Category: Trees

Sigh!

Sigh, Again

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Morning Arrives,

The Crescent Moon Accompanied by A Star,

a helper light,

which is actually the planet Venus.

Psalm 31:23

Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.

Romans 8:26

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

…

Words of Grace For Today

The challenges of every day are more than enough to dampen our energy available to even cry for help to God. How does one pray when one’s loved one is gone, one’s world is ripped out from underneath one, and even in the morning the light does not help clarify where or what one really ought to do?

How does one pray when one’s home is destroyed and one survives only because one was away that day, working on a project that required it? Where does one go?

How does one pray when rumours, nasty and dirty rumours, are spread by deceitful, arrogant, fearful, cowardly bullies, and they grow so intense that people want to kill you?

How does one pray when everything seems to be okay also this day and yet your heart tells you that your life is doomed, maybe the whole world’s, maybe just those you love and all the honest and good people (if there are even any of those left!)?

When our light has been snuffed out by the chaos and hatred of people lost in their own darkness, we are not abandoned.

The Holy Spirit, with sighs too deep for words, blows in again as a fresh morning breeze, reviving us, and giving us the words for our prayers,

the priority of meaningful tasks for this day,

and a direction for our lives, even as we walk yet in darkness.

Like a sliver of a moon, with a companion star, walking the sky as the morning sun pushes back the darkness in the east, God winds us through our days, sometimes with just enough light so that we do not stumble

too often

and we can find once again

the light by which to love

even those who want to be our enemies.

Stoop Low

To Move Forward

Friday, November 3, 2023

The Sky May Be The Limit, Expansive and Inviting,

But

God Calls Us To Do The Work of the Kingdom

Down Here,

In The Snow and The Bushes of Life.

Zephaniah 2:3

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath.

Colossians 3:12

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

…

Words of Grace For Today

I was at a conference recently at a monastery dedicated to  teaching people to follow Christ to be leaders in the church.

In the long hallways between rooms & buildings looking ahead the door tops are at chest height. When one comes to the door, though, as the door opens by sliding down into the floor, after a slight delay the top also rises up higher than any person I’ve seen or heard of, and I’ve been among the Maasai – and I’ve watched NBA games.

The perception given is that following Christ does not offer lofty things in the future. One looks down looking forward. And just so there is no mistake as one passes through some doors about 20 feet further there is a beam at the same height as the closed doors. At these one must stoop low to pass onward.

The faith passed on to us does not promise us great things (as we humans rate them); our faith does not meet our dreams & expectations. Just the opposite. The saints show us that our faith teaches us to give up our dreams & expectations as we stoop low to pass through each day.

God’s surprise for us is what God does offer the saints, which we learn is ultimately everything of utmost value! Starting with humility, compassion, kindness, patience, service, and love.

Blame?

Blame God!

Or?

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

It Must Be God’s Fault,

All the Dead Trees in Threes,

And Ice In Our Way,

And Dirt In the Sand,

Right?!

Isaiah 64:5

You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

Luke 15:21-22

Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

…

Words of Grace For Today

It is all too easy to blame someone else for what we do wrong. Why not blame God for everything that we do wrong and all that is wrong, when we are at it?

Well, because it is not the truth.

And it obscures our ability to see God’s abundant mercy and generous gifts that we receive, leaving us in the eternal darkness where the Evil One plays havoc with everyone and everything.

Confession, even made late after so much of life is wasted in the dark playground of the Devil, is God’s gift to us, a ticket to freedom to live in the Light again.

We tell stories of God’s forgiveness of the most grievous sinners, as Jesus told the parable of the great sinner son, who finally comes to his senses and returns home to his father, from whom he has taken his inheritance and squandered it on wasteful living, begging (for he has no rights left at all, not at all) to work for his father as a servant.

The father’s response is exactly what God’s is for all us great sinners who return begging God for mercy and the freedom to serve in God’s farm yards, lest we have only the pigs’ feed to keep us from starving.

God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love …

most evident when we are everything but.

Getting Around to

Righteousness

Monday, October 30, 2023

On Our Own, We Allow So Much To Block Us From Seeing,

Yet Alone Being the Light of Christ.

Isaiah 32:17

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.

1 John 2:29

If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who does right has been born of him.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Life, seems for many, a struggle to see how much they can ‘get ahead’ of others, or how much they can have for themselves.

Doing things right goes out the window along with truth every morning, if they were even in the building at all.

God offers another way.

Following Jesus offers a way to not ‘get ahead’ and take everything one can get, depriving others of the necessities of life. Instead, following Jesus’ example we give God thanks for all that we receive from God, and then use it to give those same blessings to others. Always doing things right is just a beginning. We go beyond that to do what is best for others.

Sometimes that means we sacrifice some of ourselves, some of our life.

Always it means we freely surrender any claim or right to ‘possess’ anything for ourselves. We are always stewards of God’s blessings, blessings intended for everyone.

And when that is how we live, then righteousness prevails, peace, quietness, and trust grow and lasts … forever and ever.

Thanks alone we give to God for working in us, for on our own we could not even start to follow Jesus, nor grow righteousness in our midst.

Fear

Or Freedom

Sunday, October 29, 2023

The Path Following Jesus is Narrow,

and Leads Us

to the Light of Life.

Isaiah 57:11

Whom did you dread and fear so that you lied, and did not remember me or give me a thought? Have I not kept silent and closed my eyes, and so you do not fear me?

Romans 8:15

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Fear grows out of many different kinds of circumstances. Perhaps the worst is real fear from people and circumstances that will kill or maim one’s loved ones.

In slavery everything about one’s life circumstance is determined by an other. Today things may be quite tolerable. That holds no promise for tomorrow.

That can drive one to real fear.

Being a slave to sin, a slave to the Evil One, is as high as the stakes can get, for not only is life here on earth at risk, but all life, after death and eternally, as well as life of one’s spirit, which normally can thrive even as one’s body does not.

This slavery is a valid, urgent, and critical reason to run through life in fear.

Caught in that slavery, as we all are born into it, leads to to no end of absolutely terrible things we do to try to deny that slavery, or to counter it’s effects on us and our loved ones. All our efforts are in vain, but the Devil has many ways of getting us to hide that truth from ourselves.

This is not that for which God created us to live, that we would run ourselves and others ragged out of fear, lying and deceiving even ourselves about the reality of life in God’s creation.

Hard to get that message across to us thick-headed humans, God sent Jesus, God’s own Son, to teach, heal, and guide us, and to be an example of love, even love so profound that one sacrifices oneself so that others can live, and live well.

Adopted into Jesus’ disciples we are at baptism, and then …

well life goes on and unfortunately so many of us forget all God has done for us, and we allow the Devil to consume us with fear,

and we lie

to ourselves and others

and destroy others and ourselves and those we love

and

…

it seems that nothing is better than before God adopted us in baptism as God’s own children.

Thank God, God knew we’d do that, and planned for that, so that Jesus’ forgiveness applies to us anew each day, each hour, each minute, freeing us once again from that fear and all fear that would drive us back into the Devil’s devious and destructive hands.

So we are free.

Free to follow Jesus’ example of

being slaves to God’s Will for us,

that we would love one another as God loves us,

even to sacrifice ourselves so that others will live, and live well,

live abundantly,

and joyfully.

…

Many have done this for us, so we live abundantly,

and can joyfully give all God has given us so others may live abundantly and joyfully.

For this we were created and given even this day.

Delights?

or Despair?

Friday, October 27, 2023

A drab morning, snow falling, making wood collecting more difficult.

Or delight in the cool that makes working outside a bit easier

than with countless bugs looking for a meal from your skin?

Psalm 27:1

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

…

Words of Grace For Today

Courage is hard to come by when one is down and out, beaten again and again by enemies, lies, deceptions, and others’ greed.

At times one has to agree with Thomas Hobbes when he said about life being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.

God answers that and all our other despairing with a simple reassurance: God is with us through it all.

Like walking in a sunset alone, still unable to do anything but despair how tough life is, ‘going it alone’ is always a recipe for struggles without end.

Like walking in a sunset with a loved one, the experience grows beyond itself to convince you two that life is a wonderful, marvellous adventure, with promise unending of things good and better.

So God walking with us through it all, turns life inside out with joy, delights, and hope.

And when God walks with us, we need not be overcome with fear of yet another enemy taking more of life from us, for even if that does happen, God will show us how to find joy and delight in all that life is for us.

Today, as the snow falls again, and then hard cold of winter is coming, the joy is in the warmth provided by a hot fire in the wood stove, held close by many insulated tarps. It may not be much, but it is as much a home as I have, and in it I find endless delight even as the challenges never cease to more than fully occupy my days.

So what will we see today? The enemies efforts or God’s Grace and delights for us?

Work

God’s Work

Monday, October 23, 2023

The Cold and Hard of Winter Approaches.

Is That A Curse or a Wonderful Blessing?

Daniel 6:27

He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth; for he has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

Ephesians 1:22

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church….

…

Words of Grace For Today

God certainly delivers.

And I would not take it away from Daniel, being rescued from being eaten by lions,

I’d just like to have been delivered from the ‘lions’ of today that consume other people with lies, deceptions, and greed.

Oh,

of course,

the paradise I live in now may well be God’s rescue,

and

that is

how it is for us:

we miss that God

is at work for us

because …

well all sorts of reasons.

Today, time again to notice God’s work for us.

Good Land

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

The Good Land?

Deuteronomy 8:7

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,

Acts of the Apostles 14:17

… yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

Perhaps if we develop ‘warp drive’ (space flight faster than light) we can anticipate that God will bring us into a good land, flowing with water and all goodness, but until then

we’ve ruined the earth so much that it is hard to imagine a ‘good land’ somewhere under these skies.

The water flows alright, as the glaciers and ice caps and land mass ice melt, and it collects in the oceans and they rise, and what used to be ocean front property is underwater.

Or the water does not flow and the rains do not fall and the crops do not grow.

Or … you name it, the climate of earth has gotten mean.

What did we expect?

Okay, it’s not really all all that bad.

There are blessed places where the water flows, the rain falls in good amounts, the sun shines, and the crops grow.

And if one has lived in an area that was marginal to good before climate change, conflicts and disasters, but it has become uninhabitable or unsafe then coming to a land where crops grow and people live in relative safety, then one can count that as a blessing.

Typical is, though, that if we’ve always lived where the crops grow reasonably well year after year, then we easily forget how blessed it is that God has brought us to this good land.

It is easy to forget how others yearn for such a land to call home.

It is easy to think we deserve it … and others do not.

When life is hard, survival in question each day, then each breath is precious, and with each breath we can say, thanks for such wondrous blessings. These are the blessings that make life possible.

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.

Gimme

Gimme

More Money, More Money.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

One Of The Pathways In The Woods,

One Must Traverse

To Knock On My ‘Door’.

Proverbs 15:16

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.

Hebrews 13:5

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’

…

Words of Grace For Today

A person came knocking on my door today. Not that it’s really a door, although at one point, before someone had it replaced it stood for a door, with a sliding window, probably a screen (though there’s no sign of what happened to it), even having been scratched by a dog to get out. But now it’s mounted on a wood shipping pallet, at 90⁰ to another door which stands in for a wall, stabilizing this ‘door’, with a shipping pallet on the other side, also at 90⁰ for stability. Insulated tarps are taped and stapled around the door, for those are the real walls of this place that is as much as anything that I have to call home. I live in the woods, under lots of tarps or all kinds, wood pallets as floors and walls, and no connection to the electric grid, or natural gas, or TV, or even a proper driveway. It’s just a string of pathways through the woods to get here.

She came knocking, wanting a donation for the poor. How she managed to find this place is beyond me. How she could not notice that this is how a person below poor is struggling to live, not by choice, but by necessity to survive.

I told her I would appreciate a donation for the poor, me, if that could be possible.

She laughed, and said we are all struggling.

I guess she really did not understand what she saw or heard.

…

A person came knocking on my neighbour’s door. How she found the door I’m not sure, because there is fence all around the property and an electric gate that is kept locked that the drive passes through. It’s not even got a ‘man’ gate for a person to go through. My neighbour has the best car and truck, and mower, and snow clearing tractor (a skid steer on tracks) that are all kept in proper garages for each.

She told me he said he was struggling and did not have any donations for the poor. He had to pay for 3 months in rehab for his son, a drug addict from too little responsibility, too much money, and not enough necessity to work to make a living … and too much playing with his ‘friends’, the addicts that he started hanging with in school because he was bored.

…

A person will come knocking on your door, asking for a donation for the poor. How will you respond?

…

She really is just asking for money for herself. She’s convinced that being a multimillionaire is not enough, that she is poor, that she needs help, with groceries costing more and all now. She’s even had to cut back on her vacation trips. She can only manage 6 each year. She used to go somewhere every month, either for work or play; but both are really just play. The work trips just have a few hours of meetings during them.

So how should one respond?

With pity, condemnation, confrontation, or anger?

Money represents and provides one the ability to exercise one’s will, first to survive, then to excel in luxury and comforts. The problem is once one exercises one’s will for luxuries and comforts there is never enough money to keep up with one’s thirst for more.

Better to make due with little, than be cursed with so much one always needs yet more.