Brown's Daily Word 3/5/16

    Praise the Lord for this First Saturday of March.  I had my last doctor's appointment (for now) yesterday in Boston.  The doctor was very pleased with my progress.  We praise the Lord.  We left Boston yesterday afternoon and drove back to New York where we arrived safe and sound around 9:00 PM.  The Lord blessed my wife with an extra measure of favor and grace.  She drove well all the way home. 

    It is a sunny day here in central New York.  I talked to one of the many Maple Syrup producers here in our area.  He said that they have produced over 450 gallons of Maple syrup.  There is one more week of High Production season.  Alice and I are planning to attend the local High School's annual play tonight.  Tomorrow we will gather for Sunday School at 10 AM and for worship at 11:00, followed by a mega-Coffee, cookies, and pastries reception.  It is going to a very sweet and blessed day.  Plan to attend the worship of the Lord wherever you might be.

    As I am back home after almost 6 weeks away from home I am reflecting on the reality of the Good News of Christ.  In the Psalm 30:6 we get a glimpse of the gospel, a glimpse of the good news for those who weep.  “Weeping may spend the night,” the psalmist writes, “but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:6).  Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.

    Many of us  have spent many a night gently weeping, perhaps when there’s no one around.  Some of us project the image that we always hold it together and are above weeping.  For some of us, perhaps, the metaphorical night of weeping has lasted much more than a night, and has been anything but metaphorical.

    Scripture tells us that God in Jesus Christ arose from his throne in heaven, and walked across the circle of eternity to embrace and hold a weeping world.  In fact, Jesus Christ, the last person people expected to weep, wept for Lazarus individually, wept for Jerusalem corporately, and in his Passion, wept for us  personally.  In his death on the cross Jesus unfolded his love for us and died to atone for all the ways we  have been diverted, perverted, and inverted. 

    Very often we think that we are "suffering in silence", believing ourselves to be completely and utterly alone.  In these times, according to Scripture, we have Someone to put our tears in his bottle (Psalm 56:8).  When life leaves us sitting on the ground, unable to move, Jesus does not walk right by us without seeing us.  Rather, Jesus walks up to us and stretches out his hands to help—and often those hands are the hands of other people.

    Victor Hugo's Les Miserables,  resonates with the gospel as it portrays what it looks like for weeping to spend the night but joy to come in the morning.  In the closing scene the main character, Jean Valjean, dies and meets in heaven the others who have also died, their night of weeping over and their morning joy begun, and he joins the  in the final chorus:

Do you hear the people sing?
Lost in the valley of the night
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light
For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise
They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord
They will walk behind the ploughshare, they will put away the sword…
Do you hear the people sing? Say do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!

    The good news of the gospel is that the unconditional love of Jesus Christ ensures that tomorrow will indeed come for us, that our night of weeping will end and everlasting joy will come in the morning—and what a morning that will be!

In Christ,

 Brown

https://youtu.be/4cDFH5ysLoQ