Thanks be to Jesus, the Bright and Morning Star, for the gift of all seasons from His powerful and kind hands. We are recipients of His matchless love, celestial beauty and the fathomless grace. I talked to one of the dear saints of Jesus yesterday, who has gone to Salt Lake City to be her granddaughter who has gone through major surgery and due for more surgery. This friend of ours is in her 80s but full of life and faith in Jesus. We are praying for full recovery for her beautiful granddaughter.
Praise Lord for this Friday. The Lord has blanketed the region with cool and comfortable morning sun. Alice and I drove around the countryside of the neighboring counties yesterday afternoon. It was gorgeous in every way. We drove through some of the breathtaking hills, mountains, meadows and fields, pastures and farmlands. The farmers were still planting, the livestock were grazing. People old and young were crowding around the ice cream stands in the country. Praise the Lord once again for the beauty of the Earth and for the glory of the sun. Today is the last day of schools in New York State. Students, faculty members, and families are ready for sweet summer.
The Schools and colleges are full swing for another season and session. Today is the last day of teaching for my wife. She has been teaching in aggregate for over 20 years. Praise the Lord for the gifts and talents with which He endows us so that we can use them bless others and honor Him. Alice has been blessed by the Lord to impact hundreds of young people over these years.
Life consists of giving and receiving, inhaling and exhaling, loving and being loved, sowing and reaping, investing and receiving back hundred-fold and sixty-fold. Life is filled with blessings and battles, mostly blessing I must add. Praise the Lord for the journeys we take on earth, the pilgrim's path upon which we walk and for the promise and assurance of the Eternal City. "I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me" Psalm 13:6
I spent part of the summer a few years ago attending a summer school in Oxford, England. I had a blast. I made some time to visit cathedrals, abbeys, and churches, including some very historic sites in Oxford. One afternoon I walked by the building where C.S. Lewis wrote some of his treatises and books. C.S. Lewis wrote two books dealing with suffering. The first was a philosophical treatise on suffering called “The Problem of Pain”. In it he discusses pain from an intellectual perspective. But then, at the age of 59, C. S. Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American who was 16 years younger than himself, divorced, a Jew, a Communist, and an atheist before she became a Christian by reading Lewis’ books. When they married she had been diagnosed with cancer and even called their marriage “a deathbed wedding.” She was in remission for awhile and they had four years together before she died. After her death, Lewis wrote his second book on suffering entitled, “A Grief Observed”. This second book about pain however, was a personal expression of his pain and anguish over the death of his wife. In writing about pain, Lewis made the famous quote you’ve probably heard: “God whispers in our pleasure, but He shouts in our pain.” But there’s another quote that is also powerful but less familiar. He wrote: “Pain removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.” (The Problem of Pain). In other words, when things are going great in our lives, we tend to major in the minors. It’s only when pain comes that the veil is removed and God gets our attention. Suffering makes us focus on the real issues of life and death.
“Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/4PvMvFIxlMQ
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