Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-27-19

Alexa, Siri, Hey-Google… 2019, meet 1984. Ten years ago, the FBI Director calmly told a Congressional committee that he (even he) puts tape over his computer screen’s mini-camera lens. A friend of mine who has worked in sensitive national intelligence schooled me about secret surveillance a few years ago – we should regard the “off” buttons of our electronic communications devices as irrelevant: they still listen and watch us.

Not can listen and watch. They do. “You can turn your lamp off,” he explained; “but electricity still runs through it.”

Do we care? Most of us don’t. Should we? Most of us say Yes, but surrender to the inevitability; or to the futility of resistance. Sometimes we joke about it. But it is not funny.

On the other hand (a very other hand), God watches us all the time. He even knows our minds, reads our thoughts. And our hearts.

About this reality – not a scary rumor or headline – I believe that people react in one of three ways.

* They become numb to it, hoping that God will not really notice the details of our existence and the fine-print of our lives. Or that eventually He will grade us on a curve;

* They become paranoid to the point, perhaps, of ceasing to believe in God, which they think is an easier way to cope; or to believe in a fuzzy version of God that the world manufactures as a conscious-salving substitute;

* Or they believe, trust, accept. Repent. Reform. Welcome, not fear, His watch over us. Use the truth of this reality as a discipline to act right, and please Him. This may be called a Conscience; so be it. Its agent is the Holy Spirit, sent to indwell us.

I pray we all choose what’s behind Door Number Three.

Then we will discover that God is not a spiritual spy, but a companion. A familiar Friend. The One who represents conversations waiting to happen. My daughter Heather used to audibly chat with God while driving or doing household chores. My friend Marlene Bagnull will pray in the middle of conversations with friends – “Father, please…” thus and so; seldom saying “Amen” as she switches back to human-chat – a sort of Constant Comment not bound by teacups. Cool examples, I think.

Yes, He watches us; knows our hearts. But you know what? We can listen to Him. I like to call studying the Bible “eavesdropping on God.”

“Big Brother is watching”? Only if you see that brother as Christ – Jesus our elder Brother! And welcome His fellowship!

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Click: How About Your Heart?

May 20, 2019

I have returned from a writer’s conference, one of several I attend each year. Writers, like artists and poets and few others, are obliged to be hermits. We wear our hearts and lives and fears and joys on our sleeves; but require solitude to work. It seems an odd thing for fragile creative spirits ultimately to toss their precious babies, so to speak, for the world to seize upon… maybe criticize… or, maybe worst, reject. Or ignore.

Yet we do it because we must. I think (without being presumptuous) that the closest we can get to understanding the essence of God is to create. In a sense, as we are to be spiritual “imitators of Christ,” we can savor the Creator by being creative too. Besides, it is His fault since He put the creative spark in us! Seriously, if He has gifted some with creative gifts as He apportions other gifts to other people as He wills, writers, artists, poets, performers, and other creative people have special responsibilities to touch the world… and translate the myriad aspects of God to others.

I will reaffirm some of the thoughts I had last year at another conference. The recent confab was the wonderful Write His Answer conference annually organized by Marlene Bagnull in Estes Park, Colorado. I was one of several speakers, conducting a couple of classes, and meeting a lot of great new friends. I also was reacquainted with some old friends.

It was attended by a couple hundred people, a majority of whom are aspiring writers, and many who had published a book or books or some blogs, still looking for tips to advance further.

When you want to write, you write. In fact, you need to write. And write. And read and write. It’s what you do because you are God-wired that way. I often heard people before and after classes, in the auditorium and lunchroom, in hallways: “Did you read what I wrote since last year?” or “Have you read my book?”

Never boasting, these questions were asked by people from nervousness or justifiable pride, and every writer’s sub-textual intention – hoping that people notice and understand your message; touched, maybe changed, by what you have to say, how you write His answer.

It always strikes me that the frequent question – “Have you read my book?” – might indeed have been the de facto theme. “Up above our heads”; all around us; and a part of everything we did, everything to which we dedicate our careers. But in a very real sense, God Himself also asks, “Have you read My Book?”

He asks that every day.

He asks us, not to read the Bible every moment of every day, but some time during every day, as many of us do. A passage, a chapter, a book, a verse. It is not an unreasonable request – but a request is inherent in the question – as God’s admonitions never are unreasonable.

The Bible is what we know of God. Yes, there is nature – I know well enough from our mountaintop experiences in Colorado. Agnostics who pose, and Christians who are lazy, can say that they can know God from communing with nature.

Wrong. That is one of the ways we can see God, even feel Him. But to know Him, we must read His book.

He meant it to be so. We have the Ten Commandments… written. We have Jesus’s teachings… recorded and written and published. I recommend visiting the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. I saw its substantial portions when it was on tour (in Colorado a few years ago!), and a lesson for believers and skeptics alike is that, for the hundreds and hundreds of texts from different countries, different scribes, different languages, different centuries, the texts of the Holy Scriptures vary hardly at all. The Holy Spirit “dictated” to the hearts of many writers, and oversaw the consistency of God’s Words.

Words.

Jesus communicated God’s love for us. And words, books, scripture, communicate Jesus to us.

The Bible says we are to “hide the Word in our hearts.” How better than through study of those words? They are precious. I shared with an attendee at the conference that, even when I read a Bible passage for maybe the hundredth time, some new revelation dawns on my heart. One speaker this year, Ava Pennington, delivered a powerful message that made we weep. She used phrases, and cited truisms, that I have heard all my life. But when we write or speak, and organize thoughts, the old can become new; and the new become newer. The wonder of words.

How much Bible reading is proper? Have things turned irrelevant? The Bible’s first history lesson reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Are some passages obsolete? II Timothy 3:16 tells us, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” A beloved old hymn states, “I love to tell the Story… ‘twill be my theme in Glory.”

Have you read His book lately?

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Stephen Hill (1956-2012) was a Baptist preacher and session singer before he launched his own gospel-music career. This is a song he sang when he and Woody Wright were invited to perform in the Netherlands. A moving song; you will be impacted in spite of the overlapping Dutch and Norwegian subtitles (he was very popular in Europe). Words!

Click: Will He Look At Me and Say ‘Well Done’?

3-12-18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

these people? these conditions? these places?

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

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

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

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Click: This Is My Father’s World

10-31-16

One of the opportunities afforded blog essayists is to see how many “hits” we
attract; how readers find you; and what links they wander to. Some people respond with messages; some to the blog’s address, some to my personal address; some readers appreciate the music tie-ins; many ignore them.

And I can tell when people click on messages from years past. That is satisfying to me, because I intend that most messages be “evergreen” – as pertinent today as, say, seven years ago. Just (I hope) as the Bible’s lessons have the same relevance to God’s children as they did in millennia past.

Over the past week I have purposely focused on the presidential election, not a typical pattern here. But I think the issues are so critical that we should take special notice. Moreover, the issues (as in the larger American culture) relate to biblical principles, biblical warnings, and horrible consequences of “biblical proportions.”

I have read some of my essays from years ago, and I think that most still are relevant. Even points I shared during the previous presidential campaign seem to me (as I attempt to be objective) neither moldy nor mistaken. But in the 2016 election cycle, things – not only facts but factors – change in days. Or hours. This is a campaign that is unprecedented for vituperation, lies, irrelevancies, numerous endorsements and abandonments, and, of course, scandals.

I might enter the previous sentence in the sweepstakes for Greatest Understatement Of the Year.

Through this political year I have written articles, as a historian, for national newspaper about previous political controversies – where bigamy, murder (Jackson); drunkenness (Andrew Johnson and Grant); an illegitimate child (Cleveland); an illegitimate child while president (Harding); sexual affairs (FDR, Kennedy, Clinton) – were commonly discussed. Et cetera. In other words: “Nothing new here.” And I never got close to the frequent charges of imbecility over 240 years.

Early in our campaign, this was a valid set of reminders; pacifiers, perhaps. But things are different, very different right now.

I am not being an alarmist. One who legitimately rings an alarm technically is not alarmist. An alarmist is a Chicken Little, one who falsely spreads fear and unnecessary warnings of impending doom. No, there is doom. It impends.

America has become two – or more – nations. I truly think that whether Trump or Hillary is elected, there will be riots here or there; no, here AND there. And not only on election night, but on Inauguration Day. And when major initiatives are undertaken by either putative president. (I use the word “putative” carefully – not “eventual” or “likely” president, but “generally assumed” president, because the legitimacy of Trump or Clinton surely will be challenged.)

Major questions, serious scandals, and hitherto disqualifying revelations have been commonplace this year. Our heads spin. Seismic civic explosions are forgotten scandal after scandal, because they are eclipsed by worse ones – always more bizarre. I believe that we long ago passed the point of a Hollywood studio accepting any recent news stories as possible treatments for a political thriller… or comedy: too unlikely!

OK, you know all this. I must remember to get over the astonishing and unprecedented events (partly because the two remaining weeks are bound to drop more bombshells). We must, all of us, come to grips that we very possibly are coming face-to- face with a constitutional criss.

Can a president pardon herself? Possibly… but, then, would the hundreds of millions of the “governed” be governable?

Can institutions once regarded as sacrosanct (the “most scared of holies”), for example the FBI and great charities, ever redeem their integrity?

Will personal probity ever return as a standard of public officials, or be demanded by a moral public?

Look at what has happened to us in this campaign. Except for the lurid flashes in the pan, the “breaking news,” the debates have largely centered on polls, trends, voting blocs, daily charts – in other words, the game more than the issues. Surely, the three “debates” centered more on name-calling than national challenges. We have come to assume the worst, including the worst motives, to our opponents. Hence, the two Americas: we have come to assume hatred… and adopt hatred.

I have suggested we Americans have deserved all this, and surely we do. What are we supposed to do, blame it on the Russians? We held primaries and caucuses (interminable, at that) and the voters spoke. At least in the Republican primaries there was a huge crop to choose from and a clear winner, and unlike elsewhere, no charges of rigging. So the system worked like systems do. To challenge the winner is to insult the voters.

As I also have suggested, Christians ought to look at likely results – desirable policy outcomes – instead of candidates’ personality tics or appearances.

Very slowly, but surely, Donald Trump’s speeches have featured fewer boasts and paranoid fantasies. More and more he ticks off his checklist: opposition to abortion; defending Christians overseas; reaffirming the First Amendment (freedom of religion) and Second (the right to bear arms); championing home schools, parochial schools, charter schools; ending Federal Government interference in education; and so forth.

He has fine-tuned his policy on immigrants. Not that all Mexicans are thieves and rapists, but unchecked floods of people at the borders might allow such to enter. The same with unvetted Muslim immigrants vis a vis terrorism. And so forth. Eventually, he has made sense.

This weekend Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty spoke directly of how he recently witnessed to Donald Trump. Explained the Gospel as nobody else has done. He believes that Trump accepted Christ, and he sees a work in progress.

But no matter how the election goes, voters must remember that the “perfect might be the enemy of the good.” In any event, as vital as this election is… there are many, many, many deep, deep, deep problems with this society. From schoolyards to the Supreme Court; from those who make movies to those who watch them; from those who reject Christ to… those who are faithful church-goers. One man cannot change all, so we should work with those who will try. And One who knows.

How far have we drifted? Are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” – is it that late? Have we slept through our alarms?

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Click: Where Did America Go?

4-25-16

I noted the annual observance of Earth Day. And right about now I am making ready for my annual pilgrimage to the top of that earth.

Not quite Mount Everest or Mont Blanc or Mount McKinley, but high enough: Rocky Mountain High. Not a holy trek… although it is associated with the annual Greater Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference (attendance at which I urge on all aspiring writers, published authors, casual readers, and everyone in between). Is it a true pilgrimage? Yes, it is.

Many pilgrimages have been undertaken by pilgrims (obviously) to sites of holy or historical significance; sometimes in celebration or in observation of dates or past events. They can venture to the unknown (think the New World) or to very familiar places (think Jerusalem or Lourdes).

Or they can serve to re-charge one’s battery, so to speak. To savor the sustenance one expects to be waiting. To commune in a way unavailable elsewhere.

I will re-create the experience for those of you not from bumpy lands. I was born in New York City, where all the peaks are of stone, but piled up by man, not God. (Ask me about trips to Bavaria and Switzerland and Austria sometime, too.) You arrive in Denver, nestled in mountains a mile high. You drive to Estes Park, a frontier-flavored town half again as high above sea level. Local landmarks are the Stanley Hotel and the sprawling YMCA retreat and conference center, which hosts the writers’ conference. And, of course, 360 degrees of mountains, snow-capped year-‘round.

Every year after the conference a few faculty members and friends make the trek upward – so it seems, straight up! Past the Theodore Roosevelt National Forest, into the Rocky Mountain National Park, passing scattered cabins and lazy elk and deer, we climb farther, into thinner air. The deciduous trees disappear; we are above the pine line. Soon, even the pine trees can grow no more, and there are only strange scrub plants, jagged rocks, and frozen snow.

At summits you stop to walk – carefully and slowly, because the thin air ensures that you easily become winded. If the temperatures are cold, even when you see your breath, you still shed jackets and sweaters because the sun strangely compensates. At these levels, discreet signage informs you of the height; of the fact that nearby snow scarcely melts and might be many years old; and strictly warns against stepping on the only discernible vegetation: lichens and moss. The organisms, actually not related to each other, form greenish shadows on rocks, and – as the signs warn – can take hundreds of years to reestablish themselves if stepped on and destroyed.

As high as I and my friends have ever ventured, there are always peaks not far away (probably many miles!) that reach higher. Birds with magnificent wing-spreads float above, not having to flap their wings, seemingly ever, as they catch the upward wind drafts. We stand at cliffs’ edges and look down, down, down, seeing four-legged animals we can hardly distinguish, gaily leaping between precarious peaks.

One year, in glaring sunlight and amidst unearthly silence, our group beheld these scenes and someone started singing the old hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” One by one, everybody joined in.

“This is my Father’s world, And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and ‘round me rings The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.”

Perfect-seeming. A natural setting, an appropriate response, a love song to God as He has revealed Himself. Who would not have the same reaction?

Very few of us, that’s who. Yet God, I think, would have us remember that such glorious scenery can be seductive; pristine nature is only part of the Father’s world. I believe God would have us remember two categories of truths that easily elude us, especially after we plan pilgrimages or encounter the stunning beauty of Creation.

The first category of truths – reminders, I will call them – is comprised of realities that are as hard and sharp as those of mountains. We can occasionally drive away from, but not escape, the concurrent existence of sickness and disease; of hate and sorrow; of wars and rumors of wars; of crying mothers and crying orphans; of abused women and aborted babies; of poverty and injustice; of persecution and oppression; of pollution and waste; of prejudice and corruption; of slums and poverty; of greed and envy; of empty hope and no faith. All around us.

THESE are also parts of my Father’s world. Just as much as pretty landscapes and joy-filled nature.

The second category of reminders, no less significant in God’s plan, tells us that the first category is not a random list of uncomfortable truths. Rather, they are God’s checklist of matters we must address. Christians are familiar with forebears who knew about the Promised Land. All of Creation once looked like the snow-capped Rockies. The Garden of Eden we know. The Land of Beulah was sought in Old Testament days as representing a virtual marriage feast, preparing for fellowship with the Lord.

Heaven has been described to us: The land of milk and honey, where sorrows shall cease, where joys will never end, where the buildings shall be as mansions prepared for us. If it were not so He would not have told us.

But the pathway there requires all of us to climb down those mountains, often to dwell in dark valleys. Vales of tears, usually. Valleys of the shadows of death. We will not merely encounter unpleasant things in life: we must confront and do battle with them. God’s work must be our own. We must wrestle with more than flesh and blood “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Not a warning; not an option; more like a prediction; in fact a promise from God. These are not assignments to win God’s favor. They are simply the duties of a follower of Christ.

In fact, they are privileges.

To care for those who hurt, to minister to their souls as well as their bodies, is what Christians do. Not often enough, maybe… but it is what we do. To comfort, to feed and clothe, to sacrifice and serve, to share Christ and to BE Christ; to love. To love.

Marlene Bagnull, Director of the conference in Estes Park, always remembers among the hubbub of seminars and programs and fellowship, to highlight two missions programs each year; one at home, one overseas. Truly, it is meet and right so to do. The work God gives us is as likely to be halfway around His world as across our hometowns.

And surely those tasks are also in our neighbors’ houses; in our schools and offices; in the hallways and bedrooms of our own homes. These places, these people, these problems… are all squarely in “My Father’s World,” too. As we redeem His people, we redeem His planet. His world. Let us all remember every corner of creation; pleasant and – for the moment – unpleasant. By the way, Earth Day is not a celebration of Mother Nature but Father God, Creator.

“This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world. The battle is not done.
Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and Heaven be one.”

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Click the embedded link to learn more about the Colorado Writer’s conference.

Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been to many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

For those who have followed us on RCR, please be sure to continue receiving our weekly essays by Subscribing to Monday Morning Music Ministry. (See link under “Pages” at right.)

Click: This Is My Father’s World

11-30-15

There has been a firestorm of chatter – accusations, distortions, smears, confusion, explanations – lately about Dr Ben Carson and elements of his biography. Whether he had violent tendencies in his impoverished youth in inner-city Detroit. Whether he attacked, or wanted to, kids and even his mother. Whether, as an excelling young student, had the SAT scores he has spoken of, and whether he was told he would be a good candidate, with reason to feel confident, for the US Military Academy.

Et cetera. Dr Carson has noted that the rabid press has not pursued for almost a decade the mysteries and inconsistencies of Barack Obama’s past. Dr Carson’s modesty has not made an issue of the fact that all the calumny has been disproved – the charges have, one by one, been refuted by facts and history and eyewitnesses.

Myself, I am just as (not) surprised that the tsunami of questions at Dr Carson’s press conferences are not about, say, being named head of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. At the age of 33. The landmark surgeries he performed. Becoming a world-renowned, encyclopedia-named brain surgeon. The number of lives he saved. His dozens of honorary degrees. The work of his foundation, which encourages and supports academic excellence in youth. His Christian witness and talks, inspiring millions. Where are THOSE stories?

… in fact they are in Dr Carson’s book “Gifted Hands.” It is his autobiography, written years before he retired from medicine and turned to public service (what a term – he has been serving the public all his life!), and from which an inspiring movie was produced (Cuba Gooding Jr portrayed Carson).

And that brings me to why I am writing this essay. The “man in the news” I want to share is not Carson, here, but his co-author on “Gifted Hands,” Cecil Murphey. That book is being cited, mis-characterized, and everything in between.

Cecil Murphey is a friend of mine, if I may boast, and I would like to share some things about a man who, to many people at the moment, is just a name. Cec is the author or co-author of almost 150 books. He is the absolute master of co-authoring the works of notables, interesting people, and average but inspirational folks; as well those who are inexperienced or too busy for the nuts-and-bolts of putting a book together.

“…With Cecil Murphey” appears on the covers of life stories of Ben Carson, Don Piper (“90 Minutes in Heaven” and others), Shaun Alexander, Dino, et al., including many famous names on whose books he did not receive credit (which is a common practice in publishing).

He also assisted on Dr Carson’s book “Think Big – Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence.” He has also written scores of other books – Bible apologetics; romance mysteries; travel and self-help; devotionals; and inspirational books addressing addiction, recovery, loss, healing, caregiving, grief, exercise, aging, sex trafficking, loved ones with dementia, and living with sexual abuse. Specifically, sexual molestation from the family’s point of view, living with the victim; and from the victim’s own viewpoint. Cec himself suffered abuse as a child, and his own book (“When a Man You Love Was Abused”) on the subject was difficult to write, challenging to have published, and… is touching, powerful, and useful.

Behind the scenes (for many) – Cec has also written books on the craft of writing. He holds seminars and has mentored many writers; he is an encourager. He has appeared at many writer’s conferences (Marlene Bagnull’s Christian Writers Conference is where I was blessed to first meet Cec) and has – anonymously – donated thousands and thousands of dollars for scholarships to aspiring writers.

He has received honorary degrees, many awards, was a pastor in the Atlanta area, has served as a hospital chaplain, and was a missionary in Kenya for six years. He is a man of unbelievable energy (myself, I am worn out just listing a few of his accomplishments!), with a generous heart, tremendous talent, and – pertinent these days, as his name is being dragged into mud-slinging political smears – utter integrity. A man of God, serving God and humanity. No less than the similarly modest, gifted, and brilliant subject of certain of his books, Dr Ben Carson.

The Founding Fathers of the United States fully intended – and fervently prayed – that future leaders would arise not from a permanent political class but from the general population. They would be farmers, and lawyers, and shopkeeps, and… doctors; they would serve as law-makers for a spell, representing their neighbors, always feeling responsible to them and obligated to serve them. And then they would return to their farms, their offices, their shops, their patients. Citizen Patriots.

Dr Carson understands that vision, and fulfills that aspiration. He lives it. And Cecil Murphey, the man who wrote Dr Carson’s story almost 20 years ago, understood it too, and communicated. In the same manner, he is a journeyman writer with his own Gifted Hands.

Every news item has a back-story. Cecil Murphey is the story behind a lot of other stories, and the stories of a lot of impressive people. There is a good chance that you have read a best-selling book he helped to write, or ghost-wrote, without your being aware of it. I am glad to share his story here, and proud to have him as a friend. He is also a Christian worker who is a Citizen Patriot serving his nation.

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The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune will not deter Dr Ben Carson as he seeks the presidency and, perhaps someday, even higher positions; nor Cecil Murphey, whose pen is a mighty sword of God. Here, a contemporary song of Christian encouragement, sung by Joni Eareckson Tada.

Click: Alone Yet Not Alone

Cecil Murphey

4-27-15

The Colorado Christian Writers Conference will be held in a couple weeks in Estes Park, in the Rocky Mountain National Park. I have been attending for a dozen years as faculty member, speaker, and invariable participant in the great opportunities for fellowship and worship.

I will miss it this year because of family matters in Ireland, whence I write this week. Great regrets. Ironically, if circumstances permit, I might attend, the very same days, the International Literature Festival (formerly the Dublin Writers Festival) in one of the world’s great literary cities. …but it is nothing like CCWF for Christian creators. I will miss the inevitable mountain-top experiences!

My good friend, writer Barbara Haley writes here about doubts and fears common to all writers – all creative people, even the most successful professionals – at times. She is our guest writer today.

In a few weeks, I will be attending the Colorado Christian Writers Conference for my 16th year. Same location, but a new inspirational and informative experience every year.

As I prepare for the conference, I’m reminded of the time just before my first conference when I didn’t feel like I was really ready to go. I didn’t know if I was a writer, and I felt guilty squandering our money just for a fun trip. Our finances were tight at the time, and I wondered if I were being a good steward of the money God gave us.

As the days before the conference ticked off, my anxiety grew. I rushed to get projects finished, but life happened and I seemed to get little accomplished. I would be presenting projects for critiques by professional writers and editors – work I was not yet proud of, writing not yet perfectly matched with my plans and expectations.

I couldn’t figure out how to be perfect. How to impress the editors and agents with whom I would be meeting. How to know ahead of time exactly what they wanted to see and hear. How to avoid the horrible experience of embarrassment or failure.

In all honesty, though I didn’t see it at the time, my anxiety boiled down to pride – not being able to control what others saw and felt about me. All my life I had been an over-achiever, because my self-worth was totally wrapped up in my performance and the affirmation of others.

The excitement I first felt when I registered slowly dissipated, replaced by dread and insecurity. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t write.

Finally, I talked to my husband about my situation. “I’m so sorry, honey,” I said. “I feel like I’m wasting our precious money. I wonder if I could cancel and get a partial refund.”

With warm eyes, my sweet husband just smiled in his special reassuring way. “No, you’re not going to cancel. I don’t care if all you do is go sit under the mountains and spend time with Jesus. That would be worth every penny we’re spending!”

Wow! What a relief. The pressure to perform was off. I was going on a vacation with my precious friend and Savior, Jesus. With His help, I would do the best I could—and that would be enough. I could trust Him to walk beside me and show me His plan for my writing.

Each year, I remember those wise words from my husband. And each year, I consciously take time to lay aside the pressure of “being ready” and focus on my time with God. For when I turn my eyes to Him, the things of earth truly do grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Hebrews 12:1-2a urges us to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

For me, the sin of pride had colored my world, entangling my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Once I consciously threw that off and turned my eyes back to the Lord, my world instantly brightened. Energy to run the race God had for me returned. Grace allowed me to accept my imperfections and, instead, glory in His strength and guidance.

As you listen to the following song, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, take time to allow God’s grace and presence fill your soul, transforming your thoughts, feelings, and actions by the renewing of your mind.

That even “accomplished” creative people are beset by such feelings, ironically should reassure the nervous neophyte. Yes, we are in the same boat. Yes, we are “naked before the world” with our often tentative efforts. “Who are WE to presume that what we write [or paint, or compose] will interest anyone else?”

There are several answers to that question. As Bach did, we write as unto the Lord, and we seek to please Him first; other results follow. After that: write to please yourself; if you know your subject, and know your target audience, you will succeed. Solicit the opinions of fellow creators; share the pains and joys; be encouraged and be an encourager. Venues like the Colorado Christian Writers Conference are pure gold.

Sometimes having a “mountain-top experience” can even include spending part of a week on one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

For information about the Conference, go to Colorado Write His Answer

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Click: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

5-19-14

A report from Colorado — Estes Park YMCA Conference Center, surrounded by late snows, young deer and elk, hundreds of professional and aspiring writers at the Colorado Christian Writers Conference. I have been on faculty, and critiquing the work of creative people yearning to Write His Answer, in the words of the conference motto.

In keynotes and session speeches, in prayer circles, the topics were many, but — as in other years, and without human direction or agenda — a matter of concern kept asserting itself: children. The crisis with children. Poverty here; AIDS in Africa; child sex trafficking in Asia; schools, orphanages, corruption in Swaziland; forced prostitution of young girls — children — in Thailand.

And when children are not parts of the headlines, they are parts of the story, the subtexts.

To speak about decline in morals and the media… we recognize that children are prime targets.

To speak about human trafficking… children are the victims.

To speak about the AIDs crisis in Africa… children suffer as the infected AND as orphans.

To speak about the persecuted church worldwide… children are the battleground of cultures suppressing Christianity.

In America – drugs: children. Education: children. Pornography: children. Poverty: children. Homelessness: children. Broken homes: children. Abortion: children.

It is a cliché to say that children are our future. But clichés are clichés because they are, first of all, true. However, children do not HAVE to be the first-in-line victims of a culture in decline. But they are. They cannot defend themselves; they believe what the culture tells them; they are the most vulnerable.

When I talk about headlines, it is literally the case. Recently 300-500 girls were kidnapped by a radical Islamist group in Nigeria. The kidnapper’s leader has gone public, blatantly threatening horrific fates, hinting of swaps of the innocent children for his fellow monsters in local jails.

Almost lost in the media coverage, and clearly a subordinate concern of the US government, is the little detail: the children are Christians.

If it is not becoming acceptable in the eyes of our media and government, it is at least a reflection of the frequency — almost to the point of boring triviality — that children, and Christians, and Christian children, are persecuted, brutalized, raped, jailed, and driven from their homelands.

In 1904 an American citizen was kidnapped in Africa. The businessman, Ion Pedecaris, was a pawn in the factional rivalries of the Pasha Raisuli and his Arabian government. A little history lesson: the First Lady of the United States did NOT pose for a photograph with a sign (as Michelle Obama did this week with the handwritten Twitter hashtag and “Bring Back the Children”). No, her husband, President Theodore Roosevelt, sent a message to that African government: “Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead.”

The man was freed.

I know it is a fantasy, but I got to thinking, this week in Colorado, if Mrs Obama — I would settle for a cartoon of Uncle Sam — could hold a sign that said: #Bring back our sense of proportion… or justice… or honor… or respect for children… or defense of Christianity. As I said, I am afraid this is a fantasy.

Let us remember the children – care for them, protect them, cleanse their environment. If our generation has messed up, maybe the best thing we can do – not the only thing, but surely the FIRST thing – is to beg their forgiveness. And God’s.

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Here is a tender lullaby Slumber My Darling, written more than 150 years ago by a man I am increasingly persuaded was America’s greatest composer, Stephen Foster. It is performed by Alison Kraus, (amazing) vocals; and YoYo Ma; Mark O’Connor; Joshua Bell; and Edgar Meyer. The images are by the amazing Beanscot Channel.

Slumber, My Darling

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

5-16-11

I am rounding out the week at the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference in Estes Park. One of the two such annual events chaired by Marlene Bagnull (the other is in Philadelphia in August), this conference is a magnet for veteran writers, aspiring writers, editors, and publishers. It overflows with practical training and teaching, but not the least of its offerings –- and blessings -– is the spiritual uplift.

Despite this economy, registration was higher this year then last year. Creative people are more passionate about telling God’s story (“Writing His Message,” from Habakkuk 2:2) than ever! And there is a message to tell.

The theme of this year’s conference, for the morning and evening sessions and keynotes, was the crisis in the culture, writers being engaged to save our nation.

It struck me that over the course of the week, no matter what the focus, there was a unifying theme. Of course the decaying culture, and other obvious headlines, connected the dots of all the talks and presentations. But an underlying subtext –- one that should grieve us all -– became evident in spite of ourselves.

To speak about decline in morals and the media… we recognize that children are prime targets.

To speak about human trafficking… children are the victims.

To speak about the AIDs crisis in Africa… children suffer as the infected AND as orphans.

To speak about the persecuted church worldwide… children are the battleground of cultures suppressing Christianity.

In America – drugs: children. Education: children. Pornography: children. Poverty: children. Homelessness: children. Broken homes: children. Abortion: children.

It is a cliché to say that children are our future. But clichés are clichés because they are, first of all, true. However, children do not HAVE to be the first-in-line victims of a culture in decline. But they are. They cannot defend themselves; they believe what the culture tells them; they are the most vulnerable.

Let us remember the children -– care for them, protect them, cleanse their environment. If one generation messed up, maybe the best thing we can do –- not the only thing, but surely the BEST thing –- is beg forgiveness and leave them a better world.

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Here is a tender lullaby Slumber My Darling, written more than 150 years ago by a man I am increasingly persuaded was America’s greatest composer, Stephen Foster. It is performed by Alison Kraus, (amazing) vocals; and YoYo Ma; Mark O’Connor; Joshua Bell; and Edgar Meyer. The images are by the amazing Beanscot Channel.

Click on: Slumber, My Darling

3-7-11

The assassination this week of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister of Minorities in Pakistan, is a story that garnered some attention in the news, but for the most part was subsumed by other reports on related issues from the Islamic world.

Shahbaz was the only Christian in the national cabinet, a brave advocate of religious freedom before world forums and in his own land. The news that crowded his murder from the headlines included other assassinations; street protests; Christians being arrested; Muslim factional hatred; Christians fleeing their homelands; government crackdowns; Christian churches being invaded; piracy, kidnappings and murder; and Christian martyrdom, from lowly believers and pastors to prominent officials in several countries.

According to the BBC, “Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had just left his mother’s home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, say witnesses.” He routinely had been receiving death threats for urging reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. “Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan’s most populous province, were found at the scene.” Tehrik-i-Taliban told BBC Urdu they carried out the attack.

Four months ago, Shahbaz said in a video, “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross. And I am following… the cross.” He continued, “I am ready to die for the cross,” speaking these words calmly and with confidence. He knew he was reciting his own epitaph. Shahbaz was not a supernatural prophet – he surely knew the dangers to his life – rather he was a humble servant, an obedient follower.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross (Matthew 16:24).

Shahbaz correctly pinpointed the center of our world’s coming crisis – not economies nor resources nor pollution; not even religion – but the cross of Jesus Christ. And the persecuted church, in so many of the world’s fiery corners, understands this. Despite the horrible treatment of uncountable Christian martyrs, now approaching one a minute, every day, around the world, that persecuted church is being purified, like gold in a fire.

Some Christians in the West concern themselves with the “Prosperity Gospel,” and debate universalist theories that everyone is going to Heaven, “if there is a Heaven.” But Christ-followers and missionaries and martyrs elsewhere in the world work to “know Christ and make Him known.”

The “crown” is the exclusive focus of too many Christians. Christ promised an abundant life, certainly; but He offered, and warned, and promised, the burden (mysteriously, a glorious burden!) of the “cross.” Plausible Christianity is that the Crown awaits us in Heaven; and the Cross is our lot here.

“It is one thing to kneel at the foot of the cross for forgiveness; it is quite another thing to get on that cross to follow Jesus in His death. But it is the only way to live the resurrected life. This is what it means to be His disciple. When we live the crucified life, nothing can truly harm us. You can’t hurt a dead person.” So wrote a friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer, this week. “Our churches are filled with bored, dissatisfied Christians. Not because our God isn’t enough, but because most of them have only visited the cross once for salvation. It is meant to be embraced every day.”

I did not know Shahbaz Bhatti. Three of my close friends did, but I cannot say that I would speak his mind here. However, his murder this week has me thinking more than ever about the persecution of Christians, and our proper response as believers ourselves – response not alone to the situation of martyrs, but response to Christ’s commission. And it all has to do with the Cross, the Cross.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, but not necessarily from the effects of our sins; nor the world’s persecution; nor evil, punishment, or sickness; all because there is sin in the world. And as He offers forgiveness from sin, it might be said that He did not come to grab us from hell or push us into Heaven. His ministry was to keep hell out of people, and put Heaven into us, so to speak. We are to do His work while we are here.

Christians often think we have to “close the deal” and assure that people have eternal life. But all we can do is quote the Promise. To presume that we can do any more might be to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, whose work this really is. Believers, by responding to the invitation to believe on Jesus, have a say in that; and God, of course, is the Judge.

So what is left? To servants like Shabaz Bhatti, and to missionaries in heathen areas (including – think about it – you and me, right in our neighborhoods), our work is to do Christ’s work. Here. And now. Working to keep hell out of people and planting a little Heaven – by sharing belief in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us, as Shahbaz testified; that He is not just one way, but the way to God – this must be our mission. And our privilege. And our Cross.

Jesus frankly said that the world will hate that message. It hated that message when He spoke it, and He was crucified on the cross. It hates that message when we speak it, and the world will likewise and therefore hate us. To take up the Cross and follow Him is not an option. It is as much of being a Christian as confessing Jesus as Savior.

The Book of Revelation tells us that to add or subtract a word from scripture is anathema, yet I would venture to say that in Heaven another verse has been added this week to Hebrews, Chapter 11. That book is “the Hall of Fame of Faith,” listing great heroes and martyrs of the faith – many of whom did not live to see the fruits of their service and sacrifice. “By faith, Shahbaz…”

God bless you, brother. None of your countrymen will come closer to the Truth through the motives of a dozen cowardly murderers. But I pray that millions will see the Truth through your martyrdom, your purity of faith, your service to the cross of Christ. And He will be glorified. Amen.

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In honor of Shabaz Bhatti and persecuted Christians worldwide:

Click: Anthem of the Persecuted

I want to acknowledge the words and wisdom of three friends who were privileged to know Shahbaz — Hope Flinchbaugh, Marlene Bagnull, and Dan Wooding, for whom this week has been trying; Becky Spencer (“sure you can quote me – the Holy Spirit doesn’t copyright inspiration!”); and insights I gained this week while researching a book, from messages by Lyman Abbott.