Brown's Daily Word 9/11/15

 Praise the Lord for this Fantastic Friday.  Summer has lingered here in central New York for much of September.  The temperatures have reached into the nineties much of September so far.  Alice and I have recently been on the move,  visiting our children and grandchildren.  We spent a few days in Boston, visiting Janice and Jeremy and their three children.  We followed that up with a visit to Washington, our Nation's Capital, awaiting the birth of our latest granddaughter, Asha, whose name means hope.  Asha is the daughter of Sunita and Andy.  She was born on the 1st of September, her parents' 8th wedding anniversary.  She is gorgeous and beautiful.   On our way home we stopped over in the Philadelphia area, where we spent some time with Rosalind and her parents, Jessica and Tom.  Rosalind is also beautiful, charming, and precious. 

 

    Sweet September is one of the very auspicious months in our family tree.  It was on September 5, 1974 that I arrived at JFK Airport as a young man.  It was on the thirteenth of September that our oldest daughter was born.  It was in September that Sunita and Andy were married.  It was in September that dear little Asha was born.  I was born on September 17, in a small village in India.  We have so much to celebrate!

 

    While we were in Washington we had the added blessing of meeting with some of dear friends and colleagues of Sunita, Andy, and Laureen, and  fellow servants of Jesus our Lord.  We met up with Steve and Belinda.  Steve is the  President and the CEO of World Relief, headquartered in Baltimore.  Steve and Belinda shared the  plight of the refugees that are currently flooding Europe.  They shared that this is the worst refugee crisis, even worse than that which occurred  during World War II.  The Lord has brought the need of the world in to the doorsteps of the church.  Somehow He is saying, "You feed them".  My daughter Sunita reminded me that all the refugees are dear to the heart of Jesus.  Praise the Lord that the Church is ministering to them.  All the churches and church agencies including our UMCOR, United Methodist Committee on Relief are at work in feeding and sheltering in the name of Jesus.   

 

    Today is the 14th anniversary of 9/11.  Somehow the world changed that day.  When we serve Jesus Christ, we serve under His Lordship.  He never changes.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

 

    We see the seasons gradually changing, ushering in the Autumn season.  Students, faculties, and staff are back in school and in colleges.  We see the gradual change all around us.  One amazing thing about the change of our seasons is that we can not stop it or reverse them.  Once God puts nature into motion a great symphony erupts all around us.  Every living creature is busy in preparation for the changes to come.  From the smallest insect to the largest mammal every single living thing is suddenly aware that we are in for dramatic changes in how we go about our daily lives.  The same thing happens when we fully trust Jesus to change us from a lost sinner to a saved saint.  Dramatic changes take place.  Some of us not really prepared for all that is involved.  Our lives in Christ are filled with all kinds of activity and change.   Jesus is alive in us, changing us from season to season.  Jesus is in the process of getting us ready for things that we cannot see.  It is Jesus who helps us to discover that the useless things we carry from one season of life into another can be discarded once and for all.     .  

    Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

   

    George Eliot once wrote of the beauty of the Fall season.  “Is not this a true autumn day?  Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonize.  The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.  Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."  I think it is a fascinating thing it is that such a melancholy season could be encased in such soaring colors of scarlet, saffron, and orange. The nature of natural light changes from a harsh shine to a radiant amber glow.  At the same time as much of the natural world is dying and going underground, Fall is also a time of abundance and harvest.  There is a concept in Japanese culture that describes the beauty of “the withered, weathered, tarnished, scarred, intimate, coarse, earthly, evanescent, tentative, ephemeral.”  Autumn calls us to remember our own fragility and cherish this beauty.

 

    Praise the Lord for Sunday.  Plan to be in the Lord's house wherever you might be.  We will meet for Sunday School at 10 AM and for worship at 11:00 AM.  We are excited about Sunday.  When the saints gather the sing and shout, Satan flees. 

 In Christ the Lord of all seasons.

    Brown

https://youtu.be/PaMkj4_H8WM

Brown's Daily Word 8/29/15

   The Lord has once again blessed us with an abundant week.  We spent part of the week in Boston with our three grandchildren and their parents.  While we were in Boston we were able to walk a lot.  One day we walked to the Amazing Arnold Arboretum.  On another day we spent the afternoon at the beach playing with our grandchildren.  We spent plenty of time reading books to the children, playing board games with them, and learning to look at life with a sense of wonder and awe through the eyes of children.  We got home safe and secure and are getting ready for worship tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM.  I am continuing to preach from Psalm 103, one of my most favorite Psalms.  My sermon has been divided into several sections, and tomorrow I will be preaching on "Amazing Grace' as it is portrayed in Psalm 103.

 

    Our Lord God, as revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ, is both gracious and kind.  His grace causes Him to come to the aid of the weak.  Our Lord  innately cares and is concerned for the weak, though this care is undeserved.  There is no reason for Him to care for us.  He is the stronger coming to the aid of the weaker, but it is only at His own initiation.  He cares; He is compassionate; and He is involved in our lives and our world though we don't deserve His care or concern. He gives it by His own gracious action.  We need to understand that compassion and grace are not what God does but who God is.  God cares for us with no ulterior motives, and we never can repay Him.

 

    Our Lord  cares.  He cares graciously and goes beyond all expectations.  When God puts compassion and graciousness together, He reminds us that He cares for us extravagantly; and He does so knowing there is no way we can repay Him.

 

    The enemy will cause us  to question the care of Jesus.  When we  leave the hospital after visiting someone on life support, when we  watch believers suffering miscarriages, when cancer strikes someone we  love, when drug abuse hits close to home, when divorce visits those in whom we have invested, when those who have been the pillars of faith enter hospice care — let us  remember our Lord  cares!

 

    Some time ago I read a story about  the Rev. W. Stillman Martin.  In 1904, in Lestershire, N.Y., the Rev. W. Stillman Martin, a well-known Baptist evangelist, was invited to preach at a church some distance from the Bible school.  That Sunday morning, Mrs. Martin suddenly fell ill and was confined to her bed, making it impossible for her to accompany her husband to his preaching engagement.  Mr. Martin seriously considered canceling his speaking assignment, because he would have to be away for a considerably long time.  However, their young son spoke up and said, "Father, don't you think that if God wants you to preach today, He will take care of Mother while you are away?"  Agreeing, Mr. Martin kept his preaching appointment, and the service proved to be unusually blessed by God, with several people professing Christ as Savior.

 

    Returning later that evening, Mr. Martin found his wife greatly improved in health. In fact, while he was gone she had been engaged in preparing a new hymn text, inspired by the chance remark of their young son earlier that day.  That same evening, Stillman Martin composed the music for his wife's words just as they still are sung today.

    Be not dismayed whate'er betide,
    God will take care of you
    Beneath His wings of love abide,
    God will take care of you.
    God will take care of you,
    Through every day, over all the way;
    He will take care of you,
    God will take care of you.

  Our daughter Sunita is expecting her baby this weekend in Washington. Please pray for her and the baby.

   Jesus is Lord.

    In Him,

     Brown

https://youtu.be/ijytLs96yig

Brown's Daily Word 8/24/15

Praise the Lord it is Monday.  I trust you all had a blessed and beautiful weekend.   The Lord blessed us with a beautiful weekend.  It was great to be in the House of the Lord yesterday to worship, to celebrate, and to proclaim His majesty and His greatness.   We also had a great festive time after worship.  This was part of our fortieth wedding anniversary or, as our friends say in England, "Ruby Anniversary".  We had all kinds of foods with international flavor.  It was a great time of sweet fellowship and sharing.  Thank you all for greetings, prayerful wishes, cards, and gifts.  We are blessed. 

    I talked with our oldest daughter, who shared that they spent the weekend camping in a very rustic campground of Massachusetts.  They had a great time.  Their oldest daughter, our first granddaughter, read a book from the library and presented a book report.  She won three tickets to the Boston Red Sox game at the Fenway Park, so Jeremy, Micah, and Simeon spent part of the weekend at the Ball Park.  Meanwhile, Janice and Ada spent the afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts, one of Ada's favorite places.  Praise the Lord for summer ... Sweet summer.

    The Epistle Reading for yesterday was taken from Ephesians 6: 10-20.  John Calvin, the 16th century reformer, once talked about how the Scriptures are our eye-glasses; the Bible is the lens through which we can begin to see the world as it should be seen.  The Scriptures provide us with a corrective lens so we can see the details of the world and of our culture, and so we can see more than simple shapes and shades.  We can begin to see the beautiful intricacies that make us human, those complexities that bind us together with others in a society.  There are lines of connection, of relationship, criss-crossing through us and all around us that make up the world in which we live.  Scripture offers us a corrective lens so we can train our eyes to see all the interesting connections, and all the confused messiness that makes living with others sometimes difficult.
    We all need new eyes, or at least eye-glasses, to help see these things, and that is exactly what Paul gave us in language that serves as corrective lenses that help us see the world—language that helps us think about the world.  He said, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 12).   The world we live in is full of mystery and wonder.
    Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, talked about the Bible as “a strange new world.”  He wrote, Scripture takes us out of “the old atmosphere of man and into the open portals of a new world, the world of God.”  What Barth said about Scripture in general is quite true about our passage from Ephesians 6 in particular. The strangeness of this text begins to work on our eyes as a sort of eye therapy. The words and images message the eye muscles so we can begin to see the world differently and enter a strange new world where the old world is transformed .
    This is the invitation of our passage from Ephesians: what happens when we look at the world around us from a different perspective, from the vantage point of  Christian world view..... this strange new world where “our struggle is not against flesh and blood (as we usually think), but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”  Through this passage we begin to see things differently.
    The Lord of the battle wants us to see the world through the lens of war.  We are in a cosmic struggle.  It is written that we need to wear armor, God’s armor.  Furthermore, we get a list of what makes up our armor: a belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes, a shield, a helmet, and finally the sword of the Spirit.  We are in the midst of war.  In fact, we are on the front lines.  Even though the terrain does not resemble that of the Middle East, we are, nonetheless, at war.  We are locked in a cosmic struggle that is just like the war we read about in the newspapers but with key differences.  It is the same but different.  Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.”   We don’t fight against flesh and blood, against humans, against people like us.  We fight against powers of darkness, rulers in heavenly places.
    The  good news  is that Christ has come, and the world we thought we knew is now disrupted, shaken up, transfigured.  New life now runs through the fibers of creation and everything is being mysteriously redeemed.  Jesus messes with our senses.  He complicates our vision.  He shows us that there is a whole lot more we don’t know that we thought we knew.  Jesus shows us that there is much more to learn, much more to see, if we trust his leading.
    Everyone is vulnerable to the schemes of the evil one, even those who count themselves as followers of Jesus, and that means us.  That is the reason it is written in  Ephesians: “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:10-11).  All of the pieces of the armor listed have to do with resisting the enemy, about standing firm: belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, and a helmet, but then there’s the last piece: a sword.  It’s the only offensive weapon in the list, and that weapon is “the word of God,” given by the Spirit of God (verse 17).
  In Christ,
  Brown
https://youtu.be/jcDC4vLw23k