False “Houses of God”

The buildings that line the road to hell

 

                                      are not all brothels and bars –

 

          Some are false “houses of God.”  – eab, 4/20/09

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The King Comes

The stars slowly dim,

In their domed night,

As faintest light

Merges from the east.

A sycamore is silhouetted

Against the sky,

And nocturnal animals

Return from their feast.

Another day is beginning

In the place,

Just another day,

Another set of hour’s – rat race.

 

Commerce begins –

Enter a camel train.

A peddler hawks

His trinkets and wares.

The vegetable-stand owner

Begins across the street,

 

And a Baby cries,

Another day, that’s all.

But wait, a Baby cries – 

Not a Baby in the stall?

Buyers bought and

Sellers sold, again.

 

Soldiers marched and

Housewives cleaned their rooms.

But the Baby that cried

Was the Son of God in flesh,

The One Who would cause

The dead to come from their cold tombs.

Bethlehem had not seen

Just another day.

Last night the King was born

And He’s well on His way!

  

Another night will wane

Before long,

The spring of that day

Will seem so same.

Computers will whirl

In skyscrapers around the world.

Wall Street may be brisk

Or maybe another day lame.

It will seem the same.

With telephones ringing,

Airways full of ships of sky,

The radio singing.

 

But a trump

Will sound as no other.

Christ will come before

That day has closed.

The grand Old Book proclaims

“In a day when ye think not.”

The day will look the same as it started out;

Watch that pose,

And for the Christ-like ones

It will have no close,

Heaven has begun. 

He has returned just as He said. –eab, 6/89

 

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David Brainerd – birth, Apr. 20, 1718

…The sovereignty of God.  I could not bear that it should be wholly at God’s pleasure, to save or damn me, just as He would. 

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 27.

 

…Sundry passages of God’s Word opened to my soul with divine clearness, power, and sweetness, so as to appear exceeding precious…

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 33.

 

It is good to wrestle for divine blessings.

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 43.

 

It is better to wait upon God with patience than to confidence in anything in this lower world.

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 87.

 

After I rode more than two miles [horseback], it came to my mind to dedicate myself to God again; which I did with great solemnity and unspeakable satisfaction.

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 105.

 

God was gracious to me, helping me to plead with Him for holiness, and to use the stronger arguments with Him, drawn from the incarnation and sufferings of Christ for this very end, that men might be made holy.

  – Jonathan Edwards, Life and Diary of David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 113.

 

David Brainerd was born this date (4/20/1718) at Haddan Connecticut.  He was a missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware, and Susquehanna Indians.  He prayed, worked, and was exposed to bad weather so much that he was dead at 29 – almost appearing to fail.  But tradition has it a William Carey went to India, Robert McCheyne to the Jews, Henry Martyn to India, as a result (at least in part) of reading his Journal. 

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