Dark and Light – Page 7

Delivered

From Our Enemies (Mostly Us)

Friday, March 31, 2023

Our Paths Are Never Without The Shadows of

…

our own evils.

Judges 3:9

But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

Luke 1:68

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.

Words of Grace For Today

God delivers us

mostly from ourselves

as the agents of evil that permeates all our lives

in surprising and oft denied ways so that we may too easily think all is coming up roses

when in reality the things we do stink more than the sewage pipe from the city dwellers before the first treatment plant.

Which is to say, collectively we make quite a stinking mess of the world.

Lately we see how the world comes back on us and all life, trying to stop us from destroying everything. Wild climate change storms and events that threaten all life on earth.

What are we thinking

other than only for ourselves, the future be damned.

Well it is. The future is quite damned by what we do and fail to do.

We need a saviour, not so simply as a warrior to defeat the enemy soldiers attacking us to rule over us and make us slaves.

No, this saviour needs to save us from ourselves. From our greed, avarice, and wilfulness that leaves us willing to destroy others (and ourselves and all our futures) just so that today (and a few of our tomorrows) may be ours to ‘enjoy’ in comfort.

Ahh! What was God thinking when God created us so capable of such destruction and evil …

if not

that God also created us capable of equally such great love, care, respect, and goodness.

Today, which will we choose to live out?

Welcome

Brilliant Light?

Monday, March 27, 2023

Brilliant Light Is Only Welcomed

By Those Who Have Nothing

To Hide.

Psalms 48:11

Let Mount Zion be glad, let the towns of Judah rejoice because of your judgments.

Matthew 10:7

As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Words of Grace For Today

God’s judgments are good news for those whom God does not condemn. Since God turns right-side-up the world’s upside-down way of living to gain for one’s self at others’ expense, those who have ‘succeeded’ and found a life of privilege, power, and comfort for themselves will be condemned. They will lose all their privilege, power, and comfort – indeed all their life – for eternity when God judges them. Those who the ‘succeeders’ have put down, cast out, and sucked the life out of, those people will gain a place in God’s Kingdom for eternity. They will live forever as God’s own children.

If Zion and the towns of Judah are to rejoice because of God’s judgments, then it must be that they have suffered while others have sucked life out of them.

God’s judgments are good news. But they are not good news for everyone!

Proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near, may indeed be good news, but those who do not recognize their own terrible sins will be caught, and for them it’s not good news.

The thing that is terrible is that many people who suck life out of others know full well what God’s judgment against them will be. They also know full well that anyone proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is come near is not proclaiming any good news for them.

Watch out proclaimers of ‘good news’ for the privileged, powerful, and comfortable will do everything possible to stop the proclamation. Taking life is a regular venture for them.

Who could have guessed that proclaiming good news to all people would put one’s life at such risk?

Anyone who reads the Gospel,

and gives God thanks for the saints who have gone before us.

Today: more proclaiming the good news is our task, ready of not!

Conflict

Resolution-ers?

Saturday, March 25, 2023

We All Throw Shadows In the Brilliance of Christ’s Light!

What Effect Does Our Shadow Have On Others?

Proverbs 16:32

One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.

Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Words of Grace For Today

The basic human attitude when we allow ourselves to become wholly unsure of ourselves or anxious is to become angry. Well not in one step without options. We can count to 10 or 90, breathe, and subvert the panic. We can learn to acknowledge hurt, even hurt when we know the source as another human, and then divert our impetus to anger in more constructive, less destructive (to others and ourselves) attitudes.

We can learn, guided by the Holy Spirit and the saints, to be peacemakers for ourselves, turning what could become anger and escalating internal and external conflict, into a peaceful manner of living with all the hurts, disappointments, attacks, and great losses that life and other people will throw at us.

As we learn this, and practice it, for no one is ever perfect in maintaining even one’s own peace, then we can reach out to others caught in anger, anxiety, pain, loss and others attacked by other people; we can, by God’s Grace alone, guide them to find peace with themselves and with all life offers, both good and bad.

The world needs peace, as desperately now as ever.

How will we hang on to truth and share peace this day, even with our enemies?

More Light work for the saints.

TRUTH

Seekers or Spinners?

Friday, March 24, 2023

He was Certainly Not Blind.

Are We?

Jeremiah 35:14

The command has been carried out that Jonadab son of Rechab gave to his descendants to drink no wine; and they drink none to this day, for they have obeyed their ancestor’s command. But I myself have spoken to you persistently, and you have not obeyed me.

Luke 11:28

But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Words of Grace For Today

God speaks.

Some obey, others not.

Well, some try to obey, and everyone fails. That’s human nature.

From CBC Ideas: About 2,500 years ago, Thucydides travelled ancient Greece, gathering stories about a brutal war that plunged the ancient world into chaos. He set high standards for accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness in his reporting.

His observations, so different compared to the ‘histories’ told as legends and myths, biased towards the speaker-author’s loyalties, are worth hearing any time, and surely today as ‘fake news’ and ‘spin’ and destorying of so many people polarize the populous into camps deaf-to-the-heart to each other.

First would be the horror that he saw every human would descend to preemptively commit murder and destruction against an ‘enemy’, even if it were a previously good neighbour or child or parent. When law is laid waste by corruption from within or out right destruction leaving all sense of security spinning in the wind for every person, then every person is easily capable of the worst atrocities. For 27.5 years the Peloponnesian War pitted not only Sparta and Athens against each other, but they drew every city-state into the fray. 27.5 years of horror and in the end the result was the destruction of every city.

That’s the result of humans ‘not obeying’.

That’s the result of ‘fake news’ and polarized citizens.

That’s the result of little and big lies accepted and created by Courts as facts, for it corrupts all of society’s trust in the law to maintain order, especially the trust of those who benefit from the corruption of the law by the Courts.

That’s the result of every little lie told out of greed, avarice, covetousness, hatred, fear, and revenge.

Where are today’s Thucydides, tellers of accurate, objective, and thorough stories reporting real events, and us little people dedicated to truth at all costs?

What will we be today?

Truth seekers and tellers?

Spinners and corrupters of truth?

Blessed are those who God helps to find and to hold on to the truth, one day at a time.

My Life

For a Light!

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Just a little light can make a big difference.

And God’s Light

Makes ALL the Difference

in the World.

Isaiah 66:18E

For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory,

2 Corinthians 4:6

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are three ways (maybe among many others) that we take to deal with darkness in and around us:

1) we shine a light into it to change it.

2) we wallow in the darkness as if it were all we have or could have.

3) we deny the darkness and bruise our shines over and over again until we die, having bled out from our open shine wounds we cannot see in the darkness and refuse to acknowledge, for fear we will have to admit we are in the darkness, or worse: that we are the darkness.

What do we do, though, when we do not have a light, and we know the darkness too well to either deny it or be willing to wallow in it?

We trust that God will bring the light that we cannot find, shine it in the darkness and in our darkness, and as painful and disgusting as it may be to see what up until then festered in the dark, God also brings forgiveness, renewal, and a mission for us: to share the light with everyone caught in darkness.

Light work for this day as well, ready or not.

Blessings and Curses

As God Chooses … … … Graciously!

Monday, March 13, 2023

God’s Light Shines!

No Matter What Obstacles Stand

Between Us

God’s Light Shines Also

For Us Each and All!

Psalms 115:2-3

Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.

Acts of the Apostles 17:30

While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Words of Grace For Today

A sensitive, and creative pastor came to visit on his rounds, first Sheila and then Roxy that seventh day. He started, as always, by reading the 23^rd Psalm to each woman. He went on to explain that God worked in mysterious ways for all of us. God knows we all sin. God calls us to repent, and God knows we may or may not repent, but all of us will return to sin.

And God planned for that, too.

So God always offers us a new beginning, a beginning without the burden of our sins of the past, without the burden of others’ sins, with an assurance of God’s blessings, not because we earn them, but simply because God so chooses to be gracious to us, especially when we do not deserve anything good!

As the women in turn started to tell him the barest of details about their situation he realized they had much in common yet they were so different. So he arranged for the women to share a room when they were moved out of the ICU that afternoon.

After they were both moved into the room, monitors still hooked up to each, both now able to talk and move slowly, the torrent of conversation, anger, grace, and love started to flow between the women, and eventually their few guests, long abandoned family and friends.

So much for obeying God’s commandments in order to be blessed or disobeying to be cursed.

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Our days, whether we obey or disobey God, whether we humbly repent or remain stubborn and proud, will be determined by what God chooses for us. And God chooses that we will be so blessed without rhyme or reasons.

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

And yes, God planned for that, too.

Blessings

By obeying?

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Think We Can Find Our Way To God’s Light

Passed All Obstructions?

Think Again!

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

John 15:10

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Words of Grace For Today

Sheila worked hard every day as a nurse, and made sure she took at least one day of rest per week, when she recuperated, worshipped with the Eucharist, and prayed. Her prayers also included assembling a list of things she was thankful for that she would read each morning before even getting out of bed and people she would find time to pray for each day.

She knew that she ‘abided’ in God’s love, and that obeying God’s commandments she was blessed, and certainly not cursed. She had given up on all her family and friends, one by one, as they did not ‘obey’ God’s commandments to her standards.

Then …

Sheila had a small seizure on her way to work after weeks of 16 hour work days and a small celebration with ice cream cake the night before for her 35^th birthday. It wasn’t a big seizure. Just long enough that she veered into an oncoming semi. Both were only going 50 kph, but it was enough. She woke up days later in the hospital, not working as a nurse, but as a patient in the ICU.

After the first long and dreadful chaos and confusion of getting her bearings and understanding that she could not move her legs or her arms, panic set in and she understood from the inside what a curse was. That barely subsided through the whole 7 days it took before she was finally able to speak her first word, and ask what had happened to her.

So much for obeying God’s commandments and avoiding curses!

God planned for that, too.

For us? Yes, for us, too!

Will we notice?

That’s the challenge of each day.

What Are We Doing

To God?

Monday, March 6, 2023

Not the Poorest,

Still With Candles For Light,

We Celebrate Being Alive

Zechariah 2:12

The Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.

Matthew 25:40

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Words of Grace For Today

As we do to the least of these, you have done it to me!

So God gives notice that God accompanies even the poorest, most ignored, the most denigrated of the people on earth.

And what we do to them, we do to God.

Offer them mercy, kindness, love, and one’s ear, and so it is that we will hear God.

Offer them condemnation, cruelty, hatred, and one’s cold shoulder, and so it is that we turn a cold shoulder to God.

We might hope that God would respond in kind to all those who exercise evil against the poor, and us among them.

Doch, God is merciful and loving towards all people, even the most evil, waiting and hoping they will know God’s presence, grace, and judgment to be everything that makes life worth living.

What will you evil people do this day to God and God’s poor people? Will we be among the evil ones?

Or will we celebrate God’s presence with kindness and mercy towards all people?

Be

To Me, That I May Be

Friday, March 3, 2023

God Gives Us Wide Horizons,

And Paths To Follow the Saints,

to the Light

Psalms 31:9

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.

Ephesians 1:18

so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,

Words of Grace For Today

The greatest distress that any human can face (since it covers for so many lesser distresses as well) is to not be,

to not be seen,

to not be heard,

to not be known,

to not be remembered,

to not be loved,

to not be anything at all.

…

God promises to protect us from the evil that would make this be for us.

God sees us.

God hears us.

God knows us.

God remembers us.

God loves us.

And God makes sure we are something to God, and

that many other people

see, hear, know, remember, and love us.

And God sends us out to see, hear, know, remember, and love all people,

so not one person need cry

Lord, see me, hear me, know me, remember me, love me.

Makes for a full day every day, and a full life lived,

when we work so that all people are seen, heard, known, remembered, and …

most of all …

loved.

Trust

Because God is Faithful

Thursday, March 2, 2023

No Matter the Way Ahead,

Dark or Steep,

God Walks With Us

Genesis 28:15

Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

Words of Grace For Today

As people born of this world and living in the world we are the problem. That was Lucy’s wisdom for Charlie Brown, and for us. Lucy did not have a solution.

A museum near Niagara Falls holds displays about Blondin. He was a tight-rope walker, who set up his high wire over Niagara Falls. On the day of his show a huge crowd gathered. He began by crossing over and back, carrying his balancing pole above the deadly waters. The crowd cheered loudly. Next, he set a table and chair at mid-wire, and perched there, drinking a cup of tea, with death far beneath him. Again, the crowd went wild.

After several progressively more difficult tricks, Blondin filled a wheelbarrow with water. Amazingly he piloted it over and back and not a drop spilled. He then asked the crowd, how many of you believe that I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow? As one the crowd raised their hands crying “I do!”

“All right,” he said. “Who’s first?” … The crowd went stark quiet.

That’s the difference between belief and trust.

God sends Abram, Sarai, and us into the unknown. Do we trust God enough to go? Do we trust God enough that we are born from above? Disciplining ourselves into a spiritual life will never be enough, though.

The problem remains that we are us. Neither our self-chosen belief nor our self-built trust saves us, especially when God sends us out into the unknown.

God planned for that, too. Jesus tells us, as he did Nicodemus that God gives birth to us again, this time it is a ‘birth from above’. God solves the problem of us being us. God gives us a new origin, new honour, a new ending, and a new way to live. Actually none of it’s new. This is how God created us to be. God doesn’t want us to be different than ourselves. God wants us to be who we really are, God’s own people. Trusting God always.

We trust God because God is faithful. We trust God because God is always with us, and when God promises to bring us home, it will be so, even if we have no home here on earth.

So on with this day, this blessed day, with opportunities to be blessings to others, as God created us to be.