Brown's Daily Word 1-14-08

Good Morning.
We are bracing for another Noreaster in the North East of the USA, especially through New England. Praise the Lord that Spring is not far away. Easter comes early this year as we will celebrate Resurrection of our Lord Jesus on March 23.
The Lord blessed us with a wonderful weekend. We had our first Men's breakfast of the year on Saturday morning. It was full breakfast buffet prepared and served by the Marthas of the church. Our friend Dr. Doug Kerr, M.D. was the speaker. He has been to Kenya twice in the past year with a medical team. His family joined him on the mission. His life has been changed radically. He shared his testimony and the story of Jesus's love going out to touch lives and change them in Kenya.
The Lord blessed us during our worship services on Sunday. We had our first (for the year) area wide youth rally, held at the First Baptist church, Owego. Pastors Marlene Steenburg and Terry Steenburg hosted the event. The band Chosen provided the music. Jeremy Finn and the team from the First Presbyterian Church led some silly games - as ice breakers. Close to 200 were in attendance, coming from 13 churches of different denominations. Chris Seavey , distinguished professor at the Davis college brought the message. His message was profound and anointed. The Lord moved among us. We were provoked to love the Lord afresh and anew . We were challenged to commit our lives to Jesus at a deeper level, so the He can have His way in us to transform and change our lives. I am excited about Jesus and about His church and about serving Him with zeal and vigor. We are planning for a Mega Youth event on Friday April 11, 2008. It is called 545( Five for Five). Five national Christian Bands will be in concert ,ministering to the young people. This event will be held at the First United Methodist Church, Endicott.
There’s a saying that ‘There’s none as blind as those who won't see!’ It’s certainly true in the encounter that Jesus had with the Pharisees on the occasion when He healed a man who had been born blind (John 9). The setting is Jerusalem. Jesus had just left the temple after a confrontation with the Pharisees over what they thought was an outrageous claim by Jesus. He had said, ‘I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!’ (8:58). They were so infuriated at what would have been gross heresy had it not been true, that they ‘picked up stones to stone him’. Our Lord was aware that His time had not yet come for His Passion, so He ‘hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.’ From then on, the Pharisees would watch Jesus like a hawk to see if somehow they could find some pretext to bring an official charge.
As Jesus walked away, we are told, "He saw a man blind from birth." This unfortunate person was what we would call, in our day, congenitally blind, and what’s more, he was reduced to begging. Like ourselves, the disciples were always anxious to ask questions to which there are no final answers on this side of eternity. They posed the query to Jesus, "… who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?"
This has been the topic of speculation down the ages. Job wrestled with this ancient problem; the psalmists and prophets also agonized over it, so it’s no wonder the mystery of illness is a theological puzzle. "Who is responsible?", asked the disciples, "the man himself or his parents?" The Jewish rabbis had the idea that if a pregnant woman sinned, there might be some deformity in the child.
C. S. Lewis wrote that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. Sickness can be God’s megaphone to draw our attention back to Him. But while the Bible allows a general relationship between suffering and sin, due to the fall of man depicted in the Garden of Eden, it refuses to permit the principle to be set in stone for each individual. Yes, sin has produced a suffering world, but a given person’s suffering is not necessarily attributable to his or her personal sin. Jesus dismissed this simplistic theory of suffering as He answered the disciples’ question. "No" he said, "it wasn’t the sin of this man or his parents, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
Jesus was not interested in the ‘whys and wherefores’ of the past but rather how a person’s predicament can be resolved in the present. All things, even afflictions and calamities, can work to the glory of God. He can turn suffering into good. Jesus made it clear that He was not here to explain the mystery of evil, but to remove the cause of it and break its power. When Jesus made His first "‘proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and to release the oppressed" (Luke 4:18). This tells us that the Almighty is sovereign and has a purpose in all He does. Jesus knew that giving sight to the blind beggar would be one of the signs by which He would validate His claim as the Son of God. "I am the light of the world", he said, and He would prove it by changing the darkness of this man to light, symbolic of His greater work of releasing mankind from the power of sin's darkness through His atoning work on the Cross.
We might be tempted to think it would be so much simpler if the gift of healing could be received on request, like reaching out for a bottle of medicine. But that is not so. It simply is not God’s way. A balanced view of Scripture indicates that God has plans for us. He has the best in mind for us and, in His permissive will, may allow health and strength, or weakness and suffering, long life or short life. It’s not for us to question His decision. Ultimately, we are at the mercy of God.
Whether we are healed or not, we are to proclaim the faithfulness of a God who is alongside us in Christ. He suffered, died and rose again for us. I read the testimony of a young woman who was not healed of her infirmity. She said that God was glorified even more because, in spite of her continuing disability, she loved Him. That’s the ultimate test of our faith, as we walk by faith and not by sight.
When suffering is submitted to God, then God’s work is displayed, by healing or deliverance, perhaps miraculously or with gifted medical assistance, or alternatively by a courageous acceptance of the suffering. It is then that we are enabled to discover God’s strength in our weakness. This was the experience of the apostle Paul when he wrote of his "thorn in the flesh". The Lord assured him with the words, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Jesus proceeded to heal the blind beggar, using a mudpack made from saliva. The gospel doesn’t tell us why Jesus should use this means when a word had sufficed in previous acts of healing. Perhaps the man needed to be involved in the healing process by some simple act of obedience or it may have been to tell those who would read the story over the generations that sometimes God uses ‘props’ when it suits His purposes. The stories of Scripture are often to be interpreted as giving principles rather than strict precedents or formulas to be slavishly followed.
The healing of the beggar’s blindness was clearly a miracle. The mudpack of clay may have been used to symbolize the defilement of sin that needed to be cleansed away and to demonstrate that healing could only come from the Lord Himself. But there was more to it than that, as it was followed by a word from Jesus. "Go", He said, "wash in the Pool of Siloam." To achieve the cure, the beggar had to co-operate with Jesus. He had to show faith in our Lord’s words by obedience to the command.
The Lord alone could perform the miracle and open the blind eyes, but He chose to do it through the obedience of faith in Him. The definition of ‘faith’ is simply taking Him at His word. The very people who should have been the first to rejoice showed a very sour spirit! First of all some of the now sighted-man’s neighbors were full of unbelief. "Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?" Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him." It was a tragedy that these men who revered the Scriptures and were zealots for good works would not humble themselves to see that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah. And so these theologians of Israel were out to get Jesus ‘by hook or by crook’. The neighbors brought the man to them, perhaps to get some help in understanding this astonishing miracle. The Pharisees must have rubbed their hands with glee; this was just what they were waiting for. The miracle had taken place on the Sabbath! From their standpoint, Jesus had infringed the Sabbath tradition of their man-made regulations, although certainly not in breach of Scripture.
In the first place, Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, which was permissible only when life was in danger; and secondly, in making mud, he had ‘worked’ in a manner strictly forbidden. Both the man’s neighbors and the Pharisees grilled him as to what took place but he held his ground. He insisted, “It was me that Jesus healed and it happened as you were told … I did what Jesus told me to do … and then I could see.” This clear testimony was not to the liking of the Pharisees.
The question must always be asked, "What would we have done in similar circumstances? Choices have to be made by all of us at some time. A poet (James Russell Lowell) put it like this: "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight; Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by for ever, ’twixt that darkness and that light."
The now sighted-beggar made that vital decision. The former beggar was cross-examined by the Pharisees as to what Jesus had done. The facts were indisputable so they resorted to cast aspersions on the integrity of Jesus as a man of God. They asked him frankly, "What do you say about him?" The man’s knowledge of Jesus grew as the encounter developed through the miraculous touch of his eyes and then the further meeting with the Lord, so his testimony to Jesus progressed. He first speaks of Jesus as a ‘man’, then as ‘a prophet’. When he became thoroughly disillusioned with the Pharisees at their irrational argument over the credibility of Jesus, he was provoked, tongue in cheek, into asking them, "Do you want to become his disciples, too?" to which they angrily retort, "We are disciples of Moses!", overlooking the fact that a greater prophet than Moses had appeared (Heb 3:3-6).
Jesus found him and asked if he would make his final commitment, "do you believe in the Son of Man?" The man whose eyes had been opened received spiritual eyesight as he confessed, ”Lord, I believe,” and he worshipped Jesus. His journey of faith was complete. He had lost his position in the religious community but he was assured of a home in heaven. The former beggar found his discipleship costly, and we, like him, have to decide whether we are willing to count the cost of following our Lord.
This is something that we need to embrace, but whatever comes our way, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus.
In Christ,
Brown

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Indian Christians protest violence in Orissa, state indifference

Buhbaneswar, Jan. 10, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Nearly 10,000 people from different religious communities and social action groups held a protest rally on January 10 in Bhubaneswar, the capital of India's eastern Orissa state, protest the recent orgy of violence against Christians.

The orchestrated anti-Christian violence that began on Christmas Eve saw churches, Christian institutions and hundreds of Christian family homes destroyed and looted by Hindu fundamentalists in the Kandhamal district. Police officers who had been posted around the churches fled from the armed mobs.

The speakers at the January 10 protest assailed the state government of Orissa for refusing to let outside groups assess the damage caused by the mobs. (Even Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Bhubaneswar has been advised by government officials not to visit the troubled regions.) They also urged the government to allow access for relief agencies-- including Church-related agencies-- to bring assistance to the families displaced by the violence.

The Catholic Church that accounts about half of the 100,000 Christians living in Kandhamal, and Catholic bore the brunt of the attack. Five large churches, 48 village chapels, 2 seminaries, 4 convents, and several hostels were destroyed.