Chaos? Or Giving?

Tuesday 3 January 2023

The clouds cover the light into the future.

Where shall we turn for life?

Psalms 119:154

Plead my cause and redeem me; give me life according to your promise.

2 Thessalonians 3:3

But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

Words of Grace For Today

Look around and there is not much ‘good news’ out there.

The unjustifiable war in Ukraine continues with civilians and cities targeted for wholesale destruction.

Europe faces a winter without enough natural gas to stay warm and running at full capacity.

The snow pack is a deep as it was at the end of February last winter and last winter it was the most we’d had for a while. Great for skiing and snowmobiling, but hard on snow clearing budgets and especially the snow clearing budgets that only consist of arm and back power to cover kilometre long driveways.

Covid continues to kill people and combined with the flu and colds and RSV emergency rooms are overfilled and hospitals are going into the third year of overcapacity resulting in staff shortages burning out the staff that are there.

Climate change (an example is the snow pack) promises more storms of all kinds and a few new ones tossed into the mix, more disruptions, more destruction, and a cycle where last year’s extremes are this year’s normals and this year’s extremes become normals next year, until one wonders what normal will look like!

While the causes by ‘big business’ are significant, the message is clear that we, the everyday little people, contribute massively and therefore we are guilty, guilty, guilty for not stopping the progress of climate change long ago when dealing with it were possible. Now we are left with guilt and trying to mitigate, minimize, and survive, if we can.

And, if one cares to pay attention, the Devil is playing the board as freely as ever. Fake news, lies in everyday life, and manipulations for power and control over others is rampant. Try to be one who does not participate and people will see you as vulnerable and gang up on you. The attacks may be violent and obvious, or subtle and deadly nonetheless!

It has been like this in every generation (with different flavours and crises), so much so that the Psalmist could write words thousands of years ago that fit our guilt-ridden, fright-filled, weather stricken mornings very well:

Plead my cause and redeem me; give me life according to your promise.

We know that God promises us life, but it seems that life has just fallen out of our reach yet again, and the best we can do is submit to the chaos, and live as long and well as we can, taking what we can while we can, no matter what it costs others!

Oh, the temptations of the Devil are so powerful. They promise ‘good life’ and deliver death for more and more people.

Our only hope is as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians so many years ago, that

the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen us and guard us from the evil one.

With a quiet, breathless prayer of thanks, we submit, not to the empty promises of chaos, but the blessings of God that are given to us to be shared with others.

Now that’ll give us a full day, a busy week, and a wonder filled year.

Mercy Me!

Monday 2 January 2023

A New Day,

A New Year,

Same Mercy and Grace

Sustain Us.

Jeremiah 31:20

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child I delight in? As often as I speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore I am deeply moved for him; I will surely have mercy on him, Says the Lord.

Ephesians 2:4-5

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Words of Grace For Today

New Year’s Resolutions are already being broken around the world. Old sins have accumulated and weighed people down to the point they see no other way ahead than to sin more and more as if digging themselves out of it all, when they actually are digging themselves deeper and deeper into the excrement of sins from generations upon generations.

And how does God deal with this, yet again?

God points out our sins!

And

God is merciful and gracious: God forgives us and frees us from the burdens of broken resolutions and accumulations of sins and sins’ excrementations.

And

God delights in us, as we move forward, not free from sin, but able to be saints in this chaos of life on this precious planet.

And

God adopts us as God’s own children, blesses us beyond our wildest imaginations, and sends us out

to share this mercy and grace with all other people.

Another day beginning another year, come what may, God is ready to walk with us through it all.

Fog? That Changes God Not!

Sunday 1 January 2023

In the Fog of Life,

We too easily think

We are Lost,

But God Is With Us!

Psalms 42:2

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

Matthew 7:8

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Words of Grace For Today

As those who would destroy us attack, and the challenges of each day overwhelm us – yet again – it is easy to think that God is not anywhere to be found, that one needs God to show God’s face in order to find our way into the next day.

God’s promise may be that if we ask we will receive, if we search we will find, if we knock the door will be opened, and …

and still God seems so far,

our enemies seem so strong,

and the challenges do not get easier, and they become seemingly insurmountable.

…

It is a different day indeed that we live, as the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to recognize that God is already here, walking through all the challenges with us, and facing down our enemies with a simply word.

So God is with us, each and every day, to the dismay of our enemies, and to the delight of all who know God also walks with them!

Last Stand, Forever Secure

Saturday 31 December 2022

As Sentinels

Against All That Would Do Us Harm,

God Stands

Day and Night

By Us!

Zechariah 9:8

Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them, for now I have seen with my own eyes.

Romans 8:31-32

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

Words of Grace For Today

Looking back at the year bygones and all

I wonder

what will become of

today?

all daze?

looking at the weather

or not to travel on gravel

to the bench the Judge wants order

is not something possible in this world

ways I’ve decided are not to be trusted

thoughts one cannot know so much

is out of my hands

Oi vey! my hands are sore

no more.

…

So we look to a new year, just like the last,

Knowing that God not only walks with us,

but is encamped with us, protected as a guard the doorways,

to the camp and our lives,

so that those set on destroying us

devil and all

will not prevail

not even in the new year.

We will continue to enjoy God’s blessings beyond imagination,

given to us, not earned, signs of God’s grace for others to see that God is gracious to all people,

blessing that cannot be bought with money or time:

love, hope, peace, joy, faith, fullness of life, and purpose.

Sabbath Solution

Friday 30 December 2022

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht,

known professionally as Bertolt Brecht,

was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet.

Exodus 20:9-10

For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

Mark 2:27

Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath;’

Words of Grace For Today

Give me a break!

It is all too common that humans turn things around backwards, inside out, and upside down in order to have their way with other people, usually to control them as a means of holding power, so to speak.

It’s not new. The Sabbath for humans, or humans to serve the Sabbath?

The government to serve the people, or the people to serve the government?

“Die Lösung” ([diː ˈløːzʊŋ], “The Solution”) is a famous satirical German poem by Bertolt Brecht about the East German uprising of 1953. Written in mid-1953, it is critical of the government and was not published at the time. It was first published in 1959 in the West German newspaper Die Welt.

Die Lösung

Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni

Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands

In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen

Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk

Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe

Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit

zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da

Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung

Löste das Volk auf und

Wählte ein anderes?

…

Translated:

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th of June

The Secretary of the Writers’ Union

Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee

Which stated that the people

Had squandered the confidence of the government

And could only win it back

By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case

Be simpler for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

(from Wikipedia)

Vacillations

Thursday 29 December 2022

Whether By Night

Or By Day,

The Beauty Is God’s,

The Pollution

From Making Power for Our Insatiable Striving to Control Our World

is Ours

Numbers 23:19

God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?

2 Corinthians 1:19

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’

Words of Grace For Today

God is not human, vacillating with first this Word and then later a contrary Word, always indecision reflected as the inability to know and control what is to come. Rather God is Omniscient and All Powerful so that God’s Words and Promises are sure, to be trusted, and thus

we are to live accordingly.

Or else!

Right?

Not really. Not really at all, at all.

For God did become human, in Jesus, and in him Paul says all things are always Yes – not vacillating between Yes and No. Paul asserts this when he was caught out by having told the Corinthians of his plans to return to Corinth and then his actually not returning by choice or due to things beyond his control. Paul wants to reestablish his trustworthiness to the Corinthians by pointing out that Paul is, like Jesus, always trustworthy, though not in this case! And, if we are honest, it is never the case for any human.

Though some people intentionally lie and are very predictable in that they will do you harm if it is to their advantage, there is not a person ever who can know the future and control it, try as many may.

So we are left vacillating between our yes’s and our no’s and seem to be untrustworthy and out of control. That chaos evil people take advantage of, manipulating others’ destruction and their advantage.

And that is just how it is,

Right?

Not at all, not at all.

For God’s Word is sure, and while we must not comply with God’s Word, and in fact are woefully incapable of doing so consistently,

By God’s grace and by God’s grace alone, we get to live according to God’s Word, not that it ‘works to our advantage’

but in order that we are examples of how God works with woeful sinners like us, like you, like us all.

What Awaits Us?

How Shall We Proceed?

Wednesday 28 December 2022

As Time Moves On, As Seasons Come to an End, As Canoeing Ended and the Snows Began, So On This Day What Comes to an End?

Psalms 42:12

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

2 Corinthians 3:12

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,

Words of Grace For Today

Looking,

Looking where?

Looking back, forward, in depth, inward, to the stars?

In the in between time we look where it counts:

to God

for hope,

and love,

and life,

and purpose,

and direction, also for this day.

Though hope is based on nothing tangible, and while living based on nothing tangible is foolhardy,

nevertheless we proceed with boldness in everything we do,

for our hope is based on what is not tangible, but what is infallible, and the source of the only security available to any human in life: God’s Word.

So let the day bring what it will, we will hope

to respond with the same Grace God shows us each day.

And

that is a good ending to any year, day, moment, and even life, if that is what awaits us.

Mystery of Between Time

Tuesday 27 December 2022

In All That Is,

We Find Ourselves

In The Between

Jeremiah 31:28

And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.

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.

Words of Grace For Today

This is the time outside of time,

as it were.

Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, a week of extra-ordinary time.

Time to contemplate the wonder of Christmas, Jesus born as one of us, giving us a clear story of God with us.

Time to remember who we are, and whose we are, and what wondrous, loving, and gracious things God has done for us great sinners to make us saints.

Time to remember the stories that make us live as we do, humble, generous, loving, and bringing wondrous news to all people: that God is for us!

God, the judge of all able to destroy all evil, relents and graciously moves us to plant and build today for a future for all people.

God provides this time for us to wait, again, for a new beginning, just as we sleep at night each night, waiting and trusting that God will forgive us that day’s sins and create in us clean hearts for the start of each new day, and each new year.

Time between,

Time between us being irrational people caught by emotions that confuse and mislead us, between that and rational minds that have no room for wonder and grace, and between all that (and more that we humans are in our feeble ways) and

the miracle that is God knowing us completely, choosing us, forgiving us, renewing us, calling and sending us out to share God’s Good News, the story of Jesus for us, and then God walking with us come what may.

Time

Time between

Time between the mundane and the mystery,

Time to be miracles of God’s making, living with emotions and using rational thought, and surrendering both to the mystery that is life, and God for us in this life.

God Works Not With Perfect

but with us.

Monday 26 December 2022

We’d Like to Think We Are Perfect

And Others Make the Pollution For God to Deal With!

…

…

But If We Look Up Close and Are Honest

We Are Also So Broken,

and Only By Grace Do We Live,

But Oh How We Live

Blessed By God’s Grace.

First Kings 8:66

On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went to their tents, joyful and in good spirits because of all the goodness that the Lord had shown to his servant David and to his people Israel.

Luke 2:16-17

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;

Words of Grace For Today

God Speaks,

Things Happen,

Unexpected, Inexplicable, Wondrous Things.

God Acts,

which is the same as God speaking!

And we are astounded (if we care to notice at all) how God works in and among and for the poor, the outcasts, the lowest of the lowest, and the least remarkable people on earth to carry a message of Grace, Love, and Peace,

from God to us all.

Like shepherds, we get to go

to go out

to go out and tell the world

what great goodness, mercy, and blessings God has shown us

simple

poor

outcast

broken and sinful

folk.

Well, Whadaya Know?

Sunday 25 December 2022

Fresh Christmas Snow Covers the Ground

as Grey Covers the Skies,

Yet Bright is Christ’s Light This Day.

Joshua 24:23

He said, ‘Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.’

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ways to orient one’s life,

only one is a living God, born among us to poor parents, from a most unabashedly scandalous pregnancy, and heralded by the lowest of the lowest of society.

Thus it is we are thought to be fools, and yet we continue as servants to the poor, the sick, the needy, the imprisoned. We continue to humbly begin our ways in the world remembering not our own greatness, but God’s in dealing with our great sins. We continue to live in a peace from out of time and place while conflicts storm around us. We continue to effect change, not through power, might, and force, but through humility, compassion, love, and forgiveness.

We continue.

We continue to live life to it’s fullest, sharing that fullness with all we encounter.

The snow may be fresh, but our orientation in life is as old as the universe: it is God-given from the beginning

and the Word

was made

flesh

to

live among us.