Brown's Daily Word 2-28-11

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the last day of February, 2011. Our daughter Laureen traveled to Boston this weekend to take our grand daughter Micah, who came down with us to spend a few days here in New York, home. Laureen will be driving back to New York today. Jessica and Tom have gone to Panama for a short vacation. Jessica wrote me a note saying it was in the 90's in Panama.
The Lord blessed us with a full weekend of worship, praise, and fellowship. It is a huge blessing to be in the House of the Lord with His people to worship the Lord of lords and the King of kings.
Every time I read the story about Father Maximillian Kolbe I am provoked to love the Lord and serve Him with greater obedience. Father Maximillian Kolbe was forty-five years old in the early autumn of 1939 when the Nazis invaded his homeland. He was a Polish monk who founded the Knights of the Immaculate, a Franciscan order whose headquarters was in Niepokalanow, a village near Warsaw. There 762 priests and lay brothers lived in the largest friary in the world. Father Kolbe presided over Niepokalanow with a combination of industry, joy, love, and humor that made him beloved by the plain-spoken brethren there.
On September 1, 1939, the Nazi blitzkrieg broke over Poland. The skies above Niepokalanow were filled with bombers on their way east toward Warsaw. Soon however, Niepokalanow itself was the target. As flames roared in the night and glass shattered, the brothers in the friary prayed. On September 19, a group of Germans arrived at Niepokalanow on motorcycles and arrested Father Kolbe and all but two of his friars. The monks were loaded into trucks, then into livestock wagons, and two days later arrived in Amtitz, a prison camp.
Within a few weeks the brothers were released from prison and headed back to the friary. Sensing the anxiety of some of the brothers, Father Kolbe gathered a group of them before a chalkboard. "I insist that you become saints," Kolbe said with a smile, "and great saints! Does that surprise you? But remember, my children, that holiness is not a luxury, but a simple duty. It is Jesus who told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. So do not think it is such a difficult thing; actually, it is a very simple mathematical problem." On the blackboard he wrote "w = W," grinning widely as he did so. "A very clear formula, don't you agree? The little 'w' stands for my will, the capital 'W' for the will of God. When the two wills run counter to each other, you have the cross. Do you want to get rid of the cross? Then your will be identified with the will of God, who wants you to be saints. Isn't that simple? Now all you must do is obey!"
At nine o'clock on the morning of February 17, Father Kolbe was again arrested by the Nazi SS. After being held in Nazi prisons for several months, Father Kolbe was found guilty of the crime of publishing unapproved materials and sentenced to Auschwitz. Upon his arrival at the camp in May 1941, an SS officer informed him that the life expectancy of priests there was about a month.
Years of slim rations and overwork at Niepokalanow had already weakened Kolbe. Now, under a load of wood, he staggered and collapsed. Officers converged on him, kicking him with their shiny leather boots and beating him with whips. He was stretched out on a pile of wood, dealt fifty lashes; then shoved into a ditch, covered with branches, and left for dead. Miraculously Father Kolbe recovered from the beating and was later moved to another barracks and reassigned to different work. All the while he continued to minister to his fellow prisoners. As Father Kolbe would work with the prisoners he would raise his emaciated arm and make the sign of the cross. Each time he thought to himself,
"The cross. Christ's cross has triumphed over its enemies in every age. I believe, in the end, even in these darkest days of Poland, the cross will triumph over the swastika. I pray I can be faithful to that end."
One morning when Father Kolbe was roused from bed there was a tension in the air. After roll call, Camp Commandant Fritsch ordered the dismissal of all but Barracks 14. While the rest of the camp went about its duties, the prisoners from Barracks 14 stood motionless in line. They waited, hours passed. The summer sun beat down. Some fainted and were dragged away. Some swayed in place but held on; those the SS officers beat with the butts of their guns. Father Kolbe, by some miracle, stayed on his feet, his posture as straight as his resolve.
By evening roll call the commandant was ready to levy sentence. The other prisoners had returned from their day of slave labor, now he could make a lesson out of the fate of this miserable barracks. Fritsch began to speak, the veins in his thick neck standing out with rage. "The fugitive has not been found," he screamed. "Ten of you will die for him in the starvation bunker. Next time, twenty will be condemned." The prisoners were terrified. There was nothing worse than the starvation bunker. Anything was better - death on the gallows, a bullet in the head at the Wall of Death, or even the gas chambers. All those were quick, even humane, compared to Nazi starvation, for they denied you water as well as food. The prisoners had heard stories from the starvation bunker in the basement of Barracks 11. They said the condemned didn't even look like human beings after a day or two. They frightened even the guards.
Commandant Fritsch walked the rows of prisoners choosing the ten that he wanted to die. After the ten had been chosen the cry rang out, "My poor children! My wife! What will they do?" "Take off your shoes!" the commandant yelled at the condemned. Suddenly there was a commotion in the ranks. A prisoner had broken out of line, calling for the commandant. It was unheard of to leave the ranks, let alone address a Nazi officer; it was cause for execution. "What does this Polish pig want of me?" Fritsch yelled.
The prisoners gasped. It was their beloved Father Kolbe, the priest who shared his last crust, who comforted the dying, who heard their confessions and nourished their souls. Not Father Kolbe! The frail priest spoke softly, even calmly, to the Nazi butcher. "I would like to die in place of one of the men you condemned." Fritsch stared at the prisoner #16670. "Why?" he snapped. Father Kolbe said, "I am an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose." His ploy triggered the response he was hoping for. Fritsch asked, "In whose place do you want to die?" "For that one," Kolbe responded, pointing to the weeping prisoner who had bemoaned his wife and children. Fritsch glanced at the weeping prisoner. He did look stronger than this tattered #16670 before him. For the first and last time, the commandant looked Kolbe in the eye. "Who are you?" he asked. The prisoner looked back at him, a strange fire in his dark eyes. "I am a Catholic priest."
The commandant ordered his assistant to replace the weeping man with Father Kolbe and the men were led away to the starvation bunker. As the condemned men entered Barracks 11, guards roughly pushed them down the stairs to the basement. "Remove your clothes!" shouted an officer. Christ died on the cross naked, Father Kolbe thought as he took off his pants and thin shirt. "It is only fitting that I suffer as He suffered to gain the glory He gained."
As the hours and days passed, however, the camp became aware of something extraordinary happening in the death cell. Past prisoners had spent their dying days howling, attacking one another, clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair.
But now, coming from the death box, those outside heard the faint sounds of singing. For this time the prisoners had a shepherd to gently lead them through the shadows of the valley of death, pointing them to the Great Shepherd. And perhaps for that reason Father Kolbe was the last to die.
On August 14, 1941, there were four prisoners still alive in the bunker, and it was needed for new occupants. A German doctor named Boch descended the steps of Barracks 11, four syringes in his hand. Several SS troopers and Brono Borgowiec were with him - the former to observe and the latter to carry out the bodies. When they swung the bunker door open, there, in the light of their flashlight, they saw Father Kolbe, a living skeleton, propped against one wall. His head was inclined a bit to the left. He had a ghost of smile on his lips and his eyes wide open, fixed on some faraway vision. He did not move.
The other three prisoners were on the floor, unconscious but alive. The doctor took care of them first, then, in a moment, Father Kolbe was dead. (The above story was taken from Chuck Colson's book, The Body."
The story of Father Maximilian Kolbe embodies the teachings of love taught by Jesus. Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends." Father Kolbe was not a man who had a death wish, he was a man whose will was to respond to the needs of those around him as Jesus, his Savior, would respond. As a result, he offered his life for another.
In 1 John 3:11-24. it is written, "This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have the confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. (1 John 3:11-24 NIV)
In Christ,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qEjRLlL9iE
PRAYER (traditional language)
Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, after the examples of thy servants Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer; that we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church. Endicott
53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott.
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott


Saturday February 26, 2011
6PM Coffee Fellowship

6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music: Laureen Naik
Speaker: Rev. Brown Naik