This is
the day, the new day, that the Lord has made. Blessed be the Name of the
Lord. It is going to be a blessed day wherever we might be all
throughout the land. The Lord of every day and the Lord of all the days
paves before us a way of His peace and His grace. The Lord blessed
us with a brilliant day yesterday.
Our
town here in Marathon is getting ready for the BIG weekend -- the Central
New York Maple Festival. The Vendors are beginning to set up their
booths. A make-shift amusement park is going up. Our church is
getting ready to prepare the Chicken BBQ. The "holy locus" for
the ministry of chicken BBQ is the Church Fellowship Hall. Chicken
will be served on Saturday and Sunday. Bring your family and friends.
It will be a treat. We praise the Lord for each and every one
who invests their talents, time, and treasures. We will gather for
worship at 10:30 AM in the sanctuary. Come and join us just as you
are.
The Civil
War re-enactment team has already started moving onto the village
green, setting their tents where they will encamp over the weekend, and a
teepee has gone up as well. The High School is gearing up for
the Annual Maple Queen Pageant, which will proudly a new Maple Queen on Friday
night. School employees are being recruited to man the griddle for the
pancake breakfast. There will also be the iconic pancake eating contest,
many local entertainers (who will perform on the high school stage), and all
sorts of vendors, mostly from the Southern Tier. All of the high school
classes have specific booths assigned to them. (For example, one class
sells freshly roasted nuts. Another sells balloons. A third vends
freshly baked apple dumplings. Senior always have a prime location where
the cook spiedies and Italian sausage for delicious sandwiches.) All over
town you can find maple treats - pancakes with real maple syrup, maple candy,
maple sundaes, maple ice cream, maple cotton candy, . . . and the Dairyland
Dipper (the local ice cream shop) has also opened for the start of
the festivities.
Alice
and I were both born and raised in small villages - Alice on a dairy
farm in Central New York and I in eastern India. We love living
in a small town, where people of all ages are beautiful, winsome,
down-to-earth, and above average in so many ways. We remember
special events that would draw the whole town out to participate. For my
wife there were such times as the Memorial Day "parade", Old Home
Days, the weekly Summertime band concerts where the honking of horns meant
appreciation for the music, and the combined Vacation Bible School. Those
of us who are called to small lives, can live lives of great significance.
I love to read about
the life and legacy Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's incredible
significance was not known until the very last years of his life. He was
born in an obscure log cabin, self-taught for many year, a failure as a postmaster
and a storekeeper, and in many other tasks that he undertook. He was a
very tall, very homely gentleman with a very great wit and story-telling
capability. His place was small in the legal profession and in the
greater American spectrum, until the very, very end. Many now consider
him to have been one of the most outstanding American Presidents.
Most
of us, in our lives and circumstances, can be considered to have only a small
role. Few are the numbers of persons who reach celebrity status or fame
on the athletic field. Most of us are
"small". "Smallness" is everywhere. I
love the wonderful redemptive and the salvation story of Ruth. In
Ruth we see another kind of smallness. We see a smallness that finds
complete significance, but the significance is within the life in
God. Through reading the story our hunger for significance may actually
be strengthened. We should want to be significant. We have a
human desire for significance. The Book of Ruth is a celebration
of smallness in God's greatness. It involves all kinds of things that are
necessary for a great story: tension, conflict, tragedy, comedy, resolution,
and wonder, yet it is not a novel, but a true story. Ruth really lived.
There was a guy named Boaz, who truly lived in a small town as
a pretty well-to-do farmer. Naomi really lived.
In
the Book of Ruth the significance of love and the significance of being loved
are revealed. Both of those really come out of Ruth's words to
Naomi, "Where you go, I will go". Even more
importantly, "Your God will be my God." The significance of
love; the significance of being loved are pre-eminent in these
words. Ruth was acting with a kind of freedom that is actually
disconcerting. She actually created a loyalty and puts her widowhood
second to her mother-in-law's widowhood. She put her own culture as a
Moabite, (different than Israelite) second to that of her mother-in-law.
She puts her own religion, the Moabite religion with several
"gods" in the household (statues, idols) second to her mother-in-law's
religion and living faith.
In
the Book of Ruth we see that Ruth mad a specific choice in regard to a specific
person with a specific sacrifice. It wasn't that Ruth sang a stirring
song about love. She came in and she loved a specific person (Naomi) in a
specific situation (poverty and tragedy) with a very specific sacrifice (blind
loyalty - "Where you go I will go.") Ruth converted out of one
religion to follow the living God. Her smallness in that conversion
became significant in the story of God. This is not smallness for
smallness sake. This is smallness for the sake of living in God, where
great significance is given.
Without Jesus, we
will never be satisfied. It will never come to fruition, even if we
are among the miniscule portion who receive worldly
significance. Our guarantee of significance comes in conversion to Jesus
Christ. If we are not yet converted, it's a matter of giving our
life to Jesus, receiving the love he has so that we are empowered to love
others.
This is what the church
has called heroic virtue. It's a description of those who live their
lives by love. Heroic virtue is not merely to be doing the right
thing, but to do the right thing with the power and presence of Jesus the Risen
Savior. Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me". It's doing the right thing as Jesus
would do that thing. In heroic virtue we actually can live lives
that are full of love. It's a life where Jesus' presence is
revealed. This is what the greater world, whether they know it or not, is
hoping from us. They hope that we will live lives of heroic
virtue—sacrificial lives, lives that are profoundly other-centered, lives that
are filled with love.
Blind
faith is learning to love as God has loved, learning to love as Jesus has
loved, in a series of specific choices toward specific people with specific
sacrifices. We always have choice. No one can take from us the
choice to love another. We always have that freedom.
Jesus
makes our small lives that appear insignificant deeply significant. We know of
Ruth, and her story is written because we find out at the very end of the book
that she actually was the great-grandmother to a figure named David, who is the
great-great-great-plus grandfather of Jesus himself. Ruth is essentially
Jesus' grandmother several steps removed, directly in his lineage. Her
life literally pointed and led to Jesus, and that's where her significance was
utterly and completely derived. In her own lifetime she was
insignificant, but now and in heaven she is known as one who loved and received
the deep love of God.
I love
the story by C.S. Lewis. He wrote a story about a man that goes
to heaven. He has a host. As he and his host are moving around
heaven, he sees a beautiful parade, and at the foot of the parade is a
glorious, beautiful, regal woman. He thinks, Oh, is that a queen?
Is that a monarch? His host responds, "No, not at all. It's
someone you never heard of. Her name was Sarah Smith, and she lived in
the suburbs." "Well, she seems to be a person of particular
importance." T he host says, "Oh yes, she's one of the great
ones. You've heard that theme in your country. Earth and fame in
heaven are two quite different things. Right?" The man hadn't
heard that. He says, "Well, who are all these young men and young
women at her side?" To that the host responded, "They're her
sons and daughters." "Oh, she must have had a very large
family." "No," the host says, "every young man or boy
that came to her back door with a package of delivery became her son.
Every girl that she met was her daughter."
Praise the Lord for the way He magnifies that is which is small in the eyes of
the world. At the end, those whose lives are given and lived in Jesus
will lead a procession of such beauty and glory you'd think they were monarchs.
In
Christ,
Brown
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