The Anabaptist Voice

 

How are you, dear friend?

       We pray that you can feel the grace and love of our Heavenly Father.  On June 10^th we called the cutest little girl in the world, Pat’s daughter Elizabeth, and sang Happy Birthday to her.  She is two years old.  She is a happy girl and we are looking forward to visiting them next month. 
       June 10^th was also our neighbor Lorraine Fraser’s 89^th birthday.  Since her son and his wife were gone to Canada, we invited her and another neighbor Jean Coffman over for church and supper.  Both are living alone and elderly.  They are wonderful neighbors and we had wonderful fellowship.  They are a blessing to us.
       June 15^th was Father’s day.  Don was blessed with cards and phone calls from his sons and grandchildren.  Here is a photo of Don holding Mike, Naomi and baby Pat when Don was a police officer in Grand Forks, ND, in 1962.  The next photo shows Don and David with the fish that they caught while on vacation when Don was a software engineer at Boeing in Seattle about 1975.  We are blessed to have wonderful happy families.  Below is another father – son photo, this one showing Naomi’s male cockatiel with his young chick.
       The Sunday evening CDO church meeting was a prayer meeting.  There are about 20 people, and we all sat in circle and prayed.  It was wonderful.  We felt that we are brothers and sisters in the Lord and felt that praying together made each one closer.  Our friend, 12 year old Rebekah Flynt, was scheduled to have surgery the next day and she was one of the people that we as a group prayed for.  Thank you, Lord for that special night.
       Rebekah was to be at the hospital at 5:00 am on Monday morning.  We do not know the result of the surgery yet, but our minds were on her and lifting her and the doctors to the Lord all morning that day.
       After the Sunday morning worship, we went to a Subway restaurant and ordered take-out sandwiches for our lunch.  As usual Naomi did not eat anything after lunch.  That night she got sick and vomited twice.  All day Monday she did not eat anything and slept all day.  She told us that her stomach was hurting.  Tuesday her stomach is still hurting and she did not want to eat.  So Michi called her primary care doctor who told her to take Naomi to the emergency room at the hospital, which she did.
       They were in the emergency room for 7 hours.  They treated her for dehydration but did not find anything that caused her to vomit or to have pain.  She is still having pain and is scheduled to go to her primary care doctor tomorrow.  It is difficult to see anybody hurting.  We are praying for her.

Conscientious Objector

       Robert Weiss joined the army at the age of 17 two weeks after graduating from high school.  Full of patriotism but lacking in foreseeable future, he found the military's welcoming arms a one-way ticket to turning his life around.  The abstract motions of killing in basic training did little to disturb him, but when an acquaintance was stabbed in the heart at a party and died on the way to the hospital, Weiss was forced to confront what death actually meant head on.
       "One kid died and another would soon go to prison, and the families and friends of both parties would be affected as well," Weiss said.  "As these thoughts went through my mind I began to question the morality of killing and what good could be brought about by ending someone's life."
       Seeking answers, he returned to a Bible he'd abandoned soon after joining the Army.  Combined with an improbable discovery of John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus - among other works - Weiss found he simply could not reconcile Jesus' teachings with the military's.  He applied for a conscientious objector discharge from the army but it was denied. 
       While absent without leave in January this year, Weiss spent time speaking to Mennonite church groups about his experience.  He turned himself in to the military authorities and was sentenced to seven months in prison on May 13th.
       Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  (Mt 5:10)
       The cover story in the June 16^th issue of Time magazine concerns the antidepressant drugs that are now being given for the first time in history to the U.S. combat troops.  How sad…

Love for Jesus

       Last Wednesday morning as Michi was walking past Don’s desk, he felt lead to ask her to hand him the copy of the daily devotional by Andrew Murray that she was carrying, she reads it  each morning.  He usually doesn’t read it but that morning, June 11^th, he did.  It said, “Write on a piece of paper:  My love for You, Jesus Christ, is most important to me – in my quiet place, in all my work, and in my daily life.”  Don considered this off and on during the day and finally wrote down those words on his log book for business telephone calls.  Two days later he was considering that and thought that perhaps it should say, “Your love for me” instead of “My love for You”.  On his desk was a Bible so he opened it at random and read “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.”  (Mt 22:37)  The Lord had immediately shown Don that what Andrew Murray had said to write down was correct!
       “Write on a piece of paper:  My love for You, Jesus Christ, is most important to me – in my quiet place, in all my work, and in my daily life.”

The Greatest Commandment

       Jesus answered, “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Mt 22:37-39)
       The Ten Commandments say, “You shall have no other gods before me… you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.  For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”  (Ex 20:3-5)
       Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money.”  (Mt 6:24)
       Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor.  Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Luke 12:32-34)
       The result of following the teachings of Jesus by the disciples is shown in Acts 4: “The congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.  With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.  For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.”  (Acts 4:32-35)

Love One Another

       Jesus said, “Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:34-35)
       John Wesley, the anti-war preacher and founder of the Methodist denomination, visited the Moravian community at Herrnhut, Germany, in 1738.  There he found a church like that of the early church in Acts 2 and 4, as Andrew Murray described in our newsletter of last week.  Subsequently Wesley wrote one of our favorite songs:  “Happy the souls that first believed, to Jesus and each other cleaved; Joined by the unction from above, In mystic fellowship of love.  Meek simple followers of the Lamb, They lived and spake and thought the same...  None called what he possessed his own; Where all the common blessings share, no selfish happiness was there.  With grace abundantly endured, A pure, believing multitude, They all were of one heart and soul, And only love inspired the whole.”  Wesley could see how the Moravian community at Herrnhut loved one another, showing the world that they are true disciples of Jesus Christ. 
       Since, dear friend, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.  (Col. 3:1-4)

your brother and sisters in Christ,

Don, Michi & Naomi Murphy
Tucson, AZ phone 520-297-1639
www.AnabaptistChurch.org

Jesus said, "Do not resist an evil man."  (Mt 5:39)  He means do not resist evil with evil but respond with love, the Calvary type of love that Jesus demonstrated with His death on the cross.