Praise
the Lord for this Friday. Sunday is coming. We will meet for
worship and witness this Sunday at 11:00 AM, followed by a special fellowship
time. This weekend is a big weekend in terms American Football, one of
our national past- times. This weekend is playoff weekend. My team,
the Pittsburgh Steelers, are in the playoffs. They will be playing
tomorrow evening. Yesterday I ran into a man who was dressed in
Steelers garb from head to toe. "What a fan", I said.
Praise
the Lord for the homes and the families where we live. Praise the Lord
for our loved ones, friends, families members, brothers and sister in Jesus
Christ in and through whom we are linked with one another. One of
the popular songs that plays on Radio Stations during the Christmas
season is, "I'll Be Home for Christmas". As I was pouring over
some authors in my own library and spending time reminiscing through previously
read volumes, I picked up Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home. Buechner’s deeply moving book of reflection and
recollection on his own life and longing for home ended with some thoughts
about what he called, “The Jesus Who Was and the Jesus Who Is.”
Buechner
wrote that the Jesus "Who Was" is a largely historical Figure who
came, who lived, who died, and yes—we might add with confessional accuracy—the
One who rose again from the dead. However, the Jesus "Who Is"
is the Lord who brings vision not only to blind eyes in the gospels but to our
own narrow and blurred vision. He not only is the Jesus who opened the
ears of the deaf but the One who speaks to our deafened world, as Buechner put
it, as “a voice unlike all other voices.”
Buechner
said: “The Jesus Who Is is the one whom we search for even when we do not know
that we are searching and hide from even when we do not know that we are
hiding.”3
This
morning, the blessings of the Newborn King come to those who welcome the good
news of Jesus Christ. The only thing remaining for each of us is to make
certain we welcome not the Jesus "Who Was” but the Jesus "Who Is,”
the Son of God, the Dayspring from on high, the Promised One for humble
servants, who came, lived, died, rose again, ascended, and—right now by the
power and presence of the Holy Spirit—stands in our midst, bidding needy people
to open the doors of the secret places of our lives that He may come in and
dwell with us.
In Him
alone.
Brown
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