Brown's Daily Word 3/10/15

Praise the Lord for this new day. Spring is on the horizon, knocking at the door of the stubborn winter. It is getting warmer in the Northeast of the USA though it is like summer in the western states. Spring is arriving like a lamb so far, destroying the powers of old man winter. I hear the birds sing. The days are getting longer. Alice and I walked on one of the local trails a couple of days ago. It was reinvigorating and refreshing. It was great to see so many people walking, running, and biking in the great outdoors. The sky, cloudless in the daytime, became brilliantly starry in the late evening.


This past weekend we talked one of our granddaughters. We talked and talked. After some time she said, "Grandpa, can I go now?" "Yes darling you can go now." I looked at the clock on the phone. We were on the phone with her over 1 hour 10 minutes. It was Ada, who is only 4 years old. How sweet it is!


  I had a lunch with a couple of friends yesterday. One of my sisters fixed some delicious authentic Indian food. Alice and I, and this dear couple, have been married 40 years this coming August. It was a great time reminiscing on the faithfulness, mercy, and grace of our Lord Jesus, indeed.


  Last Sunday I preached from 1 Corinthians 1:18 as part of my Lenten preaching on how we are saved by the Cross. I Corinthians 1:18 says that, "The message of the Cross is Foolishness to those who are perishing". As far as I'm concerned, some of the best music, art, painting, and literature is that which exalts Jesus. The art, music, and paintings that center in the person of Jesus Christ transcend time and ages. One of the painters I admire is by Holman Hunt, . It is titled The Shadow of Death. The painting depicts the inside of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth. Stripped to the waist, Jesus stands by a wooden trestle on which He has put down His saw. He lifts His eyes toward heaven, and the look on His face is one of pain, ecstasy or both. He stretches, raising both arms above His head. As He does so, the evening sunlight streaming through the open door casts a dark shadow in the form of a cross on the wall behind Him, where His tool rack looks like a horizontal bar on which His hands have been crucified. The tools remind us of the fateful hammer and nails.


In the left background, a woman kneels among the wood chips, her hands resting on the chest in which the rich gifts of the Magi are kept. We cannot see her face because she has averted it, but we know it is Mary. She looks startled at her son's cross-like shadow on the wall. Holman Hunt was the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a 19th-century art movement that had a reputation for sentimentality and surrealism. Yet, there were some serious and sincere artists in the movement, and Hunt was one of them. He determined to "battle with the frivolous art of the day," to do battle with the superficial treatment of trite themes.


 So he spent 1870-1873 in the Holy Land and painted The Shadow of Death in Jerusalem from the roof of his house. The concept for Mr. Hunt's painting is pure fiction though in concept it is theologically true. From Jesus' birth and youth, the cross cast its shadow ahead of Him. The cross is inextricably tied to the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here an artist is so sensitive to the theme of Christ that he spent three years surveying the landscape of Jerusalem to paint the picture of the Christ succinctly, seriously, sincerely.


When Paul left Athens, the intellectual, educational, and philosophical center of the Greco-Roman world, he came to Corinth. Paul probably came to Corinth alone, walking along the streets. As he navigated the streets, it came to his mind there was religion everywhere in Corinth. There were religious institutions, philosophies, itinerant teachers, and preachers of every kind. He was one small man on foot, walking toward Corinth. When he got there, he moved in with a poor man, who was a tent maker as was he. What difference would one more preacher make coming to a city such as Corinth? No one heralded the coming of Paul. There was no mayor to hand him a key to the city. No one had any sympathy with him being there, not the Jews or the Greeks, not the pagans or the synagogue.


 Paul came to oppose everything the city of Corinth stood for in secular life and religion. Paul was unimpressive, unwell, and considered to be a poor speaker. He did not use clever logic. Yet today, the unanimous verdict of history is that the coming of one short, lonely, poor preacher of the Gospel, was the most significant thing that happened in the history of Corinth... Gospel of Christ came and transformed the culture, transformed the people. Paul tells us something about his secret. His secret was his determination was "to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." " For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God un to salvation."1 Cor 1:18


 In Christ, Brown
http://youtu.be/reXqZpYhbOU