Praise the Lord for this sweet and sassy
summer. The Lord has blessed us with unceasing and torrential rains,
drenching fields and mountains, hills and valleys, ranches and farm
lands, overflowing rivers, lakes, ponds, and waterfronts. We have
been in and out in very recent days. I had a treatment this past Monday.
The Lord has been restoring and renewing me. I had good report from
my blood tests. We are scheduled to drive to Boston next week
for my regular consultation with the doctors there. We
will be in Boston from the 3rd of August through the 8th. We are planning
to spend some time with our Boston Grandchildren going to Beaches and just
hanging our with them and their parents.
The entire family from Boston are coming
down to New York to spend a week in a lake front house. Thank to the kindness
and generosity of friends and fellow sojourners with Jesus, Doug and Liz.
We are catching up with our garden, and are busy tilling, hoeing, and
tending. We are hoping to go out picking blueberries this weekend.
Sunita and her family are on their way
to "Pure Michigan", to visit family and friends. We
are planning to spend some of the remainder of summer with our grandchildren
and family. May Jesus, who places the solitary in the families, bless all
of your family gatherings, outings, camping, and celebrations. May He
bless our times of worship, praise, and celebrations. Praise the Lord
for the way He blesses us with simple and sacred gifts that we can share
and invest in others and thereby enriching our life together.
I was visiting with a friend over the
phone today. She is one of the very beautiful persons who loves
Jesus and has served Him very well. She is 86 years old. She
and her husband have been a source of great blessing to us and to the church.
They have reached out to others with open arms, open hearts, and loving
kindness. Her husband died in 2003. She has continued to remain
faithful to Jesus all these years. She is blessed with three
brothers. One of the brothers was diagnosed with a cancer in 1986 and
given six weeks to live. The Lord intervened, and her brother is
alive and well. He will celebrate his 91st birthday in September. I
like the Lord's report.
The Lord is there 24/7, His
wonders to perform. He is with us in spite of our bloopers and blunders.
He is in our side because of Jesus, who, while we were yet in our sin,
died for us. We are getting ready for Sunday, the Lord's day. We
will meet for worship at 10:30 AM. Plan to be in the house of the Lord
wherever you might be in worship, celebration, and witness.
Praise the Lord for the spectacular
summer. We get to celebrate the beauty of the Lord and the splendor
of His creation, and enter into the presence of His majesty and His
glory. We get to celebrate His manifold blessings and bounties. We get
to be in the great outdoors, feasting and celebrating.
One of the TV programs I love to watch is
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Many programs I enjoy are on
the Travel Channel and the Food Network. Some
of you may have heard of Anthony Bourdain, a reality show personality on the
Travel Channel, known for his shows called "No Reservations" and
"Parts Unknown". He is a chef who travels around the world to
eat various foods, so there is an episode set in Dubai, which is
part of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, where he's sitting
with some guys from the UAE around a low table. There's one common dish
loaded with meat, rice, and yogurt. Everyone sticks their hands into this
dish, balls up some of the rice, grabs some of the lamb, and eats it with the
yogurt. They all share the same dish. That is much closer to
the way they ate in Jesus' day, unlike the way we eat in Western culture, where
everyone has his own plate, knife, and fork. In the West people don't
like to share their food. In Jesus' day, you'd break some bread off of a
loaf and use it to scoop food out of the common bowls in the middle, as they do
in Dubai. In Jesus' day, when you ate with people, you really ate with
people. It wasn't just about the food, but friendship and
acceptance. Who you ate with said something about you, and likewise, who
you refused to eat with said something about you.
Jesus was traveling, on the move,
and when he passed through a town, he would pick out someone to eat with.
I love the incredible account that is recorded in Luke 19 in which
Jesus was traveling down to Jerusalem with a crowd to celebrate the Passover
feast. Of all the houses in Jericho, of all the people who Jesus could
have picked to stay with, he chose a guy whom others would avoid. His
choice caused a scandal. As Jesus entered Jericho with the
crowd, our focus is drawn to a tax collector in the town.
Everybody in that day hated tax collectors, probable even more than we
disdain the IRS today. Zaccaheus was probably one of the richest
people in the neighborhood. It is written, [Zacchaeus] was seeking
to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was
small of stature."
Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus but could
not because of the crowd, so "he ran on ahead and climbed up into a
sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way." In
fact, he climbed a tree, as our grandson Simeon would do. Zacchaeus
didn't care what the crowd though of him. He shed his dignity,
because he just wanted to see Jesus. Not only did Zacchaeus see Jesus,
but Jesus saw Zacchaeus, too. Jesus looked up to see this fully
grown, wealthy man up in a tree, and he called him by name. He said,
"Zacchaeus, come down. I'm going to stay at your house."
Zacchaeus was ecstatic to open his home to Jesus. Jesus invited
Himself to Zacchaeus' house, where they were going to sit and break bread
together. This encounter and the social transaction, caused
quite a scandal.
What the crowd saw when
Jesus went to Zacchaeus' house was simply that Jesus had gone to be the
guest of a sinner. They react with confusion because of all the people to
eat with, why would Jesus be associating with Zacchaeus? What took place
that day was a miracle of encounter with Jesus, who is life, who is the
embodiment of grace and mercy. When we come face to face with Jesus,, who
reflects truth but also offers grace, who heals and restores, something
powerful is bound to happen. The crowd of people sensed that power
although they did not know how to make any sense of it. The
encounter with Jesus brought about a great transformation in the life of the
tax collector, who had previously loved money and used people. Real
transformation ushers in a great change in the life of one who was dead in
sin. The Lord brings about the change from within and with out.
The changed man Zacchaeus is
uncontainable, unstoppable, unafraid and unashamed. "And Zacchaeus
stood and said to the Lord, 'Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the
poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.'"
His was genuine movement. This is what happens when God moves in.
Zacchaeus' perspective on life was significantly altered through his encounter
with Jesus. His life was no longer about just him. When we
give our heart to Christ in a new way, we must anticipate these
things as they bubble up to the surface. We can expect a new heart of
generosity, a heart of hilarity and self- forgetfulness. After Zacchaeus
stood up and made his announcement of generosity and restitution, Jesus said,
"Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of
Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."
By calling Zacchaeus a "son of
Abraham," Jesus was saying that Zacchaeus was indeed in the line of
promise—the promise God had made to Abraham hundreds of years earlier.
Zacchaeus was in the line to receive all of the blessings promised to Abraham
and his children. He was no longer cut off, despite the poor choices he
had made. Jesus said that he came to seek and save the lost. He
came to restore the lost, like the shepherd seeks to save the lost sheep, or
the woman who loses a coin searches her house until she finds it, or the father
welcomes home his son who has wandered far in rebellion.
This whole event which found Jesus in
Jericho, headed to Jerusalem, took place just a week before the
Crucifixion, one of the last things Jesus did before he went to be
crucified. I think that when Jesus says, "the Son of Man came to
seek and save the lost," he is speaking not only to Zacchaeus but to
everyone around. That is the mission he is on—to search out and restore the
lost.
In Christ,
Brown
