Brown's Daily Word 11-5-13

   Praise the Lord for this new day.  The Autumn days in New York are awesome and brilliant so many ways.  It is going to be another gorgeous day.  The Fall Foliage is still colorful.  There is a Forsythia bush in the church grounds which has beautiful flowers.  It was early morning last week  when,one big buck "frolicked" by the parsonage.  Another  deer came by the parsonage yesterday evening , dancing unhurried and unafraid.  Alice had planted some pie pumpkins in our little garden this summer.  We harvested not pie pumpkins but 2 different winter squash which are multicolored and exotic.  We also have picked some pears from one of our pear trees.  They are huge, delicious, crisp, and  juicy.  Praise the Lord.  Alice and I are  going to a concert by Steven Curtis Chapman this evening.  Praise the Lord for the Life and Liberty we have in Jesus Christ, the great life giver and the great liberator.

    Two professors of the Duke University wrote a book few years ago and titled, "Resident Aliens".   Christians are indeed are resident aliens.  Our Lord said that we are in the world but not of the world.  One of the hymn writers said, "Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah, Pilgrim in the Barren Land".

    In his book, The Image — A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Daniel Boorstin points out that over the past century and a half people have moved from being travelers to becoming tourists. The Old English noun “travel” was originally the same word at “travail” — trouble, work, torment. For centuries, to travel was to submit to a certain kind of torture, to do something tough.

That began to change in the middle of the 19th century.  Some entrepreneur came up with the idea of marketing travel as an adventure.  Thus was born the tour. Legend has it that the very first tour took place in 1838.  A group of people from Wadebridge, England, traveled by special train to the nearby village of Bodmin. There they had the fun of watching the hanging to two killers.  Since the Bodmin gallows was in clear view of the uncovered station, the tourists had their adventure without even needing to leave their open railway carriages.

    To live on purpose we need to learn the difference between being a tourist in life — going only where it’s convenient and comfortable, and a traveler — one who determines his or her own way in life and will get there even if it means blazing a new trail.  One reason why so many people try to climb Mt. Everest is that they want to push themselves and do something that makes them feel alive.  But we can push ourselves in moral, spiritual, and relational areas also.  Consider Joshua, the Old Testament leader who challenged his people to choose their purpose in life and to stay with it.  He said to them, “If serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).  Joshua refused simply to exist.  He chose to live.

  In Christ,

   Brown

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