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| Sunday December 20, 2009 "Daylight Again" Isaiah 9:2-7 | Brad's Blog Brad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on12/23/2009 12:11 PM | |
| The prophet Isaiah had seen darkness.
Isaiah, son of Amoz, prophesied in the latter half of the eighth century BC and witnessed the rise of the second Assyrian empire. Under the aggressive policies of it’s king Tiglath-pileser III, Assyria eventually conquered or annexed much of Syria and its neighbors, including the kingdom of Israel and it’s capital. In opposition to the growing Assyrian presence, Kings of the region formed a coalition to resist the encroaching empire and to fight together. King Ahaz of Jerusalem refused to join in the fight and was immediately overrun by this new coalition.
Rather than wait for God’s promised deliverance, Ahaz sided with the Assyrians and became a protectorate of Assyria. But this meant bowing to the dictates of Tilgath-pileser and led to the wholesale deportation of Israelites into forced exile.
This is what darkness meant to the people of Isaiah’s time: total domination by the Assyrians and strai ... |  | |
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| | Merry Christmas! | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on12/23/2009 12:04 PM | |
| Greetings!
As we move quickly toward Christmas Eve and the celebration of the birth of Jesus, I would like to share something with you that was first brought to my attention by Rev. Jennifer. I think it contains both some practical advice about being a Christian in today’s world, and a challenge that all of us could probably take on. I hope you like it, it is called “ A Christmas Letter from Jesus.” Author unknown…or could it really be from Jesus?
Dear Children,
It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that folks are taking my name out of the season. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I wasn’t actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of your predecessors who decided to celebrate my birthday on what was actually a time of pagan festival. Whatever, I don’t mind… I appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood b ... | | |
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| | Anticipation | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on12/17/2009 10:57 AM | |
| Greetings on this chilly day,
As I was getting ready this morning, I was ticking off in my head the things that I still need to get done before Christmas. Suddenly a thought occurred to me: I wonder what Mary and Joseph were doing all those years ago a week before Jesus was born? They both had visits from angels – Mary in Nazareth, Joseph in a dream – so they knew something very special was about to happen, but had no clue as to exactly how that would all play out.
Were they planning their trip to Bethlehem to register for the census? Was Joseph finishing up a woodworking project for a client? Was Mary making sure that all was in order for their journey – extra clothes, food to be packed on the mule? Were they talking about what an exciting time it would be when the baby was born? Were they planning? Were they gathering the things they would need to welcome this new addition to their household? Did they dream together of what their child would become? ... | | |
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| | Remembrance | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on12/9/2009 3:40 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
I have reached one of those points in my life where I increasingly find myself saying things that I heard my father say. Things like, “What? That was 30 years ago? That can’t be right – it seems like yesterday.”
What prompted this thought was the first thing that popped into my head when a friend shared that yesterday was the 29th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. What? That can’t be right? It seems like yesterday!
It was, and still is, hard for me to get my head around the fact that someone would want to murder John Lennon. He was a poet of his generation, the conscience of an age, a chronicler of the times through some of the most wonderful music we had ever heard. Listen to a Beatles song today, even one from their first album and it sounds as fresh and new as ever. Listen to some Lennon’s more political songs like “Working Class Hero” and you will quickly realize that so many of the issues he ... | | |
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| | Be Quiet! | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on12/2/2009 4:07 PM | |
| Greetings on this gray and drizzly day! (A “grizzly” kind of day?)
As we move into Advent, one of the things that many of us will struggle with is how we find the time to do everything that is available to us. Parties are scheduled at the same time; church events conflict with school events; work gatherings overlap with plays and concerts; family traditions run up against any of a hundred things that we would like to do. So here’s my best advice: First, don’t beat yourself up because you can’t do everything. Second, find some time every day to be stop and be quiet. Quiet…there’s a novel concept!
With all the noise that is all around us, the notion of being quiet is one that we too often ignore. But when we are unable to be quiet, we are unable to hold on to the core of what Advent is all about: preparing ourselves to be all that God would have us be. If we only take 10 minutes a day to stop and be quiet and listen for God’s voice, it will be 10 minutes we ... | | |
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| | Sunday November 29, 2009 "In Those Days" Jeremiah 33:14-16 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on12/2/2009 9:28 AM | |
| Advent can be a strange time.
Advent is part of our Christmas celebration, yet it is something completely distinct and different, too.
Advent is about preparation, but it is not always clear what it is we preparing for.
Advent is firmly rooted in future, yet cannot be fully appreciated unless we can position ourselves in the past.
Advent is about celebrating what is to come, even though it already HAS come.
Advent is about taking comfort it what HAS come, and preparing to be surprised by what we already know.
Yes, you could say that Advent is a confused and confusing time.
And nowhere is that confusion more acutely felt than in the Jeremiah passage we heard read this morning.
But before we get to Jeremiah’s confusing times, let’s think a bit about our confusion with Advent.
Advent is the beginning of the ... | | |
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| | I Am Thankful | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on11/25/2009 12:23 PM | |
| Greetings!
On this day before Thanksgiving, there is plenty to be thankful for. Among them:
The doctors have decided that what caused Jim Mowrey’s episode Monday evening was an inner ear viral infection. This is great news since with medication it should be cleared up very quickly. Jim and Judy thank you for the many thoughts and prayers that came their way.
Alex Smith continues to make steady progress. He is recognizing friends and family, talking, eating on his own, walking some distance with no assistance, remembering events when showed photographs and becoming more and more himself. He still has a long way to go, is still sleeping a lot (which the doctors say is completely normal) and will undergo some extensive evaluation and therapy, but the news is good!
Good lives, long lived: this past week one of my mother’s cousins, Helen Butz, died at 95 years old, having lived a life full of love and family. Yesterda ... | | |
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| | Sunday November 22, 2009 "Alpha and Omega" Revelation 1:4b-8 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on11/23/2009 4:07 PM | |
| Today is Thanksgiving Sunday and one of the things that I am most thankful for is the opportunity to be here at Brookhaven in ministry with each and every one of you. And I want to make that clear: we are in ministry together. That means we face the tough times together and celebrate the good times together. We welcome new babies and new friends into this fellowship together and we say goodbye to old friends together. We join together in prayer to strengthen not only ourselves, but also all those who we know need God’s presence. We learn together. We laugh together. We cry together. We live our lives dedicated to spreading God’s word and doing God’s will, together.
So, together we gather to give thanks. And it starts with a simple question: what are we thankful for? I know some of the things I am thankful for: I am thankful that I grew up with loving parents and an active and vital church and neighborhood family. They have all had a hand in helping to shape who I am, and for ... | | |
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| | Give Thanks | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on11/18/2009 10:03 AM | |
| Greetings on this gloomy day,
Next week we celebrate my favorite holiday of the year: Thanksgiving. It’s not technically a religious holiday, but it probably should be. I love everything about Thanksgiving, the warmth and smell of the kitchen as amazing food is being cooked; the even more amazing tastes when we sat down at the table together; laying on the couches, chairs and floor in the living room after dinner to see how badly the Lions would lose in their annual Thanksgiving beatdown. (Okay, that’s not fair: there was a time when they actually had a chance to win on Thanksgiving Day…1963 comes to mind.) Depending on the weather, the later afternoon would either be taken up with a game of touch football or a snowball fight, either was okay. And then of course, the evening brought another round of food – is there anything better in the world than Thanksgiving leftovers?
But the biggest thing about Thanksgiving is that it is shared with people we care about ... | | |
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| | Sunday November 15, 2009 "Becoming Hannah" 1 Samuel 2: 1-10 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on11/17/2009 9:23 AM | |
| The scripture this morning is 1 Samuel 2: 1-10, but we need some context before we get there.
Here’s how I remember the story:
There was a woman named Hannah who was married to a man name Elkanah. But Hannah wasn’t Elkahnah’s only wife. He had another wife named Peninnah. Here is what distinguished Hannah from Peninnah. First, Peninnah had children, while Hannah had none. Second, Peninnah was not a very nice woman – taunting and ridiculing Hannah whenever possible – all because Hannah had no children. Somehow, in Penninah’s mind, that made her better than Hannah. And apparently, Hannah thought so, too. She let Penninah’s ridicule and provocation get to her, and so she became depressed and spent a large amount of time, weeping for her affliction.
The third thing that distiniguished Hannah from Peninnah, is that their shared husband, Elkanah, loved Hannah best. Whenever they ate the meal following the sacrificial ceremony of blessing ... | | |
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