Praise the Lord for His
realness, His nearness, His Immanence, His transcendence, and His sufficiency
in all circumstances, predicaments, and crises and in His heavenly places
on earth. Indeed, "earth is crammed with heaven". We
have a foretaste of Heaven every day in and through Jesus Christ, the
Emmanuel, God with us. He blessed us with a day of abundance.
The world is gone insane with hatred,
violence, anarchy, and rebellion, but in and through Jesus Christ, the
Prince of Peace and Lion of Judah, we can hold onto Him and to His perfect
and eternal purposes and plans. We can know that the "kingdoms of
this world have become the kingdom of our God His and of his Christ,
and He shall reign for ever and ever". We will continue
pray for His peace.. We will continue to be instruments of His peace.
The Lord showered us with brilliant
weather - warm, yet comfortable. We worked in the garden, praising the
Lord for the abundance all kinds of vegetables and greens. Alice started
harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and beet greens. We were blessed
to receive sweet corn, cucumbers, zucchinis, and peppers from a
friend. Alice made relish from some of the abundant produce, and she
also made her signature loaves of homemade bread to share with neighbors
and friends. We had some face time (Google chat) with our granddaughter
Lindy and her mommy Jessica, who are waiting for the birth of Lindy's brother.
Alice and I drove on the back hills yesterday afternoon, through the meadows
and hills, pastures and farms. The early evening sun was magical and
mesmerizing, refreshing the heart, evoking in us a deep sense of gratitude for
the magnanimity of our Lord. We are blessed for the
way beauty explodes all around us. We passed by the Amish families
and farms. Their horses were grazing in the fields and
families were outside playing some summer sports. It was
beautiful to behold. Alice and I walked in the late evening along Main
Street, where we met some of Alice's former students who were
congregating near the town square and the ice cream parlor. It was
all sweet.
It is Friday, but Sunday is
coming. Let us plan to be in the House of the Lord this coming Lord's day
wherever we might be. We will gather for worship at 10:30
AM. Those of you live in the vicinity please mark your calendars
for a coming event. We will be hosting the St. Petersburg Men's Ensemble
from St. Petersburg, Russia, on Saturday, December 2, 2017. They are the
gifted and talented musicians who have been with us every year for last
several years. They will be in concert on Saturday December 2 at
7:00 PM in the Sanctuary of the United Methodist Church of Marathon.
We will be serving a dinner featuring International cuisine at 6:00
PM.
In his book The Great Divorce,
C. S. Lewis describes a young man who is tormented by a red lizard that sits on
his shoulder and mocks him. For Lewis, the lizard represents the
indwelling sin all of us struggle with. In the book, an angel comes and
promises to get rid of the red lizard, and the man, for the moment, takes great
joy in that. He's thrilled. "I can be rid of this thing." Then
he realizes the way the angel will get rid of it, as the angel begins to glow
with a fiery heat. He will kill the lizard. Beginning to recognize
the implications, the young man says, "Maybe you don't have to kill it.
Maybe you don't have to get rid of it entirely. Can't we just do
this another time?" The angel says, "In this moment are all
moments. Either you want the red lizard to live or you do not." T he
lizard, recognizing the hesitation of the young man, begins to mock and plead
at the same time. "Be careful. He can do what he says. He can
kill me. One fatal word from you and he will. Then you'll be
without me forever and ever. It's not natural. How could you
live? You'll only be a sort of a ghost, not a real man as you are
now. He doesn't understand. He's only a cold, bloodless, abstract
thing. It may be natural for him, but it's not natural for us. I
know there are no real pleasures, only dreams, but aren't they better than
nothing? I'll be so good. I admit I've gone too far in the past,
but I promise I won't do it again. I'll give you nothing but really nice
dreams, all sweet and fresh and almost innocent."
For C. S. Lewis, these words typify for
all of us the way in which we compromise and allow sin to dwell in our
lives. The apostle Paul wrote about what it would really mean
to kill the "lizards", the indwelling sin in our lives. He
began with an authority that is quite striking, almost hurtful to us.
"So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer
live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking," (Ephesians 4:17). When
we are in Christ Jesus, we walk a different path. There will be
no joy in those who are mired in their sin. "They are darkened
in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts," (Ephesians 4:18).
That unrewarding life is characterized by a darkened mind. They don't see
or understand what they should. They are, in fact, ignorant in their
thinking. This is going to be in stark contrast to what he is going to say
about the life of those who are in the Lord in verses 20-21. We're in
union with him who is life.
Those who walk in the way of the world
don't have any understanding of real life. Their experience is limited
only to their instincts and to the urges of their bodies. They don't have
any knowledge of the eternal. They don't know the beauty Christ intends.
It is further written what will happen to those with hardened hearts.
"Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to
sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust
for more," Ephesians 4:19.
The
angel in C. S. Lewis's story grasps the lizard and with fiery hands begins to
choke it so that it finally dies and falls to the ground, but when it hits the
ground, it becomes a stallion, and the young man gets on it and rides. What had
been the ruler is now ruled. What had been his master, he now
masters. What had ridden him, he now rides. It's C. S. Lewis's
great expression that when we actually kill the sin, the things that were so
hard actually become good and freeing and wonderful to us.
Imagine what would it be like not to live the life of lizards,
but actually to ride the horses of heaven.
In Christ,
Brown
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