Brown's Daily Word 3/15/16

Praise the Lord the Lord of all seasons who is ushering in the season of Spring  with all its beauty and splendor.  The Church of the Risen Lord is getting ready for  Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and the Victorious Resurrection Sunday.   The Church, belonging to different cultures and traditions around the corner and around the globe, is preparing to celebrate this season with all colorful festivities.

    We (our church) will be hosting a community wide dinner tomorrow, Wednesday the 16th of March.  The dinner will start at 4:30 PM and will conclude at 6:00 PM.  The main menu will include corned beef and cabbage.  The students will gather at the church Thursday the 17th of March at 2:15 PM for Release Time.

    We will gather for worship on Palm Sunday at 11:00 AM, followed by a Palm Sunday dinner reception for all at 12:30 PM.  The dinner will include, Aunthentic Italian, Mexican, and Indian Cusine.  Praise the Lord that we get to celebrate His grace and His love.

    I have been reflecting  this morning on 1 Peter 2:21-25.  In the Christian life, there are  two possible  ways to grow.  One is through people, the other is through pain.  It would be hard to find a more important principle than this.  Sometimes we grow through the influence of others.  We sit at the feet of teachers, friends, mentors, disciplers, pastors, and gifted leaders who show us the way forward.  Sometimes growth comes in the formal setting of a classroom.  More often it comes through informal settings.  “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens  another ". (Proverbs 27:17)  We learn much from books, but we learn more from life, and the best kind of teaching is up close and personal.  The most effective lessons are learned life on life.  We learn a little from a distance, we learn more as we draw closer, but we learn the most when we are face to face, when we spend time with Jesus in prayer, worship, service and witness.  Mark 3:14 says that Jesus called the 12 apostles “that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach” (ASV).  First they must be with him, and then they will be sent out to preach. So one way we grow is through people.

    The other way we grow is through pain.  Sometimes the pain comes because of the sadness of life.  Cancer may strike,  or we may share in the pain of a loved one who suffers greatly.  Pain is often undeserved, yet it comes to us anyway and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward”  (Job 5:7 ESV).  Sometimes those sparks ignite into a raging flame that threatens to consume us.  No one is exempt.

    Again, there are two possible ways to grow.  One is through people and the other is through pain.  Sometimes the worst kind of pain comes from other people. God has so ordered the moral universe that pain that teaches us the lasting lessons of life.  Poet Robert Browning put it this way:

    I walked a mile with Pleasure,
    She chattered all the way,
    But left me none the wiser
    For all she had to say.

    I walked a mile with Sorrow
    And ne’er a word said she;
    But oh, the things I learned from her
    When Sorrow walked with me!

   

     As we contnue in the Lenten Journey with Jesus our Lord we dicover that sometimes following Christ might lead us on to the path of suffering and the Cross.  Jesus our Lord declared, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me". .First Peter 2:21-25 spells out what it means to follow Christ.  “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth’” (I Peter 2:21-22).

    According to Peter, following Jesus means that sometimes we will suffer even when we have done nothing wrong.  The greatest honor for any Christian is to be like Jesus.  When we suffer unjustly, we share in a tiny portion of what happened to him.  Though he did no wrong, he was betrayed, tried, denied and crucified. Though he never sinned, he was hated by the power brokers who plotted to kill him.  The same thing will happen to us.  People close to us will disappoint us, and some will turn against us.  “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly” (I Peter 2:23).

    There is an old Hymn called “Footprints of Jesus.”  The first verse and chorus go like this:

    Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling,
    Come, follow Me!
    And we see where Thy footprints falling
    Lead us to Thee.

    Footprints of Jesus,
    That make the pathway glow;
    We will follow the steps of Jesus
    Where’er they go.

    Often the footprints of Jesus lead directly to the cross.  We are called to follow those bloody footprints even though they lead to mistreatment by the world. —"He entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”  In our day we hear a lot of talk about claiming our rights.  Ironically, most of our problems stem from claiming our rights.  But the Bible turns that upside down.  we are not to think of our rights first, but we are to think of others first.

    “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (I Peter 2:24-25).

In Christ,

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