Brown's Daily Word 4-13-12

Good morning,

Praise the Lord for this Friday of Eastertide. Alice and I had planned to go to Boston this week to visit Micah, Simeon, and Ada. Alice drove to Boston Monday, where she stayed busy, spoiling our grandchildren.

I stayed back home to share in a service of death and resurrection on Tuesday. The service was for a woman who died on Maundy Thursday at the age of 83. It was a beautiful service of celebration and thanksgiving for Dorothy. The women of the church prepared and served a delicious dinner before the funeral. This is the first funeral service I have performed where the meal was served before the service. During the service her son, her son-in law, and one of her grand daughters spoke tenderly and beautifully. Praise the Lord for the way we can face death and celebrate life in Christ in the face of cruel death because of Risen Christ who makes all things beautiful in His time.

Alice drove back home yesterday with Micah and Simeon. It is a delight to have Micah and Simeon with us here in New York. They live in the city of Boston. We live in the open country. I call them our "Fresh Air Kids". Last night we took Micah for our evening walk. It was beautiful evening with brilliant sky. The stars and the planets made their debut suddenly and brilliantly. Micah knows many of her stars and planets. She was pointing out to us the locations of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus.

Simeon is into the history surrounding the Titanic. While he was sharing with me about Titanic, I said that Titanic sank in 1912. Simeon said yes, it was 100 years ago. During our evening walk I asked Micah what Easter is about. She said, in very adult language: The Resurrection of Jesus".

As I was writing this devotion this morning I had a call from India informing me that one of my childhood friends died this morning. We were friends from the second grade through college. He was brilliant in math and the sciences. The Lord had raised him to be one of the highest ranking officers in the government. He had a heart of compassion and mercy. We had corresponded last Christmas and I had a chance to talk with him on the telephone just a few weeks ago. He was blessed with two sons and two grandsons. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints".

In a movie that some of my family loved, “Life Is Beautiful”, nominated in 1998 for an Academy Award as Best Picture, the main character, Guido, is placed in a concentration camp by the Nazis. Guido and his son, who is with him, pretend for his son that this horrible place is a game, with rules, so that his son doesn’t get too frightened. It is truly amazing how he turns this very horrible place into a place in which his son is playing hide and seek from the Nazis, and to see something funny in the way the soldiers interact with each other. Guido is such a positive and hopeful man that he brings laughter to his son and to other inmates in the concentration camp.

There are times when we can also have our own “concentration camp of troubles.” It’s definitely not the same as the concentration camps that the Jewish people were placed in, which is a horror, but there are times when we are placed in greater pain and hardships than other times or other people. Though to a lesser extent, we may be trapped in our own little “concentration camps of troubles.” In those times the Risen Savior still comes to us and helps us to go through it, when we open our eyes and heart to him and seek him. When we begin to see that there is actually a light in every dark place, life is beautiful. Concentration camps are not beautiful, but Jesus is beautiful, and when He is alongside of us in life, in concentration camps, life can still be beautiful. The reason we can say life is beautiful is because of the resurrection of Christ.

Jesus rose triumphantly from death and grave. His resurrection means that in this world there is something greater than death and troubles. His resurrection means that God is greater than death, that there is hope in despair, that there is comfort in sorrows, that there is the Risen Saviour in this world. We can have troubles, we can despair and feel sorrow – we will all have them and feel them at some times, even Christians - but with Christ we can go on and even go on strongly after that.

For those who are still in the darkness, who don’t have Christ yet in their lves , there is still hope for them. If we repent of our sins and come to Christ now, then we can experience the light of Christ even more dramatically because of the years lived in darkness, because the contrast is greater.

This can be illustrated by the life of a man named Bob Edens. “For 51 years Bob Edens was blind. He couldn’t see a thing. His world was a black hall of sounds and smells. He felt his way through five decades of darkness. And then, he could see. A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight. He found it overwhelming. ‘I never would have dreamed that yellow is so ... yellow,’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t have the words. I am amazed by yellow. But red is my favorite color. I just can’t believe red. I can see the shape of the moon - and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapor trail. And of course, sunrises and sunsets. And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light. You could never know how wonderful everything is” (Max Lucado, God Came Near, Multnomah Press, 1987, p. 13., )

Red is the best color because it is the color of Christ’s blood. With his blood he has paid for your sins. “Life is beautiful.”

In Him who makes all things beautiful.

Brown

http://youtu.be/E2KNvuscKRA



Friday April 13, 2012

Television Outreach

Time Warner Cable Channel 4

Time 7:00 PM





Saturday Evening Worship Service:

Location: First United Methodist Church

53 McKinley Avenue

Endicott, NY

Sponsored by: Union Center United Methodist Church

Time: 6:00 PM gathering for Coffee Fellowship

6:30 PM Worship Service

Date: Saturday, April 14, 2012

Speaker: Rev. Brown Naik,

Special Music by Laureen Naik