We will gather for our Wednesday
Evening fellowship and study at 6 PM. We are studying the Book of Amos. The
choir will practice at 7:30 PM. The big event for this month for is the Agape
Banquet that will be held this coming Saturday at 5:30 PM. Our young Chef,
David Childs, and his team are preparing a very special meal. Dr. Dino Pedrone
will be speaking. Tomorrow is the last day for reservations. Please call
607-748-6329 or email at umcgospel@aol.com.
My wife and I used to watch the
weekly television show called, "Extreme Makeover:Home Edition". The December 20, 2004, issue of Time magazine had an article describing the television
show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It told the
story of Alice Harris of South Central Los Angeles. She still remembers the day
the good people from ABC volunteered to demolish her house. In 2003, a flood
had left the community activist and her family, who had no insurance, living in
one bedroom. Worst of all, the waters had ruined a stash of Christmas toys
Harris had collected for poor children. Harris said, "I figured no one was
going to come to Watts and help us. No one had ever done that." But Extreme Makeover: Home Edition found her. Its
bullhorn-wielding host, Ty Pennington, shipped Harris and her family off for a
week's vacation in Carlsbad, California, while over one hundred workers and
neighbors tore her home down to the foundation and built a new, bigger one.
They replaced the Christmas toys and donated appliances, mattresses, and
landscaping to her flood-stricken neighbors. They even threw in a basketball
court for the neighborhood kids. Now that's an extreme
makeover.
All of these extreme makeovers have
something in common: an outsider comes in with a one-two-three program. First,
that outsider sees the possibilities you couldn't see. Second, that outsider
does what you couldn't do. Third, that outsider pays for what you could not
afford to pay.
In a very real sense, extreme makeovers are our Lord's business. Our Lord is is in the extreme makeover business. He's in the business of transforming your life and mine. He sees the extreme need in us that we're not apt to see in ourselves. He also is able to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He is able to pay the price for whatever he does. We cannot afford the price. He paid it for us. But his makeover is a little bit different in one area. The reality show makeover is an external job. God's is an internal job. He makes each of us a new person from the inside out.
The Bible is primarily a book of
good news. It's the story of God's extreme makeover on our behalf. The story
starts in Genesis
1 and goes all the way through the end of
Revelation. The coming of Jesus makes this
extreme makeover possible. In "Listening to Your
Life", Frederick Buechner writes:
"When the Child was born, the whole course of human history was changed. That is a truth that is as unassailable as any truth—art, music, literature, Western culture itself with all its institutions, and Western man's whole understanding of himself and his world. It is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened, whenever, wherever, however it did. And there is a truth beyond that for millions of people who have believed since. The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life, but a new way of living it. The truth of this incarnation should never cease to amaze us. The mystery of the Eternal cradled in a manger elicits awesome wonder and grateful praise."In Christ,Brown
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