Praise the Lord for
this new day. I spoke to a couple of my High School classmates ,
yesterday, who are back in Orissa, India. We graduated from High
School in 1964. Some of my very close friends and High School class mates
have gone to be with Jesus our Lord. All my High School classmates
have retired having served faithfully in their respective places of
vocation. This is summertime in Orissa India. This is also the
season for Christian Camp meetings where thousands of people gather for a few
days of celebration, fellowship, worship, and witness. A camp meeting
is in progress this week, on the premises where I attended Middle
School in the late fifties. I was invited to be one of the
speakers in May of 2014. That Camp meeting was held in the very same
place where I attended Middle School. Praise the Lord for Christ
and His Church around the corner and the globe.
The
General Conference of our United Methodist Church, will meet from
the May 10 - 20 in Portland, Oregon. The General Conference meets
once every for years during the same year as the US presidential election.
Just recently I read the inspiring story of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield,
who was a lesbian with lesbian partner promoting lesbian life
style. She was a most vocal advocate for the lesbian lifestyle.
Jesus, the " Hound of Heaven", met her on her way to self
destruction. She discovered new life in Jesus and was born anew from on
high. She left her lesbian partner and is married to a Presbyterian
minister with whom she has children and lives in NC. In her book The Secret Thoughts of An Unlikely Convert, Rosaria Champagne
Butterfield, who was a tenured English professor at Syracuse
University, talks about the radical and unlikely conversion she experienced in
the late 1990s. Rosaria
Butterfield is a bona fide scholar. She considered herself a leftist
professor, one who literally choked on the name of Jesus. Stupid,
pointless and menacing are words that describe her thoughts of Christians and
their God, Jesus.
With a major publication, she reached
what many in her profession prize: tenure. She described her life as happy,
meaningful, and full. With tenure in hand, she started researching the
Christian community, what its adherents believe, and its perceived hatred of
people such as herself. To do this, she would need to read the one book
that (by her estimation) put so many people off track. She read the
Bible. In her own words, she "read the Bible the way a glutton devours
food." That year, she read it through—cover to cover—multiple times
from varying translations. Then it started to happen. Her lesbian partner
and other dear friends began to say her reading of the Bible was changing
her. Butterfield’s reply was striking, “What if this is true? What
if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? What if we are all in trouble?”
Some months later, she found herself
sitting in the Syracuse Presbyterian Church. Conspicuously, she sat in
the back as an outsider. Sitting in the church, she reminded herself that
she came to meet God and not to fit in socially. That morning, looking
past the stares of parishioners, she fought the idea that she was lost.
Everybody she loved, including her partner was lost. She fought those
images with all her might. She did not want to be lost. She did not
want an eternity of pain and suffering after death.
In that moment, she recounts that the promises
of God rushed in as waves on the shore of her heart. She was prompted to
trust Christ for salvation and reclaim her true identity. Although weak
at first, her confession of faith has grown into one of the most intriguing and
unlikely testimonies of conversion heard in America today.
Her story may not be your story, and
your story may not be my story. Butterfield reminds us that heaven has no
tough cases, only trophies of grace.
Praise the Lord
Jesus who is Risen and who is in the world today. He is in the business
of changing and transformimg lives 24/7. Let us come to Jesus and live.
We can face uncertain days
with the certainty that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the
world. We can repeat with Paul that the sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.
We can sing with the psalmist, "surely goodness and mercy will
follow me all the days of my life". We can be confident that
"my God shall supply all our needs according to His riches in glory in
Christ Jesus".
In
Jesus ,
Brown
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