Our church has begun its
preparations for the Annual Apple Festival to be held Saturday, September 20,
on historic Washington Avenue in Endicott. Our church has a booth with all
kinds of gifts and apple baked products. Those of you live in the area please
stop by. I will be participating in a Jewish Wedding tomorrow (this weekend).
It is all exciting.
We have been studying the Book of
Hosea in our Wednesday Evening Study. We read in Hosea, "The Lord said to me,
'Go, show your love to your wife again, though she's loved by another. She's an
adulteress. But love her as the Lord loves the Israelites.' It is written
again 'You are to live with me many days. You must not be a prostitute or
intimate with any other man. And so I will live with you.'" Hosea was saying,
in other words, "Look, I've redeemed you. I brought you to myself. Now I ask
you to live with me and for me in faithfulness." In the story of the prophet
and his unfaithful wife the Lord demonstratesHis unmerited love to us in Jesus
Christ our Lord. This is the gist of the Gospel. The Lord does not love us
because of what we do. He always loves us in spite of what we do. He does not
love us because of what we are. He always loves us in spite of what we are.
When we understand how much He loves us, we are to respond to him with love and
praise and sacrifice and service. Once we receive by faith and through His
grace the gift in the person of Jesus Christ we are loved and cared for, for
eternity.
Our Lord God in Jesus Christ, does
not love us because of what we are. He does not love us because of what we do.
He always loves us in spite of what we are, in spite of what we do. This is all about prevenient grace. It is all about
amazing grace.
Clovis Chappell was a noted
preacher of the last century, and he told of a young man who lived in Chicago
who went down to the bluegrass regions of Kentucky where he met, wooed, and won
a young woman whom ultimately he brought back to Chicago as his bride. They
enjoyed three lovely years of marriage, and then one day in the midst of a
sickness in a seizure of pain the young woman lost her mind, so even when she
was at her best she was a bit demented. At her worst she would scream and
neighbors complained because the screams cut the air and it was hard to live
with. For this reason the young businessman left his home in the middle of
Chicago and went out to one of the western suburbs where he built a house,
determined that there he would try to nurse his wife back to health and sanity
again. One day the family physician suggested that perhaps if he were to take
his wife back to her Kentucky home that something in those familiar surroundings
would help her restore her sanity, and so they went back to the old homestead.
Hand in hand they walked through the old house where memories hung on every
corner. They went down to the garden and walked down by the riverside where the
first cowslips and violets were in bloom. Even with the surroundings of home,
after several days, nothing seemed to happen.
Defeated and discouraged, the young
man put his wife back in the car, and they headed back toward Chicago. When
they got close to the house he looked over and discovered that his wife was
asleep. It was the first deep, restful, sleep she had had in many weeks. When
he got to the house he lifted her from the car, took her inside, placed her on
the bed and realized she wanted to sleep some more. He placed a cover over her
and then sat by her side and watched her through the midnight hour, watched her
until the first rays of the sun reached through the curtain and touched her
face. The young woman awoke, and she saw her husband seated by her side. She
said, "I seem to have been on a long journey. Where have you been?" Then that
man, speaking out of days and weeks and months of patient waiting and watching
said, "My sweetheart, I've been right here waiting for you all this
time."
Our Lord, the Emmanuel, is with us,
waiting for us to cast ourselves with a reckless abandon upon the grace of
God.
In Jesus our Lord,
Brown
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