Brown's Daily Word 10/24/14

    Praise the Lord for this day.  Those of you who live in the region, join us for our weekly Television outreach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable channel 4.  We are just two moths away from Christmas Eve 2014.  The stores are being decked out with Christmas decorations.  It is getting brilliant out there.  We are getting ready for the annual Living Nativity to be presented at the Center Court of the Oakdale Mall, in Johnson City.  It will be held from 4 to 7PM on Saturday the 20th of December.  We are planning for a "Flash Mob" of The Hallelujah Chorus of the Handel's Messiah.  It will be sung live at 6:30 PM.  We are inviting all singers and musicians to join us.  It is an amazing setting in the center court of the mall on one of the biggest shopping days of the season.  We will also singing various Christmas carols as our friend Yancey Moore accompanies on the grand Piano.  All our friends and neighbors from all churches and denominations are warmly invited.  It will be a great time of praise and worship.  Our Lord loves to dwell in the praises of His people.  Please do mark your calendars.  The Downtown singers will be presenting Handel's Messiah live on the 19th and 20th of December at 8 PM.  It is all about celebration and proclamation.

    We are bombarded with news of terrorism and wars all around the world.   It appears that Satan is having a heyday.  We get concerned and afraid.  Everywhere you look, wars are being fought.  Wars perpetually occur, and people are always willing to fight.  Beginning with Genesis 3, the Bible tells a story about a warrior, who is coincidentally is also known as the Prince of Peace.  He is the only warrior that is capable of winning this war.  He alone will have the victory, and He alone will bring us everlasting peace.

    The story begins in a garden, the Garden of Eden, a place of perfect peace. There were only two people in the garden, a man named Adam and a woman named Eve.  They were at perfect peace with God, with each other, and with themselves.  Then something happened.  To this day, it is the most tragic event in human history, an event which plunged our world into a conflict that we continue to fight today.

    God's solution to this problem is wrapped up in a single verse in Genesis 3 that provides hope for the entire world, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

    Amazingly, peace is wrapped up in a promise and a prophecy.  This verse promises that a warrior will come to rescue us from conflict; it prophesies that this warrior is none other than Jesus Christ.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/fxUfAbSiWLU

Brown's Daily Word 10/24/14

   The Bible declares, "Joy comes in the morning".  Each new day is fraught with new beginnings.  Each new day is a gift from the Lord.  He blessed us with brilliant Wednesday evening gathering for study and fellowship.  Praise the Lord for the way He meets us.  He satisfies our deepest desires.  He cleanses us with His touch and surrounds us with His never ending love and grace.  There is a fascinating and very enigmatic verse that is found in 1 John 2:17, "The world and its desires pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever."  The problem with pleasure, possessions, and pride isn't so much that they are wrong; it's that they're not enough.  They don't last, for one thing.  Pleasure is fleeting. Possessions lose value.  Earthly accomplishments are soon forgotten or surpassed.  None of these things last.

    Pleasure, pride and possessions are also too shallow.  They cannot satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts.  Pleasure is not what our hearts are truly looking for, but joy.  We don't need more things, but we do need deep joy.  It's not achievement we're after, but significance.  All of these things can only be found, ultimately and eternally, in relationship with Jesus our Lord, which is why John says, "The one who does the will of God lives forever."

    According to C. S. Lewis, the desires to do, to have, to be are merely the rumblings of a much deeper desire.  It is a desire so deep, so profound, that even Lewis couldn't find a word for it.  He sometimes spoke about it in his writings, this inconsolable longing for something more.  Sometimes he described it as beauty, other times as joy, but it was about  a deep existential yearning for something that we can't name but know to be true.  In his book The Weight of Glory, Lewis described it as "the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited."  It is the longing for every good and perfect thing all at once, the longing for God and his kingdom.  Further, until that deepest of all desires is satisfied, nothing else will ever be enough. 

    "The human heart was made for God," Augustine said, "and our hearts are restless till we find rest in him."  Once that desire is satisfied, however, once we have turned to God and aligned ourselves with his good and eternal purpose for our lives, we can experience earthly things as they were meant to be experienced—in relationship with him.

    The apostle John declared, "The world and its desires are passing away, but the one who does the will of God lives"—lives!—"forever."  If you think this world has things to enjoy, you can't even imagine what's waiting for us in the life to come, in that country we haven't visited yet but know to be true!

 In Christ,

  Brown

http://youtu.be/-8mZpGj29qw

Brown's Daily Word 10/22/14

    Indeed, morning has broken like the first morning.  Jesus, our Eternal Contemporary, is upon the Throne.  He rules and reigns.  He reminds us that "in this world you will have tribulation, but be of good courage, I have overcome the world."   We will meet for our Wednesday Evening gathering today with a special meal at 6 PM.   In your time of prayer please remember a young mom and wife who battling some severe health issues.  Another  woman of faith and lover of Jesus and a servant going through some difficult health concerns.  Another man  after God's own heart, who will be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary in January, 2015, is facing some intricate health problems.  Our Lord is greater than all of our problems and pain, greater than all the battles we encounter in this life.  He is mighty and merciful.  We come to the throne of grace and the seat of mercy with boldness.  We praise Him for the way He has redeemed us and has given us His authority.  indeed, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us and still loves us. 

    In his book Leaving Home, Garrison Keillor tells a fictional story about a family from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.  Grace Tollefson married Alex Campbell, who turned out to be a ne'er-do-well.  They had three kids: Earl, Marlys, and Walter. Then he left her, took all the money, and she was forced to move back home and live off the kindness of folks there, enduring the relentless I-told-you-so's of her mother. It was humiliating.  Then, "One day they got a letter from a man in Philadelphia doing research on Scottish nobility who asked who their ancestors were, so he could look it up."  Grace wrote back, and a few days later another letter came.

    "She opened the envelope.  It was addressed to Mrs. Grace Campbell, but the letter began with "Your Royal Highness."  He wrote: "Today is the happiest day of my life as I greet my one true Sovereign Queen," and went on to say that their branch of the Campbell family was first in the line of succession of the House of Steward, the Royal Family of Scotland.  Another letter soon came with a complicated genealogical chart with a line in the corner leading right straight to them: Earl, Marlys, and Walter.  The Royal Family of Scotland living in Lake Wobegon in a green mobile home, furniture donated by the Lutheran church.  They were astounded beyond words.  Disbelieving at first, afraid to put their weight on something so beautiful, afraid it was too good to be true, and then it took hold—this was grace, pure grace that God offered them.  Not their will but his.  Grace. Here they were in the same dismal place, but everything had changed.  They were different people.  Their surroundings were the same, but they were different."

    Ultimately, years later, the youngest son, Walter, finds out the whole business was a fraud, but he never tells his mother or siblings, because thinking you are royalty, whether anyone else knows it or not, changes a person.  At the end of the story, Grace is old, and she says to her son, "Oh, Walter, what would I do without you?  You're so strong.  You're so good to me.  You're a prince, you know.  They can put a crown on a dog and call it a prince, but you are a prince through and through.  They may not know it now, but they'll know it soon.  Next year we'll be in Edinburgh with the bands playing and the flags flying and the crowds cheering."  It is written and we're given the divine assurance:

    ^" But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,^[a] that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." 1 Peter 2:9

     Our Lord God has reminded us that we are unrecognized royalty in this world. And for that great privilege we should be full of thanks, we should be eager servants of God, and we should "see life through the eyes of promise."  That fiction of Garrison Keillor's is actually our truth:  "They were astounded beyond words. Disbelieving at first, afraid to put their weight on something so beautiful, afraid it was too good to be true, and then it took hold—this was grace, pure grace that God offered them.  Not their will but his.  Grace.  Here they were in their same dismal place but everything had changed.  They were different people.  Their surroundings were the same, but they were different.

In Christ,"

   Brown

http://youtu.be/6_KXsMCJgBQ

Brown's Daily Word 10/21/14

Praise the Lord for this good day, indeed a gift from the Lord.  A couple from Orissa , India who are in the States currently are coming to visit us for few days.  The man is a pastor  and his wife is a school administrator.  The pastor was my contemporary, just a few years younger than me, and his wife's father was my Sunday school teacher and also my sixth grade teacher.  He instilled in me a love for math and geography.  He was also a local preacher who blessed my life as a young boy growing up.  Praise the Lord for the way He surrounds us with His unfailing love and abundant grace.  Praise the Lord for the way He places His people in our lives as His gift indeed. 

    We picked some peppers squash and pumpkins from  our kitchen garden yesterday.  There were many butternut squash, a few buttercup squash, and 2 varieties of pumpkin.  Praise the Lord for His bountiful harvest.

    I love the passage from Psalm 65: 

             You visit the earth and water it,
             You greatly enrich it;
             The river of God is full of water;
             You provide their grain,
             For so You have prepared it.
             You water its ridges abundantly,
             You settle its furrows;
             You make it soft with showers,
             You bless its growth.

             You crown the year with Your goodness,
             And Your paths drip with abundance.
             They drop on the pastures of the wilderness,
             And the little hills rejoice on every side.
            The pastures are clothed with flocks;
            The valleys also are covered with grain;
            They shout for joy, they also sing.

    Praise the Lord for abundant harvest all around us.  It is harvest time in America.  Praise the Lord for the way He blesses His people with abundance.  George Herbert said, "Lord you have given us so much.  Give us one more thing -  give us a grateful heart".  As a young boy growing up in Orissa, India my brothers and I went fishing.  There were times when we got lots of fish, mostly catfish.  There are times we got some crabs.  It was all good.  New York state is full of lakes, rivers and rivulets, ponds, and reservoirs.  We are blessed with fresh water fish.  Some of our friends are avid fishermen.  It is the salmon season.  There is a river not far from us where people fish for salmon.  This is an annual event.  One of my  brother's friends gave him 7 salmons.  I love the number 7.  They were caught from the local rivers.  My brother gave me two salmons, each weighing over 35 pounds.  I was as delighted as a little boy.  My brother reminded me how our lord Jesus  fed over 5 thousand men  with fish.  During His pos- Resurrection appearance he prepared  breakfast for his hungry, tired, and depressed disciples.  It was a hot breakfast that included "broiled fish".  Again, our Lord , the Lord of the Harvest crowns the year with His grace and Goodness.  He makes the hills, pastures, fields, lakes, and rivers drip with His abundance. The pastures are clothed with flocks;The valleys also are covered with grain; They shout for joy, they also sing.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/x0hvizFZf5Q

Brown's Daily Word 10/20/14

     Praise the Lord for this new day.  Praise the Lord for the way He ushers in every new day with His fresh grace and boundless love and all new possibilities. Praise the Lord for the way He is the Lord of all creation and He is the Lord of our redemption.  He blessed us in His house yesterday.  Praise the Lord for the way He showers us with His mercy and love.  

    I spent  few days last week in Washington, DC with our daughter Laureen and with some of her friends.  I met some beautiful people who love the Lord and serve Him "in the City".  Andy, Sunita, and Gabe were back in the States attending a family wedding in Michigan, but they returned back to Cypress yesterday.  Sunita will be traveling to Lebanon with her work, this week.  Tom and Jessie are traveling next week to spend some time with Sunita and her family in Cypress.  Praise the Lord for the beautiful world the Lord has created.  Praise the Lord for His church around the corner and around the world.  Indeed,  "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." 

    Pray for Laureen today as she will be ministering at "David's Tent".  David's Tent is a venue for singing, worship, prayer, and petition for the 50 days leading up to the election.  This tent of ministry is located near The Washington Monument ,in our Nation's Capital.  It is a 24/7 outreach of intercession for our nation and its leaders.  Pray for Laureen as she joins in this important endeavor. 

    I would like to share with a very fascinating and provoking story that comes out of Washington, DC, the epicenter of power, prestige, and possession.  A Washington Post journalist by the name of Gene Weingarten won the Pulitzer Prize a while ago for an article he wrote which he entitled, "Pearls Before Breakfast."  It was about a busker (street performer) playing a violin at the top of the escalator outside the L'Enfant Station Plaza in Washington, D.C. Hidden from view was a video camera set up to record the event, and the busker played some of the most inspiring classical music ever written.  The commuters just walked on by and, by and large, ignored him.

    The violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most famous violinists in the world. And the violin he was playing was a Stradivarius, which had been built in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari.  This one was a combination of the finest spruce, maple, and willow, built to such perfection that if you shaved off a millimeter of wood anywhere on that violin, it would unbalance the sound.  The violin had been purchased for a reported 3.5 million dollars.  Joshua Bell normally plays in the great concert halls of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Prague, London, Paris, New York, and (next month) Toronto.  People pay a lot of money to go to hear him play. He earns up to a thousand dollars a minute for his actual playing.

    On this particular morning he walked into the exit of the L'Enfant Plaza Station, positioned himself against a wall next to a trash basket. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a baseball cap.  He removed his violin from its case and placed the case open on the ground in front of him, threw in some change to encourage donation, and he began to play.  Every time a train pulled into the station, people streamed out of the subway.  Joshua Bell played for 47 minutes; over a thousand people passed him.  Hardly anyone stopped to listen.  There were one or two children being brought by a parent or an adult and all the children, without exception, were intrigued.  They wanted to stop and see and the parent or guardian pulled them, dragged them, and took them on to wherever they were heading. 27 people put money into his violin case—it came to $31.21.  Only one person recognized him.

    The Washington Post placed a few reporters around the exit and they stopped some of the folks coming out and they said, "We are doing an article on commuting—could we have your telephone number; we would like to call you later in the day and ask a few questions."  They called them and asked them if they had seen anything unusual at the station that morning.  Most could not remember anything out of the ordinary.  Some mentioned the violinist.  When the journalists told the people they were talking to that this was Joshua Bell, one of the most famous violinists in the world playing a Stradivarius that costs three and a half million dollars, they were astounded.  The Washington Post mused about this in a very interesting article.  They discussed the following question: if a great musician plays great music but no one hears, is he any good?  They asked the questions: Is beauty measurable or is it merely an opinion?  Or is it colored by the state of mind of the observer at the time?  Is beauty a luxury?  Is it largely irrelevant to the nitty-gritty of life?  No one expected a famous and proficient violinist to be playing a three and a half million-dollar violin at that time of the morning at the exit of a station.  They didn't expect him so they didn't recognize him, so they didn't hear him.

    It is wonderful to know that the Lord God, the Emmanuel, is at work in surrounding us with His eternal and divine music, fraught with blessings upon blessings, grace upon grace.  How often we miss it.  How often we ignore it.  How often we are blind to it?  How often we are deaf to its melodious sonnet?  May we pause and ponder today.  May we take time tune our hearts and lives towards Him

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/KxvAaq9q5Kw