Brown's Daily Word 11-28-11

Good morning,
    The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Thanksgiving Day Celebration.  Jessica and Tom came for an extended weekend, and Laureen joined us for an extended weekend also. My sisters, brothers, and their families joined for the Thanksgiving banquet.  We had two other friends from the area joined us for dinner and a time of sweet fellowship.  Alice baked seven pies.  Praise the Lord for His Bountiful blessings.  We delivered some pies and sumptuous home made breads to some families. It was a great times of sharing in the blessings.  Janice and her family stayed in Boston, with Jeremy's mom joining them.  Sunita and Andy stayed in Washington, hosting several members of Andy's family.  Alice and Jess took off on Black Friday early in the morning, for shopping and meeting people.  Praise the Lord for the simple gifts and all other precious gifts of grace that money cannot buy. 
    The Lord blessed us with a full weekend of worship and celebration including Saturday evening  and Sunday morning worship services.  It is a great thrill to worship the Savior and Lord.  The Union Center UMC is fully decorated inside and outside.  We have a full Nativity setting in front of the Church with trees and lights in full display.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you look.  In the Church Calendar the Advent season began yesterday. The term "advent" comes from the Latin adventus, meaning "coming" or "appearance."  Advent is the season marking the four Sundays before Christmas.  It has developed as a way of helping Christians prepare not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in his First Coming but also to help them look forward to his second coming.

     Jesus comes to invade this world with Truth and Grace.  He comes for us and transforms the grim reaper.  This theme is illustrated in an Advent hymn which  goes like this: “Wake, awake, for night is flying; the watchmen on the heights are crying.  Awake Jerusalem at last.”  The story of this hymn illustrates that God comes for us even in the midst of terrible and horrible suffering and surprises us with grand glory even when the times are ugly.
    This hymn, “Wake Awake,” was written by Philip Nicoli in the year 1598.  He was a Lutheran pastor in Germany.  During six months in 1597-1598, 1300 of his church members died.   I had conducted funerals in two weeks recently.  This was the time of the Bubonic plague across Germany.  It was one of the worst times of human history.  To help himself live with the awful suffering around him, Pastor Nicoli wrote meditations.  He wrote the following words, “There seemed to me nothing more sweet, delightful and agreeable than the contemplation of the noble, sublime doctrine of eternal life, obtained through Jesus Christ.  In my heart, I dwelled on this day and night and searched the Scriptures as to what eternal life meant.  Then, day by day, I wrote out my meditations.  I found myself wonderfully well comforted in heart, joyful in spirit, and truly content.”  1300 funerals. 1300 deaths. 1300 moments of mourning.  In all of that awful suffering at one of the worst moments in history, he composed a hymn based on his meditations about everlasting life.  He wrote, “Wake, awake, for night is flying, the watchmen on the heights are crying, Awake Jerusalem at last.”  He wrote: "Now the night is past and the bridegroom has come at last.”  He wrote not about a Grim Reaper for 1300 people, but the Mighty Messiah who brought his people home.
    Wake up.  Be alert.  Don’t fall asleep .. There is so much evil surrounding us.  Best of all, there are so many miracles all around us.  Wake up. Eyes, ears, minds, and hearts, wake up.  See the world around you.  See the blessings upon blessings of God surrounding our lives, grace upon grace that follow us.  His goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives.  Wake up.  Watch.  Jesus has come.  Jesus is near.  He is coming again in glory and Majesty.
  In Christ,
  Brown
http://youtu.be/RmknWYFr6Xk

 

The St. Petersburg (Russian) Men's Ensemble will be in concert onSaturday, December 3, 2011 at 6:30 PM

Location:  First United Methodist Church,53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott, NY
Sponsored by the Union Center UMC
128 Maple Drive, Endicott, NY
More Information available at (607) 748-6329

Brown's Daily Word 11-23-11

   Praise be to Jesus, the Lord of all Seasons and the Master in every season.  He has brought us to the Eve of another Thanksgiving Day celebration.  Alice and I drove to and from Baltimore yesterday.  It was raining  all through the journey, and foggy for much of it.  The rain echoed the showers of blessings that the Lord lavishes on us.  The Highways were crammed with heavy traffic.  People were traveling to be home for Thanksgiving.  Many radio stations were playing glorious Christmas music.  The birds, the animals, and the fish migrate, traveling thousands of miles to be home, and so do people travel hundred and thousand miles to be home for Christmas and Thanksgiving.  It is a jubilant and triumphant scene to behold.  

    The Christian life is a song of thanksgiving, a glad and joyous hymn of praise to God.  "Be thankful," Paul admonished the believers at Colossae.  "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you," he counseled the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:18).  In his Letter to the Ephesians, he told his readers to "be filled with the (Holy) Spirit" (Eph. 5:18).  Then he proceeded at once to indicate that a prominent mark of the Spirit-filled life is thanksgiving "always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father" (Eph. 5:20).  We are called in to life of gratitude and Thankfulness. .

    The psalmist, invites, "O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!" (Psalm 95:1-2).   And again, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise.  Give thanks to Him, bless His name!" (Psa. 100:4).  Psalm 150, the grand finale of the Psalter, is composed entirely of a chain of 13 commands to praise the Lord.  It closes with a call to all living creatures to join together in a swelling chorus of praise to Him.  "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150:6).     

    After Jesus cleansed ten of their leprosy, only one came back to say thanks. "Where are the nine?" Jesus asked, when only one of the healed, a despised Samaritan, returned to express his gratitude.  "Was no one found to return and give thanks except this foreigner?" (Lk. 17:17-18).  That note of disappointment at human ingratitude is as much a revelation of the Father's heart as anything our Lord ever said or did.

    God looks for and delights in the thanksgiving of His grateful people.  "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits" (Psalm 103:2).  What a mighty impulse to thankfulness lies in those three words of the psalmist: "all his benefits"! As the English poet Joseph Addison put it:

    "Ten thousand thousand precious gifts

    My daily thanks employ."

 

    In his classic Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, a devout Christian, put these words into the mouth of his hero, "All our discontents spring from the want to thankfulness for what we have."

    Fanny Crosby, writer of many popular gospel songs, was stricken with blindness at six weeks of age.  When she was just a child of 8, she wrote these lines:

    "Oh what a happy soul am I!

    Although I cannot see,

    I am resolved that in this world

    Contented I will be;

    How many blessings I enjoy

    That others people don't!

    To weep and sigh because I'm blind,

    I cannot, and I won't."

"Bless the Lord,' O my soul, and forget not all His benefits" (Psalm 103:2).

 

 

Union Center UMC Saturday Evening Worship Service
Location: First United Methodist Church, 53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott, NY
Sponsored by: Union Center UMC
Date: Saturday, November  27, 2011
Time: 6:00 Coffee – Fellowship
6:30 pm Worship Service
Music: Laureen Naik
Speaker: Rev. Brown Naik
Come! Share! Rejoice!

 

 

 

The St. Petersburg (Russian) Men's Ensemble will be in concert onSaturday, December 3, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Location:  First United Methodist Church,53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott, NY
Sponsored by the Union Center UMC
128 Maple Drive, Endicott, NY
More Information available at (607) 748-6329

Brown's Daily Word 11-22-11

Good morning,

    We spent part of the weekend in Boston.  We attended a Baptismal service for our grand daughter, Ada, Sunday in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It was held at  Christ the King Presbyterian Church.  It was glorious day, sunny, brilliant, and beautiful.  Ada wore a beautiful dress that her mommy made for her Baptism.  Ada looked beautiful and sweet.  After the baptismal service she smiled.  Best of all Jesus, the keeper of all the little lambs, smiled on her.  

    Praise the Lord for this special week when we, here in the USA, will celebrate Thanksgiving. 

    Yesterday we had a service of Death and Resurrection for one of the saints of Jesus, Evvie Binder.  Evvie Binder went to be with Jesus this past Friday and entered the Church Triumphant.  Evvie and her very dear husband Al were married for 61 years.  Evvie was a very sweet and fervent servant of Jesus Christ.  She loved Jesus and she loved His church.  She was very committed and faithful member of His Church.  She loved to serve the along with her husband.  She lived a life of gratitude and thanksgiving.  Jesus  Described people like Evvie as the salt of the earth.  We praise the Lord the life and witness of Evvie Binder.  The way she lived, loved, and served, she made it easier for others  to believe in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

    Jim Elliot, the martyred missionary, wrote in his personal journal, "I walked out on the hill just now.  It is exalting, delicious, to stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God — what more could a man ask?  Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth!  I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him . . . If only I may see Him, touch His garments, and smile into His eyes."  Here was a man thankful for his relationship with God.  Here was a man who was known by God and knew God.  He shared his name and his character.

    Bob Edens was blind.  He couldn't see a thing.  His world was a black hall of sounds and smells.  He felt his way through five decades of darkness.  And then, he could see.  A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight.  He found it overwhelming.  "I never would have dreamed that yellow is so . . . yellow," he exclaimed.  "I don't have the words.  I am amazed by yellow.  But red is my favorite color.  I just can't believe red.  I can see the shape of the moon — and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapor trail.  And of course, sunrises and sunsets.  And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light."

    Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippian Church, "I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want.  I can do all things in him who strengthens me."  That is not the statement of a man who is worried over the economic health and security of the Roman empire, or even of his own pocketbook.  It is not the statement of one who is free from affliction and trouble -- Paul suffered, right along with the rest of us.  It is the confession of a man who has learned that nothing can separate him from the love of God who cares daily for him.

    Paul could therefore wish for the Philippians that which he has already found himself -- "the peace of God which passes understanding."  He could urge upon them that mood of life which belongs only to those children of God who know the mercy of their heavenly Father: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice."

    God has remembered us.  He has seen and heard and known our suffering.  He has stooped down to deliver us out of all our affliction.  Therefore, give thanks to Him this day.  Bless His name. Rejoice! And again I say, Rejoice!

 In Jesus,

   Brown

  

http://youtu.be/fhtSQOu5G2E