Sacramental Mystic – Page 7

Who Is

On Call?

Saturday, July 15, 2023

The Weeds Produce Beauty, Without Our Intervention or Work.

God’s Greatest Miracles Require Lots of Our Work!

Genesis 31:42

If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked you last night.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

Words of Grace For Today

Work, in vain or not, there is always plenty of it for us sinner-saints, working in the church (the hospital for sinners) and without (the hospital for everyone.)

The Missionary Picnics

When I was young we went to the Lutheran missionary picnic each summer in Como Lake Park in St. Paul, Minnesota. We went because my father had heard a presentation when he was a teenager about how the Lutheran Church needed medical missionaries. So he went to medical school, did his residency and applied. They took a year to figure out what to do with him. By the time they figured out to send him to Tanganyika I was born and then one younger sister. Four years late we returned, my father deathly ill or we would have stayed. So each summer our family packed up for the picnic.

Attending were just us 11 kids, 2 parents, and between 20 to 30 other smaller families. Everyone brought their own plates, cups, silverware, food to share in pots, water melon to cut, and drinks. For our family the drink was always 2 or 3 A&W root beer in 1 gallon glass jugs, which we poured into cups held in one hand, by holding the jug with your index finger on the other hand in the round handle just big enough for one finger, flipping the jug around to support the body of the jug in the crook of your elbow.

There were prayers and singing, and always lots of stories to share of the missionaries still in the field, and from missionaries on furlough, and families like ours having returned years ago. And then finally a knife would slice the watermelon and we kids would have spitting contests to see who could spit a seed the furthest.

Afterwards we collected all the garbage (there wasn’t that much since there were no disposable dishes or silverware or cups), and all us kids were sent with small bags around the whole area to pick up garbage, leaving it cleaner than when we arrived. We didn’t bother with the watermelon seeds and I never saw watermelon growing there the following years.

This in Como Park, along the lake, with the picnic tables under tin roofs, plenty of garbage cans for clean up, washrooms sufficient, the golf course across road, and the fair grounds and the zoo a bit further away through the tree covered residential areas.

On August 6 we will read from Matthew 14 how Jesus and the disciples go into the wilderness. To be alone. No picnic tables. No facilities. No golf course. No houses nearby. No zoo, no fairgrounds.

But 5000 men and more women and children arrive. Jesus went to be alone to grieve John’s death at the hands of Herod. Yet Jesus has compassion on the huge crowd. Jesus heals their illnesses. (In Mark Jesus teaches them. In Luke Jesus does both!)

Then the disciples note that the people are hungry. Their solution is to have Jesus send them to the nearest towns. Let the imperial economy deal with them.

Jesus, instead, puts the 12 disciples to work. Handing out meagre rations that … turn out to be more than plenty! Afterwards on call again, this time for clean up, the disciples collect up 12 baskets of leftovers, one for each disciple. Lots of work handing out food to 5000 men and more women and children!

Imagine that for us today! If we can?

The other feast

Herod, in Matthew just before Jesus miraculous feeding of more than 5000, holds a feast to celebrate his own birthday. What a difference!

Herod fears the crowd (v. 5) and what his guests might think of him if he goes back on his word (v. 9). Jesus has compassion and cares for the crowd (v. 14), even though they had interrupted his desire to be alone, probably to grieve the death of John (13a).

Herod is tricked into putting John to death (v. 10). Jesus provides life by curing the sick (v. 14) and feeding the hungry (v. 19).

Boring (Matthew, New Interpreters Bible) states that these two stories are a “contrast between the two kingdoms” [p. 323]. Carter (Matthew and the Margins) goes further and states:

“Jesus’ act attacks the injustice of the sinful imperial system which ensures that the urban elite are well fed at the expense of the poor (Aristides, Roman Oration 11; Tacitus, Ann 2.33; 3.53-54). Jesus enacts an alternative system marked by compassion, sufficiency and shared resources.” [p. 305]

Lots of the ideas are from Stoffregen Matthew 14.13-21 Proper 13 – Year A at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt14x13.htm

What does God have for us today? Receiving the benefits of a few miracles? Or have we already received those and God will call on us to be on duty, to feed the hungry and clean up afterwards?

The bottom line is truth: “Divine miracles can require a lot of human work.”

Seeing

The Light

Friday, July 14, 2023

Looking To The Stars …

Deuteronomy 14:2

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

… for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

The James Webb Space Telescope looks into the universe, back in time, displaying light of many kinds captured, processed, and presented to us in our visible spectrum of light and colour, in our time.

It’s images have changed our view of the universe around us, all around us, and in that we have come to know ourselves differently.

Yet, we are the same.

We are the same God chosen, blessed people.

We are the same God chosen, people of the Light and Colour.

(See https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/james-webb-telescope-marks-1-year-of-peering-into-far-corners-of-the-universe-1.6904609 for details of each photo, including credits, a series that summarizes the first year’s photos from the JWST.)

You Call THIS

Being Saved?!

Thursday, July 13, 2023

The Path Ahead May Not Seem Inviting,

But God Walks With Us

So Nothing

Can Take God’s Blessings

From Us.

Genesis 37:22

Reuben said to his bothers, ‘Shed no blood; throw him (Joseph) into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him’—that Reuben might rescue Joseph out of their hand and restore him to his father.

1 Thessalonians 5:15

See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Words of Grace For Today

Bad things happen.

Bad things happen every day.

Bad thing happen every day to all kinds of people.

Bad things happen every day to all kinds of people who do not deserve any of it.

Bad things happen every day to all kinds of people who do not deserve any of it, not at all, not at all.

God rarely saves us from the trials of life, even the bad things that happen to us that we do not deserve, not at all, not at all.

God often saves us from the trials of life (even the bad things that happen to us that we do not deserve, not at all, not at all) just not in the ways we expect.

God often saves us from the trials of life and sends us down paths that we will have a hard time recognizing as ‘paths of being saved’.

Joseph’s brothers gang up on him. He’s done enough arrogant things, belittling them, gaining (undeservedly) their father’s favour (at the apparent cost to his brothers), and living an easier life than his older brothers … Joseph has done enough to earn his brothers’ ire. They are about to kill him.

Why not? The world is rough and violent, with many vicious animals that could easily have killed their runt brother. They can get away with it.

But Reuben is not quite on board with the killing or the ganging up. He counsels throwing Joseph into a pit and leaving him to die. That way Reuben can return, save him, his brothers will not know, and all will be well.

Then along comes a caravan of traders on camels, and Joseph is sold into slavery.

God saves Joseph.

Not quite the saving we would imagine, though, this slavery bit.

The rest of the story unfolds. We know it as history.

How many times does God save us, but looking into our futures we do not see it as saving at all!

Yet, God’s story unfolds. We are the characters.

Can we learn to be honest, faithful, and wise slaves to Christ?

All in a day, in the life of God’s saints, the people God saves,

Again and again and again.

Sweet Jesus?

Or Christ Crucified!

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

You Can Call It What You Want.

It’s Still A Rabbit, and Always Will Be,

Until It’s a Meal.

Some Things Are Obvious,

When We Aren’t Playing Games On Ourselves.

Joel 2:17

Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, “Where is their God?” ’

Titus 2:14

Christ it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Words of Grace For Today

‘There’s enough sugar in that bowl to power a train from here to Toronto.’

That could be said of a lot of breakfast bowls.

It won’t make it true.

But it could be said, given how much sugar is packed into cereals these days.

It is as if the cereal companies and us eating them are trying to make our worlds a little sweeter … any way we can

even if it makes us foolish and fat, over-feeding our frenzy for sweetness.

These efforts of our may well be sublimated attempts on our part to make up for our inability to set ourselves right with God and God’s creation.

The only answer for that un-rightness is in God’s own work to reach us, so Jesus, the Christ, is born, teaches and reaches out to us hoi-poloi, heals us of every ill, equips us with unimaginable gifts, and sends us out to share those with other people, others of the masses of hurting humanity, so desperately trying to set themselves right with

…

well, many don’t even know what with.

The ‘priests can cry in between vestibules and the altars’ all they are won’t. Such are their efforts.

The people will none the less cry “Where is their God?”

For it is all too easy to let God’s works go unnoticed, if we are on the train to ‘making the world sweet’ for ourselves.

We do not need to share more ‘sweetness’ with others.

We can share God’s gifts that heal our every ill, give us renewed life, and set us on a mission like no other.

It’s not Mission Impossible, though sometimes it is a mission unimaginable, like reaching out with kindness to the very enemies who would do us in.

Eating cereal for breakfast with berries is simple. Cutting the grass may be needed. Sharing God’s gifts … well that’s out of this world and sometimes seems crazier than anything else we’ve seen or heard of

unless we read of the saints, who have done it all before.

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.

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!)

Skipping

Into The Day

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Learning From the Sun,

Which Even On Smoky Days,

Skips Across the Evening Waters,

Our Days Begin With Celebrations: 1, 2, 3 …

Jeremiah 8:4

You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When people fall, do they not get up again? If they go astray, do they not turn back?

1 Timothy 1:12

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service,

Words of Grace For Today

People fall.

People fall often, sometimes physically, more often psychologically and even more often spiritually.

Getting up again, well that is not always a simple matter.

We’d like to simply say, yes we all get back up. Well-being is restored to us and we walk tall and healthy, full of vigour and vitality.

But it just ain’t so.

Most of us walk wounded, stooped over or even crawling from day to day. And all of us will some day not ever again get up, and we hope that someone will honour us enough to lay us in a grave.

While we breathe, wounded or stooped over, we know that God walks with us and gives us strength for this day, and each new day we breathe. We do not deserve such grace. We count on such grace.

With Timothy we give God thanks, for all the strength we need God provides, and when we need added support, God carries us through the hellish days we find ourselves in, until we come out the other side into the light of love, hope, and grace.

As we can then, we take time to skip into a waltz or two step, celebrating all that God does for us, thanking God for such undeserved gifts.

Dreams

And DREAMS

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Dreams Draw Us

Through the Fog of the Future

Into Many New and Wondrous Days

Psalm 138:2

I bow down towards your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness; for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Words of Grace For Today

I have a dream

I have a dream: I have a dream that one day I will live in peace, away from the chaos of people, industry, and commerce.

I have a dream. I have a dream that I will own land as far as the eye can see, with lakes and mountains, where I can travel to camp among the wonders of creation, in solitude and in peace.

I have a dream. I have a dream that my home will have a zero carbon footprint, with solar, wind, and hydro power abundant, with insulation and design to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and be built to last for more than two hundred years.

I have a dream that fresh water in will be filtered and fed under pressure by gravity so that no pumps are needed to provide water, and that waste water will flow out by gravity power alone so that no pumps are needed.

I have a dream that I will have an airplane powered by electricity from my carbon-free power generation, with skis in the winter so I can visit remote places with a camera.

I have a dream that my friends will come to visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that I will actually have friends, at least two or three. I have a dream that my family will come and visit once a year, gathering in campers and guests cabins near my home. I have a dream that at least a few of my family will actually be kind and honest, and that they will be the ones to visit and the others will come only every ten or twenty years to visit, if then.

I have a dream.

I have a dream, but I know God has other plans, at least God certainly has so far in my 60 plus years on this earth and there’s not much time to make any part of my dream come true, so what am I to do?

Knowing that I am born anew, not of perishable things but of the eternal Word of God I know God’s Word creates dreams for me.

So I have these other dreams. They grow from God’s faithfulness and steadfast love, from God’s Word of grace for me and for others, and they guide me to find the peace of God in the chaos of people, politics, conflicts, and storms. God’s Word guides me to value, more than my dream for myself, the peace that I can offer to others. God’s Word inspires me to take photos of where I live, to show people the beauty of creation that they often miss seeing: like a bright yellow flower in the meadow that belongs to a tenacious, invasive species of weed, like the play of light at 4 am as the sun rises above the smoke beyond the foothills seen from a mountain meadow (which is hardly a meadow since it’s a decommissioned oil well site,) like the trickle of water sliding down the rope holding the tarp in place over my ‘home’, a camper, a tarp that leaks so that the water drips everywhere, just not yet inside the camper, like the creek flowing in just one spot amidst the curves of snowbanks at -30⁰ just beyond the dry road to town that the grasshoppers own in the summer.

God’s Word guides me to write as I can, words that share the Good News of God’s steadfast, unconditional love for us all, words that inspire people to remember God’s dreams for us, for us all.

Beauty

In All Creation

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

God Makes Even Weeds to Reflect God’s Beauty.

Isaiah 49:26

I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine. Then all flesh shall know that I am the Lord your Saviour, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Words of Grace For Today

Gruesome. That’s what the Isaiah passage starts out with. Just Gruesome images of revenge on the oppressors.

Gruesome use of power, and that power is God’s power, imagined as revenge and destruction of evil people.

Jesus says that power and all authority to use it is his. He though is not about to do the gruesome revenge thing. Instead he uses the power of self-sacrificial love, unconditional love, especially for the sick oppressors. With that power he not only makes such gruesome punishment unnecessary, he wins the hearts and minds of all people.

And indeed all people will know the power of God, but not as gruesome to be feared, but loving and kind, merciful and gracious, to be feared by evil (especially the evil in us that would be gruesome) and loved by all.

If we want to take power into our hands to force things to be, then God is not for us, but walks with us to entice us down another way of life.

Living as Jesus’ disciples though is as challenging as ever, for we cannot hide in ourselves, among ourselves, safe in our small worlds. Jesus sends us out into the world.

And that is where we make a difference, not gruesomely so, but lovingly and kindly so.

The End

To Everything Will Come

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Don’t Be Foolishly Fooled;

Even the Sun

and It’s Setting

Will Come to an End.

Habakkuk 2:3

For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.

1 Peter 4:7-8

The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.

Words of Grace For Today

Knowing that ‘this too will pass’, can often be a comforting bit of wisdom to remember.

This grief

– after the death of a loved one,

– after a loss of a relationship,

– after the loss of health and abilities,

– after the loss of dreams and hope itself,

(all kinds of grief) will also pass.

The excitement of celebrations, tainted

– by family and/or friends who are not at all kind,

– the reminder of loved ones not present,

– the burdens, past and future, such celebration puts on daily life and/or daily survival,

– one’s own inability to actually eat or dance or talk with others,

(all kinds of celebrations, tainted or not) will also pass.

This life, too often aptly described as hard, brutish, and short, will also pass.

Knowing that everything will pass, eventually, even breath itself, helps keep us focused on what really matters,

… well sometimes it does.

Sometimes we just focus on trying to ‘beat’ time and ‘cheat’ death and ‘get more out of life’.

When we realize that God walks with us through everything that will pass then it is easier (as the Holy Spirit guides and enables us) to see how precious it all is,

even that person who is not at all kind,

even the grief from a loss, that gives witness to how precious who/what was lost really was,

even the celebration that we cannot fully participate in, is precious, and worth participating in as we can.

Each day, each hour, each minute there are so many things that are precious, and

if / when we realize this,

we can take the good and the bad

as precious gifts from God

which gives our hearts, minds and strength the most precious things of all, faith, hope and love:

faith that God created us and walks with us,

hope that the future will be precious as well as each minute now is,

and love for God, God’s people, and all of God’s creatures and creation.

And that can make for some interesting, challenging and rewarding time,

like today.