Friday, December 12, 2014
Brown's Daily Word 12/12/14
I have been once again reflecting on the
words of C.S. Lewis" Always winter…but never Christmas." Try to imagine that
for a moment. Always winter…but never Christmas. In the land of Narnia, as
C.S. Lewis described it in “The Lion,the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” winter
has not seen an end for a hundred years.
Once more the world and the church are facing the
terror of the enemy all around. Many are longing .. Many are anticipating..
Many are expecting. To us the words of prophesy come afresh and anew:
“Comfort, comfort my
people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service
has been completed, that her sin has been paid for. Every valley will be raised
up, every mountain and hill made low, the rough ground will be level, the rugged
places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,and all flesh shall
see it together.”
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Brown's Daily Word 12/11/14
Praise the Lord for this
wonderful season of Advent and Christmas that is celebrated around the corner and
around the globe. When I was young boy growing up in a remote village in
India, I recall the joys of waiting for Christmas. While growing up we did not
have electricity, there were no telephones, cell phones or ipods. There was no
television where you can watch Christmas movies beginning at Thanksgiving
and all through the month of December. I recall listening to Christmas
stories. My dad, my mom, my grandpa, and my uncles told us the Biblical stories
of Christmas. There were also times they told us the fairy tales. We did not
have any books with fairy tales so these stories were passed down to us through
oral tradition.
As a young boy I thought that the
Christmas story was a beautiful fairy tale that turned out to be very true. In
a way this is the story of a Mighty prince who becomes pauper so that when we
receive Him we become Royal princes and princesses .
Søren Kierkegaard, famous Danish
theologian, told it this way. There once was a mighty king
who from a distance fell in love with a humble maiden. He was a mighty king!
Every statesman in the world trembled in awe of him. No one dared speak a word
against this king, who could crush nations with his power. Yet the heart of
this mighty ruler melted with love for a humble maiden. Oddly enough, it was
his kingliness which tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace, crowned
her head with costly jewels and bedecked her in royal robes, of course she would
not resist, because no one dared resist him. But would she love
him?
Of course, she would say she loved
him, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, privately
grieving for the life she left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How
could he know her true feelings? If he rode up to her cottage in the forest
accompanied by an armed escort, with bright banners flying, that would overwhelm
her. He did not want a cringing subject; he wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted
her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden, and to let their
shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that those who
are unequal become equal. So the king clothed himself in beggar's rags and
slipped unnoticed through the palace gates. He walked the roads. He tilled the
fields. And later in a marketplace, still in his tattered clothes, his hands
now calloused from rough work, he bumped into her and introduced himself. Then
he wooed and won the hand of this servant girl. On their wedding day he
whispered in her ear, "My dear beloved, you are now a queen." And they were wed
in royal splendor, and lived blissfully ever after as King and Queen.
That is the fairy tale of
Christmas. The King of Heaven fell in love with his bride, the church, and
humbled himself so that he might win her love. Christmas, in a sense, is a fairy tale so, like a fairy tale, it takes
place in magical land of time beyond time. In the real story of the Christ child, there isn't a chimney (for Santa
to slip down). The best fairy tales take
place at night though in the church we usually meet in the bright light of day.
But that baby was born at night. The angels serenaded from heaven at night.
Joseph had his dream at night. So John wrote in his gospel that the Christ boy
came as a light into our darkness. As Simon Tugwell has pointed out, in Jesus
God was pursuing us in our night, so when we tried to run away we ran right into
his arms.
Though it seems like such a fairy
tale, what brings us and millions of other people together this season is not
make-believe. The incarnation of God in human flesh — in the birth, life, death
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth — was an historical event. The book of Hebrews describes the Lord of all enthroned in
glory: radiant as a diamond, every angel eye was on him. But then the Lord of
all looked down and saw the suffering and pain and heartbreak of our world. He
saw that the terrible diseases of sin and selfishness had broken out and
overtaken his beloved creatures. Knowing the cost of his coming, that in our
twisted-ness we would certainly reject the God of light, out of love for us he
came anyway. He came so that tonight we might
receive him by faith and have among us and within us the life of God, the
eternal indestructible life of God's own spirit.
Sometimes it seems that in this
world we are caught in the bad part of a fairy tale, surrounded by the darkness
and evil forces, and there's no way to get out of our trouble, no hope that we
will ever break out of that darkness. Every time we turn on the news, we are
bombarded by stories of murder, terrorism, madness and mayhem. We feel small,
insignificant, and helpless, and the darkness seems impenetrable. Yet, in fairy
tales, creatures are ultimately transformed into what they truly are. The ugly
duckling becomes a great white swan, the frog is revealed as a prince, and the
beast is transformed by Beauty's love. At Christmas, my friends, you and I
undergo an almost magical metamorphosis into what we always are but sometimes
forget to be: children of God. We are all, in
fact, characters in the greatest story ever told. James Patrick has likened the
church to the characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Ring trilogy: out in the world,
moving among the forces of evil, surrounded by darkness on all sides, and yet
triumphant.
I read about a Christian family in
which there is a four-year-old daughter named Kylie. Like many other little
girls, Kylie wants to be a princess. After all, she has heard the fairy tales
and knows how beautiful princesses are. One day she asked, "Mommy, can I be a
princess?" A lot of parents would have said, "Someday" or "Maybe," but Kylie's
mom is a very smart woman. Without blinking, she replied, "When you believe in
Jesus, you're already a princess." Silence suddenly engulfed this talkative
little four-year-old, because the answer made perfect sense. Of course God would
make her a princess.
In the same way, you and I are sons
and daughters of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Though we live as
flawed people in this flawed world, as someone has said, we are ragtag
royalty. We are princes and princesses. It is written in John 1, "As many as
received Him to them He gave the power to become the sons and daughters of
God."
In Christ,
Brown
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Brown's Daily Word 12-10-14
Praise the Lord for this
Wednesday. It is going to be a snowy day here in the Southern tier of New
York. We will not meet for our Wednesday evening gathering
today. The choir will not meet either. It is beginning to look a like
Christmas every where you go.
Praise the Lord for the way
He prepared the way for the Birth of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Our God is
the Lord of History. History is His story. He orchestrates His divine plan
and purposes according to His perfect will and design. Shakespeare wrote that
"all the world's a stage," and Luke
2:1-4 details how God set
this stage for His grand and glorious Christmas production! In fact, more than
seven centuries before we come to the scene of Jesus' birth, the prophet Micah
told us that the setting would be Bethlehem. When we consider that God was making preparations
for the birth of Christ, we have to think about the message of the prophet who
said, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands
of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth …" (Micah
5:2).
`The Lord of history caused
Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem in the Lord's timing. As De Boylesve states,
"Augustus, while sending forth his edicts to the utmost limits of the East,
little knew that on his part he was obeying the decrees of the King of kings."
God's direction is evident even in the movement of the population. Caesar had
thought to feed his pride and eventually fill his coffers through this census
and taxation process, but God was using this to get Mary and Joseph where they
needed to be. W.H. Van Doren wrote that "to locate an infant's birth, 60
millions of persons are enrolled." God prepared a world and set the stage for
His Christmas production.
God
prepared the woman for the first Christmas. Some of the most amazing aspects of what God was doing in
preparation for the first Christmas pertain to a young lady named Mary. We are
reminded in Luke
2:4-5 that Mary was
espoused to Joseph. The espousal involved a period of nearly one year in which
there existed the commitment but not the cohabitation of a marital relationship.
It was a time when the couple focused upon their preparation and purification
for marriage. Mary and Joseph had not lived in the same household, nor shared
the intimacy of marriage, but by the time Jesus was born there was both a mother
and a stepfather who were together called "the parents" (Luke
2:27). In His
providential preparation, God saw to it that this would be no single-parent
household. Then the single most important aspect of all this Divine preparation
is highlighted as we are reminded that Mary was expecting, for
Luke
1:5 says that she was
"great with child." When Mary was told that she would have this son, she said,
"How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (Luke
1:34). Who can
understand the miracle of the conception and the incarnation of Christ?
Surely Mary could not, but somehow the Holy Ghost came upon her and the power of
the Highest overshadowed her (Luke
1:35).
The Lord indeed prepared
"the way" for the first Christmas. I love the Christmas carol, "Away In A Manger". The Lord God,
who became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, prepared the Christ child — "the
way" in a manger. God prepared a way of deliverance in the person of Jesus,
"For," as the angel said unto the shepherds, "unto you is born this day in the
city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke
2:11). That Christ was a
Savior tells us that He was literally, a deliverer Who has given us rescue and
safety through His great salvation.
Furthermore, in the person
of Jesus, God prepared a way of delight. The angel said to the shepherds, "Fear
not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people" (Luke
2:10), and this word
"joy" has the idea of cheerfulness and a calm delight. God made a way for us to
know Jesus and, through knowing Jesus, subsequently to know joy. Jesus is our
deliverer and our delight. He is God's glorious gift for you and for
me.
Had Almighty God not
intervened in human history and made preparation for that first Christmas in
every detail, there would be no holyday, no hope, and no joy to the world. I'm
glad that God prepared and orchestrated the entire event and that, in the
fullness of time, He brought forth His inexpressible gift in Jesus wrapped up in
the swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger. Praise the Lord that we have a
direct access to that gift.
In Christ,
Brown
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Brown's Daily Word 12-9-14
Praise the Lord for the season of
waiting. . . the season of longing. . . the season of expectations. "O come O
come Emmanuel". "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus". As we wait in Christ we have
the "sure and certain hope". This hope does not disappoint us. The
long-expected Jesus came in the "fullness" of time and He will come in Glory and
splendor in His time.
Samuel Beckett’s play, entitled
"Waiting for Godot", is a satire on the human condition. As Beckett sees
it, humanity is waiting for Godot, or God, to come and save them, but he never
shows up. Their waiting is in vain, for although they have been repeatedly told
that God is coming, he never has, and never will. The characters in the play
are told to wait for Godot, for he might come tomorrow. So they continue to
wait in their dreary existence. The only prop in the play is a dead tree. The
implication in all this is that there is no God and no Savior. Life, according
to Beckett and his fellow Existentialists, is absurd. There is no ultimate
meaning to existence, and so we have to create our own meaning, without
artificial props like a belief in God. The tradition of God coming to earth to
save humankind is very strong so that it pervades our thoughts and
conversations. Beckett wants to dismantle this belief for us. He believes that
many people live their whole lives waiting for God to show up, but their waiting
is in vain.
However, the futility of life apart from God is more than evident in the play. The characters are pathetic and they contemplate suicide several times, even though they cannot even find the emotional energy to carry it out. For people like Samuel Beckett all this talk of waiting in hope is foolishness. God is not going to show up. We have been deceived, so what we should do is stop expecting God to show up. That way we won’t be disappointed when he fails to make the scene. Interestingly enough, Beckett wants people to give up waiting on God, but he never offers anything in its place except despair. Some people become apathetic as the wait goes on. They don’t care anymore. Some lose faith. Some become bitter, angry and hostile toward God.
None of this is new. The apostle Peter wrote to the people of God saying, “First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this “coming” he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ They deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Let us not, however, forget this one thing: "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. . . The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare." Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought we to be? We ought to live holy and godly lives as we look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat” (2 Peter 3:3-12).
There will always be those who believe it is futile to wait for God, but they deliberately forget that he has already come. He came to the Garden of Eden. He came in the person of Jesus, and he will come again. In fact, God comes to us many times throughout our lives if our hearts are receptive and our eyes are open.
However, the futility of life apart from God is more than evident in the play. The characters are pathetic and they contemplate suicide several times, even though they cannot even find the emotional energy to carry it out. For people like Samuel Beckett all this talk of waiting in hope is foolishness. God is not going to show up. We have been deceived, so what we should do is stop expecting God to show up. That way we won’t be disappointed when he fails to make the scene. Interestingly enough, Beckett wants people to give up waiting on God, but he never offers anything in its place except despair. Some people become apathetic as the wait goes on. They don’t care anymore. Some lose faith. Some become bitter, angry and hostile toward God.
None of this is new. The apostle Peter wrote to the people of God saying, “First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this “coming” he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ They deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Let us not, however, forget this one thing: "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. . . The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare." Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought we to be? We ought to live holy and godly lives as we look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat” (2 Peter 3:3-12).
There will always be those who believe it is futile to wait for God, but they deliberately forget that he has already come. He came to the Garden of Eden. He came in the person of Jesus, and he will come again. In fact, God comes to us many times throughout our lives if our hearts are receptive and our eyes are open.
Henri Nouwen wrote a book called
"Sabbatical Journeys", in which he wrote about some of his friends who
were trapeze artists, called the Flying Roudellas. They told Nouwen that there
is a special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze.
This relationship is governed by important rules, such as “The flyer is the one
who lets go, and the catcher is the one who catches.” As the flyer swings on
the trapeze high above the crowd, the moment comes when he must let go. He
flings his body out in mid-air. His job is to keep flying and wait for the
strong hands of the catcher to take hold of him at just the right moment. One
of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the
catcher.” The flyer’s job is to wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch
him, but he must wait."
Nouwen wrote, “Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.” Waiting is not a static state; it is a time when God is working behind the scenes, and the primary focus of his work is on us.
Nouwen wrote, “Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.” Waiting is not a static state; it is a time when God is working behind the scenes, and the primary focus of his work is on us.
I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase
of Romans 8:24: “Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a
pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting” (The
Message). We wait
expectantly. God is busy bringing about his full plan for the world and for
us. In his perfect timing he will birth that plan. The Bible says, “But when
the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). Before it was time, the birth of Christ would have been
premature, but when the time came, nothing could hold him back. When it is time
for Christ to return, nothing will be able to hold him back.
In Jesus .
Brown
Monday, December 8, 2014
Brown's Daily Word 12-8-14
Praise the Lord for this wonderful
time of the year. The Lord blessed with a soul full weekend. The service of
remembrance and thanksgiving for Dave Ring, a faithful servant of Jesus, was a
blessing. So many people attended. Many testified how Dave had touched their
lives, how he had shared the love of Christ with them. There was a big dinner
reception following the service, where there was sweet fellowship. In the
evening on Saturday the St. Petersburg Men's ensemble presented an anointed
concert of Russian Classical and Sacred music. It is always treat for us have
them with us. They also shared at the first worship service yesterday. It was
a Christmas blessing and treat. The Lord blessed us in His house yesterday. I
preached at Union Center. Alice preached at Wesley. During the lighting of the
second Advent candle the family shared about the peace that we have in Christ.
Praise the Lord; Peace that came
down to the world on the first Christmas. "Peace on earth and good will to all
men". The Divine peace promised by God cannot be acquired through any of the
countless consumer items of our materialistic society. Peace is the certain knowledge that everything we
have been told about God is true and certain. I have peace in times of crisis
because I know "the Lord will make a way somehow." I have peace in the time of
death because I know "when the earthly house we live in shall be destroyed, we
have another building, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens."
Yesterday, December 7, was Pearl
Harbor Day. Peace is our deeply held conviction that wars will stop not when
one army defeats another but rather when all armies "beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more." In other
words, peace comes as I rely less and less on the things of this world and rely
more and more on the promises of God. That is why Isaiah
26:3(NKJV) could declare,
"You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on
you."
Peace is not limited or reserved for
those times in life when everything is in perfect order. Peace is not the
absence of tension or hardship; peace is the presence of tranquility within you
in the midst of whatever storms may be raging around you. Peace is not a
guarantor that every day will be easy and smooth. Instead, peace is the fruit of
the spirit that blossoms in our souls and reminds us that even though we walk
through the valley of the shadow of death we can fear no evil because God is
with us.
Living with a spirit of peace in the
midst of the storms of life is what Herman Melville was describing in the
character of the harpooner in his novel Moby Dick. Melville
portrayrd all of the characters on the whaling vessel busy at work as they seek
out the great whale that has become the obsession of Captain Ahab. Everybody on
board is furiously at work except one, the harpooner. The harpooner is sitting
still and undisturbed. The harpooner is not caught up in the frenzy that
involves a ship sailing through a storm to catch up to and then kill a giant
whale. Instead, wrote Melville, "The harpooner sits in tranquility and rises
with a sense of calm to do his work." The storm and the fury are going on all
around him, but the harpooner is able to maintain a sense of tranquility and
calm that allows him to do his job.
That is what peace looks like:
tranquility and calm in the midst of the storms of life that allow you to get on
with your life and do what needs to be done. That kind of peace does not come
from anything this world can provide. That kind of peace comes only from God
and, more precisely, from our relationship with Jesus Christ, the Prince of
Peace.
In Jesus the Prince of
Peace.
Brown
http://youtu.be/-s_n_ycNvP8
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