Praise the Lord for this first day of March. It is going to be mild and beautiful. It appears that the month of March makes its debut like a lamb in Spring. I have not been posting any blogs lately since I have been traveling between Boston, MA and Binghamton, NY for my doctors visits. Thank you for praying and interceding. The Lord has blessed with some amazing days filled with splendor and His majesty. The Lord certainly has a sense of humor. Over the weekend, in just 3 short days back to back, we experienced Summer, Springtime, and Winter. Alice and I have been walking briskly and with jubilant feet gazing at the beauty of the Lord all around us. The maple syrup producers of our area are busy producing some of the best maple syrup in Central NY. We have noticed that some of the Spring birds are returning back to the region with mirth and joy.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It is a somber day of reflection. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10. Lent is a season that reminds us to repent and get our lives centered, our priorities straight, and our hearts clean. This holy season offers us a new chance to say, "yes" to the Lover of our Souls who created us, who made us in his own image. Lent is a season of hope and we go forth to love and to serve. By God’s grace in Christ, we do not have to stay the way we are.
Praise the Lord for His church around the corner and around the globe. People of Jesus are entering the season of Lent marching towards Jerusalem with Jesus. "And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.” Mark 10:32-34
Praise the Lord for the multitude who will be planning for various special worship services as a part of their Lenten journey. May Jesus be praised. May He draw countless millions to a closer walk with Him during this Holy Season. Our Church will be hosting community-wide dinner on Wednesday March 15. A very special and seasonal dinner will be served starting at 4:30 PM, concluding at 6:00 PM. Plan to change your clocks one hour forward on the March 12, 2017
We are planning for a Special Lenten Event on Saturday the March 25, 2017. There will be a very special meal prepared with much love which will be served at 6:00 PM in the Church Fellowship Hall, followed by a special dramatic presentation of "Simon Peter". It will be presented at 7:00 PM in Sanctuary by Dr. James Geer Ph.D. Dr. Geer is a distinguished professor of Mathematics at the Watson School of Engineering at Binghamton University. He is also a deeply committed Christian and a faithful servant of Jesus. He has been presenting "Simon Peter", a dramatic monologue of the bold, impetuous, disciple, since 1976. All are invited to join us. You will be blessed and challenged.
April 1 and 2, Saturday and Sunday, are the dates for the iconic Central New York Maple Festival of Marathon, NY. Mark your your calendars. Our church is in charge of cooking and serving the Chicken BBQ. Our church will be preparing close to 1000 BBQ chicken dinners. We are thrilled. Last year it was blast. I was visiting with the families who were sharing the meal in the dining hall. I met one young family and inquired where they were from. They said that they read about the Maple Festival Event on Internet and they drove that morning from Brooklyn NY, 205 miles one way. I said, "what a country".
April 16, 2017 is Easter Sunday. We will meet for Sunday School at 9:30 AM and glorious Easter worship at 10:30 AM.
Saturday May 13 there will be a special banquet in honor of Moms. All families and friends are invited. Ron and Barb Barnes and the team are in charge of this Holy event.
Sunday June 18 we will be recognizing Grads and Dads. There will be a very Special Banquet served in celebration. Denny and Lynda Randall and their team are in charge of this event.
Saturday, July 1, 2017 at 6:00 PM there will be a retirement party and celebration for my wife, Alice. There will be a mega-reception at the Marathon Civic Center. You are all invited.
I
read about Mark Heart a fascinating and heart-warming story. He is a
Christian, a husband, a father, and an employee. Like most husbands,
fathers, and businessmen, he juggles these responsibilities and sometimes they
come into conflict. Sometimes he has to make difficult decisions about
whether or not to be a good employee and do the things that his bosses ask of
him, or to be a good husband and father and tend to things at home. Just
over a year ago, he had to make a decision along those lines. He was
scheduled to leave on a Sunday for a business trip, but his daughter had a
doctor's appointment on the following Monday. Because his wife also
works, they were struggling to determine who would take her to the doctor.
Knowing his presence would be of great comfort to his daughter, Mark decided he
would not go on the business trip. So, he wasn't sitting in seat 2A on flight
5191 as it took off from Bluegrass field on that early Sunday morning. He
wasn't on the ComAir airplane that was on the wrong runway. He wasn't
there when the runway proved too short for the airplane to get enough speed,
crashing and killing everyone onboard except for the co-pilot.
Mark's
life has been different since that Sunday morning. He has learned that
those things which cause us great consternation and seem to interfere with our
plans—those things that delay us from where we want to go and what we want to
do—are sometimes the very things that give us life. Sometimes God uses
such things to spare us.
But
what about all the people who did make that flight?
What do we say about them? What do we say to their families?
Was God absent on that flight? Was God not as "in control" of
their lives as he was Mark Heart's? We never know when the delays of life
will bring deliverance, but we also never know when God is going to allow
things into our lives that are exactly the opposite of what we want.
Adrian Rogers
one of my favorite preachers who has entered the Church triumphant, said
that man faces three problems: sorrow, sin, and death. We can sum up
every problem we will ever encounter in one of these three
categories. Just before going to the City of Jerusalem for Palm Sunday Jesus
made a delayed visit to Bathany, the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha as it is
recorded in John 11. Jesus did not come running when he first receives news of
his friend's condition. He doesn't show up on demand. Our sovereign
God who is in control stands in back of all things. This means sometimes
he uses the things he allows as much as he uses the things he directs. If God is truly
omnipotent—if he can prevent things from happening, as well as he can cause
things to happen—all things are laid at his feet. And this means that
sometimes we don't understand what he's up to. We won't always be able to
comprehend why he doesn't answer the prayer or why he doesn't show up when we
want him to.
The
events in John 11 tell us that there are very dark days, even for the people
whom Jesus loves dearly. We learn that in his purpose and plan God
doesn't always respond as we ask. You and I cannot possibly comprehend
why God allows things into our lives that cause us to cast ourselves on him, to
come to the end of our own strength, so that we don't rely on ourselves.
Sometimes the very thing that we most want to avoid—the thing that we most
dread—is precisely the thing that God uses to draw us to himself.
To
trust God's actions in the darkest of days, we have to understand his
character. It is written that Jesus loved Martha and her sister
Mary, and Lazarus, so when we read that Lazarus was ill, we expect John to say
Jesus dropped everything and rushed to Lazarus' side. But that's not what
happened. Though Jesus loved them, when he heard that Lazarus was
ill he stayed two days
longer in the place where he was.
I would say that was unanticipated!
When
we face similar circumstances, we tend only to get angry with God. We
forget that this world is not our home. God's promises aren't all going
to be fulfilled here. There are Christians all over the world who are
persecuted, who go to bed hungry, who don't have the comforts we enjoy every
day of our lives. This doesn't mean God loves them less. It simply
means that there is promise of a better world—that they are strangers and
pilgrims on earth. God will sometimes withhold, sometimes
allow, sometimes take from us that which we love, that which we want and crave
and hold and possess, if it's for our own good. It's in his loving
character to do so.
When
Jesus said to his disciples that it was time to return to Judea, they explained
to him the danger present in such a move. They insisted he would be
killed. Jesus responded with a question of timing, "Aren't there
twelve hours in a day? And when you walk in the day you don't stumble.
It's when you walk in the night you can't see." What was Jesus
saying to them? He was urging them (and us) to walk in God's Word
when we are stumbling our way through the darkest of days.
You
and I don't live strictly according to our own schedule, our
timetable. We live according to God's schedule and timetable, but
we are not trusting God's timing when we're trying to make him conform to
our timing. When Martha and Mary realized that their brother was
desperately ill, they sent for Jesus, assuming he would immediately drop
what he was doing. But he didn't do that. He delayed. In fact, he
purposefully let Lazarus die. We know this because of what he tells his
disciples: "This isn't unto death. This is for the glory of
God." Jesus understands something we often forget: the death of our
bodies is not really death. The Book of Revelation speaks of a second
death. That's the one to fear.
If
we are going to trust God's timing, we have to walk in his Word, because in the
light of his Word, we can see that our Lord has His own divine
timing. He operates on a divine timetable, and we need to walk according
to his schedule.
There
will come a day when our bodies are lifeless, laid in a grave, but
the Bible teaches us that one of these days, the trumpet is going to sound, the
dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed.
In
His promises,
Brown.
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