Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-12-18

I’m going to revisit a couple places I have been to recently; and shared here. One is a place of memories, and imprints my soul. The other is physical, also soul-stirring.

I have written about Billy Graham’s effect on the world during the near-century of his ministry. People in my family were transformed from nominal Christianity to an on-fire commitment to be new creatures in Christ; and those changes spread to other family members, to friends and neighbors, to children, nieces, nephews, and godchildren. Billy Graham touched millions.

I was part of a planned PBS documentary, ultimately never finished, about American religious music. At one point, however, the crew traveled to Billy Graham’s Conference center, the Cove in North Carolina (where his funeral was held and seen on TV). Dr Graham’s Parkinson’s Disease kept him from granting an interview, but we did meet Joni Earecksen, who was there on a retreat with her mother; and Crusade leader Cliff Barrows; and “America’s Gospel Singer,” George Beverly Shea, who had been with Dr Graham since the mid-1940s.

Switch to another re-visit. Last week I wrote about visiting Colorado and taking a few days to luxuriate in God’s majesty. The excitement of a writer’s conference and historic Denver was followed by trips to the thin air and magnificent vistas of Breckenridge and Vail.

Snow-capped mountains (not quite enough snow for the skiiers) and deep valleys; profound silences and distant, circling eagles; deep blue skies and blinding white snow; the mysteries of Creation.

On other trips to this high “corner” of the world, every May in Estes Park – and will be, this year, too – I am on the faculty of another Christian Writers Conference, conducted by Write His Answer Ministries. Many years, some of us spend the “day after” decompressing and enjoying fellowship, up, up, up, even higher than the grand YMCA Conference Camp.

Above the tree line, past where pine trees alone grow, to mountaintops where the only “vegetation” is the green covering on rocks, lichens – not a moss, but nature’s strange hybrid of algae and fungus, no two tiny of which are alike. Signs warn against stepping on lichens, because they take two centuries to regenerate. Those mountaintops, when we reach them, are as other-worldly as the lichens. Frigid air but definitely shirt-sleeve conditions; snow that other signs claim might be 100 years old; and views of seemingly bottomless gorges and… even high peaks above.

One year several of us stood on a cliff, taking it all in, occasionally whispering that a fly-speck below might have been a mountain sheep or a giant hawk….

And someone of us started humming the old hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” Then the words. We all joined in, singing softly. I can tell you that when the air is cold but the sun is bright, tears do not freeze quickly as they run down your cheeks.

These two memories gently collided this week in my mind… because that hymn was one of George Beverly Shea’s signature hymns, such to millions around the world. This week it came to mind again, appreciating that song and that God whose world it is.

But another thought collided, too. Prompted by missions newsletters from a friend in Africa… letters from friends, several, with family deaths and news of cancer diagnoses… flying into Detroit and driving home past Flint, Michigan… I was reminded that life’s mountains only rise in magnificence when contrasted with the valleys below. Life’s valleys are often dark, frequently dangerous, and always reminders of “the pictures from life’s other side.”

The uncountable souls who suffer from disease and despair; persecution and oppression; violence and assault… the countries where people are herded from their homes and where starvation is their lot… where they suffer for their consciences and cannot be free… where the shuttered homes of Detroit and the slums of Flint would be palaces to many desperate people…

these people? these conditions? these places?

THEY are parts of our Father’s world, too.

God would have us praise Him, and be forever grateful for the beauty of His creation, surely. But we cannot believe that He would forgive us – we cannot allow ourselves to forget the fact – that there are other parts of God’s world, too.

And a funny thing occurred to me on that mountaintop: we cannot move mountains or create such scenes as in the Rockies or Alps. But we CAN change slums and build neighborhoods. We can watch for eagles and sheep as they hunt for food, but we can actually feed our own neighbors.

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Click: This Is My Father’s World