Praise the Lord for this first weekend of March. We have had a short interlude of wonderful winter with fresh snow. It is very brief and very transitory, as it will start warming up beginning tomorrow. We had some beautiful and heart-warming moments on Google chat, with our grandchildren from Washington, DC this morning. Janice and Simeon (from Boston) are currently in Washington, DC. Tom, Jessica, and Lindy are also in Washington, DC spending the weekend together. This is the first time since August that all four sisters were able to get together, so they went out to eat together at a trendy Mediterranean restaurant last evening. They were celebrating Janice's milestone birthday (from last September). Today, while Janice is at a conference in the city, the rest of the crew are spending the day going to some of the museums- most particularly the Air and Space Museum. Some of the Spring Flowers are in full bloom and they are waiting for the iconic and historic Cherry Blossoms that will start in the middle of March this year - way ahead of the regular season that comes in the first weekend of April. Our oldest grandson, Simeon, who is adventurous, very curious, very bold, and very energetic, loves to explore. He is having a wonderful time in Washington,DC.
We are getting ready for worship tomorrow, the First Sunday in Lent. We will meet for Sunday School tomorrow at 9:30 AM and for worship at 10:30 AM followed by a Fellowship Hour. Plan to be in the House of the Lord tomorrow wherever you might be. It is a great blessing and honor to be in the House of the Lord in worship, in Celebration, and in witness. Jesus is exalted. He is upon His Throne and all is well.
As Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem, He walked ahead of the disciples, His face riveted on Jerusalem. He was unafraid, and He marched with a great sense of mission and a great sense of triumph. Jesus warned his disciples: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26). If our main concern is that life go well for us, then we are concerned about the wrong things. If our main concern is that people think well of us, then we are not concerned about pleasing God. Following Christ may mean living a difficult life. We are called and commissioned to follow Christ, denying our ourselves and taking up the cross. We are Kingdom people. We belong to Jesus. We are safe and secure in Him. We have foretasted the joy and the blessings of the Kingdom. . . No turning back, No turning back. We press on following Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. He gives us grace and courage to finish it well. The Lord has promised a glorious Kingdom which is already here and yet to come in full splendor.
I have been blessed to have met some beautiful, fervent, and zealous servants of Jesus. They have encouraged me, inspired me, and provoked me to love Jesus and follow Him with tenacity and full abandon. One of those of those beautiful servants of Christ is Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who has experienced a lot of suffering. Paralyzed from the shoulders down after a tragic diving accident as a teenager, Joni often wanted to die instead of working to live and overcome her disabilities. She still lives in pain every day, but God has given her a world-wide ministry that she could never have dreamed of before her accident. She has proven faithful through it all. She writes devotionals faithfully. One devotional she titled, “Closer to the Other Side”. She tells about something that happened to her recently — something that for most of us would be rather mundane, but to her it spoke of something far deeper. She wrote, “For me in this wheelchair, shampooing my hair requires parking in front of my bathroom sink, leaning forward, and letting my friend Dana ‘go at it’ as she stands to one side and lathers my hair. ‘Joni, would you like me to wash your face while you’re under the faucet?’ she asked. ‘Sure,’ I gurgled. She took her soapy hands and began lathering my cheeks, using the flat of her fingers to gently wash around my eyes. I gasped. ‘Am I hurting you?’, Dana asked. ‘Oh, no, not at all!’, I said. ‘Please… please keep going!’ How could I explain? For that brief moment, it felt as though her hands were mine! She was rubbing my face exactly the way I used to do with my own hands, decades ago. Those few brief moments were about as close as I’ve ever felt to being healed! When we finished, Dana patted my face and hair dry with a towel. She also had to wipe away my tears. But they weren’t tears of sadness or regret. They were tears of joy about the future. I told her, ‘This was a reminder that soon I will be able to wash my own face with new, glorified hands!’” Then Joni said, “There is less distance between me and the future than me and the past, before I was injured. I have come to the place where a memory can push me joyfully into the future rather than pull me somberly back into a sad past. Because we are believers, the future has a happy, magnetic pull on our hearts. Take just few minutes today (maybe while you’re on a walk in the sunlight) to think about the new, marvelous, perfect, immortal body that awaits you — really, just a few years away on the Other Side. She ends with the scripture that says, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of me.” (Philippians 3:13). And then she prays: “Lord how good you are! The promises you have given us for that radiant tomorrow help us walk through the darkest of days on this side of heaven.” She is following Christ in her wheelchair, carrying her cross, and has her eyes set on the kingdom heaven. She is living for him now that she might live with him there.
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/EtyVdC7E6Wo
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