Monday Morning Music Ministry

A bit of a personal story, prompted by the video to Click, below.

A number of years ago I was working on a book, a three-part biography of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis; evangelist Jimmy Swaggart; and country-music superstar Mickey Gilley, all first cousins to each other. A friend offered me his unused condo in Montgomery, Texas to get away for research and writing one summer. Since Lewis lived in Mississippi, Swaggart in Louisiana, and Gilley in nearby Pasadena TX, it made geographical sense.

Once settled, I took out the Yellow Pages to chart the location of Assembly of God churches for all the weeks ahead, intent on visiting as many as I could. East Texas was in every way new to me, and I wanted to experience everything I could.

Well, the first one I visited was in Cut and Shoot, Texas. That’s a town’s name; you can look it up. A small, white frame AG church was my first stop that summer… and I never visited another. For one thing — coincidence? — I learned that a member of the tiny congregation was the widow of a man who had pastored the AG church in Ferriday, Louisiana, the small town FOUR HOURS AWAY where, and when, those three cousins grew up in its pews. She knew them all, and their families, and had great stories. Beyond that, the pastor of the church in Cut and Shoot, Charles Wigley, had gone to Bible College with Jerry Lee Lewis and played in a band with him, until Jerry Lee got kicked out. Some more great stories.

But there was more than that kept me there for that summer. In that white-frame church and that tiny congregation, it was, um, obvious in three minutes that I was not from East Texas. Yet I was treated like family as if they had known me three decades. It was the Sunday before July 4th, and a fellow named Dave Gilbert asked me if I’d like to go to his farm for the Fourth where a bunch of people were just going to get together and “do some visitin’.”

On the Fourth I bought the biggest watermelon I could find as my contribution to the pot-luck. Well, there were dozens and dozens of folks. I couldn’t tell which was family and who were friends, because everybody acted like family. When folks from East Texas ask, “How are you?” they really mean it. There were several monstrous barbecue smokers with chimneys, all slow-cooking beef brisket. (Every region brags about its barbecue traditions, but I’ll still fight anyone who doesn’t claim low-heat, slow-smoked, no sauce, East-Texas BBQ the best) There was visitin,’ after all; there were delicious side dishes; there was softball and volleyball and kids dirt-biking; and breaks for sweet tea and spontaneous singing of patriotic songs.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is America.”

As the sun set, the same food came out again — smoked brisket galore; all the side dishes; and desserts of all sorts. Better than the first time. Then the Gilberts cleared the porch of their house. People brought instruments out of their cars and trucks. Folks tuned their guitars; some microphones and amps were set up; chairs and blankets dotted the lawn. Dave Gilbert and his brothers, I learned, sang gospel music semi-professionally in the area. Pastor Wigley, later in the summer, opened for Gold City Quartet at a local concert, playing gospel music on the saxophone. But everyone else sang, too; of course in some churches, in some parts of America, you’re just expected to sing solo every once in a while. You’re not expected to — you want to. So into the evening, as the sun went down and the moon came up over those farms and fields, everyone at that picnic sang, together or solo or in duets or quartets. Spontaneously, mostly. Far into the night, exuberantly with smiles, or heartfelt with tears, singing unto the Lord.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is Heaven.”

(By the way, not only am I not from East Texas, although it is sort like home now; but I was born in New York City, so you might appreciate just how different, and not merely special, that day was for me.)

Here is a video that very closely captures the music, and the feeling — the fellowship — of that evening. A wooden ranch house, a barbecue picnic just ended, a campfire, and singers spontaneously worshiping, joining in, clapping, and “taking choruses.” There were cameras at this Gaither get-together, but it took this city boy back to that Fourth of JU-lye, finding himself amongst a brand-new family, the greatest barbecue I ever tasted before or since… and the sweetest songs I know.

Click:  The Sweetest Song I Know

Here is a tale about a not-so-happy Saturday I just endured… that got me thinking about current events as microcosms of larger issues in life.

I stupidly opened a blind link from a bogus e-mail address (“cloned” to be similar to that of a friend). Well, dozens of pop-ups popped up. I lost access to all my filters and cleansing software, my internet connection, even my Word files, proposals, unfinished manuscripts, research notes… and I went of my mind.

I pulled out the laptop and Googled everything I could. The pop-ups were phony ads trying to save me from viruses, but was itself a virus. “RansomWare,” it is called, because I was frozen unless I would purchase the program (and even at that, who knows?).

Frantic, I checked in with my new son-in-law in Ireland, a computer wiz. He has a Mac, so (all together now) “never has to deal with such things.” But he Googled too, and checked blogs of other victims, and on the phone and Skype simultaneously, we found a solution that worked. I am now free and clean. Six hours total of angst, three and a half solid hours on the phone with Ireland.

When I recovered, I got to thinking…

It shows how little — that is, not at all — human nature has progressed. People who cause these problems, whether for a little profit or pure malice, are no different than highwaymen hiding behind trees along forest pathways a thousand years ago, or urban pickpockets of Dickens’ time.

It’s the same thing with, say, abortion. Forty million dead babies today since Roe vs Wade — how is this different than “human sacrifice” or babies on pagan altars, in ancient or “primitive” societies? In fact, it might be worse today, in terms of the blackness of our souls. In ancient and primitive societies those people were mistaken, grievously, but at least believed they were serving and appeasing their gods. A murdered baby is still a murdered baby, but in American today, abortion (and so many other sins) are sacrificed to the “gods” of selfishness, greed, laziness, hatred. That’s not progress.

Is there a spiritual lesson? Yes. Human nature has not changed. Human nature won’t change. Human nature can’t change. One of the 700-billion reasons to resent politicians’ assault on freedom and responsibility these days, is that they nurture the lie that human nature is perfectible… and that government can bring perfection about.

Only Jesus can change humans’ nature. And do we despair that the world, without Jesus, is as rotten as it ever was? No… because we are not without Jesus. That’s the plan.

Sometimes this walk seems so dreary, life’s problems seem so challenging. God never said He’d keep us from troubles… just be with us through troubles. A friend wrote the other day, “Life isn’t about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain”!

So, we go through this ol’ life, in the words of this week’s song, “While I’m here I’ll serve Him gladly, and sing Him all my songs”…

… because we know at the end, we’re headed  Home, Where I Belong