Category: Sacramental Mystic

Bullies and Liars

Come in All Sizes

Saturday, June 10, 2023

God’s Grace Meets Us All!

Can You See It?

..

OR

…

Do We Need To

Zoom In Closer?

Jeremiah 31:25

I will satisfy the weary, and all who are faint I will replenish.

Matthew 5:3

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Words of Grace For Today

Driving to town at 80 kph two vehicles passed me and an RCMP patrol car pulled up behind me. A few minutes later it turned on its lights. I pulled over, with a bit of pre-PTSD rising in me that I stuffed down. As I waited, I pulled out my Driver’s License, Registration and insurance papers so the cop could not accuse me of reaching for what? Something to threaten with?

He arrived behind the driver’s window, which I had rolled down as I saw him approach. “How are you, today?” “I was doing fine.” “Do you know why I stopped you.” “Not a clue.”

M. Tobias went on to say that the speed limit was 100 and I was going 80. That lots of cars were piled up behind me. That I was impeding traffic.

I told him in no uncertain terms the reason I was going 80 was because I was broke. I didn’t bother filling in that I am broke in large part because the RCMP had harassed me and aided my ex in sending me to jail for a crime that never happened. I have filed a 50 page complaint with the RCMP detailing their harassment, warning them that their sins are bound and if they bother me again I will sue them for harassment.

He asked for and took my papers. When he returned he handed me a print out of a warning. He threatened that it would be entered on my record.

I told him that neither going 80 nor being broke are crimes. I warned him in no uncertain terms that he was harassing me and I would sue him if he continued.

Later I noted that he had not indicated how I had ‘impeded traffic’ nor that I was going 80 kph. No doubt because if he did it would make him look like the fool and bully that he is.

I guess I should be more poor in spirit, not able to know when I’m being bullied and harassed, know when a cop is full of it, and not be so able to state my case clearly … then I’d be in the poor of spirit that God blesses, because

…

this flagrant abuse by a cop is not the first nor the last time cops will be fools and bullies, harass innocent people, and abuse their power, and

being the focus of that abuse is no blessing.

Or is it?

I was not able to work the rest of the day. That’s the PTSD running loose on my edges wiping out all concentration needed to work.

But I did get some badly needed rest. And when I cleared my mind of the event, I indeed was able to see how replenished I was, how God had indeed restored me to a peaceful heart, mind, and soul. Which was needed to deal with my ex’s lawyers either blatant incompetence or malicious malfeasance (not following a judge’s order and improperly filling out and sending a form to me that attempted to undermine the effect of the order).

I guess bullies, fools, and evil hearts will always be a part of one’s life. The question is how one responds.

God help us all, for as God must need respond graciously to our foolishness and sins, so we need help to extend that same grace to others.

But will that help M. Tobias stop bullying people and actually do the work he should be doing, like dealing with the real crimes that are committed on a regular basis around where I live: all the drinking and driving and tossing the cans out, cooking drugs in the campground, or cutting down living trees to make the ‘roadways’ wider, or camping for months and that within 30 metres of the lake (illegal in all of Canada!)

We can only pray, and hope that God will tend to our hearts, minds, and bodies.

When the red and blue lights stopped me, I was on my way to the food bank. That cop stop cost me another $3 or so; every trip to town is another $25, $30 if I go over 80 or ‘gun it’ out of the stop signs/lights. So how many cop-stops does it take to make a trip to the food bank impossible because I don’t have the money to pay for the trip?

Thankfully God walks with me, and suffers everything that lawyers, cops, and everyone else does to me; so I am not alone, nor deserted. I am accompanied and given help and hope that does not fail.

How’s your day looking? Ready to be challenged by people doing evil things, grounded in God’s presence, and humble but not defeated by evil?

Have at it. God protects us.

Cursed Days?

Doch, Blessed.

Friday, June 9, 2023

Threatened By Smoke,

Yet My Days Are Wondrously and Remarkably

(and inexplicably)

Clear!

Yours?

Deuteronomy 23:5

Yet the Lord your God refused to heed Balaam; the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.

2 Peter 3:15

and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him,

Words of Grace For Today

Now it is not great when one’s enemies join together to give voice to and worse to effect a curse against one continuing to live in peace and even to continue to breathe at all.

God does not work magic to save us. Sometimes it may indeed seem that God barely works at all. Yet God does work and work grace and blessings for us.

Because God walks with us, we trust that any curse spoken or attempted against us will be turned into a blessing, just as God turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing. Thus living and breathing will continue to be wondrous for us.

Today also, each challenge is not our undoing, but cause for us to give thanks, for as many challenges as we face, God gives us the ability to overcome them.

So we live, content, giving God thanks for everything that provides life for us, most of all, God’s presence each day.

From Dirt

And Living Only By God’s Breath

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Dirt

Sand

Under Water,

Not Much More Are We …

Genesis 2:19-20

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.

Luke 12:6

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.

Words of Grace For Today

In this second creation of story, God creates all the animals out of the ground, just as the human was created. Into the clay formed as a person, God breathes spirit and life into the dirt to bring it to life.

What a way to come into being.

And it ought to humble us greatly, to remember that we are formed from the dirt, and only God’s breath makes us more than just dirt.

And though we and the sparrows are created from dirt, God does not forget us.

Being remembered every day by God, and to be remembered with grace and love, provides hope that does not diminish.

What a way to start, continue, and live each day.

Onwards

With Thanks

Monday, June 5, 2023

More Sure

Than the North Star

and the Little Dipper,

God Walks With Us

Isaiah 38:19

The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day; fathers make known to children your faithfulness.

Colossians 2:6-7

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Words of Grace For Today

And on life goes. Not easy. Not like in the past.

Not when we have climate change: wildfires and smoke, storms of vicious power, floods, droughts, and denials that it is anything more than natural evolution as in the distant past.

Life, in the present moment, always has enough challenges to make it seem that life was never this hard, not for us or anyone in the past.

Then we need only remember the difficulty of hauling water, jug by jug, on one’s head, as our ancestors had need to do, until horses, cattle, and donkeys were tamed enough to use as beasts of burden for us. So many other comforts that we take for granted make life so much easier for us than many alive even today. These comforts were beyond any imagination for most humans who ever lived.

So life may not be more difficult.

Yet the truth is comforts and difficulties are not the true measure of life’s difficulties.

Being alone, that is the constant through all of human history and even today which makes every challenge of life extreme, and sometimes impossible. Even hermits and recluses through the ages have found life possible by knowing that God walks with them. While most humans rely on other humans to be with them, to ease the burdens of life, many as they are; hermits who are mystics (and all who take their baptisms seriously) know that the only true companion is God.

Some will say that ‘the blues’, the bottle, or their dog is their only true friend. God though is not limited in anyway. When God walks with us, then come what may, we know how to give thanks. Thanks that overflows, even amidst the most difficult times.

Even today, come what may, we give thanks, and pass on this true assurance of life’s goodness to our children, so that in generations to come, they may face each day, knowing they are not alone.

Rest,

Rest Easy

Sunday, June 4, 2023

A rose,

beginning to bud,

bringing God’s beauty

to be seeable.

Psalm 145:17

The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings.

Philippians 1:6

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

While the world churns out trouble,

and we each and each contribute enough ourselves,

God is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, just in all judgements, not biased by lies or deceptions to gain undeserved advantages while stealing life from others. God sees all. Knows all, Judges all. And if our sins are not bound then we can count on God’s grace to save us.

But …

When they are bound, then who knows, for God will judge also knowing that we had warning and time for the amendment of our lives. What then does a just judge do?

For us blessed by God to be God’s own children, we trust that God will carry to completion the work that God has begun in us, to redeem us, sanctify us and equip us to be God’s emissaries of Good News on earth.

For us, life is all about seeing what God has in store for us; like a rose beginning to bud, God is about bringing great beauty and wonder into our worlds. Do we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to celebrate it?

When It All Hits

The Proverbial Fan …

Friday, June 2, 2023

Red Beauty?

Or Fire Burning Us Out?

Or Smoke

Taking Our Breath Away?

Haggai 2:9

The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.

Colossians 3:15

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Words of Grace For Today

When, though one knows one has done everything possible to make things right, it all hits the fan and gets blown to bits, one has to ask, why?

Happens to all of us, some more than others, always too often.

So how do we proceed through our days, having this happen to us, and knowing it will surely happen again?

Shall we resign, capitulate, and end our days in despair?

Shall we rise up to fight more viciously than ever imagined – hard for pacifists to fight, yet alone viciously – but shall we abandon being pacifists all together and fight like everyone else, and be more vicious now so that we can win, finally!?

Shall we plod on, actually or pretending not to notice how others run us over like bugs on the road of life?

Thankfully God knew it would be like this for us.

God sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit (all God, Three in One, anyway) to demonstrate life on earth for us, and to guide us with God’s power of self-sacrificial love through all that comes our way.

This provides an unwavering peace, the peace of Christ, that we can claim for ourselves at all times, in any circumstance, no matter who stands against us.

Further, though we may fear the result of all the things we have lost as we move forward in our days breathing, God promises that what is taken will be not only replaced (better than insurance of any kind) but that what we receive will be of far greater value. God’s gifts are always greater and more precious than any thing could be.

Today, ask for peace. It is ours. Trust God’s promises, they are sure. Never are we bereft of life’s best and most precious. God sees to that.

Yearning

Deeply

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Looking Up,

and Seeing

the Star

Above the Setting Moon.

Isaiah 25:8

… he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

Philippians 3:10-11

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Words of Grace For Today

I want to know …

Such yearning.

Such yearning that changes the taste and scents of each day, each hour, each minute.

I want to know … but what do we want to know?

So much of life is filled with yearning for the comforts (or things towards comforts) and pleasures that this life offers only with such wiffs, and then they are taken from us, often destroying our ability to yearn with clarity for what will bring health and life.

I want to know … Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.

Now that is something unlike other yearnings, for it is not for comforts or improvements or anything quickly withering into the evening fog. This yearning to know Christ, the power of his resurrection and (then comes the key to it all – the all that is life and death and existence itself) the sharing of Christ’s sufferings.

That is the key to life: to know Christ by sharing in his suffering. His sufferings were unearned, but offered in order that others might live, and live free and abundantly.

This yearning takes us outside ourselves and extends all that we are toward giving to others; giving everything we can to as many other people as we can so that more and more people will know the power of Christ’s resurrection in their own lives (the hope that moves us beyond living waiting for death).

This yearning is to see that God with a word, has wiped away our tears and disgrace, and the tears and disgrace of all people, and replaced it with the joy and thanksgiving of living fuelled by the power of Christ: self-sacrificial, unconditional love for all people.

May that be our days, and this day. Our hours, and this hour.

One Day

One Day At A Time

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Waiting …

Waiting …

Waiting …

for the New Day

Of Hope Colours.

Psalm 30:11-12

You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Hope.

Hope lives despite the current circumstances that provide no basis for believing that things will get better as time progresses.

Hope.

Hope is that our mourning (for all that once was is now gone, and all the dreams of what could be have vanished with the setting sun coloured by smoke from fires that have burned so much) will be turned to dancing, that our despair (at how the world treats everyone as if we were all commodities) will be turned to joy overflowing, that the gloom of deceit (that steals the healing power of love from us all) will be turned to peace in our hearts and in our lands.

Hope.

Hope fuels the world, and it does not contribute to pollution, deprivations, or global warming.

Hope.

Hope seems too far to achieve, or climb to, or build it from the debris that remain.

Hope.

With grateful hearts, even in the deepest of our despair, we know that hope is ours, not because we possess it, but because God sends the Holy Spirit to give it to us fresh, like the morning dew in the mountain meadow as the sun rises between the green slopes lining the horizon.

Hope.

Hope is fresh, also this day, and our hearts overflow with thanks.

For without hope all would be lost, and the first to to be lost is always truth followed by love.

Hope.

Hope arrives, uninvited, colouring our hours, again this day.

The Doer

And the Pretenders

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Who Are We To Say We Make Anything Happen?

God Makes Even the Moonlight

to Have Colour.

Numbers 11:23

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’

Matthew 18:19

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.

Words of Grace For Today

There is great power that we humans exercise. We make decisions and plans. Then we go about executing them.

Huge holes are dug and parks established in them. Mountains and plains are excavated for minerals, coal and gravel. Skyscrapers are built that reach high into the sky, standing against wind, rain, storm and most everything (but not airplanes crashed into them.)

All that we do makes us feel powerful.

Yet what we do, even if two or three gather in Jesus’ name to agree on what to ask God for, we are not the ones who do it. God is.

We fool ourselves when we think we do anything good that God has not made possible for us to do.

God is the doer.

We are the pretenders and sometimes even stewards, acknowledging that God is in control, and we ‘work’ on God’s behalf.

Were that it were always so … and more so.

Why not today?

Taking Ownership

(Really!??)

Monday, May 29, 2023

Who Can Say

They Own

This Tree and the Snow On It?

Haggai 2:8

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.

Acts of the Apostles 4:32

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.

Words of Grace For Today

That God owns the precious metals, and they do not belong to any human is quite the thought. As is the report that the early Christians were of ‘one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.’

We may wish that things were so, but even among Christians, things are given value and claimed to be owned by individuals. Oh, sure, for periods of time ownership may be shared or given over to an entity representing the whole group (as in communes like the Hutterites) but us humans always strive to have it for ourselves. It is not easy for most of us to simply share all we have, and it is even harder for us to share everything with a large group all the time. It just does not happen.

The difficulty with making a claim that God owns all the precious metals (gold and silver are just two of many) is that it starts with the premise that some metals are more precious than others. That degree of preciousness is a human construct. We are the ones who say that silver and gold, platinum and rare-earth metals are more valuable than just plain dirt and rocks. And we are the ones who give an upgraded value to concrete, sand, oil, gas, (and on goes the list).

So when we say that all the gold and silver (and all the precious metals and elements) belong to God, we start by acknowledging and giving assent to the claim that some things are more valuable than others.

Everything belongs to God.

Even we belong to God.

The rest of what is on earth is all stewardship, not ownership. But we quickly ‘forget’ that we are mere ‘renters’ on this earth.

The proper perspective is that we are stewards, providing care for what is God’s. And God has always wanted us to share with everyone, so everyone has enough to live abundantly.

We only sort of imitate that with our ‘good deeds’ and charity. If we could actually share with everyone, holding everything in common with all other people, the world would look entirely different, and we would live differently.

We pray that this day we can do another bit of imitating Christ, giving to those in need.