"Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen."
Revelation 7:12.
He blessed us with a wonderful week. Our daughters
Laureen and Sunita visited us this week along with our youngest
granddaughter, Asha. They all live in Washington, DC, but drove over
300 miles to come and spend sweet and joyful moments with us. We
praise the Lord for each one of them. They are indeed wonders of His
grace and love. Asha is almost 18 months old, and she is charming and
inquisitive. We watched with her the train as it passed through our
town twice each day. We also sat with her, watching some
mega-trucks, luxury campers, and tour buses as they passed by our house every
day. She was mesmerized and moved as she saw an Amish buggy pass by us
unhurried and unafraid. Asha wanted the horse to return and
kept softly saying, "neigh" to ask us to get the horse back. As
we sat by the picture window of the house we saw all the scenes and heard
the sounds of life all around. We had wonderful moments sharing,
listening, and reminiscing the wonder working grace of our Lord in our lives
over the decades that have gone by. Though the temporal has
come and gone, His love remains and His Faithfulness never ends.
While we were together we watched the
movie, "Brooklyn", a wonderful heart-warming story of legal
Irish Immigrants who immigrated to Brooklyn, NY in the fifties. The movie
reflects and deflects the hopes, the fears, the battles and blessings, the tears,
the trials and triumphs, the conflicts and resolutions, and the joyful
endings of dreams that have come true in the land called America the beautiful.
It is the story of untold millions of legal immigrants who came to the shores
of America and made the country their home. My girls also watched an
episode of Downton Abbey. It was all beautiful and winsome.
I woke up early this morning, waiting
for the sunrise. It is going to be a wonderful Saturday. It appears
the Spring Season has made an abrupt landing. It is all beautiful. Alice
and I walked for over a mile under a strong warm sun last evening. It was
beautiful and refreshing. A friend stopped by the other day and said that
he has seen flocks of robins that have returned back to their natural habitat
here in the North. We rejoice and celebrate the beautiful moments of
every season.
We are gearing up for a great evening of Family
Fellowship and Fantastic Foods this evening at the church. Our chefs
and cooks are preparing Italian, Mexican, Indian, and Swedish cuisine along
with desserts galore. The dinner will be served at 6:00 PM, followed
by and an evening of concert. We will meet for Sunday School tomorrow
morning at 9:30 AM and for worship at 10:30 AM tomorrow, the Day of the Lord. Plan
to be in the house of the Lord wherever you might be. Jesus is
praised. He is exalted.
One of the fascinating and provocative encounters that Jesus had is found in John 4. He met a woman who had come to a well in the middle of the day to draw water for her family. He conversed with her about water but, when we go beyond the obvious, Jesus was not talking about drinking water; he was talking about life. He said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). Jesus invited her to come to him as the source of the water of life. Her pathetic efforts to make life work had done nothing but disappoint her and break her. She had ruined her life and the lives of others as well. Her life was indeed a broken cistern. She was alienated from her community, her family, and herself. All the life had leaked out of her and she was desperate and hopeless. Then Jesus came into her life. He offered her more than water; he offered to give her life in all its fullness. When that life began flowing through her it became a bubbling stream, and she could not keep quiet about what God had done for her. She began telling all her friends and neighbors so that many others began to drink of real life as well.
Blaise Pascal once said, “Human beings are peculiar in that they pursue ends they know will bring them no satisfaction, gorge themselves with food that cannot nourish and with pleasures that cannot please.” There are many people like that today. They settle for pretend relationships and they look for intimacy in wrong places. They have what C. S. Lewis called, “incommunicable and unappeasable want.”
We can try to make our lives work by our own effort, or we can ask God for his presence to fill our lives. When Jesus invades our lives when He intrudes into our inner sanctum, something beautiful something wonderful happens. We can affirm and claim that He is everything. He is essence of our lives. He is the Alpha and Omega - the Beginning and the End. When He is in charge, He he makes all things refreshing and beautiful. C. S. Lewis said, “The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.” It cannot be just one of the many things on your list. It IS the list or it is nothing.
In Christ,
Brown.
https://youtu.be/mZGzu6oI9b4
