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Mid-Week Missive |
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| Author: | Brad Miller | Created: | 10/30/2007 2:52 AM |  | | What is happening at BCC? |
| This is the day... | |
| By Brad Miller on10/21/2009 4:34 PM | |
| Greetings!
I woke up this morning with a song in my head. When I got out of bed and looked out the window, I have to admit that my mood did not fit the song that was running through my head. Once again, I woke up to a drippy, drizzly, overcast, dreary morning. Yet the song kept playing:
“This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made….I will rejoice, I will rejoice and be glad in it…” Bah Humbug!
The streets were no better. People unsure how to drive in the rain are still a mystery to me. The trick is slow down – not speed up! Traffic lights were out. A tree was sticking into one road. An accident made me go a different route. Still, the song kept playing: “This is the day that that the Lord has made…I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Oh pipe down, would ya’?!
As I grew closer to the church, the rain picked up. No longer was it a slight drizzle, but a downpour was beginning…and just as I was going ... |  | |
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| | God's Presence | |
| By Brad Miller on10/21/2009 4:25 PM | |
| Greetings on this gorgeous day!
Just this week someone asked me how I know that God is present in the world. I was suddenly taken back to a place where a similar question was asked and answered about as eloquently as possible.
It was during my time as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri. Columbia, MO, the university’s hometown, sat dead center in the state of Missouri, half way between St. Louis and Kansas City. Three friends of mine and I spent a lot of weekends going to one of those cities or the other, since there wasn’t a lot to do in Columbia! We were very different people, the four of us. There was the dyed in the wool atheist; the disaffected fundamentalist still struggling with the faith of his parents; the struggling Catholic – faithful but questioning of the operation of the church; and me. We were from very different social milieu also. Me from the a big industrial city; one from New Zealand; one from the deep south and one from ... | | |
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| | There's always next year | |
| By Brad Miller on10/12/2009 10:33 AM | |
| Greetings on this finally dry day,
1967 was not a good year for me. My father spent about 3 months of it in the hospital fighting infectious hepatitis, my hometown exploded in the worst urban riots in American history, and my hometown baseball team, the Detroit Tigers, lost the pennant on the last day of the season.
From some perspectives, 2009 isn’t that great either. The economy has hurt us all, but especially my hometown. General Motors and Chrysler have gone through bankruptcy reorganizations. Unemployment in Detroit is upwards of 25%. And the Detroit Tigers lost the division championship on the day AFTER the last day of the season.
Unbelievable. 7 games in front of the Minnesota Twins on September 1st. 3 games up with four games to play. Yet, when the dust had settled, the Twins and Tigers were tied at the end of the season. Which led to what happened last night: one of the great games ever that unfortunately ended with the Tige ... | | |
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| | Service | |
| By Brad Miller on9/16/2009 2:57 PM | |
| Greetings!
When we talk about the book of James - as we have been in worship the last couple of weeks – we almost always come back to the most controversial part of the book: “Faith without works is dead.” Without rehashing the argument, I’m going to leave it today that James, echoing his brother Jesus, believes strongly in the saving grace of Jesus Christ and also believes that it is up to us to put our hands to work in service to God’s children. That service, those works, help our faith grow and give it meaning to us and to those we serve.
I am gratified to report that in the last couple of weeks I have had several conversations with folks interested in serving others. Folks with ideas of how we might use our gifts and resources to help our brothers and sisters in need. This is not a new concept here at BCC, but for many people, this James study has seemed like a call to action, a call to renew our commitment to serve God through good works. And lo and beh ... | | |
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| | Happy Labor Day! | |
| By Brad Miller on9/2/2009 2:49 PM | |
| Greetings on this lovely fall day,
Well, here it is, the unofficial end of summer. When I was a kid, Labor Day was the final nail in summer’s coffin…the end of fun and the beginning of school drudgery. Okay, so I exaggerate a little, but not much! But today, some kids have been back in school for a month! Some of the colleges still are just getting underway, but it seems we have lost that universal marker that Labor Day always was.
Maybe that is not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s important that this holiday weekend is not simply the end of summer party that it used to be. Maybe it will give us a chance to step back and truly celebrate Labor Day as it was meant to be celebrated: in honor of those hardworking men and women who through their labors sustain the economy, provide for the their families and make real the idea that hard work should be rewarded. It also is a day when, as much as practical, we put away the rigors of work to relax and be with family and f ... | | |
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| | Connections | |
| By Brad Miller on8/27/2009 11:09 AM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
So many things running through my mind…I had a meeting concerning regional church business this morning and when I got back to the office, lots of things hit me: a man who came to the church door just a little while ago asking if he could pray in the sanctuary…a video e-mail from a long time friend who reminded me that even though years and miles have kept us from being as close as we would like, with a little work, we can still be close…an update from a friend concerning her brothers illness…news of the death of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. I have been surprised at exactly how much each has affected me today.
The young man came and asked if he could pray in the sanctuary, so I showed him in and asked him to come by my office before he left, just so I’d know that he was gone. It is not an everyday occurrence, but it happens fairly regularly, so I had no problem letting him in. When he came to office, he thanked me an ... | | |
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| | Prayer | |
| By Brad Miller on8/20/2009 12:46 PM | |
| Greetings!
A while back I was talking with a friend who was going through a particularly tough time when he said, “I’m finding it difficult to even pray right now.”
It is a place that I have been, and maybe you have been there, too. Overwhelmed with what is going on around us, we sometimes find this simple act too difficult to contemplate. Sometimes it is because we are angry and we feel that God is not listening. Sometimes just coming up with words to describe our situation is just too much. Sometimes we are not even sure what we need to be praying for. And so, in that time when we need prayer the most, we find it impossible to pray. At the time when we would be most comforted by being alone in conversation with God, we are too discomforted to even begin.
Prayer is an awesome thing. But it can be an intimidating thing, too. When we petition God, how do we know God hears us? When we ask for something to be done in our life, is that ... | | |
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| | Sabbath | |
| By Brad Miller on8/13/2009 8:15 AM | |
| Greetings!
Recently a friend of mine returned from a vacation in Hawaii. When I asked how her trip was, she said, “You know, I told my husband, ‘I really like vacations.”” What made this statement all the more amazing is that my friend is definitely a workaholic, unable to rest if there is something, anything that needs doing. It is a sign of our times that too many people don’t take enough time off, and my friend, while aware of that, is beginning to understand the value of that time off.
During my time away from you I spent some of it at the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, Indiana. I like the assemblies because they give me a chance to meet up with old friends, to participate in different styles of worship and to simply get a sense of being a part of the “larger” church. But this assembly, while allowing all those things to happen, left me a little concerned and a little baffled. Within the first 24 hours o ... | | |
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| | God of Wonder | |
| By Brad Miller on7/22/2009 3:21 PM | |
| Greetings on this grey morning,
One of the things that seems to fade as we get older is our sense of wonder. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe we have seen too much, understand too much, become too logical, too cynical. Whatever it is, we just seem to not be as surprised or delighted by things like we did when we were younger. Or maybe it’s because we don’t take the time to be in awe of the amazing things that go on around us.
I am willing to bet that for anyone around my age or older, we did share an awe inspiring moment of wonder on July 20, 1969. On that day, 40 years ago Monday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two humans on the moon. Very late on that day, they emerged from inside their space capsule and walked on the surface of the moon. I can still remember the day vividly, and I can still remember my feeling of absolute wonder and awe at the scratchy scenes that were unfolding on our black and white television set. After years of study a ... | | |
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| | Do No Harm | |
| By Brad Miller on7/15/2009 12:01 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful summer day!
It’s funny how things pop up at just the moment you need them. Yesterday afternoon I broke my rule about listening to talk radio and was bombarded by caustic comments, subtle and not so subtle putdowns, outright questioning of someone’s patriotism and an absolutely obnoxious discussion/rant/argument about the merits of different college football conferences. And I didn’t have the radio on for more than about 5 minutes! I know, I know, it gets me every time! I should know better, and I have promised myself it will be a long, long time before I fall into this trap again.
This morning, I picked up a book off my desk that had been sitting there about a week. It was a little book that I picked up on sale at the Christian bookstore because the title intrigued me: “Three Simple Rules”. It was written by a minister who had done some research on the 18th century theologian John Wesley and found embedded in his theology what he ... | | |
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