Brown's Daily Word 1-18-10

Good morning,

Praise the Lord for blessing us with so much abundance of His extravaganzant grace. Alice and Laureen went down to Philly for Jessica's wedding shower. It was great blessing. Tom and Jessica closed on their new house last Friday. It is an old stone house, with typical Pennsylvania Dutch decor. Sunita and Andy are currently in Israel, as Sunita had to return to Jerusalem to continue her work in grant proposal writing.

Praise the Lord that in the face of disasters and calamities the Lord uses His church to bring the Good News to the broken hearted. The Church is at work in Haiti, sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed. Even before the disaster there, the Church has been at work in Haiti. Praise the Lord for the Witness of the Gospel. In the words of Charles Wesley, "The Sign of Jesus here". A group short term missionaries from my friend's Church (Trinity United Methodist Church" in Hope, New Jersey, was in Haiti when the disaster struck. The Lord protected all the members of the group, and they now are all home safely. Many of Sunita's friends and colleagues are in Haiti, and they are all safe. Some of the leaders of UMCOR, the Relief Agency of our Church, died in earthquake, including the executive director of UMCOR. We praise the Lord the brave and courageous servants of Christ who are on the front lines in the mission of Jesus Christ, our Lord. We heard from our friend Karen Woods, who is in Madras, India with the team that is preparing for the Franklin Graham Festival in Madras, India. May the Lord energize and ferment His church through out the world to impact the nations of the world with the Good News of the Kingdom.

The Lord blessed us with a wonderful day in His House yesterday. One of the readings for yesterday was take from John 2. Jesus, our Lord, was invited to a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. Our Lord loved to bring joy to His people. He is the Christ in every crisis. According to John's Gospel it is the first miracle Christ performed. Mary, like a typical Jewish mother tried to control the situation. Jesus gently told her, "Madam, what have you to do with it; my hour has not come yet." These words were no sooner out of Jesus’ mouth than Mary turned to the servants to say, “Do whatever he tells you.” What follows is extraordinary; it is unexpected, miraculous, extravagant, new and good.

Six very large, empty stone jars were standing by, each able to hold the equivalent of some twenty to thirty gallons, normally used to store water for the purification washing ritual. Jesus told the servants to fill the stone jars with water, and they did so to the brim. Then Jesus told them to draw some water out and take it to the chief steward. Tasting the water, the steward was flabbergasted – it was very good wine, the best wine yet. Miraculously, they had the best wine, in extraordinary abundance, well more than was needed for the extended, week-long wedding feast. Had not Jesus told Nathaniel, just two verses earlier in John, that in following Jesus he would see new and great things? The miracle at the wedding of Cana was just the beginning. The reign of God was beginning to unfold in Jesus’ person as revealed in this sign. Had not the prophets used the image of an abundance of good wine as a sign that the new age, the age of God’s reign has begun? The absurdity of the numbers, of the sheer gallons of superb wine can mean nothing less. It seems that Jesus’ hour had begun. Certainly, it wass not the ultimate sign of his ultimate hour, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. But his ministry had begun and in that, the reign of God had broken into human life.

The unexpected, the miraculous, the extravagant, the new, and the good, are the marks of God’s gracious presence in life. The crisis was resolved, but not even the host was aware of its resolution nor of the person responsible. In fact, not even the cast of supporting characters could begin to comprehend what had taken place. It was an act of sheer grace, offered anonymously, which revealed the character of the one who did it. He is miraculous, extravagant, unexpected, new, and good.

Out of the old came the new in unexpected ways. From the waters of purification comes wine to make our hearts glad. From a world concerned with sin, comes one whose purpose is not only the redemption of sinners, but also the news that God is searching for them to bring them new life. Like the new wine, he is not only good, but better than anything or anyone who has come before. John ends this story by telling us that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs... and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” As always, in John’s gospel the signs are there for us to see God’s glory in Jesus so that we might believe in him.



Thus began the gospel of John as he witnessed to us that in Jesus is about the business of addressing our needs with abundant and generous grace. Further, this first sign suggests that God not only has the capacity to address our crisis and need, but often is doing so long before we know they exist. More often than not God does so anonymously. Good luck? Never! The phrase needs to be stricken from the Christian’s vocabulary. Providence? Always -- God works to provide for us in generous ways just as Jesus went to work to provide for the host of the wedding feast in Cana in generous ways.

God is at work in our lives right now in ways that we can neither conceive nor identify, ways that are miraculous, extravagant, unexpected, new, and good. God is doing it so that you and I might have life, and have it more abundantly!

When the wine of life runs out, look to Jesus and do whatever he tells you to do. When the joy of life runs short, look to Jesus and do whatever he tells you to do. When the power for living your life with integrity and sobriety fails you, look to Jesus and do whatever he tells you to do. When the meaning of it all disappears, look to Jesus and do whatever he tells you to do. He is the one who has the capacity to do something about your need. In fact, the good news is that he is already working at it on his own, anonymously, just as he worked on the wedding host’s problem. He is miraculous, extravagant, unexpected, new and good.

In Christ the Maker and the giver of New Wine.

Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zHn4QSH-8

U.S. Churches Look for Own in Haiti
By SUZANNE SATALINE, KEITH JOHNSON And THOMAS M. BURTON

While many churches and aid organizations have been scrambling to send whatever help they can to Haiti, others are searching for information about their own members who were caught in last week's devastating earthquake.

Friends and relatives of nuns with the Daughters of Mary, a Catholic religious order, have sought information for days since learning that the nuns' house in Port au Prince was destroyed. Julienne Jules of Lawrenceville, Ga., said she has heard that as many as 17 nuns may be dead, with several more injured and missing, including her 84-year-old aunt. "We know several are under the debris and we are trying to get someone to go in and rescue them," Ms. Jules said. "They need machinery to get them out."

Lynn University, a private school in Boca Raton, Fla., is continuing to search for four missing students and two missing faculty members, part of a 12-person team from the university that arrived in Haiti just hours before the earthquake struck, to offer housing and food aid to the poor. The other six have returned safely to Florida. Two university staff members who were vacationing in Haiti are also unaccounted for.

The university has contracted two search-and-rescue teams to look through the ruins of the Hotel Montana in Port au Prince, the last known location of university students and faculty. Lynn University students are holding candlelight vigils. Lynn staffers are also scouring hospital and embassy rolls in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the university said. The university said Sunday it had no additional details regarding the missing persons.

The missing faculty members are Dr. Patrick Hartwick, dean of the Ross College of Education, and Dr. Richard Bruno, assistant professor in the College of Liberal Education.

One of 12 missionaries from a Dallas church working at an eye clinic in Haiti died from injuries sustained in the earthquake. Jean Arnwine, who was on her first visit to Haiti to work in the eye clinic the Highland Park United Methodist Church established in 1985, was rescued from the quake area but died Friday in Guadeloupe. One other member of the mission remains in Guadeloupe, while the remaining 10 have returned home.

Two high-ranking officials with the United Methodist Church died as a result of the quake. Rev. Sam Dixon, head of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, was caught in the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince.

Also caught in the rubble was Rev. Clinton Rabb, a member of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and part of the church's mission volunteer unit since 2006. He died Sunday in Florida from injuries sustained after 55 hours trapped in the hotel rubble.

Chicago-based charity Friends of the Orphans said two young volunteers had also died in the quake. It said Molly Hightower, 22, of Port Orchard, Wash., and Ryan Kloos, 24, of Phoenix, had perished. Ryan's sister, Erin, was rescued and is in a Florida hospital, the group said.

Friends of the Orphans is the Chicago fundraising arm of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a Catholic-affiliated nonprofit.

Yet some groups got happier news. A church outside Detroit, Christian Faith Ministries of Garden City, Mich., received text message last week that its mission in Port-au-Prince was safe and no one injured. "The entire two-acre compound is still there," said the Rev. John Hearn Jr., who is heading there with an additional group of seven this week. "The houses around us fell, but our compound is still there." The group had even just filled two wells and thus has water for drinking and cleaning available.

Compassion International, a children's relief organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo., says that one contractor, David Haynes, is still missing, presumably in the rubble of the Hotel Montana.

Spokeswoman Kathy Redmond said that the organization has people on the ground trying to pinpoint Mr. Haynes' location, and that voices were still being heard in the rubble as of Sunday afternoon.

She said her understanding is that heavy equipment is being used to move large debris at the hotel site, parts of which were just "pancaked," she said.

She added that 73 of 74 Haitian staff of Compassion International had been accounted for, though many have lost family members. Another spokesman said the group's staff was working in a parking lot because of structural concerns about the building that normally houses its offices. This spokesman, Stephan Archer, said late Sunday that "as many as 50" of the group's 230 child development centers had been affected. The centers, housed in local churches, offer food, water, education and medical services to children.

Samaritan's Purse, an international evangelical relief organization based in Boone, N.C., is providing names to a local Haitian radio station of Americans whose family and friends have not heard from them, a spokeswoman said. The broadcast recites the list of names daily at 9 a.m. and the Americans named are being asked to contact the aid organization to let people know that they are fine and have been accounted for.

Ms. Jules, whose aunt is among the missing Daughters of Mary nuns, has been sending emails and calling, but said she has received no reply from the nuns. Ms. Jules, 50, teaches high-school French. She says she contacted outside organizations, including news organizations and a Haitian Democracy nonprofit. A Catholic food organization promised to send someone to the convent to dig for the missing women. Meanwhile, some of the nuns have been taken in by another religious order, but that group has no food or water, Ms. Jules said.

No one could be reached at the sisters' mother house, in Belgium, nor their Brooklyn, N.Y., house. The order's Web site said in a message posted Saturday that the "Daughters of Mary are very affected by the earthquake.''

Ms. Jules has strong ties to the order in Haiti. Born there, she and her two sisters went to live with the sisters in 1970, attending the boarding school there, after their mother died. She said she saw her aunt just last summer. "She's my world," she said.

Members of Catholic orders said several schools were especially hard hit. At least 200 and as many as 500 students and staff at an educational complex run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, a Catholic religious order, died in the rubble, said a spokeswoman for Salesian Missions USA, the order's fundraising arm. The dead include more than 200 young women studying to be teachers at the complex's technical school, the National School of Arts and Trades. The Salesians tried to pull survivors from the rubble, and had succeeded rescuing just a few, according to the order. Without working phones, Salesians abroad were trying to get word of who else had died in a complex that includes a primary school, a youth center and kitchen that feeds thousands of children each year.

Some organizations were trying to provide care with what little they had. More than 200 people were camping on the grounds of the damaged guest residence of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Port au Prince, said Sister Kesta Occident, the congregational leader of the order, based in Montreal. The sisters have no food or electricity, so there is no water to pump, she said. "If we can do something, we will do it," said Sister Occident, who lost an aunt and half sister in the quake. "If you have food you share with them. This is the way people used to live in Haiti."

The school affiliated with the Church of St. Gerard in Port au Prince collapsed, killing most of its 300 students and teachers, according to the website for the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province, a Catholic religious order affiliated with the parish. The order also reported that the major seminary in Port au Prince, which serves all the dioceses in Haiti, was completely destroyed, while several Catholic schools and colleges lay in ruins.

Write to Suzanne Sataline at suzanne.sataline@wsj.com, Keith Johnson at keith.johnson@wsj.com and Thomas M. Burton at tom.burton@wsj.com

Brown's Daily Word 1-15-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord, for it is Friday. The Lord has given us some mild weather, especially when compared with the last week. We are just under a month before our daughter Jessica's wedding. Alice and Laureen are driving down to Philadelphia tomorrow to attend a bridal shower for Jessica there. Sunita is flying to Jerusalem today with her work, and she is taking Andy with her this time. We are living in an exciting time of world history to proclaim Jesus and His Good News in word and deed.
Without Christ many live constantly in fear and anguish. Praise the Lord, "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim 1:7). Praise the Lord for the men and women who are sold out to Jesus. Jim Elliott said, "He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose". Praise the Lord for the way Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Daniel, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all lived with passion and fearlessness. Martin Luther was among the most fearless men who ever lived. When he set out on his journey to Worms to face the questions and controversies his teaching had created, he said, "You can expect from me everything save fear or recantation. I shall not flee, much less recant." His friends warned of the dangers; some begged him not to go. But Luther would not hear of it. "Not go to Worms!", he said. "I shall go to Worms though there were as many devils as tiles on the roofs."
When Luther appeared there before the court of Emperor Charles V, he was shown a stack of his writings and called upon to recant. Luther replied, "Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning, then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience." A few days before his death, Luther recalled that day. "I was afraid of nothing: God can make one so desperately bold."
One of the descriptions of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is "the Comforter". He is also the power source that will give you the boldness and courage you need to overcome fear. We read in Acts 4:13, “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men who had no special training. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.”
As we walk with Christ under His authority today, May He infuse us with His Holy boldness and courage.
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acspX34Guu4

Brown's Daily Word 1-14-10

Good morning,
Life has a way of putting us to sleep so that we lose our passion and our vision.
Sometimes things happen and we get discouraged, or we may even get the breath knocked out of us. One problem we may struggle with is problem of depression. Many people are beset with massive depression. Sometimes we get discouraged when our expectations are not met. When this happens our faith becomes weak and there is a tendency to slip into a kind of spiritual slumber or sleep.
One of the salient truths of the Bible is that the Lord God, revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord, loves to bless His people. In the Genesis account we read that the Lord God, the maker of heaven and earth, created Adam and Eve and He blessed them. (Gen 1: 27-28) Jesus came to the earth blessing people. In Ephesians 1 Paul wrote that we are blessed beyond belief in Jesus Christ. We are blessed and we are chosen to bless each other. Whenever we are in the presence of the Lord in a intimate way we are moved and we are blessed; we are provoked and we are stirred.
Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife of David, was unmoved in the presence of God and his plan. According to the book of Samuel, all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, gathered to take part in bringing the ark of the Covenant, God's presence, into the midst of his people in the new capitol, Jerusalem. They escorted it into the city with rejoicing, shouting, dancing, blowing on trumpets, and similar undignified pursuits. King David himself danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing nothing but a linen ephod. But one person was conspicuous by her absence from this picture. Michal, Saul's daughter and Jonathan's sister, was not there. She looked out from her window with scorn and disapproval. She saw David's extreme joy and despised him for its expression. So, even an awareness of God's presence is not enough.
We often ponder the divine plan for our lives. Paul put the whole plan into a context of blessing, saying, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He said that all of this plan is working to the praise of God's glory, and that we are now to live to the praise of God's glory. How do we do that? The Psalmist says that those who will stand in God's holy place will be those with clean hands and pure hearts, those who do not seek what is false, those who do not swear deceitfully. We know, because we know of the Father's plan, that the Father has gifted us lavishly with his grace and destined us to be holy and blameless before him in love. So, in that knowledge and with faith in God's grace, let us strive live our lives in love with clean hearts and pure hands. May we imitate David in his dance of joy, however undignified and unkingly. Let us not be as Michal in ignoring God's presence and scorning those who rejoice in it.
We are all touched by the tragedy of immense magnitude that has occurred in Haiti. Our Lord is the Man of sorrows. As such He is deeply touched by the massive grief and the sorrow of His people. We are calling our church people to give generously and sacrificially to help those who are hurting and in great need. If the Lord leads to participate in this ministry of sharing and caring you can send your gift for this ministry. Make your check payable to the Union Center United Methodist Church, with the memo note, "Haiti Relief Fund". The entirety of our gifts will be sent to Haiti through UMCOR, the relief Agency of our church. 100% will be used in the relief Effort. You also can send your checks to World Vision. You can find their address on World Vision.org
May the Lord provoke us to care and share. May Jesus Christ be glorified in our lives as we will come alongside the people of Haiti in ministry.

Our Church Address is:
Union Center United Methodist Church
128 Maple Drive
Endicott, NY 13760
In Christ,

Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d61LamkXfwk