Praise the Lord for this
last Monday of September. We are less than three months away from Christmas.
Some of the department stores have already started displaying Christmas
merchandise. I trust you all had a wonderful weekend. The Lord blessed us with
his grace and love in His house yesterday in our time of worship and witness.
We had some friends join us for Sunday dinner. I watched some football and fell
asleep for a few brief moments. I woke up to watch the pope celebrate the mass
in Philadelphia. They were estimating that over
1.5 million people were attending this outdoor event but, despite the enormity
of the crowd, it was orderly. The Lord blessed the Papal visit with spectacular
weather in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia. We praise the Lord for the
Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord. We praise the Lord for the Church. The
Lord of the church is fermenting His church around the corner and around the
globe. I have been part of the church of our Lord Jesus from my infancy days.
I have been blessed beyond belief.
In the evening Alice and I
had a dinner reception for the youth in the parsonage. Alice made all homemade
pizza including desserts. It was awesome. The youth we had are smart and
athletic. All of them are students where Alice teaches. It was a treat. In
the night we watched the brilliant moon just before it was eclipsed, and caught
glimpses of it while it was eclipsed. Our daughter Janice, the photographer of
the family, posted a spectacular shot the moon from her residence in
Boston.
Those of us who have grown
up in the church have been taught lots of good things. Many of us have been
blessed by nurturing families who have instilled within us a deep love for the
Lord and the truth of His Word. We know some things are right and good. Some
things aren’t. We need godly stubbornness, not skepticism, about the good. We
should let nothing pry the good from our gasp.
It is written, “Test
everything. Hold on to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil.” 1 Thess
5 :21-22 That last phrase probably is not strong enough. The King James
Version rendered that line, “Abstain from the very appearance of evil.” We
ought to be so repulsed by evil that the very sight of it turns us away. Romans
12:9 puts the same idea in even stronger terms. “Love must be sincere. Hate
what is evil; cling to what is good.”
Our world offers a lot of
cultural garbage. We can debate what constitutes garbage and what doesn’t, but
that doesn’t alter the fact that the garbage exists. Most of us know it when we
see it. Too often, we can smell it. We also can see the damage it does. We
should abhor it. We should do everything within our power to avoid filling our
lives with it.
When we fill our lives with
garbage, pretty soon we can’t tell the jewels from the junk. Bad memories,
bad habits, bad thinking, and misplaced priorities are all garbage that can mess
up a life.
I read the story that
during World War II, an Air Force a B-29 had completed a bombing run over Tokyo
when the plane lost two engines. Home base was more than 1,000 miles away.
Conventional wisdom advised the dumping of fuel, ditching the plane, and hoping
for a rescue. The pilot, however, was far from conventional. He told his crew,
"I never have believed in crashing a perfectly good plane. Let's see if we can
make it home." The crew then proceeded to throw out everything that wasn’t
bolted down (and some things that were). They tossed ammunition, armor and all
of their supplies. Eventually, the much lighter plane limped home. The pilot
and crew were decorated for their daring. This is the happy ending we all
want for ourselves.: “Test everything; hold on to what is good; and avoid every
kind of evil.”
In
Christ,
Brown
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