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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? |
| Anticipation | |
| 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 | |
| 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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| | Thank You to Our Veterans | |
| By Brad Miller on11/17/2009 9:21 AM | |
| Greetings on this blustery day,
91 years ago, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, World War I ended. The Armistice that was signed between Germany and the Allied forces designated November 11, 1918 at 11:00 p.m. as the end of hostilities in a war that began in 1914. This war engulfed all of Europe and included combatants from all over the world, including the United States. In the four years of “The Great War”, over 30 million military personnel were either killed, wounded or missing in action. It was designated “The War to End All Wars.” Sadly, that designation has proven not to be true.
In the wake of the peace in Europe, President Wilson declared November 11th an official federal holiday: “Armistice Day”. President Wilson declared the holiday to help us remember those who fought for freedom, and to pledge to move forward so that no one might be called into such sacrificial service again. In the following decades, Americans became involve ... | | |
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| | Beauty, eh? | |
| By Brad Miller on11/3/2009 2:41 PM | |
| Greetings on this GORGEOUS day!
First, a note of pastoral advice and care: if you are inside and you don’t have to be…GET OUTSIDE NOW! Turn this computer off and go…I’m not kidding!
Okay, now that’s behind me….a dear friend of mine, whom I will call “Sparky” (mainly because that is what I call her – and she calls me “Skippy” – go figure) has started a “Facebook” exercise for her friends. It seems that when she was in college she used to hang out in a bar called “The White Horse.” (I know, I know, it’s hard to believe that a friend of mine would hang out in bars, but you know, my positive influence only goes so far…). Anyway, one of the things that Sparky and her friends used to do at the bar was write questions on napkins and put them in a basket and then pull them out one at a time and all give answers to the questions. Funny questions, thoughtful questions, light questions, and some seriously deep questions. All these many, many, many years later, she ... | | |
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| | 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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