’s

Generous Gifts!

Proverbs 10:7

The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.

Hebrews 6:12

… so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Words of Grace For Today

In the Kingdom of God there must be rewards.

There is so much written and spoken about how we are rewarded for our good works and our good work for others.

Ahh, there is the rub.

It’s all an illusion.

We are nor rewarded by how we live or do or think or believe.

The causation direction is all messed when we talk about how we earn our reward from God.

God rewards us first – when we certainly do not deserve it- and then we get to respond.

We inherit, not as reward, but because God is generous with steadfast, unconditional love.

So how are we going to go into this day?

Fretting how we will get ahead?

Working hard to earn God’s good graces?

Or

Thankful for all we are given that we have not and cannot earn, and sharing those same gifts with others?

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!)