Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-12-15

As most of you know, Dr. Pangloss was a character in Candide by Voltaire. As with many characters in fiction and literature whose sayings (“Something will always turn up,” said Micawber in Dickens’ David Copperfield) and very names (Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals) have entered the language, Pangloss manifested the universal tendency to accept what life dumps on us: “This is the best of all possible worlds.”

It is very seldom that anyone who believes he or she really is living in the best of all possible worlds says so. Usually we are whistling in the graveyard; that is, putting up a confident front, trying to convince ourselves (and anyone else who will listen) that we are not as bad-off as things seems.

The saying, and the attitude behind it, is more than resignation to life’s vicissitudes. At its best it is a temporary surrender in one of life’s battles, a choice not to respond or fight or overcome. At its worst it is a false sense of security that replaces wisdom and joy; a counterfeit theology that rejects the rescue-and-recovery operation laid out for us by God.

The counterfeit theology is deadly… and common. Many Christians, deliberately or unconsciously, employ it. It is, really, saying “no thanks” to God when He offers comfort, solace, wisdom, understanding, strength, hope.

Truly, superstition. If we utter it, we think it will become so, and our troubles will be calmed.

The deadliest aspect of believing that “This is the best of all possible worlds” is on people who, ironically, are relieved from reaching low-points, feeling desperate, realizing that they must run to the Lord. Knowing they must run to the Lord. Having to crawl to the Lord, if necessary. It sounds hard, but we are talking about those hard moments we all face.

Seeking the Lord (who, always, always in these circumstances is closer than we think) is not a bad thing in the end. It is, in fact, the Best Thing. It is where He wants us. What a shame that it takes horrible situations – or that we let ourselves be so separated – that we have to experience that desperation.

But what a wonderful thing that we seek and arrive at the foot of the Cross, before the Throne of Grace.

“This is the best of all possible worlds”? The phrase is often said after a death, an accident, a disappointment that we cannot explain. Personal sorrow, economic distress, dashed dreams. “Oh, well, maybe it’s for the best…” is a denial-fed mantra. Its efficacy is self-swindling balm, because many people will then say, “Anyway, I have to believe that; it helps me get through.”

This puts the saying in company with wishing-stones, rabbit’s feet, lucky charms, necromancy. What a waste of the joy unspeakable, full of glory, that God offers. If this – in the larger, non-specific sense – were the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for prayer, spiritual guidance, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit; indeed, no need for a Savior.

There is sin in the world. Sometimes, often, we sin; we fall short of the glory of God. Our problems are always some result of sin, corruption, junk in the world around us. And sometimes the result of our own actions. Whatever. God provides a refuge. Jesus is the cleft in the rock during life’s storms. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter.

“Come to Me, weak and heavy-laden,” Jesus invited. “Peace that passes understanding,” we are promised. “I am the bread of life,” when our very souls are starving. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Understand me: the Sovereign Lord declares that without Him, this is NOT the best of all possible worlds.

If you are a believer and you find yourself falling back on that empty mantra, shake that dust from your sandals, and learn again how to walk with the Lord through this imperfect world.

If you are casual about your faith, or a nominal believer in God, or have a “universal” trust in the goodness of a supreme being – and you find yourself trusting, when “necessary,” that this is the best of all possible worlds – realize how empty this is. It is as sad, horribly sad, for people to decline God’s gifts as it is to defy Him.

And be more spiritual than to refer to “the man upstairs.” That “man” has moved out. In fact he was never home.

The Creator of the Universe not only is “upstairs,” but lives right next to you. He knows your answers; He has your answers; He IS your answer.

And He is your guide to the best of all possible worlds.

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Johnny Cash sang a song, late in his life, that captures the desperation we sometimes feel.

Click: Help Me, Lord

9-28-15

A tweenager I have gotten to know was saddened by the recent death of her grandfather. As a young Christian she displayed a concern that many youngsters otherwise would not feel: “I never had the chance to tell him about Jesus!” I thought of this yesterday when a neighbor told me he invited another neighbor to church one Wednesday evening; unable to attend, the fellow was invited on the following Saturday night. But the next morning the invited guest, in his 30s, was found dead in his living room. My friend had not inquired of the guy’s “standing with the Lord,” but church would have been a time to open such conversation.

These are poignant stories. Timing – as with so many things in life! – can be excruciating.

In significant matters like a person’s relationship with Jesus, making the simple but profound decision to accept Christ and be secure about eternal salvation, to be a child of God and a citizen of Heaven, we all have responsibilities. Jesus commanded us to share the Gospel. Not just with grandfathers and neighbors, but to all the world.

Yet, we can only do so much. It is my opinion that the contemporary church either makes too little of evangelism – diluting the Gospel – or too much, trying to “seal the deal” with professions of faith, signed pledges, and obligatory testimonies. We need to remind ourselves that our commission is to share the Gospel; it is, by holy design, the work of the Holy Spirit to convict, lead, and witness to people’s hearts.

Do we think the Holy Spirit inadequate to do the work Jesus foretold?

We should not stop coming alongside those new in faith, of course not, but we do not seal those deals, so to speak. We cannot. Individuals do, and only by the prompting and power of the Holy Spirit of God.

Further, to be humble about our roles can give us a clearer picture of things we are doing… and not doing, as Christian servants. That young lady who cried, “I never had the chance to tell Grandpa about Jesus!” did not mean she never had the chance. Nothing against her sincerity or naiveté – we all share such grievous regrets of timing – but what happened was she never took the chance. She had the chance; we all do. My neighbor took the chance by issuing an invitation. But, wow, what a reminder.

Right here, I only want to expand on this in a different way. You might be reading this, and might be someone who does not buy in to the act of “accepting Jesus,” or the importance of a “decision.” You might not be comfortable or consider it your role to “share the Gospel.” Or to respond to such forms of outreach. You are not alone, even in this land of many churches.

Well… then, this message is for you. You might not share; you might be shared to; you might dismiss the importance of “accepting Christ.” Maybe you have heard about such things, but never actually heard them directly. You are hearing now. Stick around for another paragraph or two.

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. A just God cannot accept sinners determined to reject Him. As humankind discovered its inability to please the Lord by offerings and works, and our “clean” garments were still as filthy rags, God provided the Perfect Offering. He sent His Son to earth to teach and heal and preach and inspire – to save – a lost world. Christ became the sacrifice for our sins, that whoever believes in their hearts He is the Son of God; and confesses that God raised Him from the dead, shall be saved.

To this statement of Good News, if you add anything, that is foolish; if you subtract anything, that is dangerous. The Gospel invitation, condensed.

Now you have heard it. Whether you live a few more days or a few more decades, the Gospel has been shared with you. Next? Search the Bible; and pray to God for His Spirit to come into your heart… and your mind, that any questions you have will be answered. It is a prayer that never goes unanswered!

“Timing” still is important. This might be the last day of the rest of your life!

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We might stray, we might feel alone, we might think we are far from the Shepherd’s sight, or care. But remember the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Ninety-nine sheep might be in the fold, but He will seek out the one who is lost. This song was written by Elizabeth Clephane; melody by Ira Sankey, 150 years ago. Sung here by Dean Phelps.

Click: The Ninety and Nine

9-21-15

I once worked for a youth-ministry resource company, as “Director of Product Development.” Actually it was as editor, sometime conference speaker, and seldom directing the development of new products, despite the title; unless books are called Products, which I suppose they are.

Anyhoo, an excellent editor and I oversaw the publication of about 50 books a year. Now that I look back, even between the two of us, that was a book every week, which we did, yes, “develop,” from brainstorming sessions, to proposals, to outlining, to many author conferences, to helping design and work on cover art; along the way contributing gems of wisdom about people who might write introductions and endorsements, suggesting promotion and ad copy; ultimately to develop comebacks for a Christian bookstore in, say, Pittsburgh, that objected to the way a kid looked on a back-cover photo.

But, a book every two weeks, as we, Solomon-like, divided the chores. No wonder we went crazy. Holy crazy, of course; sanctified bonkerdom. Biennial conventions, various office duties, and office picnics broke the monotony if not the workload.

But it was a wonderful company, a for-profit “ministry,” and thousands of pastors and youth workers – and by extension multiple thousands of kids – relied on our books, conferences, and products.

While I was at the company, the owner died in a horrible auto accident – one of those deaths when you automatically say, “Too young, too young.” He was too young, and it still would have been a tragic loss if had been 108. His widow picked up the reins. Soon into said reign she inaugurated a monthly book review group. It was voluntary in the office; Christian books were assigned; and she led a free-flow discussion.

In one of the sessions, talk turned to being secure about going to Heaven, as it does sometimes among members of old-line churches and even among skeptics. Our leader announced that she was pretty sure she was going to Heaven, because she and her husband “had given so much money to charities through the years.”

I paused. One way to put my reaction.

We all live in a land that was founded and settled by Christians, in a society that largely was designed and informed by Protestant theology. It is not against the law for anyone to dissent from these situations and their implications. But to be ignorant of them – especially as the owner and life-worker in jobs devoted to sharing the gospel among churches – is astonishing.

It is very common in America for average citizens to be ignorant of dogma that onetime permeated Western societies, however. It is common for people these days to be quite unaware of doctrines and traditions of the churches they attend – if those churches, many of them, “independent,” even hold to such things.

And the surprise I evinced that afternoon might have been unwarranted, because I had developed doubts that any shade of orthodoxy inhabited any corners of that office. And these are days when popes question traditional doctrine, and pastors gut the gospel and newly interpret – or couldn’t be bothered to – the Bible.

But the logic of revealed truth, if there is anything to the Bible, and Christ’s ministry, includes the fact that we cannot buy our way into Heaven. We cannot fool God with promises, bribe God with good deeds, or impress Him (that is, unto Salvation) with good works. If so, rich people writing checks would elbow themselves into Glory… and we know what Jesus said about the rich getting into Heaven. Indeed, if salvation were that easy, Jesus’ incarnation, birth, ministry, miracles, teaching, persecution, torture, condemnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, would all be worthless shams. Hoaxes. A cruel trick on the Christ, first of all; and then us. All in vain.

All through humankind’s history, people have been susceptible to “natural” curiosity about, say, reincarnation. Superstitions about karma. And false hopes that good deeds now and again will be sufficient to please a Holy God. Wouldn’t it be nice? And easy? The bad news is that it’s not true.

The good news is that there is a satisfactory substitute available to all. With our sinful inclinations, we cannot do it on our own, anyway – but God has provided the substitutionary and atoning death of His Son to pay the price of sin. Simple. Easy. Not cheap. But free.

Next, how do we live that new life with changed hearts? Jesus said to take up our crosses and follow Him. Yes, we should be Christ-followers. At the same time, as we are pilgrims and strangers in this world, we proceed forth, “stepping out in faith.” Alone? No, we know that Christ is there, leading from behind (as current phraseology goes)!

Over, under, above, below, however, the best we can ask for, and hope for, and have, is Jesus holding our hands. He will guide us day and night. He, working through the Holy Spirit, will correct us when we are mistaken.

That is, sometimes we follow; sometimes He is behind us; and sometimes it is best to hold His hand… the security of knowing that He is with us. At our sides; what a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

If we happen to slip into error or heresy… well, think of it this way: if you are persuaded to buy your way into Heaven through offerings or donations, if Jesus is holding your hand, it will be hard to reach for loose change or a checkbook. You will find yourself being reminded that charity is from a pure heart, and giving is the result of Salvation, not the price of a ticket to Heaven.

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The great gospel song by Albert E Brumley, “Jesus, Hold My Hand,” is a virtual sermon in song. It is a song I have sung solo in churches more than any other. Here is a heartfelt and, um, enthusiastic version by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Click: Jesus, Hold My Hand

9-7-15

“He has told you, O people, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” – Micah 6:8

When I was a college student, there were still such things as loyalty oaths. Students, teachers, applicants for many jobs in the government and the private sector, were required to answer and sign the following yes-or-no question: “Do you favor the overthrow of the United States Government by violence, force, or subversion?” As a young wise guy – now I am on old wise guy, not much wiser – one time I circled the word “subversion,” and added a note that I wished to avoid bloodshed.

Of course, it was not a multiple-choice question. I was no radical, and it was a reasonable question, especially in those times (maybe more so now, but that’s for another message…) and it was not right that my sense of humor eclipsed my common sense.

No less reasonable a question, and more serious, is the famous and favorite verse from Micah. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. Not a multiple-choice, and, overall, not a hard choice in life. Right? I am reminded, when I think on this verse, what always is right about God’s will, and what often is wrong about organized religion.

What I hate about religion is that it turns the simplicity of God’s message into a tangle of rules, conditions, qualifications, codes, and seeming contradictions. In fact, when theologians, clergymen, priests, and pastors get hold of churches and schools, of texts and flocks, oftentimes the contradictions are not apparent but real.

A quatrain (not from the Bible, but pertinent) I discovered and memorized in my youth says: “All the saints and sages who discussed/ of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust/ like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn/ are scattered; their mouths are stopped with dust.”

Humans, who by our natures are lost and confused, and almost preternaturally, every one of us, yearning for truth and for peace and for Answers – we need simplicity. We fool ourselves that Complicated equals Profound. On such momentous matters as sin and death and afterlife, after all, doesn’t it make sense that the way to the Truth be complex? … and that we need learned leaders – saints and sages – to show us the way? No: They invariably need to tell us the way, not show us the way.

And there we get back to organized religion. New rules get added to scripture, which the Bible says is unforgivable sin (and so is taking away anything in scripture). Remember that for more than a thousand years, believers were not allowed to read the Bible, or translate it to their native languages. People were taught that intercessors in Heaven were needed to petition, or thank, God. Way-stations between earth and Heaven that were never in the Bible were invented. Today, television preachers promise that “seed money” you send them will guarantee God’s return blessings; and other rank heresies. Organized religion or organized rackets?

For those who are confident in having “found the way” to God, no different with those who are lost and confused and wanting to find God – in other words, all of us! – everyone should realize that God is accessible. Knowing Him is easy. He is always as close as a shadow. Talking to Him is simple, not complicated; hearing from Him is clear, not a matter of superstitious mystery.

Oh! His commandments? Jesus’s words? The Bible’s directions? Yes, they exist… and thank God. He doesn’t leave us helpless! But… He is not the Great Pretender, the Author of Confusion. His rules are few. They are for our guidance, and our happiness, our ultimate fellowship with Him. The Commandments are still wise and valid. The words of the Prophets, so many fulfilled, are lamps unto our feet. The teaching of Jesus? His words were surprisingly few, astonishingly full of wisdom, and directly for our salvation.

The essence of the Bible is found in so few words and passages that anyone might memorize them. The 10 Commandments (not the “10 Suggestions”) are rules we need. Micah’s verse about doing justice and walking humbly. Jesus’s summary of the Truth as “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength; and… Love your neighbor as yourself.” To get to Heaven? – no classes, exams, ceremonies, or human blessings; only to Believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord; and confess that God raised Him from the dead.

I am grateful for some human agencies in or out of organized religion. Much has been useful: the ancient creeds simply encapsulated the tenets of faith; Martin Luther recalled the Bible verse that by faith we are saved, not (complicated) works; Mother Teresa brilliantly told us that God does not care about our “success,” only our obedience. Clear teaching… genuine humility… patient praying… anointed teaching of God’s word, not mankind’s “improvements”… service and sacrifice… quiet witnessing, even martyrdom… these are the elements of Christianity that humans can receive and provide. The essence of the Gospel life, not the “stuff.”

It has been said, and truly, that religion is mankind reaching up to God, but Christianity is God reaching down to us.

Let us learn to distinguish between the artificial rules and the True Faith. One is confusingly complicated, one is refreshingly simple. One might be wrapped up in memories and sentiment, but the other opens doors to joy unspeakable. One can keep you from peace; the other delivers it. You can discern. If not… that is why God instituted the communication-channel of prayer; and why He sent the Holy Spirit. Such prayers, such questions, such seeking, never go unanswered by your Father in Heaven.

We are aware that many things in our lives are right or wrong, true or false. We know. Experience, if nothing else, teaches us many things. Are the important things in your life mere check-boxes in a multiple-choice quiz?

Is Faith in God?

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The Gospel group Found Wandering sings its version of an old Stanley Brothers standard.

Click: That Home Far Away

8-31-15

When I was a “baby Christian” I had been familiar with scripture verses and Bible stories, but was new in the personal knowledge of the salvation message and a relationship with God in Christ. When “born again” I often prayed in a certain way that I thought was appropriately humble.

I began my prayers – and sometimes filled them and ended them – with confessions of unworthiness. I was conscious of my lowly status before God. A sinner who felt presumptuous to approach the Throne of God. This realization was humbling, and I thought was a step forward in my proper relationship with God. A spiritual breakthrough.

In fact, it is just the opposite. The pilgrim’s progress on the way to Heaven, to the presence of God for eternity, certainly has way-stations of setbacks and also, yes, those of clear realizations. It is hard to move to the next spiritual step until we approach, appreciate, and pass by the stages that include, say, the overwhelming understanding that the gulf between a Holy God and us, lowly sinners, is enormous.

The consciousness of sin, and the awareness that we cannot save ourselves, is essential in our walk. Likewise the full knowledge of God’s awesome holiness. But…

… these steps come during our journey, not after we are assured of Heaven and the security of forgiveness and acceptance. When we achieve Heaven there will be no shadow of turning, no doubts, no anxiety about past transgressions, no nervous feelings that we have sins yet to be dealt with.

In fact we can know that peace now. No Pearly Gates, no giant book with ledger-sheets of good and bad.

When we are saved, we are saved. The Bible speaks of judgments, yes, and also crowns and treasures delivered after we are in Heaven. Whether we can “lose” our salvation before Heaven is occasionally debated by theologians… but not that we can lose it in Heaven. These are all mysteries that fill us with joy, but not with dread or even insecurity. God does not issue counterfeit entrance passes. There will be no U-Turns once you get to Glory.

The Joy Unspeakable we can know now is because of a simple fact. When we invite Jesus into our hearts, where He lives and reigns after our happy surrender to Him, God looks at us and… sees Jesus. He sees the “new” us. And the Bible tells us that when we receive Him, and receive the forgiveness He promises, we are forgiven indeed.

He casts our sins over His shoulder into a sea of forgetfulness. God can do anything, but in that mystery He forgets our sins: He chooses not to remember them. Not only in Heaven, but now, He remembers our transgressions no more. A neat trick. Thank God. Literally.

And that means those prayers couched in abject humility as a sinner, groveling in guilt and unworthiness, are out of place in the life of a born-again, saved and redeemed believer. Once upon a time, appropriate – even necessary – but no more! We stand on our feet, washed and covered by Jesus’s Atonement, and approach the Throne of Grace! He looks at us, and sees the Blood.

There is another side to the coin. Just as we tend, unnecessarily, to remind God of sins that He has forgotten, how often do we forget our prayers that He has answered? How often do we neglect the Source of gifts and good things? How often do we fail to thank Him for uncountable blessings?

In my case, I’m afraid the answer is “often.” Probably with you, too.

Those items of Neglect are sins. God is the author of all good things, and whether we rudely fail to acknowledge His move in our lives, or simply (?) ignore the grateful responses due Him, we horribly fall short. Salvation is not free – the sacrifice paid by Jesus made God cry, not only Mary – but it is easy, and it is eternal.

Surely, after He has forgotten our sins forever, we can occasionally remember His forgiveness, His blessings, His love.

We have traded our dirty clothes for shining robes, and a crown, and diamonds in that crown. Remember what awaits. We have foretastes even now. Let us act like we know it!

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Click: A Diamond in My Crown

7-6-15

Imagine the year is 2215.

If the world is still around then – or as we Christians are wont to say, if the Lord tarries – there will be history books. Well, maybe not books, but there will be histories. We humans do not always learn from history, yet we study it and are curious about the past in various ways. And are doomed to repeat what we fail to learn.

As a student of history, with degrees in history, and as an author of many biographies and histories… I nevertheless claim no special insights. Yet I think a text like the following is plausible, even likely. I don’t wish it. In fact, I fear it. But I expect it. Two very different Fourths of July.

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This “history” is written in 2215, which is far fewer years since the watershed year in American history we choose (2015), than between the Declaration of Independence and 2015. Therefore, rapid changes were recorded. The United States of America is gone now, a historical memory like Egypt of the Pharaohs or ancient Greece or the Roman Empire. It was divided into regions that became new countries, or portions that were swallowed up by former rival nations and ambitious neighbors.

At one point in its history, America was a nation that surprised the world. Its early generations. It was “discovered”; settled by mostly European peoples and cultural values; it expanded, became wealthy and powerful, and incorporated the wisdom of the ages as well as recent philosophies. Religion, Christian tradition, Enlightenment thought, respect for human rights and responsibilities, all were there from the beginning, or grafted onto the American stock.

Then, what surprised the world even more – or, perhaps, what stands out in history – is how quickly those qualities disappeared.

All the words of its Founders and Framers, that the promise of a republican democracy could only succeed in the hands of a godly people… were forgotten.

The insights of countless foreign observers, that “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great,” were disregarded, instead of being appreciated as a warning.

One by one, America’s original sins, like slavery, were painfully expunged, but hard fought nonetheless; yet generations after the signs of progress, Americans descended into ugly recriminations, as if slavery and poverty were worse than ever.

Military power that represented, and protected, America’s material wealth, soon morphed into imperial ambitions. Despite the lessons of history that every nation that sought boundless conquest – republics that became empires – America rotted at the edges first, and lost land, allies, and its very citizens’ loyalties. The United States had bases in more than 100 countries in the year we chose, 2015. Unsustainable.

Some of the many qualities that made the United States stand out from other nations in history were its industry, invention, trade, and the widespread prosperity that followed. Never were more people more comfortable, and able to pursue education and leisure. Yet an entitlement mentality overtook the United States. Redistribution, envy, resentment of success, were the fruits of the free enterprise system.

Finance capitalism nurtured currents of greed, and materialism replaced idealism. Far more common was the desire to penalize achievements. Where once America applauded those who accomplished things, a mindset took hold whose impulse was to tear down. And confiscate. Instead of elevating the talented to the first-class, America began to tear everyone down to the third-rate level. In schools, in society, in the workplace.

Language, borders, and culture became dirty words. Traditional heroes were attacked, and “celebrities” took their places. Talents that might have served the arts were turned toward jingles, advertising, and diversions designed to be obsolete in a season. Military veterans had to rely on private organizations for their care; their families were thrown to public assistance.

Sex replaced love; drugs replaced thought; relativism replaced religion; “being nice” replaced being right; government programs replaced charity; TV and movies replaced books. The Self replaced the ideal of private responsibility for others. The Moment replaced the Future. The accumulation of things became the standard of success, and respect; personal integrity became irrelevant.

Divorces increased. Illegitimacy soared. Addictions and abuse were like epidemics. Despite the clear evidence of … history… the United States became a society where human nature and human relationships were turned inside-out. Drugs became acceptable. The family unit was not merely challenged, but attacked. Religion was transformed into an object of hatred and ridicule, instead, with all its faults, of being a lodestar. Gender roles were reversed. People “became lovers of themselves,” and engaged in debasements.

Gender roles, family structures. Those who ruined America thought that the inclinations and traditions of the human community could be, should be, changed by laws and courts. It was little different from the French Revolution, which tried to change clocks and calendars and mathematics. Doomed; futile at best, self-destructive at worst. But those who did not learn from history were doomed to repeat it.

American schools, run by the state, became propaganda mills. So, in effect, were voices of the entertainment and news complexes. Traditionalists – descendents of those who had established and had long underpinned the culture – were silenced, and persecuted.

As surprising as the decline, these and many other examples, and how quickly it happened, was the fact that so many citizens welcomed the radical changes. As in a Bacchanalian orgy, after a certain point the self-loathing destructiveness fed upon itself. History be damned; posterity be damned. God Himself be damned.

… for that was the underlying motive force of the agents of decadence, destruction, and degeneracy: rebellion not only against tradition and a unique heritage in world history; but nihilistic mutiny against God. The God whose blessings enabled that former nation, the United States of America, to briefly stand in world history as a Shining City On a Hill.

Some people think that politicians invented that slogan; or that Ronald Reagan coined the phrase; or that one of the very first Pilgrims, John Winthrop, imagined it. But Jesus first envisioned it and spoke of it, in His Sermon On the Mount. The United States saw it, had it, and lost it.

For awhile it seemed so unlikely. But the United States became merely one more page in history’s book, to turn and move on…

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It is not amiss, on this 4th of July, 2015 (to return to the present) to quote some words Ronald Reagan did write on the issue at hand – whether America can retain its precious birthrights of freedom and liberty:

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again. … It is inconceivable to me that anyone could accept… delegated authority without asking God’s help.”

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I have chosen a recent anthem, “Lead Me Home,” concerning one’s last days, with videos of military funerals and cemeteries, because the juxtaposition of this great song and these powerful images illustrate my point, here – that the American culture is slipping from the moorings that once held it together. Honestly, we should be mourning, as much as celebrating, this particular July Fourth. Christian patriots need to roll up sleeves, become better informed, prepare to fight, and expect tougher times.

The challenges, and our current parlous situation, are outlined in scripture. You know that. Justice of a righteous God. End Times. But the rewards of the faithful, and the glory that awaits us, are also written in the heavenlies.

Click: Lead Me Home

6-29-15

As sure as there are troubles in our lives, there is deliverance. Not always, or so it seems to some of us. Not immediately: that is certain. It can come. When it comes – any manner of relief, answers, healing, comfort, understanding, peace – we often to pray thanks to the God whose pity and mercy we so recently sought. Or, we do give thanks or do penance or share with the world what God has done.

It is a tempting thing to suppose, especially when the Creator of the Universe wonderfully has intervened in our affairs, that the crisis is settled, that God has done His work. We adjust our sandals and move ahead, refreshed, toward the next goals in life.

But that is not exactly God’s way, not the Bible way. It is more the case, when He has delivered His people, His children, that He not only saves us from something… but for something.

St Augustine, before the year 400, preached the following words in a sermon. This important man is an essential figure in the theology, cosmology, and philosophy that is a continuum that includes Plato, other early church fathers, and Martin Luther, as readers of this column know (or at least know of my sympathy and wellsprings). It is a miracle that so many of Augustine’s sermons, lessons, and books have survived, lighting our paths through the centuries.

Anyway, he wrote about the idea of deliverance, and God “bringing His people through”:

Brothers, look and see: The Judeans [Jews] were liberated in the sea, the Egyptians were destroyed in it…. The Judeans go beyond the Red Sea and walk through the desert. It is the same way with Christians after baptism: they are not yet in the land of promise, but they live in hope….

The Egyptians who chased the Judeans out of Egypt were not their only enemies – but they were their old enemies. In the same way, our past life and our past sins… continue to haunt us. There are enemies in the desert as well…

Interesting! We know the story of Exodus; and we think of other examples in the Bible of God saving His people. When we think of it, many individuals and populations were saved… only to face greater challenges. Is these the acts of a kindly God? Yes! God is love! We remember the “Hall of Fame of the Heroes of Faith” in Hebrews chapter 11: the Bible’s greatest champions of faith and obedience are there honored.

And every one of them came short of his goal, never making it to each one’s “promised land.” Also interesting, and instructive. The Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, the desert after captivity, “over the Jordan,” Canaan Land, Beulah Land – have you heard these terms?

Exodus 33 has the account of God speaking to Moses:
‘Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.’…  And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, ’Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you.’… [But] He said, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’

Rest? These people yearned for even more, and more, and more, deliverance. Free of the Pharaohs, they wanted also to be free of… God. They wanted to live as they wished – to sin and be rebellious – and not merely trade metal shackles for moral restraints. They were free of the bondsman’s lash, and thought they deserved license to revel in decadence and debauchery. (If this sounds to you like a description of America-up-to-date, we share the same shrinking desert island…)

But God knew the basic natures of His children; He knew the desires of their hearts; and He would not answer those prayers to be free of responsibilities as well as actual chains.

The Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, the desert after captivity, “over the Jordan,” Canaan Land, Beulah Land… many people believe these were earthly symbols of Heaven in the Bible, poetry and hymns. But they were not, never were. Heaven is… Heaven. If there were a physical Promised Land with miracle blooms, and flowing milk and honey, why should any inhabitants desire the real Heaven?

“Beulah,” in the Bible and in many hymns through the years, refers to “marriage,” a word, and a land, where believers might commune with God, even be in a relationship akin to marriage with the Son. But. That all precedes Heaven. Paradise, Eternity, Heaven is our final home.

As sweet as God’s promises, His deliverances, His dwelling-places of communion on earth, are… Heaven will be sweeter. A wise-guy skeptic friend of mine once challenged me: “If Heaven is so wonderful, why don’t you end it all, and go straight there for eternity?” Apart from the proposition that God hates murder, including of one’s self (and, by the way, that includes morally, not just physically), that is not in His plan, either.

We stay on earth, and should desire to, to serve Him. We cling to this life in order to fulfill whatever plans He has for us. We embrace life so that we can share His glory, bring others to saving grace, to minister to a hurting world as “imitators of Christ.”

In that perspective, we need to see, first, that the mercies He offers us here – in ways represented by Beulah Lands, “milk and honey,” Promised Lands – are havens of rest, foretastes of Heaven, gifts to make our days here sweeter as we work for the Master. Not Heaven… but on the way! We have jobs to do for Him, and they become easier, perhaps; or maybe more challenging. But the Hope, and Victory, are within view.

Truly – and always – when God saves us from something, He saves us for something.

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An old hymn, Is Not This the Land of Beulah, and a more recent gospel song, Sweet Beulah Land, share the distinctions and the reality of that place we may all seek. Wonderful words. Here, the two are explained and performed by the composer of the latter song, pastor and singer Squire Parsons. “I’m kind of homesick for that country, where I’ve never been before…”

Click: Beulah Land

6-15-15

Last week we shared thoughts about the anguish of suffering and illness, and the topic of God’s will regarding healing. It should not be a matter of debate; but it is. It should not be complex, but we make it so.

And we said this week we would discuss coping with the burdens that, naturally, remain when infirmities attack our bodies, our loved ones, our families. How standing strong in faith… can sometimes, still, leave us shaky when the “major” crises are past or covered. We will discuss a surprisingly little-used source of strength, little-used by even the most reverent of Christians.

And that is God.

I am preaching to myself, so I know whereof I speak.

How often do we pray, and pray for a specific result? Do we really pray – and mean – “Thy will be done”?

Do you ever pray for strength in order to go it alone, to be God’s warrior, to be an example to others? How often do you pray to just be God’s obedient servant?

Are your prayers for God to give you strength, or that God BE your strength?

What percentage of your prayers do NOT have a specific result in your request? Do you ever pray, in effect, “I don’t know, God; I am helpless; I am clueless; I trust You, in all You have, all You are, and in all You do”?

Do you remember that God manifests Himself as the Holy Spirit in order to inhabit our prayers, and bring spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and faith when we cannot summon these things ourselves? Do you remember that Jesus promised, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7)?

You will notice that most of my challenges – most of our “discussion” – has been in the form of questions. Well, life (and its recipe of burdens and grief as well as its menu of joys and hopes) consists of questions. In our personal journeys, we can have questions without answers, but for useful wisdom it is hard to appreciate the answers unless we ask informed questions.

And if life consists of questions, we know that Jesus does not only HAVE the answers. He IS the answer.

This seems like a paradox, or at least a challenge to the spiritual wisdom we are supposed to exercise. God circumvents our fervent thoughts, insights, education… even our theology? Yes. Christianity is, at its core, a counter-intuitive, upside-down, revelation of God. So it is not about what we pray, necessarily, but Who we trust.

Not what He can do, but who He is.

Not framing our desires, but knowing our needs.

Not trusting our own wisdom, or faith, but obeying Him, and trusting all His ways.

My friend Linda Evans Shepherd recently reminded us of St Isaac’s words: “The highest form of prayer is to stand silently in awe before God.” God knows all, anyway.

Christianity, where you can only stand by being on your knees.

Christianity, where rebellion leads to slavery.

Christianity, where obedience leads to freedom.

Christianity, where surrender leads to victory.

Oh, the burdens of our hearts! The desires of our souls! Too often do we pray backwards, ready with a heavenly shopping-list. Yes, we understand the momentous aspects of awful illness and tortured love affairs, of family crises and personal dilemmas. We know the reasons we pray for certain outcomes! But Martin Luther once said that Reason is the enemy of Faith, and so it is.

May God help us always to pray believing… in His wisdom, His love, His strength.

+ + +

Click: Please Be My Strength

6-8-15

Yes, I can spell; hold on. I want to address the topics of disease and sickness; and of God’s will and whether God allows infirmities – or whether He visits them upon us at times. Hot-button topics, always. I want to consider spiritual gifts, whether Divine Healing is a grace available to the contemporary church, or whether it was a “sign” to heathens and believers only in the first century.

The questions are not arcane, nor abstract. To the afflicted they can be of burning urgency. To some believers, some factions, they represent attitudes that, for all intents and purposes, define one’s faith.

My own life-experiences reflect different theological viewpoints. Rather, changing viewpoints through the years. Apart from the Theory of Evolution, about which theory I am a skeptic, my views on Divine Healing have evolved. I am persuaded that God has worked a sort of progressive revelation on my spiritual views.

I am not being flippant: I believe we always should invite God to inspire us – to have the Holy Spirit guide and inform us – as we search scripture and exercise our prayer life, our conversations with Christ. As our faith matures, we are “baby Christians” when that state is sweet and seemingly sufficient, but eventually we graduate from such mother’s milk and subsist – require – heartier spiritual food. The Bible assures us that this characterizes the life of the believer.

When I became a fervent Christian, born-again with all that implies, including multiple blessings, my wife and I were convinced about God’s invariable will to heal. We never quite ventured into “name it and claim it” territory, but if God can heal, and He answers prayer, and the fervent prayer of righteous men availeth much… healing was only a prayer away.

Right? Or a prayer hankie, which could be purchased off the TV ministry. Or a “love offering,” taken up at the preacher’s crusade, with promises of the hundredfold return, not just healing. I saw miracles. I did. A crippled leg extended; deaf ears opened. But when such things did not come, many preachers blamed the sick person’s faith, not germs or viruses or accidents or heredity or self-destructiveness or…

Eventually, I wondered why the evangelists who promised perfect health all wore glasses. Surely they were not fashion statements.

During this time my wife developed illnesses. Diabetes led to heart attacks and strokes. Celiac disease struck. She was listed for heart and kidney transplants. Her faith was never shaken, but at the point of death she received two organs. She believed that God worked a miracle through surgery, science, and doctors’ hands. Healing came. Christ’s promise of “life, and more abundantly,” she came to believe, was about more than money.

Also in her life she was healed of blindness, and, later, thyroid cancer, when the healing prayers were not as fervent, but they were cases “where the doctors can’t explain it.” Spiritual evolution: God was displaying His sovereignty, and we learned obedience.

Where once we thought that “by His stripes ye are healed,” that Jesus guaranteed Divine Healing for all because of the cross, we came to realize that we should pray as we are instructed, the burdens of our hearts; then trust and obey; and when and if healing comes, to give God the glory. By those stripes – Christ’s sacrifice, not a preacher’s sermon – He identifies with us, our fears, and, yes, our pain and infirmities.

Recently I have been acquainted with close family members and close friends with mysterious, serious, troubling afflictions. How should we pray?

Always – for healing. That is the burden of our hearts. There is NO instance in the Bible where God’s prophets, or Jesus, EVER claimed that physical affliction is from the Lord; or that disease is from God; or that sickness is sent to “test us.” Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”? Just as likely temptations or distractions as illness. So: we pray, believing.

If healing does not come… or as we desire… or as fast as we want… or at all… we trust and obey. Our puny selves, with maturing but never matured faith, when it comes down to the paths we walk, cannot even walk without God holding our hands. It should never be, “heal me that I may run away,” but “hold me close that I may walk with You.”

This understanding is not a safety-valve for those who pray and their prayers go “unanswered.” No, it is a mature exercise of faith.

Why is there sickness in the world? God does not send it. But there is sin in the world; in this broken world there is sickness and death; dangers and strife; hostile natural forces (insurance companies have a nerve calling them “acts of God”). The rain falls on the just and unjust. God does not promise that we would be free of these things – only that He would be with us, comforting us, increasing our faith, sometimes healing us, always loving us. Holding our hands.

Does God bring (or even allow) sickness in order to chastise us, keep us in line? God forbid, I say. I know that many believers (orders within the Catholic Church, for instance) believe that sorrow is a virtue and that some people are meant to suffer. I had a friend with many infirmities who memorized the entire Book of James, for its verses that seem to accept and embrace suffering.

However, it can become, it should become, our duty, when illness strikes, to turn to God, to trust Him, to ask for wisdom, to plead mercy for loved ones… all the time praying for healing, and acknowledging that He is the Lord who healeth thee. Of course. He can, and He will. Let us not forget the “Divine” component of Divine Healing. He is the God of Understanding.

And in the meantime, acknowledge that we can’t even walk without His holding our hands. In obedience classes, that would be called “heeling.”

My son-in-law Norman is going through trials of body, emotions, and his work with family and ministry. In his faith, seeking understanding, he has turned to Proverbs 3, and its following verses. Good prescriptions indeed:

3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;  In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

3:19-20 The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens; By His knowledge the depths were broken up, And clouds drop down the dew.

3:24-26 When you lie down, you will not be afraid; Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, Nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes; For the Lord will be your confidence, And will keep your foot from being caught.

Next week, some thoughts on how to cope with the burdens that, naturally, remain when infirmities attack our bodies, our loved ones, our families. We will discuss a surprisingly little-used source of strength.
+ + +

Click: I Can’t Even Walk Without You Holding My Hand

4-6-15

It’s strange. This Jesus, who told us all the time that He stands at the door and knocks – at the doors of our hearts – is “not home” when we come to His door. My name is Mary; you have heard of me. I went to His tomb this morning, and the stone was rolled away. He is not there. His burial cloths are, but not His body.

Gone.

Where has He gone?

It’s a few hours later, and the Disciples, who have been hiding in fear and confusion, some of them came, too, and see the empty tomb. “Gone,” they say. The few days since Jesus died on the cross were the blackest days of our lives. Maybe in humankind’s history. The Savior was promised and prophesied… He was made flesh and dwelt amongst us… He performed miracles and talked wisdom and preached love and told us what to do to receive forgiveness… and be reconciled to God… and to live eternally with God. Now… gone.

It is a few days later. Jesus is alive! He has appeared to us. He has mingled with multitudes. He showed His scars; He let a doubting Thomas touch His wounded side. Those who condemned Him are seeing Him, and they fall at His feet. Even Romans and Jewish historians like Josephus see Him. Gone… but returned.

He died for all sinners, He said. He loved us while we yet rejected Him, He said. His sacrifice substituted for the punishment we rebels deserve, He said. Before He was gone, all that made no sense. Now that He lives, we understand.

I am not sure, but now that He is not gone, and is showing Himself to people, I have an idea that since He left the tomb and lives again, maybe He is seeking out some of the people He died for. They were gone, too, when things got rough. He wants to bring them home.

Now I can tell more, from the perspective of 40 days after the Resurrection. Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven. Gone again? Not really; He promised a Holy Spirit to take His place in our hearts. Gone? Hardly.

I remember the Virgin Birth; and His many miracles; and all the prophecies fulfilled, but if Jesus did not rise from dead – if the “gone” was REALLY “gone” – it is all a useless, cruel joke. [“And if The Messiah is not risen, our preaching is worthless and your faith is also worthless,” I Corinthians 15:14]

But… He is not gone.

No. Jesus is not gone. Our faith is NOT worthless, not in vain!

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In Jerusalem, on a stage under the night moon, gospel legend Jessy Dixon sings “Gone,” the classic song by Eldridge Fox.

Click: Gone

3-30-15

In this changing world, it might be possible that some day the death penalty will be outlawed everywhere. On the other hand, if governments are being kinder and gentler with miscreants, we are seeing more summary death penalties these days – executions of infidels, troublemakers, and… “others.” I think of scimitars used by Moslems for beheadings, and remember when I was a child, I wondered if Jesus lived today, whether He would be put to death by firing squad or electric chair.

If so, would Christianity adorn its churches with representations of guns, or an electric chair, or a lightning bolt, or the symbol of poison we see on vials? Would Christian women wear jewelry in the shapes of a noose, or a sword?

It is not an impertinent question. It is pertinent if we think again, and perhaps with more focus, on the death of Jesus – and on the manner of His suffering and sacrifice. Experts on such things as torture say that crucifixion is one of the most horrible forms of meting out death in the charming history of our species. The forms of execution mentioned above surely are quicker and therefore higher on the scale of mercy. Burning at the stake was relatively quick, as were other “medieval” forms of torture and death, compared to crucifixion.

To be nailed to a cross, awful in itself, and left to hang and die, took several hours; sometimes longer. The arrangement of internal organs and the law of gravity combined to bring slow death, not so much by unbearable pain but by suffocation of the lungs.

But for a moment we can consider what else Jesus endured – aspects that were not usual with other Roman victims. The painful, mocking, bloody crown of thorns was unique to this condemned Man. Some prisoners were tied by rope, not nailed through the wrists and ankles, to crosses. Other factors were “either/or” in the Roman justice system: bearing the patibulum, the 100-pound crossbeam, through the streets to where the vertical wooden stipes awaited; whipping to within an inch of life; flogging by the worst instrument, the flagellum – not a normal whip or cat-o’-nine-tails, but leather strops with lead balls and animal bones filed to sharp points – would break the skin, catch it, and pull strips (“stripes,” as the Bible prophesied) off the back. Scourging, when ordered, often killed the prisoner, and seldom reached 40 in number, as Jesus endured. Of course, we know that He was mocked, poked, punched, and spat upon also, during His “trial.”

Over and above that – the combination of which few if any men ever sustained – I believe the worst thing for Jesus was the knowledge that, during those hours and days, He had been betrayed, denied, and abandoned by His followers, those who knew Him best. During this period of testing and trial, when fulfilling the Father’s plan and completing numerous details of Old Testament prophesies, when, perhaps, He was MOST human, the rejection by His friends and disciples must have hurt more than anything else. “The body they may kill…”

And Jesus went to the Cross. It was difficult (I say with irony), interrupted by all those things like trials, beating, scourging, humiliation, carrying a rough, heavy crossbeam along the via Dolorosa on lacerated flesh. I say that they interrupted the walk, because despite the agony – the human side of the Messiah asking the father if the “cup” could pass from him – it is true that, metaphorically, Jesus virtually scrambled up the Cross.

So we approach the Mystery of the Cross we can never fully comprehend.

Jesus knew His whole life that He would, as the lamb of God, be the Sacrifice for humankind’s sins. The Israelites had sought to please God by sacrifices of spotless lambs. God was pleased, at this moment, to offer His spotless son, without stain or blemish, as a sacrifice so that we, believing, might be cleansed of sin.

The Mystery further includes that Jesus did not merely die, as we have stated, but that His torment might have been worse than any individual has ever suffered.

The Mystery further includes that He suffered in silence. In his “trials” and hanging from the Tree, as ancient writings and hymns sometimes called the Cross

The Mystery further includes that He could have called down 10,000 angels to rescue Him, but did not. He might have struck His Jewish accusers dumb; or Pilate and his court dead, but did not.

The Mystery further includes that Jesus’ suffering and death were not only recorded in the harmony of the Gospels, some in more details than others, but cited by secular contemporary historians like Josephus. The predictions, details, and implications of the Cross are there for the world to see.

The Mystery further includes that we are told that our simple acceptance of Jesus’s substitutionary death on the Cross is the first, simple, requirement for our sins to be forgiven and to spend eternity with Jesus. (The other requirement is to believe and proclaim that God raised Jesus from the dead. “To be continued…”) So simple. Such a miracle. Such a mystery.

The Mystery further includes something that is not in the Bible, but I believe is totally consistent with every word in the Bible:

I believe that if every other person who ever lived, or ever will live, were sinless, as impossible as that would be – but stick with me – that Jesus Christ still would have sacrificed Himself; served his ministry; allowed Himself to be captured, tortured, and sentenced; and would have endured death, even the death of the Cross. He would have done this even for one individual out of human history.

For me. Or for you.

God’s love is as wide as a universe: without end, without walls or ceilings. But as laser-focused as to know the names of you and me. The facts of our lives. He knew us before we were born. He knows our all. He counts the hairs on our head.

He loves us that much. Jesus DID die for you, and me. The Messiah died for mankind, and, just as accurately, He died for you and me as individuals. A sacrifice not for “most.” Not for “many.” Not for 51 per cent of us, like in a democracy. He died that ALL might be saved as the human race deals with the invitation. But He also died for individuals, who make decisions as individuals. A mystery, really.

You and I were not in the ragtag group of scoffers and the curious – and His mother – at the foot of the Cross. Yet I believe that when Jesus looked down, through swollen and bloodstained eyes, He clearly saw… you and me. Individuals.

As we meet His gaze, we have to confront the Cross, and respond to all that it implies. A Mystery.

We become aware that every time we sin, with every act of disobedience or rebellion, we nail Him to the Cross as surely as the Centurions did. Do think how often you betray, deny, insult, and abandon the Savior? A Mystery… that chills our bones.

Behold the force through which the universe was formed, become human for a season and for our good (yes, Good Friday, thank God), enduring all these things and hanging limp on a Cross. Can we fail to respond to this? He died but He rose; He was not defeated but He conquered. He was very man, but is Very God.

Another Mystery: This Jesus is a King… who rules from a Tree.

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Click: When He Was On the Cross

3-23-15

Here is an anomaly – something like Winston Churchill once called, in another context, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: It is possible in America today, a “Christian” nation founded by Christians, many of them pilgrims and many who dedicated their lives, their lands, and their legacies to Jesus Christ; a country where churches dot the landscape and where sermons and Christian music are common on airwaves… it is the case that many people in America today grow up never hearing the gospel presented.

Multitudes reach adulthood, and live their lives, without the basics of the Christian faith being explained to them. America, “one nation under God,” land of the Pilgrims’ pride, of religious holidays, of the Ten Commandments?

This is certainly the case in Western Europe, despite some countries still having “state churches,” and where tax money is levied to support denominations. Many people are aware of churches, and traditional holidays, and have heard familiar hymn tunes without being at all aware of the tenets of faith.

When church attendance is a matter of indifference – or avoiding church is a matter of pride – and when rejecting every reference to Jesus, or every mention of the gospel is as easy as changing the radio dial or clicking the TV remote, millions in these “Christian” United States live in the spiritual condition of many savages from remote corners of the earth, and the vicious heathens of history. Strange. Seemingly unlikely. But true.

Believers throughout the millennia have endured torture to learn and savor the gospel of Jesus Christ – the Good News. Many believers have sacrificed their all in order to know and serve the Savior. Many believers have risked, and lost, their lives in order to share Christ.

These facts are yet true today. In lands where it is most difficult and dangerous, there are martyrs we hear about. We read of secret house churches in China, meeting in whispers and in danger, yet boldly reading the Bible one page at a time each meeting. We know of imprisoned believers in North Korea and Cuba and Iran. We read where, in the face of persecution and death, hundreds and thousands from other faith traditions convert to Christianity, in places like Egypt and Syria.

Yet in the Christian West, so-called, millions are indifferent to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Worse, our culture grows hostile to the faith.

In an ironic way, many people who are skeptics and rejectionists – agnostics and atheists – cannot be faulted as nonbelievers if the culture has conspired to shield them from the gospel, from Christ’s gentle invitation. How can they believe unless they hear?

I do not have to tell those who HAVE accepted that invitation some time in their lives, who know the life-changing and soul-cleansing New Life offered by Jesus, that the day they made that decision is the most important day of their lives. We have the knowledge that “our lives,” after that encounter with the risen Savior, means eternity, not just the days we shuffle around here.

And the second most important day in someone’s life, although it is of course the other side of the same metaphorical and significant coin, would be the day a person rejects Christ. But… just as consequential.

One might say that people can’t be accountable for things they have not heard; and we have agreed that this unlikely scenario is possible in our secular society. It might be the case that people have heard sermons, but sermons that encourage people to, say, be nice to others… and not about the crisis of sin and rebellion, and the fatality of separation from the Savior. Very possible.

But at some time, I believe the Holy Spirit will arrange events so that every person at least one time hears the simple message of the Messiah, and the challenge of the Cross. And will have the opportunity to open ears, mind, and heart. Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance, one Day, will not be an excuse.

It might be a word of a friend. It might be a stray gospel song or random TV preacher. It might be messages like this. Maybe you are reading this by “accident”; maybe a friend has forwarded it to you. But by any of these happenstances, you can no longer, ever, say that you never really heard the gospel explained to you. The personal invitation from the Lover of your Soul –

There is one God, creator of the universe; who always was and always will be. He created vast domains of the heavens, yet counts the hairs on your head.

In love He created the human race and our bountiful earth. In love He granted humankind free will; and we all have gone astray. We rebel, we sin, we think our puny selves sufficient; and that grieves God.

Through His inspiration, in writings and through prophets, He has offered rules of conduct; He delivered miracles, chastisements and blessings; and yet His children sin. We all have gone our own way, and God, not having created robots, grieved.

As only an awesome God would do, He emptied Himself and became human, walking amongst us and posterity, sharing Truth, showing His power by miracles, and showering us with His love through teaching and by example. He was incarnate so we might be assured that He knows our suffering and sorrows. He offers the mere acknowledgement of Him to be our path to reconciliation. That is what God yearns for in us.

Because He is so holy, and we are sinners, we cannot otherwise be reconciled. How can we approach the presence of One so holy, except, once offered, through justification, by faith, in Jesus? When – true to form for humankind – the Christ was once again rejected and was betrayed, tortured, and put to death, prophecy was fulfilled. But at that turning-point of history, Christ overcame death and the grave, and rose from the dead.

Miracle of His many miracles, He lived again, ministered and preached, all this in ways that His contemporary skeptics reported and no other founder of another religion can claim. Confirming His divinity, this man born of a virgin then ascended bodily to Heaven, where He lives today, interceding for the believers. The blood He shed at Calvary is what paid for our sins that separated us from God.

We are “covered in the Blood,” so that when God sees us, he no longer sees rebellious children, but the precious blood sacrifice of His Son. We form the Blood-bought church. Too special for you to treat with indifference.

And in the place of Jesus on earth, the third incarnation of God was sent to live in every believer’s heart. The Holy Spirit empowers, inspires, and encourages Christians today. Healings; deliverance from sin and addictions; restoration of relationships; new beginnings – these are what the Holy Spirit accomplishes. I have been the recipient of the born-again experience. So have millions. So can you be.

So… there. If this is the first time you have read the Gospel message, or maybe the first time you have heard it so simply reduced, you cannot claim, when your life on earth is judged, that “you never knew.”

You can say the Bible is a book of fairy tales… you can say that man created God and not that God created man… you can say that Jesus never lived or that the Resurrection was a plot… you can say that billions of believers are deceived and have been, for 2000 years… you can wrestle with the fact that uncountable Christ-followers have known the Truth so completely that they have endured torture and death, refusing to deny His existence… you can spend sleepless nights trying to comprehend how this or that person’s life has been amazingly transformed… you will scoff, perhaps, at displays of love and sacrifice that seem crazy to you… you might still think that you know better than this “God” and the preponderance of history and the evidence in writings and cathedrals and chapels and art and music and in changed lives. Transformed natures. New births. Joy unspeakable.

… but you cannot claim that you have never heard the message of the Gospel, the Good News. The details will follow later – when you accept Christ, you become hungry and thirsty for them, no worries. But to believe Jesus was the Son of God, and that God raised Him from the dead: believe it in your heart, and confess it with your mouth (in a prayer; to a friend) and you have satisfactorily accepted God’s simple invitation.

God honors sincere seeking, and never lets the yearning prayer of a hungry soul go unanswered. In the midst of a sinful and secular society, a culture of cold churches, people can still move on this or any day from the second most important day of their lives (as dangerous as rejecting Christ is) to feeling like they have arrived at that most important day. Welcome home.

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The first time in almost six years of Monday Morning Music Ministry that we share a video from Family Worship Center, but this infectious performance by Nancy Harmon of her classic gospel song says it all about the role of Christ’s shed blood in our salvation:

Click: The Blood-Bought Church

3-16-15

I have begun reading “A Chronicle Of the Crusades,” a massive 15th-century illuminated manuscript – in translation, believe me – originally titled “Les Passages d’Outremer.” I am interested in history of all eras and all places, so this is not exactly required reading. However, I am also prompted by President Obama’s recent scolding of Christians to “get off their high horses” and realize that many awful acts were committed “in the name of Christ,” citing the crusades of a thousand years ago; and not mentioning atrocities committed by radical Moslems a thousand years ago or – famously – last week either.

It is not mere (and common) self-loathing of Christians and whites to assume that the Crusades were birthed and maintained in Christian brutality, blood lust, and racism. Aggressive educators and supine defenders of our faith have transformed this contention into a “fact of history” – despite its substance being very much in dispute. Rather, historical facts, if they shall become the subtext of our identity and rationale for today’s policies, must be dusted off and honestly viewed.

Christianity had “holy sites,” associated with the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. Islam, a religion founded centuries subsequent to Christianity, determined to seize lands and sites, sometimes desecrating them. Christians sought to restore ownership, if not management, of holy places in the “Holy Land.” Its center of gravity having shifted northward and westward, Christian expeditions were launched to that end. In succeeding campaigns, there were battles, sieges, pillaging, many deaths, and uncountable examples of bravery and brutality on both sides, on all sides.

It is rather useless, and perhaps intentionlly subversive toward a different agenda, to re-ignite those flames of passion. Yet it is being done, and not only by our president. Wars frequently are bad enough in their first incarnations, without declaring and waging them anew. Perhaps the huge book on my lap will teach me some new things, even though, yes, I realize that it was written by Europeans.

I want to pause for a moment, however, over a larger picture – the illuminated manuscript, as it were, of Western Civilization before and after the Crusades, and what once was rightly called Christendom.

People use the phrase “the barbarians are at the gates,” applying it to everything from video games to the corporate history of Nabisco to the threats posed by ISIS. Oddly, there is no consensus on the origin of the tocsin “at the gates!” but it seems that Barbarians, generally, were called such by the cultured civilizations of Athens and Rome based on the invading tribes’ purportedly unintelligible language: an approximation of “ba-ba-ba” morphed into “barbarian.” Today, alarmists use the phrase because they feel threatened by forces attacking the virtual gates of our culture.

Alarmists legitimately can be alarmed by legitimate threats, just as paranoiacs sometimes DO have people stalking them. Nevertheless the dominant thrust of Western Christianity’s contemporary cultural attitude is that the so-called challenges to our traditions and heritage are real… but are not threats.

Cultural rebels are in command. Anarchists and nihilists ironically are setting many of the rules in society. “The end of history” has happened: the postulation of Francis Fukuyama that millennia of the world’s cultural traditions have been up-ended, enabling disaster or, at best, an unknown new system. Just as with Nietzsche’s “God is dead” – when a culture no longer recognizes God, He is dead to that culture’s life. “How shall we then live?” was the question asked by Francis Schaeffer in a monumental study almost 40 years ago. It is a question posed by philosophers since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle… but never losing its relevance. Or, today, its urgency.

The difference today is the exquisite and apocalyptic precipice upon which we teeter. A death-struggle in the twilight of a once-great civilization. Barbarians are past the gates; they have been welcomed, they live amongst us; they are A-list celebrities.

I am not singling out Hollywood, but our Barbarian culture. We have willingly celebrated barbarism. Sometimes this suicidal syndrome is called anti-intellectualism, but is far deeper, of far more serious consequences. It threatens destruction from which survival is impossible. The contemporary morals and mores of Western Christianity (often masquerading as the new sacraments of “tolerance” and “lifestyle choices”) are nothing more or less than the poisoning of our culture’s well.

Our society’s rejection of God, denial of Christ’s divinity and teachings, and demonization of our Western heritage, is not a minor and enlightened bend in the road of progress. It is a complete U-turn, back to… barbarism.

Hilaire Belloc wrote of the barbarian that he “hopes – and that is the mark of him – that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

“Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers…. In a word, the barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this: that he cannot [build anything]; he can befog and destroy, but he cannot sustain; and of every barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization, exactly this has been true.

“We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh.

“But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

We will revisit this theme, because it has more aspects and should engage us in many ways. But for the moment – to return to those barbarians at the gates of Western Christianity, Western Civilization – the barbarians have overtaken our culture, either incorporating themselves or coldly obliterating us and what we hold precious.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that civilizations seldom die from invasions (gates and barbarians notwithstanding) but by suicide. In that sense the ghastly Clash of Civilizations is not so much prompted by Communist states or Islamic terrorists or extremists who work to do us harm. It is the clash of traditional Christianity versus the barbarism of modern Christianity and post-modernism. Western Civilization has lost that clash of values.

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The Litany of St. James, written in the 4th century, sung by Cynthia Clawson.

Click: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

3-9-15

“Friends have wondered if I get mad at God for not healing me. Um, sorry, but He’s been healing me since the day I accepted His forgiveness 42 years ago. He has healed bad habits, thoughts, behaviors – a MOUNTAIN of ugliness in me over the years. How can I question how He works in my life now? I am blessed WAY beyond what I deserve. A few times lately I’ve actually learned to thank God for this illness. He has worked in me more than ever before.”

Those are words written by my friend Mike Atkinson of San Diego. He is on the verge of Stage 5 kidney failure, preparing these very days for dialysis that will keep him alive until he can receive a kidney transplant. I am concerned for Mike as a brother in Christ, but also because my late wife received a kidney transplant at a critical time of need, so I can relate on several levels. (Hers was a 17-year health and success story.)

Readers can learn about some health questions, but also be inspired by Mike’s faithful responses. (His regular e-mail posts, “Mikey’s Funnies,” recommended as one of our links, confirm the sense of humor that helps sustain him.) Here are excerpts from his profile in Refreshed Magazine:

Is this your first health crisis? Yes, at least the first serious one.

What is the prognosis? Kidney failure is imminent. Once that happens I will start peritoneal dialysis, a home version that will do the business my kidneys no longer do – cleaning out toxins and water from my body. Basically dialysis will keep me alive until I can get a kidney transplant. I am blessed in that many people have offered to be donors. I am humbled.

How are you coping during this trial? Like a roller coaster. Obviously any physical ailments come with their share of emotional struggles. Since I’ve never dealt with health problems like this, I’ve run the gamut of emotions. I love King David, since he’s a man after God’s own heart. When you read his psalms, you see him yell and wail at the almighty God, and then ultimately fall in the loving arms of his Heavenly Father. He really knew how to process tough stuff; a great model for everyday life.

What are your fears? That I won’t qualify for the new kidney or if I am that the transplant won’t take or it won’t last long, in case the disease attacks it as well. A big question mark when looking forward. I read an article recently that said everyone gets healed: Medically, divinely, or by going “home.” I’m ready for any of those options. An adage like “I don’t know the future but I know Who holds the future” really becomes real in these situations.

Was there a specific moment you recall when you questioned God? And if so, how did you work through it? Not really. Not because I’m any kinda SuperSaint, but because I believe in His sovereignty. I live by the motto, “Accept the reality. Hope for the Divine.”

What advice would you give to another person going through a similar journey? While physical ailments can bring you down, there are some things that I’ve learned that help remind me that I’m a human and not a blob in a recliner:

Laugh. It is the best medicine. Whatever makes you laugh, return to it often.

Keep your hobbies. The weakness from the disease doesn’t let me do everything I need to with my plumerias in the yard, but I do what I can. And that brings me much pleasure. [Mike is an award-winning grower of the exotic Hawaiian flower, and has a sign in his garden that reads, “Gardening is cheaper than therapy.”]

Find community. For me it has been a couple groups on Facebook of folks around the world with this same disease. It really helps to converse with others going through the same things I am.

Go to church. Every word of every song and sermon has taken on new meaning for me, especially the new-found depth in our classic hymns (Just keep the Kleenex close). God has used all that to bring me strength when I needed it.

Embrace help. I’ve learned that people want to help. And as hard as it is to accept it, I realize that by accepting it I’m allowing God to bless them.

Get outside. I need that. Makes me feel human again.

Get outside yourself. I found I retreated into myself at times – getting too self-focused. It’s very easy to do with a chronic illness. But I don’t read anywhere in the Bible that people with chronic illness get a pass on serving others. We understand the power of encouraging, serving, caring for others, but I’ve learned that to do all that from a place of weakness is real power. God wants to live in our weakness. The best way I’ve found is being the face of Christ to the hundreds of medical personnel I’ve met in the last year. They don’t get joy from their patients very much, so I can bring some into their lives by relying on God’s joy and hope.

Thank God. Every night when my head hits the pillow, I force myself to thank God. No matter how bad the day may have been, it should could have been worse.

What have you learned about your faith during your journey? That faith alone can’t always carry you through the deepest valleys. We are human after all. You need others who can help and even carry you. That’s so hard for me to accept, but I’ve lived that this last year many times.

Some days I just felt like #lifesux. This illness and the related side effects has brought a lot of loss in the last year – energy, mental abilities, strength, activities, fave foods and drinks, and more; and now struggling with the realization that I will be kept alive by a machine (dialysis).

What have you learned about your family during your journey? That I can’t do this without them. Just being with them is fuel for life. Even though my grandkids wear me out, it’s worth every precious ounce of energy. My family’s love and support has carried me many times this past year. I’ve also learned that my family was bigger than I thought, with friends, Bible studies, and churches all around the world praying for me. The “great cloud of witnesses” has taken on a whole new meaning. Just blows me away.

What have you learned about God during your journey? That He is still God. He doesn’t promise us escape from hard times. He promises to be with us, to walk with us through the dark nights of the soul. Good Christians die every day; they lose their homes; they lose their jobs. God is not a magic potion to get us out of life’s challenges. He wants to be our crutch, so we can lean on Him daily.

Let me finish by saying that just because I may have communicated these views does not mean I live them – or even believe them – all the time. As I said it’s a roller coaster, and God has a lot more work to do on me.

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Mike Atkinson and I worked together (at least when the bosses were watching) at Youth Specialties. Today he is Chairman, Board of Trustees, San Diego Youth For Christ. Mike’s daily blast of wholesome humor is found at Mikeys Funnies. Subscribe! And read the full article about Mike in the current issue of Refreshed magazine

Click: Abide with Me

2-2-15

If the world survives long enough to look back and reflect on recent historical trends, I think we have an inkling that Posterity might view the past half-millennium as the Age of the Individual. (How’s that for “recent”?) By my estimation, individual rights and individual responsibilities reached their apogees sometime in the 1700s, about the midway-point since Luther and now, and I regard Luther’s “Here I stand” defiance of arbitrary church threats as the trumpet-blast of Individualism.

But rights have been taken for granted of late; responsibilities are being surrendered to entitlement mentalities. In spite of individual initiatives in commerce, industry, and the arts, it was our 20th century that saw new solutions in anti-individualism: Marxism; Leninism; Syndicalism; Socialism; Communism; Fascism; the Corporate State. Hardly humanity’s nostalgia for boots on their necks, but, likely, a mob psychosis arising from Individualism run amuck (“WE know better than you”)… or a subconscious insecurity about the duties that are incumbent upon Individualism.

Last week I was asked, after a speech, whether there has been a time in history when an individual (or, perhaps, a movement or even a nation) has made a difference in policies regarding life, respect for life, ugly policies like genocide or (specific to this query) about the issues we collectively call Sanctity of Life.

The great founders of religions around the world, through history, often were quite comfortable with, say, infant sacrifice. Mohammed engaged in bloodbaths before he was himself consumed in one. Luther was indifferent to Jewish persecution. Catholics, including “reformers,” made a sport of torture and death; so did Calvinists and Covenanters, et al.! Christian reformers who came to the Colonies more often escaped persecution than exercised toleration; the land was broad and empty enough to accommodate sects, here and there, not dissolve the differences between them. Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for being not only a Quaker, but a Quaker preacher; and a woman preacher.

The Aztec and Incan cultures practiced infant sacrifice; and to a lesser extent did the Mayans. To a greater extent, around the world and at another time, ancient Carthage practiced it actively. But no individuals or reformers succeeded in cultivating the consciences of those groups. I don’t think there are records of anyone trying, actually. It is only when the societies disappeared that the practices disappeared.

It is troubling that religions generally practiced these horrible practices more than governments did – or, when governments exercised such practices, it was often with the initial sanction of the prevalent religious establishment. Religious reformers who argued against, say, genocide or infanticide were either a) quickly dispatched themselves (i.e., not successful in the efforts); or b) simply unable to persuade their societies of such horrors.

Indeed, persecution and even slaughter very often are adopted, rather than vanquished, when cultures and nations collide. In the frontier wars of the American colonies, white men (colonists; British troops; French settlers alike) became adept and brutally casual about scalping the natives. It was not revenge as much as adopting local customs.

If my intimations of pessimism are justified, then at least we can see a ray of sunshine – and only in these latter days – that are fruits of Individualism. Not often, in history, have individuals or nations “made a difference” when basic societal attitudes have been prodded and needed change. And it is in things happening right now, most notably, in areas as Right to Life and the Sanctity of Life. Not a complete U-turn! – but evidence of change.

Abortion has been legal for a generation in the United States, codified in court decisions, and virtually set in stone, yet this week’s polls say that 84 per cent of Americans now oppose abortion after 20 weeks, maybe sooner. A major turnaround; a harbinger.

A different topic… but of the same flavor: Cruelty to animals (including wanton slaughter, such as of the buffalo) used to be commonplace. In the world’s history. The same with cruelty to children, which still remains a major problem, but now widely condemned. In Dickens’ time it was as common as oatmeal, a virtual “right” of brutal parents and employers. That is changing, and among other agencies we can point to is the SPCA and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Another different but related topic: the fall of Communism. It was the cancer of the 20th century; we have witnessed its downfall in so many countries, largely bloodless. Similarly, the rock-ribbed, entrenched apartheid system fell in South Africa. Battles continue in our world against hunger and disease, and – I am not a Pollyanna – against religious persecution, more brutal than ever. So, the sanctity of life is not yet universally embraced. But let us return to my point about individuals.

Latter-day reforms, attitudinal improvements to the human spirit, changing views about life before and after birth, have come from INDIVIDUALS. Some analysts say that Communism fell because Gorbachev decided to “ease up” the system. No, that viewpoint is an insult to thousands or millions of individuals who resisted: those who were willing to die, or did die. For freedom. Also, usually, for their faith. Martyrs.

And so with the changing attitudes toward abortion, which was the focus of the question I was asked. God knows (literally) that it was not politicians or judges – they are the villains. It was thousands of protesters, like the people in DC last week (the anniversary of Roe vs Wade); you know, the multitudes ignored by the Mainstream Media. Christians, almost all. Henry Bergh, founder of the SPCA – Christian activist. Founder of the Salvation Army, Gen Booth, and so on – Christians all. Mother Teresa, Samaritans Purse: not revolutionary figures and movements… but arguably more efficient as individuals working together.

Maybe for the first time in history, INDIVIDUALS are making a difference. Humanity is wising up? Better technology / communication? Maybe. But things are different these days. I think, and hope, and pray.

These successful reformers have been Christians. Some other religions, but frequently Christians. And I recognize that sometimes the reforms needed to be made against institutions FORMED by other Christians, but that makes the fight ironic, not less worthy, or holy. Individual Christians.

Why is this? We need to recognize that the only honest, bedrock, challenging, successful, and demanding “voice” in human history, against such horrors like infanticide, genocide, persecution, and hatred, is the Voice of Jesus.

This is not only religious apologetics; I believe it is a statement of fact.

Secularists will scoff, but the historical evidence is preponderant, as is recent history. The voice of martyrs, the faith of martyrs, the witness of martyrs, the sacrifice of martyrs. Many martyrs who sacrifice comfort, family and friendships, careers; not only their lives. Any other “motivation” than the Voice of Jesus is futile when it confronts the darkness of human nature, even the Culture of Death that threatens to consume us.

That darkness – sin – scarcely changes down the pathway of human history. But love, even the love of individuals, like single candles that can pierce the blackest darkness, slowly, slowly enlightens humankind’s often stumbling steps.

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Music video: Monks performing a somber masterpiece by Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

Click: Funeral March for Queen Mary

1-19-15

Words matter. They matter to me, as a writer; they matter to me when I teach and mentor; they mattered to me as a father around the dinner table, correcting my kids when they would say “quote” instead of “quotation,” or “may” when they meant “might.” Yes, they did roll their eyes, continually (NOT continuously)… but in later years have thanked me for instilling rules of grammar. My son is a TV news writer and producer, so his skills were honed.

Words matter to God Almighty too. The Holy Bible is His written Word. He WROTE the 10 Commandments. And “in the beginning was the Word, and the was with God, and the Word was God.” These are the very first WORDS of the Gospel of John, and as we soon learn in verse 14, the pre-incarnate Jesus was the Word through which the worlds were called into creation: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

I generally am not a fan of bumper-strip theology or slogans, but they have their place; sometimes a very good place, if people can grasp truth in a phrase or sentence. So I value words highly, yet realize they must be respected. Over-simplification can be as dangerous as contumelious obfuscation. (See? I mean mean-spirited confusion.)

In that spirit of caution, I venture to make good on the promise of this essay’s title, a guaranteed cure for the hopeless. A little play on words – but not a game. Thinking about the words, and considering what they mean, can lead to new ways of thinking about a lot of other words… and attitudes… and directions in your life. Stick with me:

Hopeless. We have all experienced this emotion, whether a fleeting mood or a profound form of grief. But try to act on this: when you are hopeless – when you hope less – resolve to HOPE MORE. Easily said, right? Yes, it is. And usually hard to do. At first. But we can hope, always. There is always that better place. Faith, after all, is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1); that’s what faith is.

I once had a friend in a men’s Bible study years ago who was having the worst luck, as we call it, in his career, financial situation, family security. Disappointment followed disappointment, and his news was always bad or worse. Finally he passed some hurdles in a job search, and everything seemed sure for him. On an appointed Saturday morning we waited for his arrival so we could hear the good news. He reported that at the very last moment the whole thing fell through, and he was back at the starting-line. We all felt like crying; a few of us did weep for him. But he was virtually cheery. How could this be, we asked. He replied, “For a few weeks there, I experienced hope. Sure I’m disappointed, but it was so sweet to experience that joyful hope the Lord granted me!”

A superhuman faith, I thought. But he let Hope-less turn into Hope-more and it soothed his soul.

Once you think of similar word-surgeries it can change your attitude in uncountable ways – maybe throughout life, not only in a current crisis:

Thankless? Turn it into “Thankful.”

Does “Sorrowful” describe your mood? Trade it in for “Joyful.”

Are you prone to Counteract? Try to Interact.

A buzz-word is “maladjusted.” Tell it to buzz off, and choose to be well-adjusted.

Are you fearful? Remember that Jesus said “Fear not” dozens of times. Fearless you will become.

Is your habit to be tasteless? Be tasteful. Do you always ask, “Why me?” Emphasize correctly when you think how God loves you: “Why… ME!” Do you worry that your boss or friends think you are a “good-for-nothing”? Be good for something!

Being friendly will transform being friendless into being a friend and having friends… and having the most important Friend.

Romans 8:25 explains, “hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Hopeless no more, an attitude of hope – the foundation-stone of faith – can change your life.

My Word!

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Our music video answers a question that some hopeless-feeling readers might ask, “how can I turn things around so easily?” Well, on our own, it CAN be difficult. But God sent the Holy Spirit to be our guide, to instruct us, encourage, grant us supernatural portions of wisdom, knowledge, strength, faith… and hope. Here, the Forbes Family sings a gospel song written just more than 100 years ago by George A Young. Young was an obscure preacher living in poverty. Also a carpenter, he built a modest house for himself and his wife, which village thugs burned down when once he was away preaching. Not trained as a poet or musician, nevertheless he wrote this song in response to his devastating situation:

Click: God Leads His Dear Children Along

1-5-15

Life has been likened to a game through the ages by saints and sages, by poets and even pastors. We are warned on one side against a game of “eat, drink, and be merry,” because one day we die. Or sometimes we properly are reminded that like some sports, life can be a very grim game indeed. Me? Sometimes I see life as a grand chessboard. Unfortunately I see myself a checker, not a chess piece. Gulp.

Today we think of our lives as vast jigsaw puzzles, not at all illogical.

See how the pieces fit: babyhood, youth, adolescence, nonage, adulthood, dotage. They usually fit together well, although some of us, putting this puzzle together, really have to search for the piece that depicts maturity. But into each life also come pieces that represent curiosity, hope, disappointment, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, greed, ambition, pride, modesty, temptation, sin, desires, charity, unforgiveness and forgiveness, envy, intellectuality, faith…

Have I left any pieces out? Surely. But I have not only described life’s jigsaw puzzles of me and you, but everyone who has, or has had, a pulse, on this earth. Those pieces, in my analogy, will be of different shapes, some of mine larger than yours; some of yours smaller than his or hers. We all, when complete, form different pictures.

And we know, don’t we, that even the kindly old lady down the street has had bouts with envy or pride. “There is not one amongst us in whom a devil does not dwell,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and we note he metaphorically used a lower-case “d” in “devil.” He continued, “It is not being in the “dark house,” but having left it, that matters.”

In the same way as the kindly old lady we all know, or TR’s Everyman, there are awful folks and hardened criminals who have tender spots, and are capable of conversions. Think of Ebeneezer Scrooge; of St Paul who, as Saul, persecuted Christians; of John Newton, slave-trader who saw the light and write the words to “Amazing Grace”…

But I want to suggest that no life, no matter how long, or how many pieces make up the picture, is or complete without a piece I did not list above. Did you catch that? Can I give you a hint? – it is shaped like an “L.” Ah! There are a couple holes in the jigsaw puzzle of completed lives.

See the missing piece, shaped like an “L,” for Love.

We have all experienced love, even the most miserable amongst us. We have expressed it and shared it – given it away – some of us more than others. But it is a common and irresistible force. To humans it is mysterious because, as serene as it should be, it can also bring heartache and disappointment. It can be the basis of charity but also frustration of broken dreams.

There is a reason that 95 per cent of songs have love lyrics. Even “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” is a love song, about dashed dreams. So are the melancholy lieder of Franz Schubert, and the many grief-toned piano sonatas of the perpetually lovelorn and frustrated Beethoven.

OK… that “L” piece fits there. One more hole in life’s jigsaw puzzle. It looks like an L-shape could fit there, but a little differently. Maybe, turned around a little bit, it looks like a “J.” Yes, J for Jesus. Now our life’s jigsaw puzzle is a complete picture.

Those similar-looking pieces, L and J, in fact make any life complete – especially puzzled lives, to reinforce my metaphor! They are the most important of our lives’ components. Indeed, we are not complete without them. We occasionally might flatter ourselves that we are pretty good puzzle-masters; and perhaps so, occasionally. But we are not puzzle-makers, and cannot be. God plays that role.

I sometimes wonder if Love did not exist, could we imagine it? Like a color that might exist but we’ve seen; or a seventh sense: hard to imagine what we cannot imagine. God’s Love, expressed in the Person of Jesus. He loved us so much as to create us and place us on this beautiful earth; loved us so much as to be forbearing as we humans have sinned and rebelled generation after generation; loved us so much as to share the Truth, offer forgiveness, to open Heaven’s gates…

… loved us so much as to lower Himself to the form of a human, His Son, to share our sorrows, show us the Way, and to offer healing and salvation to those who believe on Him; loved us so much as to remain amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit, to guide, comfort, and empower us. To have His Son take our sins, our deserved punishment, upon Himself – could we imagine such love? And all this, while we were yet sinners?

Surely this love – our puzzle-piece “L” and the similar-shaped “J,” signifying Love and Jesus – can make the puzzles of our lives complete, whole… making sense.

Look at either one, and if you really can’t understand them fully, just accept them and fit them into your life’s picture. Each one is a piece that passes understanding.

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“The Love of God” is a traditional hymn performed here by the three brothers Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen Nasby, The “NCrew,” their band called Eli Eli. It is a hymn that comes as close as any to defining the indefinable, indescribable unspeakable mystery that is God’s love. There is a legend that a madman in an asylum once heard the song through his barred window and wrote the words of the third verse on his wall. Somehow the plausibility of that story reflects the love, the peace, that passes understanding.

Click: The Love of God

By Leah C. Morgan

He’s only 10. He’s not a threat. He’s rather ordinary, but the girls in eighth grade who ride his bus target him as the object of their ridicule. Day after day, they humiliate and torment him, and there’s no one to care. The school is contacted but nothing changes. The boy cries, inside and out, his agony overtaking him.

Then one day, right about the time people out there are celebrating God’s love come down, talking about Advent, and the visit of an advocate from heaven, a new ninth-grade girl moves to the area and starts riding his bus. She sees the cruelty of her peers. She doesn’t care much about impressing them. But she becomes outraged, incensed with their behavior.

She is moved with compassion for him and comes to sit with him in his misery, right beside him, on his seat on the bus. She associates with him, the outcast. She smiles at him and identifies with his suffering. At Christmas time, the greatest gift appears in the most unlikely forms, the shape of his tormentors.

And the unthinkable happens.

The girls who had picked on him begin to ridicule the new girl and punish her for showing him kindness. They tell her she’s ugly. This one, who is beautiful like an angel. But she is unflinching, unmoving. She stays by his side taking his pain, absorbing the blows. And the faces of the tormentors contort with rage, their mouths spewing out hatred. The angel girl, the one surely sent down, begins to laugh.

She looks on at the ridiculous, outrageous scenario, the mean girls angry at kindness, and she laughs. She laughs and laughs, inflaming the bullies even more until one of the girls grabs the heaven-sent one by her long beautiful hair, and bangs her head against the bus window. Over and over they hurt her for loving him and he is as helpless to save her as he was to help himself. Is there a God anywhere to stop the injustice? Even his savior is subject to this evil?

At this very moment, the principal of the school walks by the school bus window. She sees the abuse and rushes to help.

Finally, the boy is heard. After months of humiliation and scorn, someone listens. In fact, it really does seem that God has listened, as though He heard his cries and sent a representative of Himself to hurt alongside him and bring a rescue. It sounds a great deal like the Christmas story itself.

This encounter happened yesterday in our neighborhood, and is the greatest Advent experience of the season for me. It is the most picturesque. My niece, Eden, is the one putting on the Christmas robe, playing the role of the suffering, humble Savior, loving the outcast, defending the weak. Her example of love has brought Christmas down to me.

UPDATE: 12.23.14 – Christmas keeps coming down, falling like love. The mother of the angel-girl lives with her daughter, and knows too well that she is very human. Mom cheers her compassion for the boy, but is concerned for the hostile relationship between her daughter and the angry girls. She pleads with her daughter to consider their struggles, to see them as needing love every bit as much as the boy.

The daughter considers this as she enters her home after school. She reaches for the door, and hears the taunting girls behind her: “You’d better go home! You better run!” She whirls around to face them. They throw down their backpacks, readying for a fight.

She looks into their angry faces and says, “I want to apologize.”

The girls’ jaws drop so low, they nearly make contact with the backpacks on the sidewalk. “What?”! They demand an explanation.

“I was really mad at what you were doing to that boy on the bus, but that didn’t give me any right to call you animals. You’re people with feelings too,” said the very human, heaven-sent one.

The girls answered, talking together at once. “It’s okay. We’re sorry too. Maybe we could be friends? You seem like a really cool girl.”

And today, the one “giving” Christmas, received a Christmas present from an apparent former enemy, because she “looks like a princess.” Pink lipstick.

This is what Jesus living in us is meant to do. Love the unlovable. Pierce the darkness of hatred with the blinding light of love.

+ + +

This tender but powerful guest essay, a true story just days old – no: actually 2000 years old – was written by our friend Leah C. Morgan. She writes about beauty, laughter, and life here and after as witnessed from her home in Western Maryland. Your comments can be directed toleahcharlenemorgan@gmail.com. The music video is by Joy Williams.

Click: Here With Us

12-1-14

A dialog, as if overheard. This has been a “crowded” week in America – a confused jumble of social unrest and riots; of Thanksgiving holiday and prayers – or at least thoughts, maybe – of traditions and faith.

“Look at those protesters! They have no hope!”
“Are they protesting or looting? And, I think they have plenty to hope for.”
“OK. They have nowhere to go but up. But they need schools.”
“Schools are not magic. If kids don’t attend, no learning can take place.”
“Well, look around the world. Drugs, prejudice, oppression, greed!”
“It sounds like the end times the Bible talks about.”
“Oh, the Bible. Christians haven’t helped anything – they’ve caused a lot!”
“You ignore Christian charity? The Words of Christ?”
“I’m smart enough to see the bad that has been done, is done, in His name.”
“So your problem is with followers who are mistaken, who sin; not Him.”
“My problem is with the hypocrites who fill the churches.”
“How about the Ferguson church that was torched? It had preached peace.”
“So why didn’t their Jesus save that church?”
“Why do you hate the gospel message of love so much?”
“Why do YOU talk about messages? Can’t you see what people WANT?”
“In Ferguson?”
“No! People everywhere, oppressed by the system, who want justice.”
“Justice… Peace. Those things begin with each one of us.”
“Fool! People everywhere want self-esteem!”
“I think people everywhere need self-respect.”
“Churches don’t deliver self-respect.”
“Maybe not; sometimes not. But Jesus does.”
“Jesus doesn’t bring justice to the streets.”
“But Jesus brings justice to our hearts. His sacrifice justified our sins.”
“All religions say those things. And life is still miserable everywhere.”
“No other god than the Lord defeated death and promises life… and peace.”
“Fairy tales. I don’t see that working anywhere.”
“Then you haven’t looked around you, at healed, saved, peaceful souls.”
“I hear stories, but that’s all they are!”
“Well, you are talking to someone who knows that peace.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t live in poverty, you are not oppressed.”
“Christians, missionaries, everywhere are some of the poorest of people.”
“But Christians are still on the side of the powerful classes.”
“Nearly a thousand Christians every day are imprisoned, tortured, killed.”
“Maybe THEY should rise up and riot and take the streets back!”
“Maybe they’re busy praying God’s mercy on the souls of their oppressors.”
“And where will THAT get them?”
“Maybe to eternal life. Certainly to a place where their souls are at peace.”
“We’re back to that again. They’ll still be poor and get no respect…”
“Go on: no self-respect? No hope? Still with that awful hole in their souls?”
“You just don’t understand. You don’t understand what people WANT!”

Actually, the answer-man in this dialog might be right. We cannot always understand want people WANT.

What do people want? is a question that doesn’t go away, and burns hotter every day. But to me, more important is: What do people NEED?

Answer to the quiz: People need the Lord.

+ + +

“We are called to take His light To a world where wrong seems right. What would be too great a cost For sharing life with one who’s lost? / People need the Lord, people need the Lord. At the end of broken dreams, He’s the open door. People need the Lord, people need the Lord.” These are words from the beautiful song by Steve Green. Covered here by Fiona Hui.

Click: People Need the Lord

11-24-14

The Rosetta, a mother craft that hurtled through space for 10 years, recently dropped a landing craft called Philae on a distant comet called by scientists 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The comet is relatively small, fewer than three miles in diameter, its arcane name bestowed to distinguish it from thousands of other comets and asteroids. Gotta keeps things straight when these objects are a third of a trillion miles from earth, speeding at something like 35,000 miles an hour.

These numbers alone should make us take notice. It is not a bad thing, amidst cruelty, oppression, barbarity across our own planet, to appreciate the potential of the human mind – and the human spirit – by focusing on other planets, other objects in space, fellow residents of the universe.

The saints and sages of ancient Egypt and Athens used to gaze at the stars, and chart them. Before them, primitive grunters around the world would look heavenward and wonder. Most of us still do more than occasionally. What is out there? How long has this all been spinning? Where does it end? – and, then, what is beyond that boundary? What is our place in all this?

Such has been the inspiration for theologians, philosophers, scientists, poets, and lovers since time immemorial. Which is good. It is good to look up. It is good to look away, sometimes, from our own concerns. “Keep your eyes on the stars,” Theodore Roosevelt once said, “but keep your feet on the ground.” The scientists behind Rosetta had a very specific goal: to test the comet for the presence of elements, and water, that might be similar to those found on earth.

Their idea, since current theories identify comets as leftover crumbs from the Big Bang, like rock-solid dust bunnies under the universe’s bed, that if any of them slammed into Earth in primordial times, then perhaps a droplet of water eventually led to… well, you get it, iPads and all the rest. Maybe so. I am not a proponent of a 5-billion-year-old universe, but let them have their fun. Who knows what will be discovered?

Whilst I seriously am in awe of this mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the inspiration it will foster, I am amused by some aspects of the mission and its guiding earthbound crew. As I chuckle I am also grateful for the following:

When the scientists made their first joint comments to the world’s press, they fumbled with microphones that didn’t work, or got tangled between them;

The lander bounced like a tennis ball on the low-gravity comet. This was always a threat, especially if (as turned out) solar panels were turned from, instead of toward, the sun. A shame, but some data was collected and beamed to earth;

One of the scientists wore a wild shirt in a press conference, a colorful silky affair festooned with drawings of sexy women. It was decried by various troops of the Thought Police as sexist and inappropriate, but a) it was hand-made for him by his girlfriend; and b) the fellow, as a scientist, should have a right to assert his Inner Nerdiness;

In a subsequent press conference, the brainiac broke down crying, as he apologized for wearing the shirt. He plants a (virtual) spec on a (virtual) dot almost a trillion miles from home, and he loses his composure when the Shirt hit the fan.

… all are examples, or reminders really, that humankind is not approaching superhuman status, neither our emotions nor even our brains. We still bumble and stumble, sort of walking into trees and puddles while gazing at the stars. We build fancier toys, shinier too, but hardly are closer to understanding Everything about life – hardly Anything. The Big Bang is the latest answer to Why and When questions about creation. But… the more I hear scientists explaining it, the more, it seems to me, that they are just restating the first chapter of Genesis. Merely with less clarity.

Those news stories about chess masters playing against computers? Sometimes the computer wins, and folks start talking about the threat to human beings, if computers become smarter than we are. I would remind the nervous folks that there are always the options of removing batteries or pulling plugs; and at the root of the matter, human beings make computers, human beings program computers, and human beings, at least around here, screw them up on occasion. I think we are safe.

How is this essay a message for Thanksgiving Week? To me, simple; a lot simpler than landing a vacuum cleaner on a comet. The ESA triumph, even with glitches, makes me give thanks for the minds wherewith God has graced us. The renewed inspiration provided by an astonishing space mission makes me give thanks for the spark of creativity God has placed in all of us – we literally cannot create anything, but we can rearrange and discover things, therefore able to appreciate the quality of creativity that He allows us to emulate.

And I am thankful as a child of God that my fellow creatures – all of us – whether through space missions or a sport-shirt selection, may remain humble. Servants knowing our places in the universe. We don’t have to be rocket scientists to be thankful for that.

+ + +

Human achievements. Creativity. Mysteries of the universe. Let us give thanks this week, by resting upon sincere prayers of gratitude. Also I nominate on oratorio by Franz Josef Haydn, “The Creation.” An amazing work of profound spirituality. Haydn is remembered for his symphonies, string quartets, and chamber works, but seldom for his choral, religious, and oratorical work. “The Creation” is a masterful account of the Genesis story. This video (Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, dir.; performed in English) is a work of art in itself, with orchestra, chorus, and soloists in a magnificent cathedral… and the camera examining every corner of the cathedral’s design and decorations, and amazing, amazing videos of nature’s glories – God’s glories!

Click: The Creation by Josef Haydn

11-3-14

We believe Jesus in many ways and about many things; or we like to believe we do. But often, when He speaks most directly, His humble servants – you and me – tend to either miss the significance of His words, or sometimes over-think them. Does that happen in your life?

In either of those cases His words lose their effect! Unplugging Jesus? That’s not just foolish; it could be dangerous.

I am speaking specifically of His promises to us, and when we don’t act on them. Why would the Son of God “go out on a limb” and promise us peace and healing and forgiveness and wisdom and strength and power, unless He can fulfill those promises; and wants us to take Him at His word; and have us try to exercise spiritual gifts? And if we don’t – if we hear them, but are timid, or weak in faith, or exercise excuses – are we not, in effect, calling Him a liar?

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said: “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry” (11:28-39, NET).

Could there be a sweeter promise? We don’t have to be farmers or ploughmen to understand the analogy. All we have to be is human beings – with our usual problems and fears and disappointments; and, sometimes, doubts – to FEEL the unspeakable joy that such an invitation holds. But yet, we do not always avail ourselves of the promise.

How often do we feel unworthy to bring all our problems for the Lord to deal with, especially if they are of our own making? How often do we feel that our spirituality should not admit to needing any help – “we can take it from here, Lord”? How often do we over-intellectualize, searching scripture, seeking counsel, even praying, praying, praying? Those all might represent good “B” answers… when the “A” answer is the promise of Jesus!

How often do we do these things (or not do these things)? The answer is – often. Too often.

“Take your burden to the Lord leave it there.” You know, there is a lot of room at the foot of the cross. More than we can imagine. One burden. Many of our burdens. Huge burdens. The burdens of many. And in the meantime – on our way to the cross to leave them, so to speak – Jesus will be our yoke, lifting the load, carrying our burdens for us.

There is a hymn, “Leave It There,” describing this very practice, taking our burdens to the Lord. It has special significance to me and my family. After the heart and kidney transplants of my wife Nancy at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, we conducted a hospital ministry to heart-failure and transplant patients. For six years we (that is, Nancy and me and our three children Heather, Ted, and Emily) would conduct services and visit patients’ rooms once or twice every week.

In our services, “Leave It There” became a favorite hymn, often requested by patients, some of whom heard it for the first time in those services, and by patients who came and went through the years. Among its comforting, and strengthening, lines: “If your body suffers pain and your health you can’t regain, And your soul is almost sinking in despair, Jesus knows the pain you feel, He can save and He can heal; Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. ~~ Leave it there, leave it there, Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there; If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out! Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.”

It was written by Charles Albert Tindley, born in 1851, the son of a slave. By age five he was orphaned, but at 17, after the Civil War, he had taught himself to read and write. He moved from Maryland to Philadelphia, working for no pay as a church custodian but, aspiring to the ministry, he learned Greek and Hebrew. The African Methodist Episcopal Church accredited him on the basis of outstanding test scores and preaching skills. For several years he was placed in different churches in different cities, impressing his congregations and winning converts.

Pastor, Deacon, Elder… eventually Tindley received a call to a congregation in Philadelphia. Thus did this servant of God become pastor of the church where he once worked as an unpaid janitor. When he preached his first sermon there, 130 members sat in the pews. Eventually under him the church had more than 10,000 worshipers. He preached, he championed civic causes, and he wrote astonishing hymns and gospel songs. One became the basis of the Civil Rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”

Another was “Take Your Burden To the Lord, and Leave It There.”

Doing research during the course of our hospital ministry, I was surprised to learn that the author of our makeshift congregations’ favorite hymn lived and preached in Tindley Temple, just down North Broad Street from where we met every Sunday morning. We had a connection with Dr. Tindley, who died in 1933, that seemed more than coincidental. Did he, with all the challenges he faced and, yes, burdens he bore, always “trust and never doubt”? That likely is not the case… but he was, as an overcomer, an example of someone who took those burdens to the Lord and left them there.

Those very acts, trusting and fighting the temptation to doubt, will be honored by God. He will surely bring you out.

+ + +

The great Jessy Dixon sings the anthem of faith, “Leave It There,” as only he could.
Click: Leave It There

10-20-14

I want to tell you about two remarkable women.

Fanny Crosby’s name is known by some people today, but her great number of gospel songs fill the hymnbooks of many denominations, and the airwaves even today, sung in every musical style you can think of. She lived almost 95 years (1820-1915) and was a prominent poet and librettist until about the age of 45. Then she began writing lyrics for hymns. Before she died she wrote almost 9000 hymns, many of them, as I said, familiar today.

These and many other works were accomplished despite the fact that Fanny Crosby was blind. Little Frances had an eye infection as a baby in Brewster NY, was mistreated with medicines, and thereafter had no sight. It was a handicap she endured without complaint, testifying that if she had “normal” sight she “might not have so good an education or have so great an influence, and certainly not so fine a memory.” She further testified that “when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.”

She was a teacher of blind students at an institution in New York City – where her secretary, transcribing her dictated poems, was a teenaged future president, Grover Cleveland – and a published poet, a librettist for opera-style stage cantatas, author of patriotic works during the Civil War, and an evangelist. She shared the gospel message from street corners to rescue missions to crusade meetings.

Fanny Crosby wrote words for her hymns, and seldom the music. Dozens of prominent and amateur composers provided the music to her miraculously simple but profound verses. In fact many of her poems were published under assumed names, so hymnbooks could maintain the appearance of variety. She and her husband, a blind organist, shared evangelistic work.

She never received more than five dollars for a song, and routinely much less; sometimes nothing. While her songsheets sold millions, she invariably lived in poverty. She was befriended by many, including Ira Sankey, the “music man” in D. L. Moody crusades in the US and England; but whatever money she made through her long career she did not tithe – she usually gave away half, sometimes all, of income receipts, to churches or missions. In New York City she served at the Bowery Mission, and lived in extreme poverty in places like the Tenderloin District or Hell’s Kitchen.

If you don’t know Fanny Crosby’s name, you might know her hymns including “Blessed Assurance,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Safe in the Arms of God,” “Near the Cross,” “Jesus is Calling,” and “He Hideth My Soul.” She is buried in a humble cemetery outside Bridgeport CT, her modest gravestone telling the world: “Aunt Fanny: She hath done what she could.”

When I met Cliff Barrows of the Billy Graham Crusades, he told me how the words of Fanny Crosby had touched his life, sometimes with the impact of Bible verses themselves. That day I had with me an old copy of Fanny’s autobiography, “Memories of Eighty Years,” and I presented it to him. A jewel-encrusted heirloom would not have meant more to him; it was impressive to see evidence of how, indeed, he had been touched by Fanny Crosby in his life.

Fanny never considered her affliction a handicap, and she did not complain about her poverty. She wanted to write hymns; and, in countless humble missions and fetid soup kitchens, she wanted to share Jesus with “her boys.” Her work lives on, beyond the people she met, in the hymns that still affect listeners today.

The other woman we visit today was Fanny’s contemporary and, like her, a poet, evangelist, missions worker, when these activities were uncommon, in churches and in general society, for women. She also suffered physical affliction, and wrote the words to at least one hymn of great fame and comfort to generations of people. Katherine Hankey, 1834-1911, was born in London and did all her work in England except for a period as a young woman, as an evangelist in “darkest Africa.”

Katherine’s father was a prosperous banker, so she never endured the privations of a Fanny Crosby. Yet she caught the evangelistic zeal – despite her staid Anglican roots – and preached on street corners of poor urban neighborhoods, in factories, and at docks. While only in her thirties she contracted a disease that had doctors confine her to bed, not merely her house.

Her greatest regret over this news of a life-threatening illness was that she could not preach, share the Word, and talk about the love of Jesus to “her boys.” She determined, if she had to find an alternative, to write what was on her heart. From a very long poem grew the verses that embodied her zeal to “tell the old, old story.”

Two women in two cities, two different societies – different from each other; different from today, especially regarding the role of women – both challenged by horrible afflictions, but overcoming them. Gloriously.

Their biographies are lessons for us all, not only contemporary women, young or old. They are inspirations to what we may do as fighters in the arenas of life, as warriors wielding the gentle weapons of God’s love and mercy.

Two women speak, and sing, to us over the many years. One, blind, wrote, “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” The other, weak and bedridden, wrote, “I Love To Tell the Story.”

Two women’s stories are… one story. The story of Jesus and His love.

+ + +

The separate but equal testimonies of two remarkable women live on through two powerful and beloved gospel songs. As musical sermons they have touched the lives of millions since they were written in quiet and humble circumstances by two servants of God.

Click: Tell Me the Story of Jesus – I Love To Tell the Story

10-13-14

Sometimes when we make life-transitions, what we leave behind is ugly: think of a chrysalis and a butterfly. I am reminded of Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar: “The evil that men do oft lives beyond them; the good is interred with their bones.” But when I “process” Shakespeare’s words what comes to my mind is not only the question of evil. Because good – good works, good deeds, sacrifice and service – can survive our lives to encourage others, at least.

In fact, sometimes we confront the anomaly that what is “left behind’ (please, I am not talking of the movie) can be beautiful – maybe more memorable than what is supposed to be more important! The wisdom that can be drawn from this, and life-applications, struck today’s guest essayist, my friend Laura Pastuszek. She will state her revelations better than I just attempted to do:

Laura writes, My friend collected many colorful shells at the beach on Sanibel Island in December of 2011. And it appears she had a reason in mind for how she wanted artistically to display these dead creatures. However, she never did tell me.

If anything, she may have placed them with care, and they were purposely arranged, or maybe done in a random act? I really can’t recall. And yes, in a way, it matters because these shells helped me through some of the most difficult events that I could have never imagined.

In the three years since we spent this week at the beach together, both of us have had our share of tragedy. Mostly random. Funny how life works that way. It is inconvenient to say the least, unbelievable to sound almost cliché when describing sickness and death. Little did I know that I would experience losing eight people that I cared about, including my brother, mother, and father within one year. And I never dreamed that the “collector of the seashells” would go through radical breast and lymph surgery due to an aggressive cancer that nearly took her life.

The shells I photographed are beautiful!

But they are dead.

How can this be? The sickness and deaths I have experienced were anything but beautiful. In the months and years that I have suffered great loss, I have often asked myself where to find the beauty in the midst of my world. Quite frankly, it has been hard to see, and I have often prayed for the ability to look through such lenses.

Looking more closely at the photograph of beautiful and colorful shells, I could not help but notice the red, brown, purple and other hues of colorful shells. Vibrant, even in death. Really? Death is certainly not vibrant, it is depressing and painful, at least from my vantage point.

Some of the shells are smooth, some are rough. Death came like that for my loved ones. For some it was sudden, for others it stalled for months and it was a brutal road.

One day, just like I took the picture of the beautiful shells, I took inventory of the memories of my loved ones. Was there a big difference between the shells and my loved ones? I realized that the hardest thing to accept about death of a loved one is the absence of a physical “shell.” I only have my memories to rely on for preservation of the inner beauty of my loved ones, and this intangible act is difficult, especially when the territory is foreign.

I have always loved shells for what they looked like on the outside, never for the creatures that were alive within. I never really bothered to know or enjoy the inner being of most of these creatures. But it was that inner being that caused such beauty to last.

Revisiting the photograph caused me to think about death in a whole new perspective. That is the beautiful thing about grief. I realized that I get through it by seeing little glimpses of life, mostly in the obscure; and this revelation about dead seashells definitely is obscure… or at first seemed obscure. But I am being reminded to make the intangible remnants of my loved ones’ lives matter. Intently, I place such memories in my heart and mind, often.

I recall my mother’s words saying, “Honey, you always do a great job…” and my father taking the toothpick out of his mouth, tilting his head my way, waiting for a kiss on the cheek when I greeted him; my brother reminding me to defrag my computer; and my friend chatting with me over the phone about each of her four young children. I capture remnants of my loved ones’ characters, accomplishments, dreams, and spirituality, often. Those things are what I picture deep inside.

They have become my beautiful shells, arranged nicely, each showing their distinctive wonder.

And each morning, as the sun rises, I can walk along the water’s edge, and have trust that God is with me in my grief. It is He that helps me to rearrange the picture of my new life, and to heal. It is His spirit that enables me to live through the death of loved ones, through grief, as an act of faith and II Corinthians 5:7 reminds me of this: “For we live by faith, not by sight.”

+ + +

We should always feel the assurance of knowing that if we don’t see our friends and loved ones again, whatever the circumstance, we surely may see them on heaven’s shore. In the meantime the lives we lead, and leave some day, will be seen by others as beautiful testimonies of who we were, what we did… and who we served. Like shells on that beautiful shore.

Click: If We Never Meet Again

9-22-14

People sometimes are more attracted to fantasy than reality, which amuses me. When it doesn’t amuse me it disheartens me. I understand real life can be grim; that our souls seek poetic escape; that fiction often codifies the moral tendencies of a culture, and we thereby create comfort zones. Blah, blah, blah, as literary critics say.

But why is this true, when reality can also be sweeter than any fiction? As a former editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney, I spent a lot of time trafficking in the contemporary versions of civilization’s epic confrontations and traditional fairy tales. But I have to report that I wondered, during my Marvel days, why millions of readers were so invested in superheroes, forever asking “what if?” about characters with super powers, invincibility, the ability to defy nature, fighting life-threatening foes and defeating evil, as good as good guys can be… but how so many of those young (and older) readers could be indifferent about Jesus.

Jesus was the greatest superhero of them all, doing all those things quite easily – and we can add attributes like time travel, walking through walls, and rising from death. Everything but the Spandex, right?

Yet many people prefer fantasy to reality. Speculation to truth. Mythological heroes to men and women of history. Of course, I suspect that a major factor is pride: humans have the tendency to monopolize the truth, or persuade themselves that they can do so. Malleable stories are therefore more comforting than stark reality.

For instance, what about angels in this essay’s title? Well, it struck me a few years ago when the Angel Fad was coursing through the bloodstream of America, that many people equated that with a rise in spirituality.

Yet Angelmania was spiritual only if Hallmark stores are churches, only if costume jewelry is sacramental, only if Della Reese (“Touched By an Angel”) is an ordained minister of the gospel. (In fact she does pastor a church – in Los Angeles, where else? – called the Universal Foundation for Better Living, a non-Christian Unity or New Age sort of church whose pope is someone called The Reverend Doctor Johnnie Colemon.) So she and Rev. Dr. Johnnie are ministers, but not of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But angels did populate the Christian culture for a season. Now they largely populate storage closets and the backs of dresser drawers, along with posters of elves and fairies, garden gnomes, and WWJD bracelets. Odd, no?

I do believe in angels – I mean I believe they exist – just as I believe it is useful to ask myself “What Would Jesus Do?” in daily situations. I am fairly certain He would not have worn angel pins, but that is not my point. These things are not evil, and I might yet seek forgiveness for being spiritually flippant. BUT.

I am quite serious when I regard anything that takes our eyes off the gospel message of salvation can be the essence of sin: missing the mark. Yes, I believe that angels exist, but not the angels of popular culture. The Bible describes them, and that’s enough for me. But we need to understand certain things:

1. There are actually many things we DON’T understand about angels, and cannot understand, because the Bible often is intentionally vague;

2. Their role, as described in the Bible, principally is as messengers and “ministering spirits”;

3. They are not humans in heavenly bodies; they are separate creations; they can appear sometimes as humans (my family had such an encounter), but are spirits;

4. Except for the seraphim, only occasionally are they described as having wings;

5. All angels are not good: Satan attracted one-third of them in his rebellion;

6. They are not omniscient nor can they be omnipresent… or they would be as God;

7. In their perhaps uncountable numbers, they are not anonymous – Michael and Gabriel are two who have central roles in the heavenly realms, and will play mighty parts when prophecies are fulfilled – cherubim, seraphim and others are ministering spirits to us, and comprise worshipful choruses before the throne.

So. No offense to my own guardian angel, if I have one, but I am suspicious of Christianity that lives in jewelry and not necessarily in our hearts. Or expressions that serve as statements of our faith, when our very lives, instead, should show our love – faith in action.

Ultimately, there is, I think, one important thing to remember about angels. And this will prove I am not a spiritual abuser of these mysterious creatures, far from it. Angels, created by God before mankind was created, and not glorified souls of humans, have never known what you and I have experienced.

Never sick? Never feeling loss or betrayal or pain or grief? Never sinning? How can that be a negative? I feel sorry for them precisely for those reasons. No angel knows the shackles of sin, broken by the power of salvation. No angel knows the joy of forgiveness. No angel has experienced bondage and blood-bought redemption. We are more precious in God’s sight even than angels, more than all creation.

All angels can sing “Jesus loves me, this I know.” None can sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

Jesus came to die for human beings, every one of us who will accept His sacrifice. Sorry, angels, He didn’t die for you. Yet the Bible tells me so, that you will be ministering to us, just the same, as we enter Glory. As we gather around the Throne together, that’s when I really will feel the touch of angels’ wings.

+ + +

An old American hymn (ca. 1860) is the comforting “Angel Band,” written by Jefferson Hascall with music by William Batchelder Bradbury. It originally was known by its incipit, “My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run.” It has painted a true picture of the heavenly orders for generations of Christians.

Click: Angel Band

9-15-14

I want to tell you about one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met. His name is Stan Cottrell. He is a runner. But to say that is sort of like saying Rembrandt could draw, or Shakespeare wrote stuff. Stan has run all his life, all over the world. He has run in dozens of countries; he has earned certificates and keys to dozens of cities around the world; he is in the Guinness Book of World Records; he has been welcomed by most of the world’s famous leaders of the past generation.

I didn’t know his name, but Stan has been on magazine covers, on many TV programs, and had his picture taken with presidents, prime ministers, and even dictators. His list of achievements and recognitions seem almost as long as, well, the Great Wall of China, which Stan has run atop many times.

But Stan Cottrell is not an Olympic runner. He seldom runs in the famous marathons. Stan has set records for time, especially long distance runs – very long distances, like across entire nations — but those races are not his forte.

He is an endurance runner. Not (necessarily) speed, not those kinds of records. Stan Cottrell runs because he has been gifted with musculature and body chemistry that enable him to run, run for long periods, and run for long distances. All his life he has run. He runs for causes. He will set a course intended to attract attention to causes. He runs across finish lines when nobody thinks he can do it… and he frequently has been met by hundreds or thousands of local children who join him for the last stretch, in a memorable finish to the race.

Stan has called many of his endurance races “Friendship Runs,” often raising awareness and funds for charities, most frequently of late for orphans and the welfare of endangered children. He currently is planning a World Friendship Run – to circle the globe. Not to run non-stop – there are those pesky oceans! – but to step his fleet feet in every country on earth; running courses in conjunction with local people; always to benefit orphans who are in need in every land; and to be joined by children at each finish line.

These goals are remarkable, and logistically daunting, in themselves, but the added astonishment is the fact that Stan Cottrell is 71 years old. Ready, set… he WILL go.

Stan’s example is reminding me of the difference, the vast difference, between speed racing and endurance racing. As with so much we encounter day by day, there is profound metaphor waiting at the finish line. Do you recall the famous Bible passage, from Hebrews 12: 1-3:

“Since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility He endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up” [NLT].

Life is a race. So true as to be mundane – yet we do not always act like we realize the fact. Days turn into weeks; weeks turn into years; we plod along anyway, whether we walk or run. As to life’s challenges, how often are we conscious of that “great cloud of witnesses” of whom we are aware, or not; or who are unseen… but are cheering us on? When we encounter MORE than challenges – grief, tragedy, sorrow – then, I think, another aspect of this passage pertains to us.

Notice the number of times “endure” is used by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. “Let us run with endurance…”, “Because of the joy awaiting Him, He endured the cross…”, “Think of all the hostility He endured from sinful people…”

Ecclesiastes 9:11 had instructed: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle always to the strong…” Endurance is a quality that we should seek and cultivate. In races. In battles. In life.

The rubber (as per soles and souls) hits the road, then, according to our powers of endurance. Christ does not only want us to finish races – yes, He does – but to run with strength, purpose, and to good effect, as we are being watched. And encouraged. A sailboat regatta relies on the wind; airplanes, when they sought world mileage records, did it with fuel.

The wind under our sails, the fuel in our personal tanks, is endurance. It is a moral commitment as well as a physical attribute. And reaching the finish line seems less daunting, within view.

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There is a difference, sometimes fatal, between being headstrong and running with endurance. One of our time’s great songs about spiritual endurance is Andrae Crouch’s “Through It All.” Here it is, sung in a living room setting, by the angelic young Church Sisters.
Click: Through It All

8-18-14

The suicide of Robin Williams has had many people talking. The columns and airwaves, lunchrooms and sermons, are filled with the gamut of opinions and emotions. Sympathy, criticism, speculation, curiosity; “expert” judgments on whether suicide is the act of cowardice or aggression.

Christians have gotten into the act with stories of Robin Williams “accepting Christ” or talking about God in his final months, or during rehab. Maybe so, maybe so. I am not referring to any of my friends, of course, but I sort of wish some of these Christians would shut up. Whether Robin Williams accepted Jesus or not, was between the two of them, and not just as a matter of privacy.

We do not know what anyone does, really, in their spirits and in their last moments, sometimes even if we are at their bedsides. If they ask for prayer, if they confess Jesus then, or had done so years previously, that is a different matter. Why can’t we leave things to God in those sacred last moments; to the Holy Spirit, when crucible-conversions might take place?

If Paul was chief among sinners, I surely am chief among name-droppers, I will confess. So I can understand those who once buttonholed celebrities and now love to tell the stories. How often do those stories reveal more about the tellers of tales than the persons in question?

And, we must be careful about tales of presumed deathbed conversions that are related in order to be “an encouragement” to the rest of us. If Robin Williams, for instance, had drawn closer to God… did he find spiritual “fulfillment” in killing himself? That is a tenuous argument for the gospel’s efficacy (not that being born again is a magic wand, of course) to the world’s hurting and desperate souls.

I am trying neither to presume not condemn. But the omniscient spiritual post-mortems are not only foolish things, but dangerous. My friend David Barton (whoops), historian and expert on America’s spiritual foundations, recently was embarrassed when his publisher pulled his books from shelves and their catalog because of his overreaching claims about the Founders and Framers of the nation. I always thought his attitude – that virtually every Colonial was a born-again Christian – was patently false. (He is not the only Christian historian to make such claims.)

In fact many establishmentarians of that time, in and out of churches, were not the fervent Christ-followers of today. Some were Deists, but Unitarianism had not yet developed. Many thought Jesus the teacher and not the carpenter WAS God’s conception of an only-begotten Son. That is to say, good and obedient Christianity was of a slightly different template in those days. Evangelicalism was both more circumspect and more common in those different times. Believers of the “Dark Ages” might view today’s born-again Christians as whited sepulchers. Same Savior, different times, different modes.

As in Robin Williams’s case, the peace between the Founding Fathers and God (“Providence”) has been sealed and is none of our business, literally. (What IS important about the Framers, and missed by Barton et al., is that the Founding Fathers to a man respected the Bible as a blueprint, morally and civically, for the new nation. THERE is America’s biblical foundation.)

Our time would be better spent, whether we consider celebrities or neighbors, on their moments before death… not speculating on their afterlife. We can do something about the former; we are powerless regarding the latter.

To whatever extent you know someone, you can never rightfully say, “I never had the chance…” after they die. You can only say “I never took the chance.” We have opportunities. We can invest in a conversation with a Bible verse or word of encouragement. We can share a witness, draw a spiritual lesson from what the person says. You can end a conversation with a prayer. You can send brief e-mails with a verse or a prayer. You can check in at random moments, and if the Spirit encouraged you, say so. You can introduce them to Jesus, leading to conversion.

You might be resisted as that “religious nut.” You might be thought of as foolish. Pray for discernment, but you might risk offending them. You will be out of your “comfort zone.”

But every chance you take will make the world’s discussions of therapy and counseling and medicines a little less exclusive. Every word you share will be a little seed planted in a person’s soul. And if they are troubled, you plant in fertile ground. If Robin Williams had recalled one strong witness that however was never shared… well, I don’t know, and don’t presume to.

But we all can be better Christians one-on-one before certain events. The Bible IS the best therapy, counsel, and medicine. For those who find solitude, loneliness, and insecurity to be frightening and horrible things, recovery can start with the words of Psalm 32:7: “You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.”

I am one who knows the satisfaction of amusing friends, and the legitimate goal of making the world laugh, but the greatest ambition of us all must be to receive the simple but profound smile of acceptance from our loving God.

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I cannot be judgmental about any suicide. What drives people to that extreme is, almost automatically, incomprehensible to the rest of us. Robin Williams was depressed by career downturns, with all his successes? Maybe. He was disheartened by a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease? Tell Michael J Fox; so I doubt that. There were “demons” we don’t know. Joni Eareckson Tada is someone who received more than a “normal” portion of life’s junk: quadriplegic from a swimming accident when young; the victim of cancer in later years; and many challenges in between. Yet she has been more than a conqueror, and an inspiration to millions. Among her gifts is a beautiful singing voice, heard here in her (almost) Oscar-winning song, “Alone Yet Not Alone.” A condition, a promise, that many despairing hearts should claim:

Click: Alone Yet Not Alone

8-11-14

Old and new. Up or down. Happy or sad. Passive or aggressive. Fast or slow. Liberal or conservative. Hot or cold. Yin and yang. Life is a story of extremes, and our choices between them. Can’t everything, basically, be understood through such a view?

Black or white? Right or wrong? … Good and evil? Not all things that seem like opposites ends of the spectrum are even on the same spectrum. Even mother-daughter relationships can seem, or be, at times anyway, like oil and water. But the bonds are hard to break. And, they are not opposites, really.

Aristotle thought so, that there were the extremes of thesis and antithesis, and the truth, or best formula for living, lay in the center: the “Golden Mean.” His friend Plato disagreed, sensing that there were abstract principles of right, and justice, and truth; and that humans should strive toward that truth, ennobling themselves by the quest for truth, and the fidelity to certain standards. Even before Christ, Platonists recognized Abstract Truth. Aristotelians claimed Relative Truth. The early church fathers were neo-Platonists.

In a civic sense we can say that the Founding Fathers of the United States proclaimed the “pursuit of happiness” as a right. Later politicians elevated “happiness” alone as a right — bestowed by government, since government would define the meaning of happiness every so often, and re-calibrate the Happiness Meter for its citizens.

In the spiritual realm, in religion, the question (and answer!) about two extremes is essential to our existence, not just our happiness or moral equilibrium. Many otherwise serious people secretly subscribe to the cartoon portrayal of good and evil as two silly characters sitting on our shoulders: the cartoon angel, and the cartoon devil. Yes or no; do it or don’t; speak up or shut up.

Many people believe that the figures, silly as they are, represent God and Satan. Of course. Our consciences roil. Whom shall we let persuade us?
But in this life-view of good and evil, such a view is fatally flawed. The opposite of God is not the devil. Neither is Satan’s counterpart Jesus. The Bible tells us that Satan is a fallen angel. In the heavenly realms, Satan’s counterpart is St. Michael, the Archangel… about whom many Christians neither know nor care much, and do not have to, really.

God is above all. Before all, and pre-existent. God is all-powerful, not co-powerful. All-knowing, not a partaker of certain knowledge. Creator, not co-worker. Judge, not jury.

God, not partner.

There is no counterpart to God. The spirit of evil, the devil whom we know, is so far beneath God that if we only realized that true relationship, we could better understand that sin has no power over us. Jesus confirmed this by the Resurrection and Ascension, which should ever remind us of God’s pre-eminent position in the universe, and in our lives, whether we fully comprehend it or not.

The opposite of God is not the devil, but the ABSENCE of God. He is so all-present that the only way we can find an opposite extreme is to shut him out completely from our hearts. This we are free to try, and result is not a variety of things we call sin, but worse: a coldness, a total isolation, a frightening awareness of separation that is horrifying.

Attempted suicide victims, despairing of God, have spoken of that coldness. Listen, by the way, to many atheists, such as the late Christopher Hitchens, who, in spite of themselves, often argued against God as unfair or demanding or confusing. But NOT non-existent. Such positions place them somewhere on the road to belief, not non-belief. Hitchen’s famous book, after all, was called “God Is Not Good,” not “There Is No God, So Why Are We Even Talking?”

Fortified with such understanding — whose points are posited hundreds of times in hundreds of ways in the Bible — we can stand stronger when we face moral dilemmas and ethical challenges. Jesus reigns in our hearts, and that funny character with a tail and a red suit never really sat on our shoulder at all. And if Satan’s jewel crown (sung about in those terms in an old and profound gospel song) is on your head, you placed it there once when you thought false choices were real. Let God reach down and cast it away.

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Many singers have sung the amazing gospel song of the obscure past by the forgotten composer Edgar L. Eden. One was Bruce Springsteen, of all people, in a stirring version:

Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown

8-4-14

“Caring” is a buzzword that has become – as most buzzwords do – overused, oversold… and underappreciated, to the point of emptiness. In our society, Caring is a word that covers a multitude of sins: bureaucratic assembly-lines; government overreach; the tyranny of a minority. All in the name of Caring.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with caring. Quite the opposite. But it is a word that must be coupled with something, or else it is a disembodied emotional phantom. Abstract.

It has entered the realm of “Politalk.” A few years ago, some politicians received memos suggesting they insert the words “Caring” and “Children” every so often in speeches. We listeners were supposed to start wagging our tails like Dr Pavolv’s dogs at the words. Enough of us did. “Do anything to me, but just tell me you care.”

The inherent problems are more than emptiness of meaning. The Caring meme charts a steady course from compassion to compulsion to coercion. Next, the Compassion Police come knocking at the doors of our conscience, serving writs of Guilt.

Lest I sound like Scrooge, think of what the vulgarization of Caring has come to mean in the 21st century. In the name of Caring and Compassion, we have allowed governments to co-opt the role of individuals, and individuals’ consciences. The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan was that an individual was moved, and acted alone – in fact, out of character and social expectations. Jesus Himself healed, and empowered His followers to heal… notice that He never empowered or commissioned the government of His day. In fact it was “render unto Caesar,” not “demand from Caesar…”

Through history, the great agencies of Caring, after individuals and family, were more than governments. The authorities in ancient Greece and Rome did build public baths. But it was the church, in a thousand ways, that delivered charity and succor. Also, it was guilds and businesses. The Fuggers, bankers and merchants of Augsburg in the Middle Ages, established almshouses for the poor. In 1858, individual donors enabled a doctor to open baths and health facilities for the poor in County Cork, Ireland. By 1860, around the engine works of the Great Western Railway in New Swindon, outside London, the directors built worker’s cottages, libraries, and hospitals; they provided health care and free medicine.

The point of this history lesson is that in recent years, governments have co-opted care-giving functions from individuals and associations. To cite “efficiency” is to worship a false god, because in the process, individuals are being robbed of the option to emotionally notice; denied the challenge to intellectually consider; discouraged from the initiative to assist. In fact, when governments collect taxes in order to be the agents of Care, people eventually will feel less obliged to do charitable work themselves.

St Augustine (in his Confessions) speculated that the meaning behind the reminder “the poor you will always have with you” is that God desires to set before us circumstances to which we will be inspired to act charitably. Our broken hearts touch His heart.

Through it all (or despite it all), Americans still contribute more money and more missionaries and social workers than do most other countries to most world needs. But the relentless socialization of charity has brought us to a realization – confirmed as we watch the nightly news these very days – that regimes that ruled in the name of managing peoples’ fates, are having their true natures revealed: corruption, theft, oppression.

We give our lives over to institutions that care… but they crumble. Leaders who care… but they get turned out. Officials who care… but they play the system against us. Politicians who care… but they lie. Programs that care… but they run out of resources. Meanwhile, all the time, Jesus has been standing at the door, knocking. When Jesus cares for us, it is not because He has compassion, but because He is the essence of compassion.

And when He cares about us, and cares for us, something happens. He offers healing, provision, and the peace that passes understanding. Those things are not in the fine-print of anything the world’s “compassion” can deliver.

We should not suspect the motives of the compassionate in our midst; not at all. But we always need to remember that without the godly component, the world might care about, but truly cannot care for, its people.

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Does Jesus Care?

A powerful, simple song was written a hundred years ago around this question – and this answer: Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you (I Peter 5:7). It is sung here a capella by the Isaacs – brother and sisters Ben, Becky, and Sonya. From the excellent beanscot Channel on YouTube. It will stay in your heart all week!

Click: Does Jesus Care?

7-28-14

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly….” (I Cor. 13: 11, NKJV) Although I came to belief in Christianity as inextricably related to Holy-Spirit Christianity as an adult, I can still put myself in this scenario.

But it has become evident to me that portions of the church have corrupted Biblical doctrines, or exaggerated them, even violated them. Can I put it this way? – some preachers, today, have actually made that glass darker, not clearer, for believers.

I have to come to see that God’s power is mightier than the misinterpreted promises shared by some preachers. His miracles are more profound than those recounted by television preachers. His mysteries are more intense AS mysteries, than theologies that explain God as a spiritual butler on hand when we have desires.

I am talking about healing, and abundance, as in the “prosperity gospel” we hear preached.

“By His stripes we are healed.” Some people preach that Christ’s suffering and death, by this verse, means that healing is ours, and we only have to claim it. That physical ailments, when not healed, indicate that our faith must be weak. Yet I have noticed that the most prominent “claim it” preachers wear glasses. Is this their choice – a fashion statement?

My wife had diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, celiac disease, amputated toes, a heart transplant, a kidney transplant, dialysis, and other health problems. Yet her faith was secure, and she was a mighty witness. She was miraculously healed of a cancerous thyroid, yet underwent a heart transplant despite prayers to be spared. She believed she received emotional and spiritual healing, and accepted God’s sovereignty. By Jesus’ stripes, not an evangelist’s, she was healed.

I believe that verse means that when we are healed, it is BECAUSE of Jesus’s “stripes,” that He ordains healing, guides the hands of doctors and nurses… and deserves the glory when healing does come. Spiritual priorities.

Likewise the verse “I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). That’s King James; other translations say “… Christ who strengthens me.” Words are important. “Claim it” preachers will say that God clearly gives us the power that Jesus had… to move mountains , for instance. Yet we do not see mountains moving. “Yes, but ALL things…”

First, we can sense metaphors more than hyperbole in this verse. Spiritual roadblocks, or spiritual mountains, we all have them. But my new understanding of that verse hinges on the emphasis of certain words. Can we not think that we possibly are being taught – return to the King James translation – that whatever we do, we should determine to do in, and through, Christ (to stay in God’s will); and that fact will strengthen us?

Yes, to answer my own question. I can touch on the prosperity gospel, and I remember how one preacher actually printed a chart – how much you would donate to his ministry, and (by the “hundredfold return” of Mark 10:31) how much money you could expect to receive, probably by miraculous surprises, in return. That, and “have life, and that more abundantly,” was answered by my wife with the realization that God can bless us in uncountable ways. If we define Him by cash we are sorry examples of Christ-followers.

Yes, God is a miracle-working God. Yes, we need miracles in our lives, often. But I would suggest that, even in our brokenness and desperation, we chase after miracles, and healing, and prosperity – even just subsistence – when we should be more passionate about chasing after and pleasing God, doing His will, and being obedient.

By the way, concerning miracles: I have seen some that people classify by that term, for instance a withered leg being made whole at a service. But, personally, the greatest miracle I have witnessed is the experience of my sinful life being forgiven, my heart turned from rebellion. I know what a miracle that was.

We will understand it all better farther on, but in the meantime the Holy Spirit can lead us, better than evangelists, in the ways of God: that is why He was sent, and why He dwells in our hearts.

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An ancient American hymn, a frontier hymn whose writer and composer are lost to history, is “It Is Better Farther On,” also known by its incipit, “As We Travel Through the Desert,” first appearing in a hymnal in 1877. (Not to be confused with the standard, “Farther Along.”) It speaks of the proper priorities of life’s journey, meeting our challenges, and trusting the Savior’s leading, as well as our destiny. “Oh my brother, are you weary Of the roughness of the way? Does your strength begin to fail you, And your vigor to decay? Jesus, Jesus will go with you, He will lead you to the throne, He who dyed His garments for you, And the winepress trod alone.” Here it is sung by the Zahasky Family, the Alaska String Band.

Click: Farther On

7-21-14

Christians ought to concede one of the arguments of scoffers. The Bible CAN BE, and sometimes IS, ambiguous. Not on matters of essential doctrine, of course. There enough unambiguous words from Jesus and the Apostles, for instance, about the way to Heaven, the path to Eternal Life: Believing in Jesus as the Son of God, and accepting His atoning sacrifice for our sins. Repentance will follow; as will confessing Him in your life.

The “ambiguous” parts come with issues that have railed or raged through the centuries, in discussions between friends, to the basis of wars between nations. Lack of biblical clarity has caused numerous councils to meet in deep debates, and has led to divisions, schisms, and uncountable splits and new denominations. And wars.

End times – when will the End of the Age come? And will the tribulation be at the beginning, middle, or end of the millennium? Is the Book of Revelation given to John literal or allegorical? Are the letters to seven churches contemporaneous or prophetical? Do they address periods of the future church’s dispensational practices? Did Jesus mean that His sharing of bread and wine was to foreordain consubstantiation or transubstantiation? Is the Body of Christ the New Israel? Can believers lose their salvation? Are the gifts of the Holy Spirit for today, or did they expire in the first century? Infant or “believer baptism”?

I believe these ambiguities of the Bible – the “confusing” parts about which, counter-intuitively, much dogmatism reigns – were purposely put there by God. Many men wrote the scriptures, inspired (literally , “breathed-in”) in every case; that is, not of their own thoughts, as coffers say, but God’s. Therefore, don’t you think that if some things might be interpreted this way or that, it is because God wants to keep His children on their toes, spiritually?

None of those “stumpers” affect our salvation, you’ll note. No, they are “side issues” to our belief in God, our acceptance of Jesus, and (or should be separate from) our service to fellow humans. For instance, “No one shall know the time or the hour” of the Second Coming. Nevertheless, Christians argue. Nevertheless, the question has nothing to do with our salvation. But the ambiguity leads to… keeping us on our spiritual toes.

One of the ambiguities has to do with prayer. The other side of ambiguity’s coin, so to speak, is “mystery.” God cannot contradict Himself, so when we are told things that seem inconsistent, we may be sure that our puny minds are at times insufficient, not that we have not caught God in an “Aha!” moment.

We have “Aha!” moments when we listen to God. We cannot catch God in an “Aha!” moment.

In my baby-Christian days I made myself a victim of what I misunderstood about God’s will, and I still fall prey, as do many believers. When conscious of my sins, or a specific transgression, I would pray. And pray. And seek God. And fall on my face before Him. Don’t we all do this, sometimes?

Yet we know that God answers prayer. “He rewards those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6), among many similar verses throughout scripture. Yet what does “diligently” mean, precisely? Among multitudes of examples are stories of mothers who prayed daily for years for the salvation of their children. Surely this cannot contradict scripture; we are taught in Matthew 21:22, “You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it (NLT).” Is it against God’s will to pray, and pray, and pray, for something? Does it mean we don’t trust Him to hear?

Sweet mysteries. We stay on our spiritual toes. We pray, we believe, and we seek Him.

However – back to when I was a baby-Christian – one trap into which believers should NEVER fall is this: once we have accepted Jesus, and He lives in our hearts, we must never pray prayers that approach God as “me, a lowly sinner.” Ashamed to lift our faces. How many Christians ruin their “walk” – cripple their faith – pollute their relationship with God – by adopting this attitude? MANY OF US!

Remember God throwing our sins into the Sea of Forgetfulness? This is similar. As God promises, and we cannot do, He both knows and forgets. But don’t you forget this: if Jesus is in your heart… then, when God sees you, He sees His Son. When He looks upon you, He doesn’t see the person who still fights sin and temptation. He sees that you are covered in the Blood Of the Lamb. Stand up, and claim that right standing with God.

The “defeated one,” Satan, also sees the Jesus in your heart, and cannot attack you unless you give him quarter.

Christians are too modest, or least about the wrong things, too often. Jesus lives in you! No matter what your transgressions or burdens, or how you are attacked… how can you keep from singing?

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How can we keep from singing? This is the title of a classic American hymn, its author somewhat obscure, but music by Robert Lowry, and it first appeared in printed hymnals around 1868. Here, performed in a style undoubtedly different than then, is the late Eva Cassidy.

Click: How Can I Keep from Singing?

5-5-14

Judgment Day. The stuff of legends, and lessons, and sermons. Depicted in art from ancient stained-glass windows to the steel engravings of Bibles and tracts, to cartoons of God (or maybe St Peter), looking stern with an enormous white beard and on an august throne, hearing the individual cases of cowering humanity. Some are consigned to hell; some are promoted to heaven.

I had been a Christian – or, rather, a church-goer – for a long time before I became aware of the biblical assurance, indeed the promise of Christ, that we can know whether we will spend eternity in heaven. We can know right now, or any time; we don’t have to hope and die and hope again, nervously awaiting the judgments of a capricious God.

Neither will our citizenship in heaven depend upon a balance of our good and bad deeds during our lives. “Our righteousness is like dirty rags” before a holy God, anyway. None, not one, can “earn” heaven.

To believe otherwise is to deny biblical texts, the words of Christ and the apostles, and would be an insult to the Plan of Salvation; the cross; the resurrection.

There is unbelievable comfort in knowing, not having to guess, about our souls’ status in eternity. Some denominations believe (I do not) that we can lose our salvation by apostasy, but that is one of those matters, while important, that we can leave until that Day to discover.

The Bible is intentionally vague about some matters (for instance, details of End Times) which I regard as God’s wisdom: keeping us, spiritually, on our toes. In similar fashion there ARE aspects of our eternal standing with God that likewise are challenging to our understanding. For instance, we are told that some of the saints (us, not necessarily Vatican conferees alone) will receive treasures and crowns.

Saved is saved, right? No, God will confer crowns to some (we presume to martyrs and defenders of the faith)… and then, it is my own belief, there will not be a hierarchy in heaven. Those saints will lay down their crowns before the throne, by the glassy sea. Some will be given that extra opportunity to praise God.

“Saved is saved”? Yes, but let us look at the different judgments to come. The “Great White Throne Judgment,” pictured in Revelation, is an End Times trial for anyone who has rejected Jesus; has refused to accept God’s plan of redemption from sin. The Bible says that all will acknowledge God and Jesus Christ as Lord. Even too late, but all Creation will acknowledge Him in this scenario.

“And then will [Jesus] profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity (Matthew 7:23).” “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life… (Revelation 20:11-12).”

Chilling. And reason to take solace in Eternal Security of those who have accepted Christ.

But we have that challenging question of what is informally called the “believers’ judgment”: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).” “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things [done] in [his] body, according to that he hath done, whether [it be] good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).” No threat of hell, but… judged.

I have an idea. It is not in the Bible, but I don’t believe it is anti-biblical. There are several instances in scripture of God judging His people. Satan tried to condemn Job before God. The devil, we are taught, is Accuser of the Saints. I believe, however, that part of the “believer’s judgment” will not only be Christ on His throne, or God holding the Lamb’s Book of Life, or Satan like a devilish prosecutor, accusing us of sins or shortcomings in life.

I can picture other people surrounding us. It will be their eyes, not God’s, who meet ours, and accuse us. Can you picture it? These will be people who failed to accept Christ in their lifetimes, destined for damnation. But we failed THEM, by not sharing Christ.

Unsaved loved ones will cry: “Why didn’t you try harder to tell me about Jesus?”

Jewish friends will lament, “I knew the basics of the faith. Why didn’t you lead me to Yeshua??”

Someone you met once will say, “I expressed curiosity about the Bible one day; you could have shared things with me. Why were you silent???”

An associate who had self-destructive tendencies, that you knew about quite well, could sob: “That was when I needed Jesus! Where were you?”

A friend you were with during his or her dying days might shout out, “THAT was the moment I needed to get my life together. You knew the Truth! Why did you never say a word to me?”

This circle of people cannot condemn us, but they can accuse us, indict us. God forbid that their names are written under our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life. I’m afraid we all have people we have met in our lives, who could populate that crowd of accusers – our Lost Chances.

Looking ahead to this possible aspect of Judgment should bring us up short now. We can store up treasures in heaven… by not squandering them on earth.

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Click: I Do Not Know You

4-28-14

The last verse of the last gospel’s last chapter (John 21:25) tells us, “Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.” Even more under-reported is what Jesus did during the 40 days between His resurrection and His ascension to Heaven. I have thought, and shared thoughts, about this period before, and its appeal does not let me go.

Let’s visit the topic again… and imagine Palestine in those days, mysterious because we have been told so little.

Jesus walked and talked in places where His ministry had been; He was seen in His restored body by thousands; He healed many; He continued to preach, He continued to love. And then He ascended to Heaven, taken up in the sky, which also was witnessed by others.

For 40 days Jesus showed the world that He lived again. The Sanhedrin had called Jesus a blasphemer, and others claimed His miracles were of the devil… but His 40 days in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, being seen by multitudes, was scarcely disputed. We shared, in the recent Easter message, how the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus referred to it, as did other writers, matter-of-factly. A few generations later, the writer Eusebius interviewed many people who had known people who saw Jesus during these days, told of miracles, even cited sermons and letters of the risen Jesus.

In other words, some people might not have joined the Christ-followers – although believers multiplied rapidly, even in the face of persecution soon thereafter – but very few people disputed that He rose from the dead.

The number 40 appears 146 times in the Bible, a number of God’s significance. We think of Noah; of the years in the wilderness; of the days Moses was on the Mount; of Jonah and Nineveh; and, in Jesus’ case, the number of days He was tempted of the devil… and the number of days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Usually this number signifies testing, trials, probation, or a provision of prosperity. We must believe the last comes closest to the risen Lord’s season before He ascended. They certainly were active days.

Yet as busy as He must have been, I have a picture in my mind of Jesus alone, also, maybe when darkness fell, down lonely paths, maybe through storms and cold silences, walking the dark hills, not responding to the curious crowds, but seeking out the troubled and the hurting individuals.

This is a plausible picture, because Jesus still does this today.

It was in His nature: Remember the “ninety and nine,” and the one lost sheep the shepherd sought; remember Christ’s words, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”; remember His story of the father rejoicing over the prodigal son who repents and returns and is restored; remember His admonition to be “fishers of men”; remember Him weeping over Jerusalem; remember the promise that “Whosoever” believes should not perish but have eternal life.

He walks the dark hills, looking for us – piercing the gloom with a joyful hope that may be ours.

And, continuing to reconstruct an image of what Jerusalem and surrounding areas must have been like those 40 days, abuzz with talk of the Miracle Man, let us also remember that we don’t have to respond to a shout from the street – “Come! They say that Jesus is down by the river! Let’s see Him!” No… He will come to us.

And it is especially the case, I believe, if you are one of those people who is skeptical, or has “heard enough,” or cannot crack the shell of hurt or pain or resentment or rebellion or fear, or all the other hindrances that prevent us from experiencing the love of Christ. He is closer than a shadow, no matter what you think, or what you might prefer to believe.

“God walks the dark hills, To guide our footsteps. He walks everywhere, By night and by day. He walks in the silence, On down the highway; God walks the dark hills, To show us the way.”

The risen Savior, Lord of Creation, walks the dark hills, seeking out… me? and you? where we are? in our hurts, in our messes? That’s the real miracle of the Miracle Man, to me, still –- that He loves you and me. Looking for us; finding us; hugging us; loving us; healing us; teaching us; saving us. Those 40 days were a practice run for eternity – His and ours.

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A favorite of gospel music is the haunting “God Walks the Dark Hills,” embodying mystery in its origin. It was written by a lady named Audra Czarnikow, who lived in Liberty, OK. Little is known about her; she apparently wrote no other hymns or songs. Small groups sang her song, and others recorded it; eventually it became a signature song of the Goodmans; here it is sung by the appropriately haunting voice of Iris DeMent.

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

4-21-14

In a generation after the first Easter, Christianity had spread to the far corners of the known world. There were churches in the future lands of England and Ireland; after a century, church settlements in “barbarian” northern Europe; and around 300, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the formerly pagan Roman empire.

The Bishop Eusebius wrote remarkable histories during the reign of Constantine that traced the lifelines of the church: communities; outposts; heresies; theological and leadership rivalries; miracles; persecution (for instance in Gaul, which made Rome’s look like child’s play) and martyrs. Christianity spread, subsuming the cultures and arts… as, it seems to me, any movement fostered by the Creator of the Universe, was proper to do.

“Gospel” means “Good News.” The early church fathers, in the manner of Mary at the tomb, were Newsboys in a very real sense; so were the rising corps of evangelists, missionaries, and pastors.

But have you ever stopped to think of what enabled the Gospel to spread so rapidly? There is a temptation to think it was the witnessing of Christ’s miracles. Eusebius, for instance, had spoken to people who had spoken to people who knew Jesus, heard Him preach; seen His miracles, encountered His resurrected self.

I think it was different; I think it was more. After the Ascension of Jesus, it was as if the scales fell from peoples’ eyes. Gentiles had the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament explained to them. Jews, multitudes of them, remembered those prophecies anew, and recognized how Jesus fulfilled them to the smallest detail. As the Roman centurion said, in a sudden moment of clarity, “This Man indeed is the Son of God.”

Additionally, what happened was the miracle of Pentecost. On that feast day, the frightened Disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit, which Christ had promised to them – to us – and told them to wait. After it comes, as on that day, believers share their head-knowledge with heart-knowledge. They becomes doers of the Word, not hearers only. They supernaturally gain wisdom and knowledge… and boldness.

So: my view was that the sudden spread of Christianity, even despite (and maybe because of) persecution, was due less to the MIRACULOUS elements of Christ’s ministry, and more to the LOGIC of His incarnation. Some people were late to the party – oh, what a party! – but their minds were clear, in those first centuries. It became the most natural thing on earth (and beyond) to live (and die) for the God-with-us, Jesus.

Among the logical evidence that Gentiles learned, and Jewish believers recalled, were the words of Isaiah, written an amazing 700 years BEFORE Jesus was born. Without verse numbers and footnotes, it is a startling narrative:

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? … He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked – but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. … He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

What does this tell us? That after Jesus rose to Heaven, His followers shared the Good News – the Gospel message. It was indeed good; humankind’s best. But it was not “news.” It, and uncountable other details about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, had been planned and written before the foundation of the world.

Not “breaking news,” but Good News indeed.

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It took “breaking through the clutter” to hear, for the first time, or thousandth time, the STORY of Jesus. Then, as now, the simple logic overwhelms our minds and hearts and souls. The supernatural becomes natural. This ordinary paradigm has been summed up touchingly by songs of two female poets of the 1800s. I implore you to click this short video, watch, listen, and learn… or re-learn. “Tell Me the Story of Jesus” is a beautiful plaint by “America’s Blind Poetess.” Fanny Crosby was blinded at birth, began to write poems in her 40s, and before she died in her 90s had written nearly 9000 hymn-poems, many beloved today. “I Love to Tell the Story” was written by Katherine Hankey, a well-to-do British girl who shared the gospel with factory workers and street people until she became too sick to leave her deathbed. But, she wrote, “I Love To Tell the Story.”

Click: The Story of Jesus – Telling and Being Told

3-3-14

“Farther along we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it, all by and by.” We have many hymns of faith to uplift us and remind us of God’s promises. But this old song can rightly be called a “Hymn of Doubt.” It does not intend to shake our faith, but rather it expresses the pain, the confusion, the questions – and yes, sometimes, the doubt – we all experience when life collides with life.

That is to say, when circumstances go radically off-script. The scripts we write for ourselves.

I have a friend who has been making some breakthroughs in her chosen field of writing, and has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, tearing her world apart. Another friend has made a place for herself after a hard road, or several of them, early in life; and now is at the top of her chosen field. Yet she is under attack, and will suffer, from intrigues and corporate politics – as old as human nature, a fact that never makes the devastation any easier. Another friend has been involved in ministries and charities for years, and now is virtually destitute, feeling hopeless.

“Tempted and tried, how often we question Why we must suffer year after year, Being accused by those of our loved ones, E’en though we’ve walked in God’s holy fear.”

We accept the fact that bad things happen to good people: Are we being tested? We remind ourselves, sometimes grasping for straws, that Job was tested, too. In that eponymous book, the oldest of all the books in the Bible, we are told that Satan accused Job and taunted God, saying, “He doesn’t love You; he just loves Your blessings.” Without knowing it, Job issued a challenge to our own faith with such an argument – an encouragement to seize upon what was later written: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Job ultimately answered, “Though He slay me, I will put my trust in Him,” the Lord God.

But yet – I know this; we all do – the crud of life is still crud. To my friend dealing with the worst cancer news, what can I say, what can any of us say? Of course we pray for healing. Of course we trust God’s mysterious ways. Of course we try to believe that some “greater good” will be served. But. BUT…

“Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder Why it should be thus all the day long; While there are others living about us, Never molested, though in the wrong.”

I recently wrote to a friend that God never promised a detour from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, only that He would BE with us when we have to walk through it. There is sin in the world – besides the sins we commit that contribute to our problems – and we simply are assigned the task of dealing with those consequences. Planning against pitfalls, battling disease, fighting corruption, deflecting hatred, protecting the weak, comforting the sick, and… loving. And loving. And loving.

“Sometimes I wonder why I must suffer, Go in the rain, the cold, and the snow; When there are many living in comfort, Giving no heed to all I can do.”

The mysteries of God – why, indeed, some of the unrighteous might enjoy material comforts; or how forgiving others can bring forgiveness to our own souls, those kinds of mysteries – are not to be understood now. The friend to whom I wrote about the Valley was once at the lowest of low points in her life, an alcoholic. Now that she has magnificently overcome, she admits that she might have gone through those horrors so that she can now be a better witness, counselor, friend to uncountable others. She gained a genuine voice after walking a difficult road but now is in a serene place, rescuing other lives. God’s way? Maybe.

“Farther along we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it all by and by.”

This chorus, true as it is, does not promise that we will understand life’s cruelties and God’s mysteries, and blessings, after a few more prayers. Or more Bible study. Or another sermon message. Or reading a few more blogs. “By and by” refers to Glory: Heaven.

In Heaven we will not know all things – that would make us like God. But we will understand better, by and by. Can we suffer less by loving God more… by yearning for Heaven more? Yes – another mystery, a comforting mystery. As Joni Eareckson Tada, well acquainted with mortal distress, as a quadriplegic in constant pain, and recently afflicted with breast cancer, proclaimed, “God permits what He hates, to accomplish what He loves.”

“Faithful till death, says our loving Master; Short is our time to labor and wait; Then will our toiling seem to be nothing, When we shall pass the heavenly gate. / When we see Jesus coming in glory, When He comes from His home in the sky, Then we shall meet Him in that bright mansion; We’ll understand it, all by and by.”

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Joni has been in the news because she sang the title song for the Christian-themed movie “Alone Yet Not Alone,” which, amid controversy, was pulled from Oscar consideration recently, after receiving a prestigious nomination. Here she offers great testimony and the comforting old song “Farther Along,” with Homecoming friends, legendary gospel singers. Affirmation and a second chorus by Vestal Goodman. I once had the privilege of interviewing Joni at Billy Graham’s retreat center, the Cove. She spoke at length of her trials, and she sang, as here. Some day I will share that video in the Monday Ministry blog. (Also present that day were Cliff Barrows, George Beverly Shea, and Joni’s mom; see photo.)

Click: Farther Along

2-10-14

All through the Bible are examples of gifts, sacrifices, and responses that God’s children lay before Him. Tithes, ten per cent of income. First fruits. Rams without blemish. Spotless sheep. Burnt offerings. Service. Penance. Repentance.

Looking ahead to visions in the Book of Revelation, we have the mysterious questions of crowns awarded to certain saints – not salvation or eternal life, but some rewards in Heaven – no longer a mystery when we are given the picture of those saints laying down the crowns before the throne of God. From Chapter 4: “The four and twenty elders fall down before Him who sat on the throne, and worship Him who liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

The beautiful picture of a perfect gift rendered into a perfect offering.

Indeed, all the instructions to gives thanks and tribute to a Holy God, and the inclinations of our hearts, should be to bring the purest and holiest things we can – including our souls and our confessions and our best efforts here on earth – because Holiness demands holiness. It is meet and right so to do.

But God tolerates one thing that is broken, not whole, and even is soiled. No, He does more than tolerate: He welcomes… the broken heart.

“You can have my heart, though it isn’t new,
It’s been used and broken, and only comes in blue,
It’s been down a long road, and it got dirty along the way,
If I give it to you, will you make it clean and wash the shame away?”

Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

Continuing wonderful lines from Julie Miller’s “Broken Things”:

“You can have my heart, if you don’t mind broken things,
You can have my life; you don’t mind these tears,
Well, I heard that you make old things new, so I give these pieces all to you,
If you want it, you can have my heart.”

Life is a road with many speed bumps and pot-holes; and, as we read recently in this space, from “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” many detours and pitfalls. God encourages us to make the journey, to press on, to acquit ourselves well, to have integrity as Christians. As witnesses we should be modest servants, confident soldiers, and shining “Imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1).

Yet, even wearing white robes, we can be holding shattered, broken, and even soiled hearts in the cup of our hands. God is a Potter; Jesus was a carpenter; the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. A broken heart God will not despise.

Our Heavenly Father can see the band-aids and paper clips. That we bring broken hearts and even messed-up lives before Him (which we resist doing, in our natures, too often) does not mean we are faulty Christians. We are just… Christians. Who “have heard that You make old things new.”

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The lines quoted here are from Julie Miller’s amazing song, “Broken Things.” Here she sings with her husband Buddy Miller. Graphics by the great beanscot.

Click: Broken Things

2-3-14

I recently have re-read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan (or re-re-re-read, actually forgetting the number of times I have read it). It is the most remarkable of books, once held to be the most printed book in the English language after the Bible. Despite our culture’s sudden and virtually total disassociation from it, that record might still hold.

Bunyan’s book is an allegory: the journey through life of the everyman hero, Mr Christian. It once was required reading in schools, beside the Bible – yes, in bygone times – but also for its masterful allusions, exquisite language, and impressive construction. The hero’s name, and those of myriad characters (Valiant-for-Truth; Worldly-Wiseman), were not crudely conceived of an impoverished imagination but to be clear about metaphors and symbols. Bunyan was teaching a lesson.

He wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress” while he himself presumably was being taught a lesson. The Englishman Bunyan, who lived 1628 – 1688, had been a poor tradesman of relatively loose morals, but was converted to Christianity when he heard the voice of God. Like Martin Luther more than a century previous in Germany, he became conscious of his sinful nature, and grew to faith in fear of God. He was moved spontaneously to preach, and attracted a following. But at that time, in England, it was forbidden to preach unless ordained by the Crown’s church.

During two prison sojourns Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The texts were received, the writer said, through visions, in the manner of St John transcribing the Book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos.

Quotations from this great book strike us like lightning-bolts through the centuries. Its truths are still true. The nature of humankind – our needs and temptations and failures and hopes and triumphs? There have been no changes to our natures: we still need the message!

“What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it.”

“A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.”

“The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.”

“It is my duty to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on Him that is stronger than all.”

But the most significant allegorical aspect of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” – in any event, the metaphor on which the narrative depends – is the Road. The Path. The Way. The journey’s channel; the Highway. Mr Christian proceeds amidst detours, roadblocks, false advice… toward the Destination, the Cross. To Heaven.

“Now I saw in my dream, that the Highway, up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.”

The Highway to Heaven is an allegory easy to comprehend. But it is hard to travel! As hard as the poor, beleaguered Mr Christian found it. Bunyan likely was under no illusions that his book would turn the world upside-down. Indeed it had great impact – it is possible that millions have accepted Christ because of it through the centuries – yet it can only be expected to speak to readers one by one. One by one.

Despite books of old and mass-media today, the personal appeal of the gospel, which in fact was the mode of Jesus and the Apostles, is just that: a PERSONAL appeal. God’s plan… Christ’s Great Commission… the Holy Spirit’s ministry. “Go and make disciples.”

It is a temptation of human nature, and a specific spiritual malady of contemporary Western culture, to think that knowing ABOUT the “Highway,” being generally supportive, is enough. Or that wandering down detours at least corresponds to good intentions. Or that “other” Highways are efficacious, if the traveler, after all, means to arrive at a similar happy place to where the cross stands.

These relativistic lies and deadly heresies will result not only in others (and ourselves) walking aimlessly through life… but being “lost.” Fatally lost. Eternally lost. The Bible makes clear that all other roads lead to destruction. God is a guide; the Bible is our road map; and millions of sermons, songs, allegories, and books like “The Pilgrim’s Progress” graciously have been laid before us as spiritual MapQuests.

Even more, God allows U-Turns, as my friend Allison Bottke has called her ministry. However, He doesn’t allow short-cuts. He has not cancelled, nor even postponed, our journeys. And to use another Web-Age reference, it is Jesus’s voice we hear in the GPS, reminding us that there is no way to Heaven – no other way – but through Him.

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“Walking Up the King’s Highway” is a standard song in many hymnals. It is a favorite of the Black church, written by the great Thomas A Dorsey and Mary Gardner. Here it is performed in rousing fashion by more than a hundred “Gospel Legends,” giants of influential Spirituals of the past half-century. The late Rev Donald Vails leads the singers. Billy Preston is on the organ.

Click: Highway To Heaven

11-18-13

The late Malcolm Muggeridge was an iconic figure in British life and English letters. An essayist and critic, soldier and spy, journalist and satirist – he served as editor of Punch, the venerable humor magazine – he was, until his death at age 87 (1990) a thinker who was forever interested, and always interesting. He walked a path that similar intellectuals walked: an early interest in Socialism or Communism (his wife’s aunt was Beatrice Webb, the famous Fabian Socialist), then a roughly simultaneous conversion to conservatism and Christianity.

Those others include G. K. Chesterton; C. S. Lewis; Hilaire Belloc; in America, Whittaker Chambers – literary men whose early views were either Marxist or atheist or both (Lewis’ friend J. R. R. Tolkien wound up his journey as a profound Christian, but did not commence from a radical origin). Like these persuasive apologists, Muggeridge not only came to understand the gospel’s relevance to the contemporary world, but he was an extraordinarily gifted apostle, a missionary to his own people.

I recently came across Muggeridge’s thoughts inspired by, of all things, a caterpillar: “Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, and feeling… like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? Is it conceivable to them that so constricted an existence as theirs should burgeon into so gay and lightsome a one as a butterfly’s? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads – no, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.”

These are reflections not so much on the miracles of resurrection and of new life in Eternity – or, indeed, new life on earth after accepting Jesus – but upon humankind’s congenital disinclination to accept supernatural gifts of God. Deliverance? Healing? Forgiveness? Salvation? Eternal life with God? Available to ME? “No, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.”

At another time, perhaps inspired by the same encounter with a caterpillar, Muggeridge was challenged by his friend William F Buckley, on the latter’s television program “Firing Line,” to invent a parable whose meaning was unambiguous.

“I was actually watching a caterpillar in the path of my garden, a furry caterpillar. And I thought to myself: Now, supposing the caterpillars have an annual meeting, the local society of caterpillars. And my caterpillar, an older caterpillar, addressing them, says: ‘You know, it’s an extraordinary thing, but we are all going to be butterflies.’

“‘Okay,’ the caterpillars say. ‘You poor fool, you are just like an old man who is frightened of dying, you’re inventing something to comfort yourself.’ [But] these are all the things that people say to me when I say I am looking forward to dying because I know that I am going to go into eternity. You see?”

Buckley asked, “Please explain.”

“And so he – the caterpillar – abashed, draws back, but in a short time he is in his chrysalis, and, sure enough, he’s right. He extricates himself from the chrysalis, and he is no longer a creeper, which is what caterpillars are; he is flying away.”

As before, the lesson I derive is not – I should say not ONLY – that there is a New Life. Because we know that truth from God’s word; from examples of uncountable transformed sinners; and because some of us have experienced profound inner, spiritual changes. And in terms less prosaic but no less miraculous, we see examples of amorphous tadpoles become distinctive bullfrogs, and, indeed, creepy caterpillars become beautiful butterflies.

But in the parable of Muggeridge there are, once again, the other factors as old as humankind’s sentience: doubt, skepticism, ridicule, denial, and the old “scientific proofs” against the miracles of God Almighty. These attacks, and myriad attackers, can be daunting to a lonely believer.

Yet that scenario does not affect, at all, the Truth. Yes, it is the case that we can be (and, as Christians, are in the process of being) transformed from ugly and common, to precious and unique. The Truth does not rely on people’s opinions of it. Neither do God’s promises wait for the world’s vote on whether He will keep them.

Muggeridge’s predecessor C. S. Lewis wrote of the night his frankly intense devotion to atheism was transformed, melting (kicking and screaming at first?) to a realization of the Fact of God’s existence: “You must picture me alone in that room… night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. … I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most… reluctant convert in all England.”

And the rest of his days were glorious. The author of “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters,” as Malcolm Muggeridge was to do a generation later – and as you and I may do this week – spread his new and colorful wings in splendor, affirming God’s transformative power… as a new creation in Christ.

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I have taken us back a century or so, visiting names of great converts, great exegetes. We can also visit the 1970s, when the Jesus Movement and other manifestations of “Born-Again” Christianity swept the nation. A children’s song that was savored by adults too – still, to today, as we all are a little grayer or (in the case of singer-songwriter Barry McGuire) balder. But still appreciating the joy, and the truth, of “Bull Frogs and Butterflies.” From a backstage interview in Australia recently:

Click: Bullfrogs and Butterflies

10-21-13

My father, US Army Air Force captain, was involved in the D-Day invasion. He used to say that you could always tell the true military heroes at get-togethers: they were the ones who listened quietly and didn’t brag. The braggarts usually were the phonys, he said. What did he do on D-Day? “I was in the Weather Squadron,” he answered. “We just flew over the coast and battlefields, safely looking at clouds.” The toughest part for him, he said, was counting the planes, every day, of buddies who never returned to the English airfield at Bury-St-Edmunds in Suffolk.

There is a similar dynamic with prayer. Christ Himself warned us against the types who make big shows, loudly praying, in prominent places in the church. We are to emulate those who steal away and pray modestly; and give, even if only mites, like the humble widow did.

About personal prayer, we should be modest. We keep phone conversations quiet, or should; and a conversation with God is really no one else’s business. But sometimes Christians are quiet because… they just don’t know what to pray.

I suspect that two people who are among the first names we all would cite as the saintliest amongst us, Mother Teresa and Billy Graham, often had times they simply were at losses over exactly what to pray. Not to compare ourselves to them (believe me) but when our family conducted a hospital ministry after my wife’s heart and kidney transplants, and when, frequently, patients or families or spouses, or even doctors and nurses, would ask us with tears in their eyes, “Why?” – we discovered that sometimes the best answer was, “I don’t know either.” Honest prayers are starting- points. Presumption fools no one, least of all God.

Such a surrender of our almighty wills and self-important knowledge can be liberating. We should not always pray for answers: sometimes we should pray for understanding. Both goals may elude us, but to seek understanding requires trust, and faith, and surrender.

The Bible has a further solution for those moments of spiritual stammering. It is one reason that the Holy Ghost was sent into the world, in fact one of the job descriptions. “The Spirit also helps our weaknesses: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26,27).

Body, mind, and spirit: they are not one, but our own trinities. When our bodies ache or we are troubled, and our minds stumble as we seek God… our spirits are able to connect with the Holy Spirit of God. We can pray in the Spirit, utter a gifted prayer language, or simply surrender our spirits to God. And we can feel it when that connection is made. Some Christians say “we know that we know that we know.” We not only communicate with the Father, we commune with Him at those moments.

Worse than being spiritually tongue-tied in moments of crisis or distress, is when we simply don’t feel like praying. Why approach God? We might be resentful; we can feel abandoned; frequently we are confused. But fear not; do not be discouraged. All the saints of history have confessed to occasionally having such emotions. Those who don’t, like those bragging war “heroes,” might not be truly seeking God anyway, but that’s their business. Our business, however, when we don’t feel like praying, is simple:

Do it anyway. Offer a “sacrifice of praise.”

“Let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here, we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess His Name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices, God is pleased.” Hebrews 8:13-16, NIV

Praise Him for His many gifts. For the fact that your problem is not worse. For the unspeakable joy that awaits the Christian. For a godly perspective on our challenges. For the problems that did not come our way. For the incarnation and sacrifice of God’s only Son for you. For a love so marvelous that a place has been prepared for you in glory. For… God so loved the world.

When you can’t think of what to pray, start with “Thank you.”

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Click: I Know How to Say Thank You

10-14-13

I’m going to conduct a little tour today. To a place called Beulah Land. It is a place of relationship, though not actual geography, mentioned in the Bible. It appears in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is the subject of more than a dozen well-known hymns and gospel songs. Our brief journey here will look over that land as much for what Beulah is NOT, as much as what it is. A clearer picture of the Bible’s message is never a bad thing.

Many people, including some teachers and many hymn-writers, have assumed that Beulah Land is a picture of Heaven – if not an alternate name, then a poetic allegory. Such connections are also frequently ascribed to “Canaan Land,” “The Promised Land,” and other terms. They all point forward, spiritually, and are meant to encourage God’s people to persevere. But they are not literal nor allegorical nor biblical pictures of Heaven.

The reference to Beulah Land appears only once, actually, in the Bible, and only in earlier translations. Isaiah 62:4: “Thou shall no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shall be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for Jehovah delights in thee, and thy land shall be married.”

At a certain point in the history of Israel and Judah, those nations were apostate and they “married” themselves to foreign gods. The Lord had in fact briefly abandoned His people (Desolate, Forsaken) in response (Isa. 54:7), but the verse of chapter 62 refers to God later bringing them to the Holy City, called Hephzibah in this reconciliation. And the picture of a full, restored relationship with God – as a marriage would be – is called a state of Beulah.

Hephzibah means “My Delight Is in Her.” The word “Beulah” means “Married.” Neither, however, means Heaven. The recent English Standard Version translation is more literal: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.” A wonderful place to be… a blessed relationship there… a Land to strive toward… but not Heaven.

Many believers through the centuries have prayed to attain Beulah Land as Heaven, to live at least at in Beulah land as Heaven’s border region. The idea was propelled by the allegorical writer John Bunyan in “Pilgrim’s Progress” – “The Enchanted Ground is a place so nigh to the land Beulah, and so near the end of their race”; the place “where the sun shineth night and day.” A wondrous place, but… not Heaven.

Why do I think it is important that we recognize the distinction? What could be so bad about all the depictions of Beulah Land, a marriage relationship with the Lord?

As beautiful, paradisiacal, fragrant, pleasing, the Land of Beulah is – described by the most fervent writers, poets, and songwriters – and for all the images our spirits can summon, all the pictures of Beulah Land are NOTHING compared to what Heaven will be!

The Land of Beulah is wondrous because we compare it our lives here on earth. Having a relationship with God akin to a marriage is amazing. Yet Heaven will be all the more wondrous – superlative – and there we will have an eternal lifetime of joy with Him.

Is “the Good the enemy of the Perfect”? Sometimes. But our recognition of a Land of Beulah, the most beautiful place we can imagine, should not be substitute for seeking Heaven, the most beautiful place we can scarcely imagine. A Wedding is a happy day. A Marriage is a joyous life.

“I can see far down the mountain, Where I wandered weary years,
Often hindered in my journey By the ghosts of doubts and fears.
Broken vows and disappointments, Thickly sprinkled all the way,
But the Spirit led, unerring, To the land I hold today.”

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We closed with lines from what is probably the most familiar hymns about Beulah Land. This version is sung by Squire Parsons, who also wrote another song that is beloved in the contemporary church, “Sweet Beulah Land.”

Click: “Is Not This the Land of Beulah”

10-7-13

Many popular sayings that are regarded as embodying folk wisdom are, in fact, as crumbly as the fortune cookies where they should stay. I have always been struck by how almost every handy, traditional capsule of folk wisdom is cancelled by another such time-honored saying. “Look before you leap”? But… “He who hesitates is lost.” You can “roll with the punches” OR “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” And so forth.

I recently thought the oft-quoted Thomas Wolfe aphorism “You can’t go home again” when I did in fact visit the home in New York City where I was born, and the address in the New Jersey suburbs where I was reared. I drove from the Philadelphia Christian Writer’s Conference with my friend Shawn Kuhn, who was born in a different neighborhood of Queens. We were each a little surprised that our neighborhoods were clean, appeared safe, and had not fallen prey to real or clichéd urban blight: just the opposite.

Later in the week, with my sister Barbara, we visited the address of our adolescent years – I call it such because it was recently razed and replaced with what regretful “natives” like me are calling “McMansions,” ridiculous mini-estates on half acres. Most of the new owners likely suffer from the affliction common to parvenus, the Edifice Complex.

It was sad to see my home no longer there; our Village School boarded up; the town’s Swim Club closed and overgrown; and the church of our youth condemned, doors chained closed, neglected.

However. Paging Thomas Wolfe: “You CAN go home again.” I understand that I am supposed to understand that the past is past, a rose is a rose, and all those other syllogisms. The more important facts relate not to whether our parents have died, or our homes have been demolished, but what value they had in our development. The important corners of our memories. Then, the question is not whether we can “go home,” but whether those “homes,” our foundational values, can, or should, ever leave us.

I will call someone else, George Santayana, into the discussion, and mangle his own famous aphorism: “Those who forget the past are not only in danger of repeating it, but of having no past at all.”

I recently quoted Theodore Roosevelt in this space: “Both life and death are parts of the same great adventure.” And we should be reminded that Wolfe’s adage refers to the emotions and our intellectual growth, as much as nostalgic real-estate tours. My childhood is not a house; it was spent in a home that stood there. What I am, or have achieved, as a man is no less real because my parents died after my formative years. The chapel of my affectionate memories is gone, all the more bitter because it stands as a skeleton; but my faith was not diminished because the doors are chained shut.

Indeed, the pasts we miss and the futures we distrust are seldom pieces of real estate or schoolrooms or, say, battlefields. They are of the mind, the intellect, of life-choices, emotions… in fact, the spiritual realm.

Even when we know this fact, whether we are filled with joy or anxiety, it is easy to forget: a most human part of our humanity. My heart currently grieves for the director of the writer’s conference Shawn and I attended, because she is beset by personal problems, health trials facing herself and family members, business challenges galore… (Please look for the website of Write His Answer Ministries and see the wonderful things Marlene Bagnull has done and is doing)

Christians know the Author all good things, and know who is the enemy of our souls, who comes to seek, and kill, and destroy. Words are cheap (if I can cite another old cliché) but, being a frequent victim of discouragement myself, I feel qualified to remind anyone who will listen that there is a Larger Story. We cannot always see it. But we need to remember it.

“I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,” Joshua 1: 5.

We call to our memories: we should summon the best of them. They call to us. And, whether our children live near or far, we should always be in the mode of calling them home too. Just as our Heavenly Father does to us.

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We can visit our old houses, or not. But we remember our homes. When parts of our past remember us, so to speak – “call to us” – it doesn’t mean we look backward, either to change course or to summon regrets. We are reminded, properly, that life is a continuity of traditions and values. Memories of homes, schools and churches are represented by parents, calling; just as we will be calling our children “home.” The classic song by Doyle Lawson, sung by Emmylou Harris.

Click: Calling Our Children Home

9-23-13

A theme song of cynics – there are many; many cynics and many are their themes – is the famous sentiment written by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, i). But the hopeful among us must see that this is honored in the breach, that the exception proves the rule. We must not merely be convinced that fights for righteousness and honor and creative expression are worth the fight in this difficult life… but that the fight ITSELF, not only the goal, is worthy.

Cynicism is challenged by uncountable examples of service and sacrifice by kind souls, by acts of charity, a word whose original meaning is “love.” Challenged in the over-arching sense by the work of weary toilers in the fields who sometimes are bent but never broken. And in the very personal examples of artists who die without ever knowing the effect their work eventually has on other people. There are stories we all know from history.

We think of van Gogh; of Poe; of the composer Schubert and the novelist John Kennedy Toole… and of Eva Cassidy.

Some serious critics have called Eva the greatest American vocalist. Do you ask, “Who?” Her relatively sparse playlist has swept record charts around the world. Some of the era’s greatest singers and producers have attested to her uniqueness. The acclaim and sales have all come years after she died. Eva was born in Washington DC in 1963. Self- (and dad-) taught on several instruments, she listened to the great performers of several genres she rapidly mastered herself: blues, jazz, gospel, country, pop standards.

Eva played in several clubs in the Washington area. A college town, DC is replete with jazz clubs, music venues, performance clubs. As a student there myself in ancient times, I was privileged to enjoy, in places like the Cellar Door, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Scruggs before they were nationally famous. Later, Eva Cassidy attracted a local following and made a few CDs, but her fame was fairly restricted to the District. Pros and record execs who heard her music were astonished, but many of them simply did not know in which category to place her. All of them later regretted their short-sightedness. Her voice was angelic (if angels were to sing the blues); her interpretations were miraculously emotional; her guitar style was unique.

When she was 30 she had a malignant tumor removed from her neck. Three years later she was dead, the melanoma having survived within her body, spread to bones and lungs. After her diagnosis (three to five months to live, no hope of survival) she returned once more to her stage of choice, DC’s Blues Alley, and sang “What a Wonderful World.” That choice, as much as hearing her music, confirms what a wonderful person, not merely a musical talent, Eva Cassidy was.

But it was five full years after her death before the world really heard about her, and heard her. A stray CD made its way the BBC Radio studios in London. Airplay on a morning show lit up the proverbial switchboard. Fast-forward this story to Number One on British record charts; five CDs in the Top 150; continuing presence in England and Ireland, especially, but also Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Australia… and, finally, America; and sales exceeding 10-million CDs.

It is easy to lapse (thusly) into numbers and statistics. But it was Eva Cassidy’s astonishing talent, and her effect on listeners, that is the story. She had a gift for making mundane lyrics special, for discovering spiritual nuances in standard love songs, for making happy tunes blues-y and turning sad ballads hopeful.

That her “success” is posthumous is ironic at least. Yet once we take account of life’s vicissitudes, we should take heart. The good that we may do DOES live on “after our bones are interred.” When we do the Lord’s work, sharing hope and sunshine, we are eager to see the “seeds” we plant take root and bloom. But we don’t always know if, or when, it will happen. Mostly, we cannot know. As servants of the Word, it really is the Holy Spirit’s job to “close the deals,” and we should resist the temptation of pride if we are too concerned with the seeds we plant. We can plant those seeds; we can even cultivate; but only God can make life grow.

In fact there is a legitimate spiritual satisfaction in not knowing these details. When writers, artists, singers, songwriters, poets, and all people graced with God’s creativity set their works out (as it were) like baby Moses in a basket, among the reeds and into unknown waters, we don’t know who will discover them. But, trusting the God whom we serve by serving our fellow men and women, untold numbers of people, and their families after them, may be profoundly touched. Even if one person’s spirit responds, we have done our jobs.

If we, any of us, exercise the talents wherewith we have been graced, if we see our lives as parts of the cultural continuum of civilization, just as we are woven with the scarlet threads of redemption, then some of us might be the next van Goghs, Poes, Schuberts, Tooles, and Eva Cassidys. And be content that the value is in the working and the works, not the accolades of the world. And the rest of us? We can feel blessed that we are witnesses of these great talents.

Remember the Yogi Berra quotation, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? Memo to Yogi: sometimes it only BEGINS when it’s “over.” The theme song of THAT truth is sung by Eva Cassidy.

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One of the only videos of Eva Cassidy singing is an amateur camcorder capture of her and her guitar at Blues Alley. It often brings tears to viewers’ eyes for the unique interpretation and commonly untapped meanings from a pop standard previously considered without spiritual depth. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was recorded the year of Eva’s death, 1996. I commend this performance to you, and its compelling whisper to your soul: “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. … If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” When Eva sang, she made it a spiritually rhetorical question: We can.

Click: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

9-16-13

Either God exists, or He doesn’t.

The question this statement poses, among uncountable other speculative, philosophical, ontological, and even religious questions, is THE most basic and most important that can be asked of human beings, or any beings.

As someone who is secure in the answer, I was confronted by the question this week in a way that never escapes anyone’s imaginings. The Voyager I spacecraft, NASA announced, has left the friendly confines of our solar system. Not the universe, of course, for that ends… well, we are not quite sure where. But Voyager has crossed the border of our Sun’s “bubble” of “plasma” – charged electrons in “empty” space whose density changed, though differently than expected, when Voyager passed over the line into interstellar “space.”

The inherent limitations of conceptualizing scientific facts, no less than imperfectly understanding scientific theories, has us turn to inverted commas and air-quotes. I will save electrons, myself, by dropping all these quotation marks. But we should keep them at the ready, because they represent the intellectual crutches we often need when discussing such things. We – humans – know more and more every day; by one estimate, every eight months we discover and learn more things than in all of mankind’s previous history. Yet even with Voyager the assumptions about the density of outer-space electrons, in these otherwise empty-seeming neighborhoods of the universe, have been revised. Interstellar plasma is acting differently than scientists predicted. And brand-new questions about magnetic forces in space, not just as carried by solar wind inside the solar system, have presented themselves.

My brain starts to hurt too, despite the thrill of such data. Perhaps we will learn more when Voyager reaches its next sun’s neighborhood. Be sure to stock up on provisions, if you plan to wait for that news; that will not happen for another 40,000 years. Such is the vastness of our universe.

By then, Voyager probably still will be hurtling along, but its information-gathering and transmitting facilities expired. Interestingly, the probe, which was launched in 1977, has computers far less complex than of any smartphone today. It records data on… yes, an 8-track cassette. And it sends that data back to earth by a 20-watt signal. By comparison, a radio station near where I live has a thousand-watt transmitter, and can be heard for a range of 25 miles or so. Yet, we launched Voyager, it observes, and we learn: a modern, and more peaceful, turn on Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Amidst this week’s tsunami of news of wars, rumors of wars, crises, corruption, killings and beheadings, revolutions, disasters of weather, economies, and human folly, we have this news that takes our minds (and I hope the imaginations of our spirits) to other things. Out of this world. Almost by definition, eternal things. If you didn’t see photos or artist conceptions, or movies of distant solar systems and planets, watch the video whose link is at the end of this essay. We inevitably are in awe.

In awe of what? There is that question again. If God doesn’t exist, the theories of atheists and agnostics and secularists about when the universe was formed, why it was formed, and how it was formed are interesting (or not) only as speculation.

Although theories abound, no one comes close – absent the God Proposition – to advancing any sort of a definitive idea about when the universe began (including the question of what was here previously, wherever here is); how large the universe is (when the question includes “what, then, lies beyond its borders?”); and how, just how, then, did we get here? There are scientific ideas… that often change. And these questions are lights-years from the larger question facing scientists: Why?

The fact that no human has, by oneself, answers for such questions does not automatically prove the existence of God. There is no proof, which is why it is called Faith. But it does suggest a universal prerequisite, humility, when one addresses such questions without what I call the God Proposition.

My explanation of why many “intelligent” (yes, I will resurrect the quotation marks) people reject God is that we all of us have a latent desire to BE God, to be in control of our situations, to have all the answers. Unfortunately, among the primitive, including sophisticated primitives, this leads to superstition. At the other extreme it leads to oppression, destruction, and death; that is, when clever and resourceful men presume to be gods, the eternal temptation consumes. Never has a mortal been able to benignly control others – an oxymoronic concept anyway – when none ever has been able to control his own self, and the “base passions” of our spiritual DNA… absent the God Proposition.

More than the rudimentary computer systems on Voyager was something of greater significance. In the hope that the craft might meet some alien civilization in a remote part of the universe, it carried a unique payload – a copper and gold alloy disk (estimated by its designers “to last a billion years”) with greetings in 115 earth-languages; some images of our species and schematic maps of earth; and music. The first selection was a recording of the Second Brandenburg Concerto, first movement, by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra. Among the playlist of global music, Bach was the only composer represented thrice; the Gavotte from the Violin Partita No. 3, and the Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 were the other pieces chosen to represent humankind’s creative profile.

Biologist Lewis Thomas was asked what he would have nominated for this message to unknown civilizations. “The complete works of J.S. Bach,” he said. “But that would be boasting.” I love the (proper) tribute to mankind’s greatest music-maker, but it is interesting that our greetings, our physical likenesses, and our greatest artistic expressions were sent aboard Voyager, in hopes of telling the Universe about us.

… but, significantly, the designers and programmers chose to skip the crowded narratives of human history that are filled, like this week’s headlines, or any week’s headlines, with war, cruelty, murder, and oppression. A half-truth can be no different than a lie. We wanted to show what earth is like, what humanity has done. We just wanted to sanitize the story.

But in my view, there comes that “God Proposition” once again. The dirty little secret, deep down in all our souls, is that our natures are sinful, and many humans have tended to kick and scratch and resist God… but there is also a part of us that yearns for the God who sees good things, and has created good things, and wants to share good things. Part of us – because God planted such yearnings – seeks the good: sometime, occasionally, we have the same impulses as our God.

We don’t need to understand every little (unknowable) thing about the universe and God; we do need to accept Him. It should not be difficult! We cannot be God, no matter how hard some will try. And though we know Him imperfectly, and even love Him imperfectly, we can rest assured that He knows us, and He loves us, perfectly.

Just look at the stars and the galaxies and the universe, fellow voyager.

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I chose another of Johann Sebastian Bach’s immortal works, the second movement of his Third Orchestral Suite, BWV 1068, commonly known as “Air On the G-String.” Images are from NASA probes, including from the Hubbell Space Telescope. N.B.: the text’s passage about Bach’s music aboard Voyager is adapted from my biography of Bach published by Thomas Nelson, 2011.

Click: Bach’s Air On the G-String

8-26-13

It is a familiar scene this time of year. Children go off to school, some walking up the steps of the yellow school bus, some into the front doors of the school where you drop them off, some into the car, off to college. Familiar scenes; also familiar feelings, at least for parents.

Separation anxiety, of sorts. Landmarks. Turning points. All very emotional. For me, as a father, these scenes were especially emotional, because my children appeared to seldom notice anything special at all about them. Tra la la, they couldn’t wait to board the buses or run for the schoolyard. The most sentiment ever displayed was my son Ted’s annoyance at my insistence to photograph him on the porch, each first day of school year after year (because, um, I KNEW that some day he would cherish the memories) (that day might yet arrive).

It all threatened to get really slobbery when they went off to college. At those points I was ready to grab each of my three kids around their ankles, unwilling to let them go. They reflected no such emotion. I have chalked this all up, by the way, to their active sense of curiosity and adventure, nothing to do with me being the Weirdest Dad On the Street, proven by such episodes.

OK, I exaggerate a little (I tend to exaggerate at least a million times a day). But we need to remember – which means, when I write it, that I often forget – that the “saddest” things in life really are sometimes the sweetest.

When we sign up to be parents, part of the contract is to let go some day. Actually day by day. It is not a mixed blessing, even if we get, in the immortal words of Maynard G. Krebs, misty in those moments. In a recent essay I quoted Theodore Roosevelt, when he said that both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. Likewise, no less, are dirty diapers, silly tantrums, going off to school, asking for help with homework, the first date, the second broken heart, going off to college or the military, and watching them get married.

“Time and Chance happeneth to all,” we are reminded – and we do need reminders – in Ecclesiastes. If God sees sparrows falling to the ground, He also sees them when they leave the nest… and fly. If Mama Sparrow is not sad about that (which is my guess), neither should we regard our tears as anything but droplets of joy.

Our first born, Heather, I assumed to be exceptional from her first breath, so when she was three months old or so, I festooned the house with large signs labeling everything, just to help her to read a day or two sooner than otherwise. My son Ted entered a more sensible world. Our youngest, Emily, we knew would be our last child. My subliminal response to this, I now realize, was to keep her a baby forever, to preserve her like amber in childhood (hers, not mine). I tried to hide from her the knowledge of things like bicycles and solid food.

I kid again, a little, but rearing children, after all, is more about your values at the time than their “molded” personalities afterward. It is unavoidable, and not to be regretted but rather celebrated. Savor it all, parents, even the separation of day care, summer camp, or college in some state you cannot locate on a map.

Part of God’s sweet plan of life is that when you have children, and nurture them, and train them, and endure (and share) all the dramas of childhood, the hours drag by slowly.

… but when the kids have left home, for whatever the myriad reasons, the years then go by quickly. Remember that, while you still have the gift of remembering.

One of Emily’s friends is Amy Duke Sanchez, whom we would not know except for having “let go” of Emily when she left for a faraway college right about this time of year. Recently AmyDuke forwarded to me a very wise saying – “Don’t ask God for anything until you’ve thanked Him for everything.” That is not merely a template for constructing your prayers.

It is a reminder to stop and think about the implications of “everything.” We know that all things can work for good, and we need to see that our momentary regrets, especially in this, the Season of Empty Nests, can really be puzzle-pieces in God’s eternal and joyful plan.

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Even after mxplf years (gee, how strange: a typo) since my youngest went off to college, I still get as misty as Maynard G. Krebs when I listen to Suzy Bogguss’s bittersweet classic about a child’s Rite of Passage, “Letting Go.” The lyrics about the empty nest, and turning the page on memories, are wonderfully captured in the video with the song. Please treat yourself.

Click: Letting Go

8-19-13

I attended a local theater production of “Fiddler on the Roof” this week. The legendary musical and the Yiddish story that inspired it concern themselves with assimilation, and, of course, tradition – the writer Sholem Aleichem was a sensitive genius – but I found myself, this week, seeing it as a strong treatment of the relationship of fathers and daughters.

One reason might be that this week was the first anniversary of my granddaughter Sarah’s birth; followed after nine days by her death. The precious preemie, in the words on the grave marker her parents placed over the tiny casket, will always be loved and never forgotten.

We cannot quantify, and scarcely begin a manner to measure, the loss and grief in the hearts of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, when death visits us. “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure,” said a hero of mine, Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote this after his son Quentin was killed in a World War I dogfight over French battlefields; we he left unsaid is the anguish of those left behind as others join that Great Adventure. And those who watch die a child not yet of the age of knowing.

I thought further about the notable paucity of father-daughter relationships in sacred writings, mythology, and literature. Unless there is a hole in my memory (and I invite discussion) the subtext of Aleichem’s story is a rare theme. Think: most of the resonant generational male-female stories in the myths of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. are mother-son, not father-daughter. Isis married her brother and became mother of Horus. The legend of Oedipus was, famously, a son-mother tale. The complicated cosmogony of Roman deities was comprised of some father-daughter relationships, as of course anything emanating from life, real or invented, cannot avoid – however, virtually all of the significant relational myths are father-son, brother-brother, or, sometimes, mother-son.

In the Bible it is rather the same. Fathers have daughters, of course, but the significant stories and lessons seldom involved fathers and their daughters. Adam and Eve had two sons; Noah had three. Abraham was challenged to sacrifice his son… with the attendant emotions and reflections readers cannot avoid. Indeed, God the Father arranged that His only begotten Son be sacrificed. Lot’s daughters? Not our role models. Naomi and Ruth: meaningful story, but not father-daughter. We revere Mary through the Magnificat, and empathize with her presence at the cross and the tomb, but by inference.

In literature we find, again, numerous enough examples of fathers and daughters, but portrayals are seldom invested with the cathartic implications of male-to-male relationships, or mothers-and-sons. Curious, really. Often, characters who are the daughters of fathers are cast as manifestations of rebellion or symbols of fulfillment – filling roles of the weak paterfamilias. Interesting literary devices, but, again, failing to examine the love, the special love, that exists between father and daughter.

A few examples: Shakespeare’s daughters often were social surrogates more than generational, emotional partners. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet came of age and was willful in part because her father, Capulet, was not. The rebellions of Desdemona and Jessica (in “Othello” and “Merchant of Venice”) were as two-dimensional as the compliance of Ophelia in “Hamlet”; that is, bereft of mature love. Pure hate we see in the daughters Goneril and Regan in the tragedy of tragedies, “King Lear,” while their sister Cordelia is an exception that proves my rule.

In more recent literature, the daughters in the novels and plays of Goldsmith, and the novels of Austen where they rose to be lead characters, asserted themselves almost always as patient surrogates for weak-willed fathers. Their fulfillment usually was prompted as much by duty, or pity, as much as by love. The same can largely be said of the daughters in Thackeray and Dickens.

Well, I have broken my intention of keeping this introduction to a compelling riddle brief. I will segue by wondering (a facile escape, not a logical answer) whether fables, and the Bible, and literature, come up short on treatments of father-daughter bonds for same reason they seldom address why the sky is blue or why trees are made of wood: the obvious need not be addressed. But 10,000 speculative essays cannot convey the truth, and the depth, of father-daughter love as to experience, as a shy and crusty bad dancer, the invitation to dance with your daughter to the corny “Daddy’s Little Girl” at her wedding reception.

So the “Fiddler” performance reinforced my thoughts on the anniversary of Sarah’s death. Early and in distress, she lived only nine days.

Pain and sorrow, especially for Pat and my Heather and Sarah’s two brothers Gabe and Zach, will never disappear and scarcely dissipate, although God grants peace and acceptance in His measurements of grace.

From the blog Heather started after Sarah’s death (http://sarahs-baby-steps.blogspot.com/ ):
“Can I let you know that grief isn’t like a pit that you climb out of or like a fork in the road that you walk away from? Our grief and sadness will be a part of our lives until we are reunited with Sarah in heaven. We are healing from the ‘rawness’ of the grief, but we still have difficult moments…. I’ve heard it said that we learn from our children even as we are teaching them and I believe that is true…. We didn’t know Sarah personally very long, but the experience of having known her and then dealing with the grief of missing her has changed us deeply.”

There is a way that fathers can bond with departed daughters… or any readers, with any families of babies who have died. After Sarah died, a nurse offered a dress that was, sadly, unused in a similar situation, for a photo to be taken. Heather continues the story: “We decided to just lay the dress on Sarah and tuck it around her so as not to move her much. It was a beautiful white crocheted dress with a pink rosette and was just what I had envisioned for her baptism dress. Later, after pictures, I asked about it and if they had lots of dresses–I assumed there was a closet-full. [The nurse] said that she had been given the dress awhile ago and told to give it to a family who needed it. For whatever reason, she felt we were the right family. That kindness shown to us and our daughter took a bit of the rawness out of the day. Our girl was ‘dressed up’ for a bit and we got to have sweet pictures taken as a family.

“We started a fund to provide dresses to families whose preemies are in the NICU where Sarah was. Much more was generously given that we ever thought. The [nurse] says that the donations given in Sarah’s name ‘have currently purchased over 75 beautifully handmade layette sets for infants and their grieving families.'”

What a beautiful concept. If anyone is moved, please consider a donation. See below.

Otherwise, take a moment any time (or many times) during the anniversary of Sarah’s life, Aug. 14-23, and remember a brief life, a tender life situation, a lost life… the precious gift of Life itself, in all its ways and promise.

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“Going Home” has become a sacred song for those who have passed from life. It is actually a Negro spiritual based on the tune of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Performed here, in church, by the London churchboy’s choir Libera.

Click: Going Home

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NICU Dress fund
Donations can be made to “William Beaumont Hospital NICU” in memory of Sarah Shaw…. We would like to provide dresses in Sarah’s memory for other families who have to say goodbye to their little girls. This is a fund we started to support families in their grief. Checks or micro-preemie dresses (button or closures in the back, please) may be sent to William Beaumont Hospital, 3601 W. Thirteen Mile Rd. Royal Oak, MI 48073-6769 Attn: Mara Sipols). Please put “Sarah Shaw” in the memo of checks so your donation goes to the right fund.

8-5-13

A guest message by one of my great friends and a most insightful and sensitive writer, Leah C. Morgan:

I’ve never been acquainted with stress. People throw the claim around, and plenty act like they indeed really are stressed over everything, but it’s always been a stranger to me. Now because of some recent challenges I am fighting to push the weight off my chest, to keep the sickness in my gut at bay.
 
Here’s how. My husband Bonnard has been teaching on Creation and Evolution at church. We have talked about laws of probability and physics, many wonderful things. But the facts presented last week did something supernatural for me: facts inspired my faith.
 
If the distance from the earth to the sun were represented by the thickness of a single sheet of paper, do you know how close we are to the next nearest star? Using the same scale, we would need a 71-foot stack of paper to span the distance. We would need 310 miles of stacked paper of that normal thickness to reach outside our galaxy. And 31-million miles of stacked paper to reach the end of the galaxy known to us.
 
If the sun were hollow, it could hold 1,300,000 earths. But the star Antares could hold 64-million suns! And the star Hercules could hold 100-million Antares; and the star Epsilon could hold 125- million Hercules.
 
“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?”
 
The earth that we live on, and love, is smaller than a speck in the universe; and I am microscopically smaller than that. And yet God tunes his ear to my pleas, He listens to my cries for help and my words of adoration, and is moved for me.

I know He is near. He’s so far away in the vast, wide sum of his creation, but yet He is close by. I’m so absolutely convinced of His love for me. He is for me. For some reason, like a love that’s bigger than Epsilon, He’s interested and compassionate and busy for me.
 
The weight on my chest is gone, the crowded thoughts in my mind are swept clear, when I think that although I might need a telescope to see God, He’s got a microscope on me. 

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The group of “Christian Tenors” known as Sing! Tenore is comprised of Shane Wiebe, Jason Catron, and Mark David Williams. On this vid, illustrating Leah’s spiritual cosmology, they perform, with the Prague Orchestra, “This Is My Father’s World.”

Click: This Is My Father’s World

7-7-13

The man was an “average believer,” or maybe an average non-believer. A lot of people find themselves in spiritual comfort-zones in Post-Christian societies. When we are told that we are born as basically good beings; that sin is a matter of contemporary, and changing, points of view; that “doing good” should guarantee our place in Heaven (if there is a Heaven); that a loving God (if there is a God) would never send one of His children to hell (if there is a hell); and so forth – when people are told such things, they easily can resist appeals to repentance. To deal with their problems.

When churches themselves, over and above the secular media and the community of counselors, hold such ideas, that people can barely navigate the turbulent seas of morality and spirituality is a certainty. And a certainty – as with this man we visit today – to be insecure. More: frequently, if privately, terrified.

He was having a heart-to-heart talk with God. He was not convinced that God existed – through the years he went back and forth on that issue – but it seemed to be a good way to organize his thoughts.

“God, I read Rob Bell’s book ‘Love Wins,’ and I liked it. I know it is criticized for being ‘Universalist,’ arguing that You will keep everyone from hell in the end. Can I confess? I liked it because I thought I found a book that will support my desire to avoid the Hard Questions that You ask. In other words, a loophole.

He thought he heard God answer, “It IS My desire that none should perish. But My Son the Messiah said that no one shall come to Me except through Him.”

The man said, “I know these things; anyway, I have heard them. But this Heaven thing… I don’t know if it exists. Or if it so important. And hell? Sometimes it’s like I’ve already been through hell here on earth. Why is this so important?” He grew agitated. “I once heard Rob Bell speak and he criticized that old hymn I used to love, ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ and he said he wishes he could rip it out of every songbook.”

He continued; “Rob Bell said that we shouldn’t wish for Heaven – we have work to do here on earth. That people who desire Heaven so much are missing the point of being Christ-followers.”

He thought he heard God say, “It is good to hope. Some people cannot identify with the meek and the suffering who seek release. It is well that my Children keep their eyes on Heaven; seek first the Kingdom of God.”

The man felt confused. Does desiring Heaven imply that we should be eager to die? And how much do we do to earn Heaven? “By grace you are saved, not by works,” he heard God say.

He sensed God challenging him, even as he doubled down on his skepticism.

God said: “I have sent a Perfect example to guide you through life, to Heaven.”

The man said: “Perfect? Jesus was arrested, thrown in prison, and executed like a criminal.”

God said: “Look, I have made it such that a strong, loving hand will take yours.”

The man said: “That hand? It is bloody, and has a hole in it.”

God said: “The fullness of the Godhead is in this Guide I have sent you.”

The man said: “I know all the verses, God, but, still, if Jesus ‘died for me,’ why am I still unhappy? Why is there still injustice in the world? Why the sickness, cruelty, hunger? Why should I think about some far-away Heaven?”

For a while he didn’t hear the voice he thought was God’s. Had it all been a dream? Surely He hadn’t stumped the Creator of the Universe!

Presently he thought he heard the same, warm voice as before: “There are already multitudes of angels who know not sin nor sorrow; but neither do they know the joy of overcoming… of salvation. You are not an angel; you are more precious to Me. My children, like you, will be touched by pain and sorrow – that “vale of tears” – because there IS sin in the world. But, accepting My salvation, you can know joy unspeakable in this life. And thereby know that there is a mansion in Heaven, awaiting you.”

And, “This world’s people once knew Me as so holy as to be unapproachable. Works, sacrifice, rituals – humankind tried it all. I wanted My children to know Me through a humbler manifestation. A poor baby, born to despised parents, living as a man, then as a servant and teacher; a healer; a Savior; finally a resurrected and risen Incarnation. If you cannot understand My holy will through this, if you cannot reconcile your duty on earth and your hope of Heaven…”

The man thought the voice trailed off. But he understood things differently. He would walk, and work, and believe, and serve, and be obedient, because he sensed the presence of Guide who would assure him that one day he might “fly away,” but in the meantime – through this “vale of tears” – that Guide would be saying, “Home: Come on home!”

“Home, come on home. Ye who are weary, come home.”
Softly and tenderly calling, “Home, come on home.”

“Home, come on home. Ye who are weary, come home.”
Softly and tenderly calling, “Home, come on home.”

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Today’s musical clip is not “I’ll Fly Away,” nor even the familiar “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is calling,” but the beautiful contemporary song “Tenderly Calling,” quoted in the blog essay. It was a song from John Denver’s next-to-last album. The graphics are by the eternally amazing Beanscot.

Click: Tenderly Calling

6-17-13

Thinking about Father’s Day, there is someone in the news who, perversely, might be deemed “Father of The Year.” Not that he is a great role model, or has been honored by his children. Someone named Desmond Hatchett has fathered 30 children by 11 different women in the past few years.

Proud, not ashamed, of himself (“the wimmins just be lovin’ me”), Hatchet recently petitioned the courts to reduce or void his child support requirements. Although a previous court divided his financial responsibilities among the children he was found to have fathered (some of them slated to receive, thereby, $1.47 a month), he claims that chronic unemployment, partly due to his criminal record, prevents him from meeting the obligation.

In some American cities, unwed pregnancies account for 70 per cent of births, at least among certain ethnic groups. To discuss ethnicity in relation to such social maladies is virtually verboten in today’s politically correct culture. We will never “right the ship” in America unless honest debates return: it is just as wrong, for instance, to excuse a person due to race, as it is to condemn a person because of race. And that applies from reckless baby-makers to presidents. Nobody is immune from personal responsibilities, and nobody is immune from the responsibility to address social and spiritual crises.

Similarly, it is a mistake to exempt some citizens – that is to say, every citizen – from frank discussions. I take the news item about Daddy Hatchett as a take-off point for this essay. But illegitimacy, irresponsible parenting, crummy and absent fathers infest every group, every class, every race, and, yes, the church population too… almost in the same numbers as the overall population.

The courts can only go so far (except when they overturn deep traditions and voters’ referenda about, say homosexual marriage and legalized drugs), but it is a sad commentary how they address irresponsible fathers. Enforced employment? Prison? Sterilization? No, child support, alone, is the routine application of justice. Justice… to the children? And child support frequently goes unpaid, and often is scarcely sufficient, even on paper, to begin with.

But officially, when we are at a cultural crisis, the System’s official definition of Fatherhood is boiled down to “child support.” Spare change, and you’re done, dad.

To read other headlines, you would think that neglect, abuse, and all manner of dysfunction inhabit every home on Main Street, every apartment on Broadway, in contemporary America. To the extent this is true (and can we all generally agree we live in a flawed, corrupt, society?) let us fix things, starting with the nearest mirror we can find, and proceeding: our households, our larger families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our workplaces, our governments and courts, our nation.

It is proper to relate all those problems, and all these areas where solutions can be made, to Fatherhood.

Fathers are heads of households, or should be (I mean there should BE fathers present in family units). Fathers are role models. Mothers make physical sacrifices; fathers do, too, but must add to the qualities of nurture. Guidance and example, counsel and wisdom, integrity in the workplace and in relationships, forbearance and leadership, strength and tenderness. All in ways much different than mothers’ duties to their children. Not more or less important, but, certainly, different.

It is best to look beyond the statistics and the poor examples in our news and neighborhoods. Work to correct… but look beyond. We should even look beyond the great examples – surely we all have them! – of our own loving fathers, tender parents, grandfathers who dispensed wisdom. For those of us whose fathers were heroes, as I can say, and who miss them every day, even then, even on Father’s Days, we may look past them.

The example is our Heavenly Father. Almighty, Omnipotent, Giver of life and of laws, Who loves us so much that His Son gave Himself so that all His other children might be free of their sins and commune eternally with Him. Father. “Abba” in the Bible – it means “Daddy”!

There is a story that James Abram Garfield, 20th president of the US, once gave advice to a father who asked about the possibility of the man’s son’s short-cutting his training. “Certainly,” Garfield is supposed to have replied. “But it all depends on what you want to make of your boy. When God wants to make an oak tree, He takes a hundred years. When He wants to make a squash, He requires only two months.”

The story says a lot about the type of children we may produce in this country. But it also says a lot about the proper attitude of proper fathers in this country.

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One of the great sentimental songs about Daddy was written by Elsie McWilliams and Jimmie Rodgers, and recorded by Rodgers, the “Father of Country Music.” Elsie was Jimmie’s sister-in-law and wrote many of his hits. Here it is performed with feeling by Tanya Tucker, a tribute to her own dad.

Click: Daddy and Home

5-13-13

“To sacrifice what you are, and to live without belief: that is a fate more terrible than dying.” So declared Joan of Arc. “One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it.” Joan was a martyr, but she was also a revolutionary. No less a hero of the faith was Martin Luther a few centuries later. Offered a pardon from excommunication, torture, and death if he merely recanted his written opinions, he declined and said to his accusers words that have thundered through the ages: “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

Heresies nibbled around the edges of the early Church two thousand years ago. Often they were persuasive enough to some believers that creeds were codified in order to resist error. “What do we believe? Let us keep things fresh in our minds, and write these principles down, that we might meditate on them, and bequeath them, properly, to our children.”

Today most churches have forgotten the creeds. Protestant churches often ignore them. Many churches no longer recite the Lord’s Prayer. There is no vacuum, however: their places have been filled by rituals like Exchanging the Peace. “Peace be with you.” A holy kiss. A three-pat hug. We care, as Christ commended. Programs exist to facilitate, and prove, that caring impulse, for all the world to see.

The impulses that Jesus admonished us to adopt, as His followers – charity, for instance – frequently have been co-opted by governments. It would be wrong to say that the Modern State has been a pickpocket or a thief of our prerogatives and rights and inclinations, however. Contemporary Christians largely have surrendered the traditional tenets of their faith, willingly ceding the role of the church to the state. No “separation” there.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” So declared Satan in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Book I, 254-255. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (263).

The Bible predicts that in the End Times, people will call evil good, and good evil. Even the saints – devout churchgoers – will be deceived. Even believers will have “itching ears” ready to listen to perversions of the Truth and excuses for immorality.

In recent days the trial of a Philadelphia abortionist accused by his employees of killing babies after live births, and causing the deaths of some mothers, has trickled through the filters of news media that do not think such atrocities are newsworthy… or blameworthy. He was found guilty, and Planned Parenthood hoped the killing would continue… but in facilities “cleaner” than Philadelphia’s angel of death. A Cleveland man is accused of imprisoning three girls as sex slaves for a decade, inducing abortions by physical abuse. Elsewhere, judges who prevent 15-year-old girls from having aspirin pills or cigarettes in school, ruled that girls of that age, and younger – no age restrictions – can buy “abortion pills” over the counter, with no doctors’ approvals nor parental notifications.

We have been taught that ancient cultures practiced infant sacrifice to appease their gods, and we have been taught to regard those societies as triangulated somewhere in the middle of barbaric, primitive, and deluded. Just so. But what is it about our own culture – Our GDP and economy? wide-screen TVs? iPods? college degrees? sports cars? – that makes us any different?

We sacrifice children, even babies, to the gods of Convenience, of Lust, of Selfishness, of Political Correctness. The older cultures burned babies on flaming pyres, or threw them into volcanoes. We sever babies’ necks and toss them into dumpsters, or let them sift between the culture’s cracks into basement dungeons or for sale to “trafficking” networks.

This, in Christian America. Or what has become – let us be honest, no longer “threatening” to become – Post-Christian America.

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How many of us long to return to simpler times? Do we need to be in the shadow of Solomon’s Temple? Is there no substitute for the fire of the First-Century Church? Should we burn with the fervor of biblical reform, as did Martin Luther? Must we sit under “hard preaching,” as Puritans under Jonathan Edwards? Maybe. But some of us would just like to live in a world, again, where a simple “mother’s faith” nurtured us, protected us, guided us. And these scenes were sacred, not ridiculed.

Click: My Mother’s Faith

5-6-13

It is sweet to look ahead to Mother’s Day by looking back, and thinking about, motherhood. Of all the artificial, consumerist-induced “holidays,” this might be the “holi-est,” because a Mother, as a subspecies of the human family – indeed all of animate creation – comes the closest we can imagine any of us being to divine.

I write, of course, as someone of the sub-sub species, a man who is merely a son. Without being a traitor to my sex, what I mean is that a recipient of a mother’s love, a product of a mother’s nurture, a blessing of a mother’s grace – for all the unspeakable joys represented in those conditions – can only accept on trust what it means to be a mother. To conceive, to bear, to deliver, to rear, to laugh, to cry, to hold, to love, and then to say good-bye to a child is something that neither father nor even son is capable of fully understanding.

I am not so starry-eyed to be saying that all mothers are angels. It is a statistical unlikelihood. Half the fairy tales we know would not have been spun without the Evil Stepmother. Nature allows for exceptions. But if all mothers are not angels, I think it is true – plausible under poetic license – that all angels are mothers. Marschall’s Law: A few mothers seem like angels because they are always harping about something; but most mothers are angelic because they display the saintly qualities God has imbued in the status of motherhood.

The modern world, including militant feminism (which, by its name, ought to believe the opposite of what it teaches), would have us believe that all humans are alike in every way, except for, um, internal plumbing. And the annoyances of life, like some of us have to shave our faces every day, and lift heavy objects in the yard on weekends; and some of us are cursed to become pregnant and bear all the things that society demands thereafter. I call that description of womanhood and of motherhood, faulty pronunciations of “special” and “blessed.”

I think it is significant that God’s chosen people, the Jews, trace lineage through mothers, not fathers. I think it is profound that the world accepts the wisdom of the statement, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” I think it is noteworthy that the viewpoints of mothers have sanction to transcend logic and mundane rules – in the manner of Ambrose Bierce’s description of “sweater” as “A garment worn by a child when its mother is chilly.”

My opinions were mightily formed as a child after dozens of times my mother took her handkerchief from her purse, and gently applied a little saliva to wipe my face after I played in the dirt, or before a Sunday School performance. (Those were days when women carried dainty handkerchiefs and, moreover, sprinkled them with perfume.) But I was naive. I was convinced for years that mothers emitted perfumed spit. Remarkable proof, it seemed to me, that moms were extra-special, endowed by their Creator with inalienable attributes.

Yet there were other, really remarkable and extra-special aspects to my mother (insert: “all our mothers”). When there was only a little extra food at mealtimes, I never, never saw my mother take a second helping for herself when others were even slightly hungry. When any of us kids disappointed her, which surely was not infrequent, time after time she forgave and even made the most ridiculous excuses for our actions – to others, while she no doubt cried herself to sleep in the way that mothers can fold things under their wings.

My mother chose instead to nurture, and explain, finding wisdom from who-knows-where, except the seeds that God plants. In her case, every question of mine that children have wondered through the ages, was answered in the context of God and the Bible. Even when her theology was improvisatory, her instinct was sure… and that taught me more than chapter-and-verse. She taught me hymns and Bible verse that she uttered even in her last days, when in a coma.

One final observation among these inadequate attempts to gild the lily that is Motherhood. Fathers tend to defend and instruct and, we hope, be role models: items on our job descriptions. But the unique relationship between a mother and her child is illustrated by the fact that a godly woman will make her requests known unto God; she will discuss her plans with her husband; but she shares her dreams with her child.

Usually mothers share those dreams privately, and casually. Her soul can be laid bare in the kitchen, while dinner is cooking. Imaginings can unfold while laundry is hung. A child’s bed, with Mom stroking her child’s hair, can become a confessional booth. Of such moments, biological imperatives all, trust is the fiber of the beautiful weaving of bonding, and of love.

What is shared by mothers in those unique moments matters little in relation to whether they bear fruit or are evanescent. They might be the stuff of foolish hopes, or even bitter disappointment. What matters is that mothers, in such settings, inhabit those extra-special attributes of motherhood. Sorry, guys: we have our special moments, but they are quite different.

We hear something like the flutter of angel wings, and it can remind us of saintly mothers. We can sense a whiff of something like perfumed spit – excuse me – and we are reminded of mothers’ everlasting acts of nurture. We shed a tear of remembrance for our mothers and realize that a magical alchemy joins that tear of joy with mom’s old tears of sorrow, and love, and supernatural compassion.

Mother’s Day. A holy day indeed, if we remember correctly.

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The great Iris Dement wrote a song about our theme today. She sings of her special relationship with her mother – dreams shared directly, values absorbed indirectly, but the weave that forms the fabric of life. The verses of the bridge, by the way, are comprised of 10 or 12 titles of old gospel songs.

Click: Mama’s Opry

4-29-13

The pilot’s voice came over the speaker system. “For those passengers on either side of the aircraft, if you look out your windows, you will see a line that is rather evident, a line along the top of the Rocky Mountain range.” We all craned our necks. I, for one, was grateful that airlines were still providing information from the cockpit free of charge. I heard a child ask: “Is there a dotted line on the mountains?”

The sight was in fact a virtual line – the Continental Divide. You can discern it from 25,000 feet above; but that “divide” affects every inch of land in North and South America.

The Continental Divide is the separation-line between the vast watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean, from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The Continental Divide starts in the Bering Strait at its northernmost part, and extends to the Strait of Magellan, at the southernmost tip of South America. There are smaller hydrological divides in the Americas, but the Continental Divide is the most prominent because it extends virtually in a straight line; it is the mightiest and longest of all the watershed sources; and the line of high peaks along the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains and Andes is dramatic.

The phenomenon of hydrological divides refers to more than rivers, which might logically (but not forever) flow away from mountain peaks, even hundreds of miles away. Rivulets, freshets, streams, rivers, aquifers, underground rivers and underground seas are similarly affected. It is remarkable, really, to realize that such things are not random, but mapped and working according to the Creator’s geological determinism.

There are lessons for us – lessons beyond beating the pilot to the punch on your next flight, and impressing the kids in nearby seats. It is generally true (that is, a scientifically valid generalization) that raindrops or melting snowflakes that land on the west side of the Continental Divide will wind up in the Pacific Ocean. And the same precipitant-units that fall on the east side of the Continental Divide will one day feed the oceans of the continents’ east coasts.

It is also not a scientific stretch to say that many raindrops or snowflakes falling just inches apart, atop the Rockies or Andes, will become components of utterly separate forces of nature – facts of life. The lives and conditions of huge continents (for the same factors attend the world’s other land masses) can be determined by events, even gentle drizzles, a few inches this way, or that.

The lesson for us is the similarity to our own lives and conditions.

We all should think more often about the seemingly natural or random events in our lives that, actually, have altered the course of our existence. Sometimes for the better; sometimes for the worse; sometimes in ways we cannot know… yet incidental factors start us on paths that never would have otherwise happened. Without some raindrop, so to speak, falling to the left or right of our personal Continental Divides.

This should inspire more than “what if” games we can play. It should heighten our awareness of people we meet, things we read, ideas we encounter. We should look for wisdom in our “chance” meetings. We can be eager, and not anxious, about changes that present themselves in our lives – what exciting journeys might be ahead!

And this is particularly true when we consider that God might be IN those raindrops and snowflakes that sustain us, and ultimately carry us. God in the rains? – NOT a stretch, there! All this applies as well to the components of “into each life a little rain must fall.” That is, we must track them all, where they go, where they take us.

Remembering these things, we should look to those showers of blessing: be open to Bible verses you might call to mind, or friends who share a prayer, or hymns you hear on a radio station across the room, or a sermon you might surf by on TV, or the message on a billboard.

… or, less obvious (as subtle as tiny raindrops or melting snowflakes, in themselves), random offerings of kindness you witness, done in Jesus’ name; or you hear of someone’s incredible act of forgiveness; or a homeless person given shelter; or an abused child given comfort; or someone’s prayer for a stranger in a discouraging medical situation; or a hopeless-feeling, battered, wounded, hurting soul nevertheless giving thanks.

These would all be God’s raindrops in YOUR life, as you witness them: not just for the people involved. Mercy-drops ‘round us are falling. They will not evaporate! They will become part of your own spiritual watershed. It is useful to know, no less than the Continental Divide atop the mighty Rockies themselves, that they can carry you this way, that way, in ways you could never imagine, if you indeed let them irrigate your soul.

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Yes, we make life-decisions. But in a deeper, truer sense, God charts the courses of our streams of life. Andre Crouch once wrote “If it had not been for the Lord on my side, Where would I be?” Helen Baylor sings a moving version in church:

Click: Where Would I Be?