Praise the Lord for this awesome
Autumn season. Autumn is one of my favorite times of the year
to capture the beauty of the Lord in His creation. Colorful leaves,
bright blue skies, and the changing of the seasons create vivid, colorful
scenes that beg to be photographed. In the words of John Donne, “No
spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal
face." Further,
in the words of Albert Camus, “Autumn is a second spring when every
leaf is a flower.” The
colors are unfolding fast and furiously. The mountains and the hills are
aglow and very alive. Praise the Lord! He is the Lord of
History. Indeed, history is His story. Alice and I have
been driving around by the farms, orchards, hills, and meadows.
Praise the Lord for the abundance of harvest. Praise the Lord for season
of abundance. Our garden is still full of fresh vegetables. Praise
the Lord that He is the Jehovah Jireh. He provides. He
replenishes us with His abundance and magnanimity. He is is
exalted and Lifted on high.
We are getting ready for worship this
coming Lord's day. We will meet for Sunday school at 9:30 AM and for
worship at 10:30. Our church is hosting a church wide dinner on Sunday
the 15th of October following the morning worship. We are also hosting an
evening Hymn sing on Sunday the 22nd of October at 6:00 PM. We are
excited about this evening of great singing of the great hymns of the
church. Come and join us. There will be a reception following the
hymn sing. We will be serving very seasonal refreshments including
donuts and apple cider.
Praise the Lord for the way he calls us
to life in Him, through Him, and because of Him. Often this life is
paved with blessings and battles.. triumphs and tragedies.. glorious
moments and gloomy moments... We all journey through joys and
sorrows, joys of triumph and the anguish of defeat. One of the great
blessings of the life in Christ is that He walks and talks with us. He is
our constant and eternal companion and He is provides the finest bread and
choicest wines for the journey. Hebrews 4:14-16 reminds
us that Jesus, our Great High Priest, can sympathize with our weaknesses as the
man of sorrows.
Andrew Peterson depicted this cry of
lament well in his song, "The Silence of God."
"And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes …
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes …
"There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And he's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a stone
All his friends are sleeping, and he's weeping all alone …
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And he's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a stone
All his friends are sleeping, and he's weeping all alone …
"And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God …"
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God …"
The beautiful thing is that even while
we will feel this way there is rock solid truth to cling to, reminding us of
the God who never leaves us or forsakes us. Psalm 42:1 is
the cry of any true believer. This is an image of an animal in drought
and, like such an animal, we have a desperate longing. We love God, and
his love has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom. 5:5).
There is a yearning for God deep in our souls that is being expressed (like in Psalm 84, where the
psalmist yearns for God and says a day in his courts is better than a thousand
elsewhere). The psalmist's soul—his inner being, the essence of who he is—deeply
desires to meet with God in the sanctuary of the temple. (Notice the
psalmist refers to God 21 times in very personal ways, referring to him also as
"my salvation [or Savior]," "my rock," and
"Lord.")
Two of the powerful Psalms that I love
to read and reflect upon is Psalm 42 and 43, which speak
of oppression and taunting from people around the psalmist David. It
would have been enough even if all he faced was the sense of God's
absence, but his grief was heightened by the taunts of others (as Psalm 42:3
says, "People say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'". It
is astounding that the psalmist prays this way and makes known his woes to the
Lord, but this is instructive for our prayer lives. It instructs that we
can rightly bring our sorrows before the Lord. He is there to hear our
prayers, and he allows us to leave our anxieties and cares at his feet.
What we need when we are needy is God. The psalmist, though in lament, is
not in despair. He deliberately turns his mind to God's grace and
faithfulness and covenant. It is here we come to remembrance.
Let
us make our requests known to God and cast our cares upon him. As we
do so, there are promises that he will care for us. His peace will guard
our hearts as we dwell on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable,
excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:6-8). We
must consciously, forcefully remember God, his character, and his work on our
behalf. In verse four, the psalmist remembers what it is like to worship the
living God. He remembers the love of God that remains with him and directs him
(v. 8) and God's truth that leads him home to worship God, the joy of all his
joys (43:3-4). Amid pain and sorrow, we remember : God is sovereign,
loving, and in the midst of our sorrows. He has spoken to us definitively,
decisively, and directly in his Word. We are invited to Hope in God! Wait
for God! Hope is confident expectation based on the truth that we have. This is
no mindless meditation: a closing of the eyes or a passive twiddling of the
thumbs. Rather, we are to engage in ongoing, expectant, straining anticipation
for God's deliverance. This is a spiritually aggressive confidence that God
will act and show himself faithful, based on past performance and future grace
seen in his promises.
We hope in God because of his
character and attributes. He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger,
abounding in steadfast love, holy, just, exerting wrath toward sin. He is
for, not against, those who are in Christ. Christ is infinite in
power, worth, and perfection, all-knowing, everywhere-present, unchanging in
character, our rock and salvation, sovereign over all things, Creator,
sustainer, altogether great, and altogether good. In the history of
redemption, he has created all things and shown grace to humanity again and
again. In His grace He gave a child to Abraham and Sarah in their old
age, brought 10 plagues upon the mighty Egyptians, parted the Red Sea for the
Israelites to walk across, provided food and drink for Israel in the
wilderness, defeated nations, made the sun stand still, disciplined his people
for their sin, brought them back to the land in his mercy, and brought his Son
Jesus Christ as the way and truth and life and the only means of salvation,
propitiation, expiation, redemption, and reconciliation with God.
Jesus has given his Spirit to His
church and promised a coming day when all will be made right, when he
will dwell with his people forever, and there will be no more sorrow, sickness,
tears, or death.
In Christ,
Brown
