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| A Godsend | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/28/2009 9:19 AM | |
| Greetings on this gray day,
Have you noticed that some of our renovations are already underway? Oh, not the big one in the sanctuary yet, although there are people hard at work to make that happen as soon as possible. But there were some other things on the renovation/refurbishing list that are currently underway or complete. These are the kinds of things that we can do internally without the need of contractors and sub-contractors. For instance, the drainage issue in the courtyard has been taken care of, and the water is rerouted in a better way. Attached to that is the building of a retaining wall that will shore things up in a really beautiful way. On the other side of the church new sidewalk now connects the storage area with the other entrances to the church. Also, the beginnings of a stone path to the back parking lot now starts at the end of that sidewalk. There is a new storage area in the courtyard for the CDC and for BCC. There is a new expanded closet in the choir ro ... |  | |
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| | Sunday May 24, 2009 "Sharing the Power of God" John 17:6-19 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/28/2009 8:56 AM | |
| I grew up in a house my grandfather built in the 1930’s. The original venting system in the house was accessed into each room by metal grates that swung open to allow heat to enter, or could be pulled shut to close off the flow of heat into a room. In the upstairs of the house, where the bedrooms were, the grates were two sided with an opening on each side of a wall. In other words, two bedrooms side by side shared the same grate. This meant that if the grate was opened into one room, it would have to be closed into the adjoining room. This was fine for most of the year, but in the dead of winter, we learned to very carefully work the grates from both sides so that they could both be partially opened, allowing heat to flow into each room. This also meant that you could pretty clearly hear what was being said from one room to the next.
My brother and I shared a room that shared a grate with my parents bedroom. So, occasionally we could hear them talking, and I’m sure they hear ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 17, 2009 "Celebrating the Power of God" Psalm 98 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/18/2009 3:49 PM | |
| As we continue to move toward the amazing events of Pentecost, we resume our look at “The Power of God”. Last week we talked about recognizing the power of God, in ways big and small. Next week we will finish the series by exploring the issue of sharing the power of God. Today, we turn our attention to “Celebrating the Power of God.”
I have seen some great celebrations in my time, and I bet you have, too.
What celebrations stick out in your mind? For folks of my parents generation, V-E day and V-J day, those days celebrating the allied forces victories in Europe and Japan, seem to stand out. There are famous pictures of crowds dancing in the street, embracing and kissing, all because of the end of the hostilities in World War II.
I was privileged to find myself in the midst of an amazing celebration the night Pope John Paul II ascended to the papacy. There is a large Polish population in Detroit and the center of that population is a n ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 10, 2009 "Recognizing the Power of God" John 15: 1-8 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on5/12/2009 3:06 PM | |
| As we celebrate the continuation of Eastertide, the next three weeks we will undertake an exploration of something central to understanding God and our connection to God. For the next three weeks, we will focus on “The Power of God.” Today we will spend some time “Recognizing the Power of God”, next week we will turn our attention to “Celebrating the power of God” and finally, on the Sunday before Pentecost, we will delve into “Sharing the Power of God.”
Sometimes the power of God is seen as a liberating power, but other times, we fear that God’s power will be used to punish. At times, the power of God is so overwhelming as to leave us awestruck. At other times, the power of God is so subtle that we may even not make the connection that God is behind it. There are times when God’s power emboldens us to make a stand, and others when God’s power lets us know that it is okay to simply be, silent and passive.
All of us have seen the power of God. All of us have ... | | |
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| | Hospitality | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on5/7/2009 9:53 AM | |
| Greetings on this day that can’t make up its mind: will it storm or not?
It was great to take a break and go to New England for a week. We were able to see pretty much all of Carol’s family, some old friends from Boston, Carol’s oldest college friends and BCC member Brian Lovering. We covered Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine pretty well during the week, from woods, to the ocean shore to big cities. A nice time all the way around.
One of the really nice things that happened to us may seem quite simple, but it is was a simple act of kindness and hospitality that we don’t see very often. On Tuesday we went to get Carol’s dad, Ernie, who lives in a care facility in Carol’s hometown of Warwick. In fact, the house she grew up in is a mere couple hundred yards from the facility. We wanted to take Ernie to the shore for lunch and he said that he would like to go to the house. He just wanted to walk by and see what it looked like these days, and so we did. Inc ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 26 "Children of God" 1 John 3: 1-3 | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on5/5/2009 1:53 PM | |
| “Children of God.”
How many times have you heard that phrase? And of all those times that we have heard the phrase, how many times did we stop and really think about what it means? Probably not very often. It is familiar, it is comforting and in our 21st century hearing, it probably speaks more to who God is than to who we are.
For me, the image of God as loving parent is one that I have grown up with and one that sustains me. My experience of what a parent is helps with that image.
Since I have been nothing but blessed to be one of the children of Erwin and Dorothy Miller, how much greater must it be to be one of the children of God?
The parenthood of God is slightly different because my parents did not choose me, but still they showered me with love and wisely guided me. God, however, chose me and you and you and you. We are God’s children because God has claimed us as such.
The scriptur ... | | |
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| | True Community | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/21/2009 9:59 AM | |
| Greetings,
Normally, I would send this out tomorrow, but I just got off the phone with a man I have never met before, and probably never will. Yet, this man and his wife have touched me so profoundly this morning that I needed to share it with you. The whole scenario speaks to the mysterious power of God’s presence, the strength that we gather as members of a faith community and the absolute unknowable boundaries of that community.
As I mentioned on Sunday, Andrea Chambers, a member of BCC who moved to Texas about a year and a half ago, called me this past weekend. Things have been going well. She is engaged to a soldier named Mike, who is presently serving his second tour of duty in Iraq. She was 7 months pregnant when she went to the doctors for a test to let her know the gender of the baby. She was told there was no heart beat; the baby had died. For medical reasons, she needed to carry the baby another week and her delivery by c-section is scheduled for ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 26, 2009 "Complete Joy" 1 John 1:1 - 2:2 | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on4/21/2009 8:20 AM | |
| Welcome to our “Low Sunday” service of worship. For many modern Christians, the Sunday after Easter is referred to as “low Sunday” because of the drop off in attendance between Easter Sunday and the second Sunday of Eastertide. But historically, it is considered low Sunday simply to highlight the “high” of Easter. Writers have suggested that the “low” might also refer to the almost predictable let down that so many of us experience in the wake of the big celebration that is Easter. That sagging “what next” feeling that exists when we struggle to keep the joy of Easter alive in our everyday lives.
In some ways, I think low Sunday is every bit as important as Easter Sunday.
It’s easy to be a Christian on Easter. We go to the tomb and we find it empty. And the good news that accompanies that empty tomb is the most incredibly gripping news we could ever receive. Jesus is arisen from the dead, but that’s not the whole story: the resurrection of Jesus if for US ... | | |
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| | After Easter | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/15/2009 3:25 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful spring day!
Easter is such a wonderful time, but it can also be one of great stress, too. Not only for the preacher who wants to find a new way to tell a story that everyone already knows, or the choir director who wants to have the best possible anthem on that special day, or the person who gives the children’s sermon who wants to wow the kids on the biggest day of the church calendar. No, it can be stressful to the person who after witnessing all the passion and joy of the resurrection, gets up on Monday morning and realizes that their life has not changed a bit. If Easter happened, why am I not in a better place,or in a better mood, or why haven’t I solved my problems? Year after year, Easter comes and goes and we celebrate. But what of the person who witnesses the perfect love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, and still finds themselves mired in a decidedly un-perfect world?
Well, it may just be that that is why the worshipping ... | | |
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| | Easter Sunday April 12, 2009 "An Idle Tale" Luke 24:1-12 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/14/2009 10:37 AM | |
| I learned about the power of resurrection when I was a teenager.
One day the front doorbell rang. I went to answer it and when I opened the door I saw a tall, broad, rather rough looking guy wearing a United Auto Workers jacket. Now, neither the roughness or the UAW jacket was out of the ordinary in my neighborhood, but when he asked if Dorothy Conely lived there, I was a bit surprised.
I asked him to wait a moment, closed the door and went and got my mother. I described who was at the door, that he had asked for her using her maiden name. She looked a little concerned and said, “stay behind me.”
She opened the door, and said, “Can I help you?” and the man responded, “Hi Dorothy.” My mother looked a little perplexed for a minute than suddenly cried out, “Oh, my gosh, Bob Hill!” She pushed open the door and he held out his arms and enveloped her in the biggest bear hug I have ever seen.
Now, I did not recogniz ... | | |
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