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| Sunday September 25, 2011 "The Prophet's Goal" Amos 8: 4-12 | Brad's Blog Brad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/26/2011 10:25 AM | |
| As we continue our series looking at the prophetic voices of the Hebrew Bible, we come to that point where the question must be asked: what is the goal of the prophet? Or maybe more accurately, what is God’s goal in putting prophets before the Hebrew people, and by extension, before us?
The answer is straightforward: the goal of the prophet is to affect change in the people. Change in their attitude, change in their behavior. Change that will lead them closer to God.
The prophet Amos is a great example of someone who was working toward that goal.
Last week we looked at the prophet Ezekiel who carried out his ministry during a time of extreme duress and stress for the Israelites. He was prophesying while the people were in exile in Babylon, and it was easy to see how the people would need guidance in the midst of terrible times.
The prophetic ministry of Amos is a different story. Most scholars believe that the b ... |  | |
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| | Laughing Out Loud | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/21/2011 1:51 PM | |
| Is there anything better than laughter? Doctors are telling us that people who laugh regularly are more likely to be healthy, and there was even a study at Emory University Hospital trying to gauge the effects of laughter on the efficacy of cancer treatment. They showed comedies – broad, laugh out loud comedies – to folks who were enduring chemotherapy treatments. They compared these folks recovery with folks who had similar diagnoses but just read a book or listened to music during their treatment. The results seemed to show that there was indeed some therapeutic advantage to laughter…and even if some were skeptical of the results, the fact is that it a good laugh certainly couldn’t hurt!
I have worked in places where laughter was never heard, and I have worked in places where laughter bounced off the walls all day. And not only have the laughter-filled places been more enjoyable, I firmly believed those work places were more productive, too. When I think of the best times I have ... | | |
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| | Joy Abounds | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/19/2011 1:12 PM | |
| The headlines for the last few weeks and months have not been real uplifting or encouraging. Politics, the economy, confusion and uncertainty have dominated our psyche for too long now. I badly need a break from the disturbing news, and today, I got it.
Today I had lunch with some clergy colleagues from churches around the Brookhaven area. It was a nice lunch, a nice time of easy conversation. We talked about what was happening in our churches, shared some of our successes and our challenges, and basically, just did what colleagues do in this type of situation: enjoy each other’s company. There was no agenda, no dispensing of advice, no pronouncements of how we ought to do things. Rather, we just shared and commiserated and listened. It was simply friends enjoying each other’s company, putting the worries of the day behind us, knowing full well that they are not going anywhere. But for awhile, it was nice to do just that. I don’t need to tell you that situations like this are no ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 18, 2011 "The Prophet's Call" Ezekiel 2: 1-5 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/19/2011 1:07 PM | |
| Wouldn’t it be nice to have God speak to us directly and tell us what to do? Well, before you answer that question, think about the example of Ezekiel.
We don’t know a lot about Ezekiel: we know his father’s name was Buzi; we know that the name Ezekiel means “God strengthens”; we know that he was a priest, or at the very least, a priest in training. We know that he was deported to Babylonia as part of Nebuchednezzar’s “brain drain” of Judah, where the best and brightest were removed, thus making the region much too weak to be a force in political matters. We know that he was married, although we do not know his wife’s name.
We know nothing of any other family and we have no clue as to how he supported himself.
We also know that, to put it in strictly technical theological terms, he was one weird dude.
He is known for the series of oracles that he presented to the Judeans who were exiled in Babylonia. The oracles of doom tak ... | | |
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| | Fear and Faith | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/8/2011 7:40 AM | |
| When I was a kid, we had periodic “air raid” drills in the basement of Crary Elementary School. The alarm would go off and we would walk single file to the old basement which was a maze of rooms and sections, all with low hanging fabric wrapped pipes and ducts. It was kind of fun, actually. During one particular “air raid” drill, while standing in our appointed place in the basement, my friend Dennis Bennett turned to me and said, “So, we’re down here to practice what to do if someone attacks and bombs us, right?” I told him yes, that was what they told us. He paused and asked what seemed like a really good question, “Who’s going to attack us? Canada?”
We were, even in the midst of a “Cold War”, blissfully ignorant of the tensions in the world. We were the generation born after World War II but before Vietnam. World War II had been at the center of our parents world. When Vietnam became moved to the center of our world, we were older and better able to understand that this was a ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 4, 2011 "Working" Ecclesiastes 2:24 and Leviticus 23:3 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/6/2011 11:26 AM | |
| Well, there it is. In two short verses from the Hebrew Bible we have our work life laid out for us. First, work should be enjoyable, and second, we’re going to work 6 out of every 7 days. Well, I hope it’s enjoyable if we are going to do it on 85% of our days!
Labor Day celebrates our work. It is not a religious holiday, but there is importance in honoring those who work and setting aside, at least symbolically, a day of rest.
But how does all of this fit into our faith life? What does the Bible say about work?
Genesis 2 makes it clear that it was what we are destined to do and it is good. Genesis 3 on the other hand, says it is a curse handed down to humans because of the sinfulness of Adam and Eve.
Paul speaks at multiple points, most specifically Thessalonians, of working hard and not shirking our responsibility. He is clear that we work because God ordained it, and so it is expected of us. And if God expects it of us, ... | | |
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| | Good Advice | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/1/2011 9:55 AM | |
| Greetings on this overcast morning! (Could it be too much to hope that there is rain in the gray sky?)
I get a lot of stuff via e-mail…some of it is solicitations, some of it is correspondence, some of it is informing me that if I simply respond millions of dollars will be deposited in my account. (I’m up to about $600 million available to me!), some of it is funny, some of it is inspirational. This week I received an e-mail from my friend Phil Foster that he received from his friend Ali Jooma. It is simply “Good Advice.” On the heels of a sermon series on the book of Proverbs, this really strikes home for me. I have already printed off a copy and put it on my bulletin board…now, if I can only follow the advice! (I am especially trying to work on numbers 26 and 27!) Enjoy!
"Good Advice"
1. Pray
2. Go to bed on time.
3. Get up on time so you can start the day unrushed.
4. Say No to projects ... | | |
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| | Sunday August 28, 2011 "Life Outside of Worship" Proverbs 6: 1-19 | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on8/31/2011 9:25 AM | |
| Occasionally I hear someone say something like, “I want to read the Bible, but it just doesn’t seem to have much in the way of practical advice in it.” Okay, some of the language may be different than ours and some of the parables and metaphors and similes might not fit our sensibility, but all in all, I feel like the Bible is chock full of practical advice.
Some of our most treasured scriptures contain great practical words: The Ten Commandments; “Love your neighbor as yourself”; “Judge not, lest you be judged.” But nowhere is there more practical advice than in the book of Proverbs.
This book is aimed specifically at helping us to understand how to act in order to live a good life. It is aimed at the most practical aspects of day to day activities. Having spent some extended time with the book in the last few months, I am astonished we don’t carry around a book of proverbs the way some carry around a book of Psalms!
Hear some of the p ... | | |
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| | Ordinarily exceptional | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on8/25/2011 10:59 AM | |
| I was reading through my daily devotional today and it really didn’t speak to me at all. So, I just started randomly looking through the days until I found one that had passages highlighted from some past reading. Highlighting is something I became accustomed to in college. The idea being to highlight the really important stuff so when I went back over it, I wouldn’t waste my time on the unimportant and mundane. The problem is that sometimes I would go back to look at a chapter and find that I had unwittingly highlighted 95% of the chapter! Other times I would look to see what the few highlighted passages said and think, “Huh? Why did I highlight that?”
Well, today when I looked at the highlighted passage I knew immediately that I had highlighted it for good reason, and that reason was still as important today as when I first read it. Here’s what it said:
‘We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises – human nature and pride are sufficient for us to ... | | |
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| | Sunday August 21, 2011 "The Way of the Good" Proverbs 2:1-22 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on8/23/2011 7:24 AM | |
| One of my favorite singer/songwriters, Stephen Stills, wrote a song called “Thoroughfare Gap” were he describes in great detail a train ride of some length. The train begins its ride from the level plain of the foothills and winds it’s way up through mountains on it’s journey. He describes the feeling of the train laboring through the ascending portions of the journey and the exhilarating feeling of picking up steam on the level places. He describes the beauty of the landscape, the river rising with the melting snow of winter, the charred field that lies dormant following a lightning strike and fire. There is time to contemplate the beauty, and there are times when the train seems to strain to make it to the next rise. And as the train nears its destination, Stills sums up the importance of the experience of finally getting there: “It’s not the destination. It’s not the distance. It’s the ride.”
I think that this song does a good job of summing up our faith journey. As people ... | | |
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