dark, low clouds, rainy

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Think and speak for yourself; myself, in our developing political climate, I find this collect terrifying. But again, myself, as we sink into the darkness, I'm thankful to be the age I am, and to have lived in America's Time in the sun. At least, sun for me as a White American Male. For many Americans, it was just starting to get light. 

The experience and lesson of human history is that every empire has its Time and then falls; either collapses fairly peaceably as the British Empire and the Soviet Union, or is brought down forcibly as the Roman Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Third Reich; but falls. 

Were those falls a divine bringing about? IDK, who can say? In each case and Time, the empire was marked and marred by the human cruelty that's an inevitable blemish of power gone mad. Meanness and bullying starts with targeting the most vulnerable and spreads until everyone is vulnerable. The meanness becomes a right and joy of the powerful, to whom compassion is weakness. 

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Monday morning early, still dark outside. Low, black clouds. Rainy weather overnight, 7H porch is wet with standing water. Grant your people grace to love what you command: what do we believe our God commands? lovingkindness.

RSF&PTL

T89&c