Living Word

...from ...Baptized We Live; Lutheranism as a Way of Life: Daniel Erlander, 12
Living Word is the "Address" That Creates Change.
Living Word is like the plea of an old-fashioned young man on his knees asking a young woman to marry him.  She realizes that her affirmative response to this "address" will change the rest of her life.
When Jesus confronted the fishermen with the two words, "Follow me," they realized that an affirmative response to this "address" would change the rest of their lives.  This was Living Word!
Jesus told parables as a way of confronting the hearers with the Living Word.  Parables were not intended to serve as "packages" for rligious propositions but as HEARING EVENTS -- stories which would gently break into the hearts of the people demanding and creating change.
I am still pondering the people whose paths I crossed today.  How many of them have heard the "address"?  How can you tell if/when someone says "yes"?

Genesis 44

...I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father...
Have you ever not said something because you knew that the other person would not listen, or would manipulate the words to mean something completely different? That would have been the gracious thing to do, but no, I opened my mouth to share a piece of motherly wisdom.  A whole bunch of "Charlie Brown hearing wonh-wonh-wohn from the adults" later, and I wish I had taken the high road, the grace filled road.  Perhaps grace will resurrect one day in the ears of my daughter at a point where her brain retrieves the truth passed on.

new words

GLOCAL: the relationship between our local culture and the emerging global culture. A word worth pondering.Is there grace to be found in this relationship?

Genesis 43

...God be gracious to you my son. ...
Prayers were said along my journey today...blessings asked for a man who looked so sad, for a woman weighed down bags and seemingly unsure where she wanted to go, for a woman who fell while ice skating, for a number of people who came up in Tweets.
to those I met today, those mentioned and all others, to those who read this post:
God be gracious to you my son.  God be gracious to you my daughter. 

Genesis 42

...Why do you keep looking at one another?...
This reminds me a lot of people, often times church communities.  We know what should or could be done, but instead look at each other, or more often the floor, hoping someone else will get on with the task.  In Genesis 42 Jacob is sending his sons to Egypt to get food due to a long famine -yes it will be a long journey, yes it could be dangerous-but there is potential life at the end of the trip, rather than the present death they are living in. To move from what one knows -even if it means certain death -to risk hard work, a long journey, and life itself; to embrace potential life, in a form yet unknown....when one takes this step that is grace.

Genesis 41

...The seven years of plenty that the land of Egypt had enjoyed came to an end, and the seven years of famine began...
I have never experienced famine.  Sure I have been hungry, but never suffering from famine.  Perhaps famine in my life comes in other ways.  Today I sat at the hospital with one of my children, now it was a short visit -in and out in two hours.  Famine was confronted in my ache to take away my child's pain, and the pain of all the crying babies in the ward.  Famine was confronted in the having to let go, be out of control, and let morning ministry slip away....grace came through this because I was embrassed and filled by a love so deep, I would not have wanted to be anywhere else than with my child.

Genesis 40

...It is God who gives the ability to interpret dreams. Tell me your dreams. ...
Grace is the open door.
Throughout the day the church door has been open for people to come and go for a 24hour House of Prayer event.  This event is co-ordinated by someone from outside of the church and it has been such a blessing for us! 
The building was alive today and still is alive at this moment!
Over a dozen people have come in and out to pray since 9am.  The quilting group met -with a person joining us from another community.  The treasurer and assistant treasurer were here.  A girl walked in off the street to see if there was enough kitchen space for her and some friends to break bread.  A friend from Dartmouth popped in.  One person who came to pray, commented that the Lutherans are one rocking group of Christians. Tonight prayer continues, church council meets, the All Nations Full Gospel church comes for Bible Study, and the Venturers have their meeting. 
This place is alive!!!  The face of Christ is present among us!!!
This is grace!!!

Two grace thoughts today:
One Blackberry phones are grace when all the other computers in one's house are in the shop.
Two, being with a group of people and being told that your words were grace.
God works in mysterious ways!

Genesis 39

...but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favour in the sight of the chief jailer...
Grace came in the loving words of a fellow skater today.  I have been going for weeks, every Monday for an hour.  Today one of the gentlemen, who is always there, came over while I was taking my skates off.  He offered words of encouragement:  "you are a good skater and have been getting better every week."
I didn't know this guy, other than seeing him at the arena on Mondays.  He is a good skater.  It was nice of him to go out of his way and make my day.

theatre

Children enthralled by the theatre. Their giggles and ohhs and ahhs. Innocence. Enjoyment just because. Grace.

Genesis 38

...it happened at that time...
In 1945, just before the liberation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was being held in the prison at Flossenburg Germany.  His last weeks were spent with men and women from a wide range of nationalities.  As written in the introduction to his work Life Together, Doberstein quotes an English officer:
Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive....He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near....On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us.  He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprionment, the thoughts and the resolutions it had brought us.  He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered.  They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us."  That had only one meaning for all prisoners ---the gallows.  We said good-by to him.  He took me asde: "This is the end, but for me iis the beginning of life."  The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.
The text on which he spoke on that last day was "With his stripes are we healed."
Grace in Word and deed.

Genesis 37

...meanwhile the Midianites had sold him (Joseph) in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captian of the guard...   GRACE to come later in this story

Today was one appointment after another, all held in the sitting area in the church nursery.  That means comfy leather couches...which I don't usually find comfy but today enjoyed sitting in.  After each appointment there was a space of about 10minutes.  It was so quiet and restful.  I breathed it in and was rejuvenated for the next encounter of Christ in the eyes of the one looking back at me.

Genesis 36

...They took their names from the places where they settled...
To be part of the place where one lives, that is grace. To feel in tune with the neighbourhood, the culture, and the spirit of a place. I like this passage from Genesis because taking the names of the place means a willingness to be apart of what is happening in that place. I would say being apart of what God is doing in that place. Living in any place, when one opens their eyes to life around them
, is an invitation to see God and be part of grace.

forget-full-ness

Yes forgetting was the fullness of grace today. I almost forgot to post a blog and a couple other things too. It is grace because I did very little today and felt no guilt! Amazing! This is the first
full day off in weeks. Forgetting jobs yet to be done, things I could do, ought to do...this was a blessing.

road trip

Yesterday my van quit, on the transcanada hwy. out of my home province. CAA was a place of grace to call. I was in tandum with a friend who returned to pick me up. A day where grace came with a whole lot of help from my friends, and some kind strangers.

Genesis 35

...Jacob set up a memorial stone and consecrated it by pouring wine and olive oil on it....
There are moments in our lives that are consecrated, in a way, through the engagement of our senses.  Grace came to me today wafting on the warming spring air.  First, it was the coffee roasting house down the road...that rich dark long roasted smell.  Ummm!  Second, and thankfully later in the day was the smell of beer being brewed at Oland's.
Why are these smells grace?  The smells capture my spirit and make me breathe in deeper, and deeper.  Ahhh.  A moment of repose in a flurry of getting from one place to another.

Genesis 34

...we can not let our sister be treated like a common whore...
It has come to the point where I usually only read the comments under the pictures in the newspaper and of course, the comics.  One deed written about in the paper, judged to be bad in my books, leads to another and another.  What is right and wrong, moral or ethical?  The news is depressing. 
Morning to morning I find grace shown in the snippets of every day life made funny, through the quips in the comics.  Often I find that I am laughing at myself.

At the doctor with a man who is scared. He's in with the doctor now. The grace for him, and me, was watching him watcg the children sitting across from us -they kept his mind off of his discomfort. Grace is found in a delightful way,

new beginning

Grace in new technology. Trying this out for the first time. Calling it "hoping into hope".

EASTER

...Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed, Alleluia!...
What a celebration!   Vibrant singing.  Suits and dresses. Flowers. Excitement, perhaps brought on by too much chocolate or coffee.  But my favourite part of the service, of the whole day in fact -was celebrating Eucharist...Christ's meal....with cinnamon rolls and pink champagne.  When the cork popped the ahhh, the laughter, the kids chasing after it.  We celebrated -with the "good stuff"!  And why not Christ is alive.

Good Friday

In the neighbourhood, a small group of disciples gathered and walked.  Carrying a large wooden cross, shared from shoulder to shoulder, prayers were said at various places along the way.  Prayers for the nursing home and those who work there, for the men who sleep in the park and live out of the garbage, for small businesses, for those living in the area, for green spaces, etc.

Jesus prayed in the garden.  This group of disciples prayed in the garden of the world in which they live and move every day of the week.  The prayers were for community, realtionship, and justice.

It was dreary and damp...drizzling.  It was a quiet walk that was a reminder that we are separated from God and from the people/creation around us.  It was a time to give thanks and offer up the neighbourhood, ourselves...to Jesus who died for all.  This is grace!

Genesis 33

....Brother I have plenty. Keep what you have....

Grace in bareness...a fiery promise of hope.