Brown's Daily Word 7-29-08

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the Summer days. It is full blown Monsoon Season in India. The day after we left India it began to rain torrentially in Orissa. The rivers and streams were overflowing along with the springs erupting from the hills and mountains. Our Lord Jesus during His ministry on earth spent much time outdoors, including the hills, mountains and the beaches. Often the boat would become His pulpit and the mountainsides became amphitheaters. One of the delightful and awe provoking messages of the Bible is the message in the story of the feeding of the five thousand. The story has a summer motif. The Lord is gearing up for a mega picnic, out in the hills of Galilee looking down the beaches of the Sea of Galilee. Imagine, going out on a picnic with Jesus. It is mind boggling. This story is one of the few told in all four Gospels, and in every version, the disciples are hung up by trying to do the math themselves. Five thousand men plus women and children, and they're all hungry. The disciples don’t have enough money to buy food for them, and they only have the small amount of bread and fish that they have brought themselves. Providing for the crowd is impossible, they will have to leave and fend for themselves. The math is more than obvious. Jesus our Lord, however, is completely untroubled by the unbalanced equation. Jesus knows about the new math, the math of the Kingdom, where whatever you have plus the power of God always equals whatever you need. He divides the group, multiplies the loaves and fish, and there is not only enough food for everybody, there are 12 baskets of leftovers. Going back hundreds of years we find the prophet Elisha doing much the same thing. Here comes a man bringing food from the first fruits of his garden. That’s language for the tithe…you brought a tenth of your income to God before you did anything else…and in an agricultural society, that income was likely to be the crop from the first harvest or the firstborn lamb in birthing season. So he comes with his tithe to Elisha, the man of God, and Elijah tells him to feed a hundred people with it. "But what I have won’t feed a hundred people!" cries the man. "It’s not enough…do the math!" But Elisha, like Jesus, knows about the new math. "Let God worry about balancing the equation," says Elisha. "Put the food before the people." He does, and again there is not only enough, but some left over. People often spend a whole lot of time…lifetimes even, trying to figure out whether some of the biblical miracles are possible with the logic and science that we know. . One thing is clear throughout the Bible, and that is that our Lord can do what ever He well pleases. If God could create the entire universe with a Word, a few more loaves of bread are not going to be a big deal. God is not just a bigger, more powerful version of us…God is qualitatively different from us and trying to limit God to our math and our logic is like an ant colony trying to limit human behavior to the logic and instinct that guides their own lives. After the telling of the loaves and fishes story in the Gospel of Mark, the disciples get in a boat to head across the Sea of Galilee and become distressed when they realize that they have not brought enough food. They have only one loaf of bread for all 13 of them. Jesus can’t believe his ears. "Why are you talking about having no bread?" He asks them…probably banging His head against the mast. "Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?" They said to Him, "Twelve." "And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?" And they said to Him, "Seven." Then He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" That is still the question God asks of us today. "Do you not yet understand that I love to give? Do you not yet understand that if you give, your giving will be so blessed and multiplied that there will be more left over than you started with?"

Please take some time to pray for the following:
Larry who needs full-time employment.
Harvey Henson who is having chemo.
Nancy Henson will be having chemo.
Paul who has been admitted with a heart condition.
Barbara-upcoming knee replacement surgery.
Ron-upcoming surgery.
Patel, my brother in India with a special need.
Jeffrey-going through depression.
Mary Ann-who had a fall.
Mayda Dudley, 96 yrs. Old who had a fall.
Michelle Rucker-six more weeks of radiation.
Louise-heart condition.
Darren McPherson-pray for continued healing.
Michelle, Jessica and Erica-expectant moms.
Chris-health situation.
Connie-had surgery yesterday.
Tom Turgeon-who has cancer.
VBS program this week.

Praise the Lord for the full recovery from surgery for the following:
Al Smith
Jerry Adams
Praise the Lord for His mercy and grace. Our Lord is awesome, always and His mercy endures forever and His love never fails. He is more than wonderful.
Brown