Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-26-13

Revisiting some old thoughts, at the request of some old friends. A day for reflection, and to ask some questions relevant to today’s Memorial Day:

Hey, Soldier. Or Sailor, Airman, Marine. Late servicemen, fallen or passed on.

It’s Memorial Day. Your day.

Back when all the holidays meant something – or meant something different – this began as “Decoration Day.” When people decorated military graves, or commemorative statues, or monuments and plaques.

That’s why I’m addressing you as one group, and as anonymous veterans, because Decoration Day was designed to memorialize, to remember and honor, dead servicemen and women. All of you.

You know, on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence; on Veterans’ Day we honor the retired military among us.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day, maybe because the act of placing decorative flowers and flags was becoming an empty gesture. Or simply wasn’t being done that much any more. Whatever: most Americans think of it now as “the beginning of summer,” the vacation season. So, backyard barbecues have replaced parades and cemetery services.

Maybe that’s what you fought for, and many of you died for. “The American Way of Life.” My dad didn’t fight in World War II because he hated the Nazis or Japs like the government told him to hate; he didn’t even believe that Main Streets in the American heartland were about to be invaded. He volunteered and served because it was his duty. That’s another old-fashioned concept.

The dirty little secret about history is that the best fighting forces have met success not because they hated, but because they loved. You American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, in your graves through the land – throughout the world, sometimes buried where you fell – loved the flag, loved your people, your homes, your Main Streets; and you loved the concepts of duty and honor.

Most of you guys are probably like my father, and would tell me that you just “did what you had to do,” and most of your kids are probably like me, in awe of dedication and sacrifice. You would tell us to honor the people in uniform right now. And we do.

If we are not inspired by uncountable acts of bravery, because the news media dismiss your service, or because we are too busy back home here with bread and circuses, then we are reminded, often enough, when we notice your missing arms and legs, when we learn of tearful surprise reunions with your kids… or when we see your weeping widows.

We are reminded of you, despite ourselves, when we read of crowded and shabby Veteran’s hospitals. We cannot forget you any more when the headlines reveal delays and needless deaths at VA facilities. Many of your families were forced to subsist on food stamps when you were “defending our freedom” overseas, and now that you are home, are poverty and neglect America’s real memorials to you?

I am aching to ask you questions, you older servicemen, if I could: is it all different now? Today we fight enemies so far from our shores, toward victories that have not been defined. So often fulfilling missions to build roads and schools and deliver classroom computers, when back home here, your own families are on government assistance, and there are American communities in need of roads and schools and classroom computers.

I know one thing that’s NOT different, because I have met some of the returning service people today, and have seen them on TV too. The uniforms still grace good people; people who have a sense of honor and duty; brave people who serve because service is honorable.

So, old timers, maybe if anything is different these days, it’s not the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines themselves; and maybe, when all is said and done, it’s not so much the service they are asked to perform. Maybe the biggest difference is what kind of America they have been fighting for, what Main Streets to which they return. I pray they are not much different than those of your day.

… but it was you men and women, now in your graves and represented in those memorials, who brought us to the point where we can even discuss these questions. You didn’t give us Freedom – God did that – but you all defended it. You knew the difference, and you did it well. Often it was brutally difficult, and usually it was far, far away from your homes.

So I’m going to tell you about trips we will take, many of us, this Memorial Day. Not as far away as your places of service and sacrifice. Some of us are not close to our relatives’ military graves, but all of us are close to some military grave or memorial. I am going to suggest that we, the living, pick some flowers or buy some flowers, or get a flag, even a little flag, and visit a military cemetery. Or any cemetery, and then look for a military emblem on the stone. Or a town’s war memorial.

We are going to place a “decoration,” maybe a thank-you letter or a prayer, to brighten your memory and honor you… whoever you are. We are going to pray thanksgiving for your service. For those of us who cannot get out, we are going to make that trip in our minds.

I look forward to visiting the grave of a stranger. I will symbolically shake your hand, and salute you. You represent much that was great about America. You represented US. God bless you.

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Many songs – patriotic, traditional, military – could follow this message. I have
chosen this old Johnny Cash recitation that decorates the memories of our late
military members with the colors red, white, and blue.

Click: That Ragged Old Flag

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

5-12-14

“Selfie” is the latest neologism – a newly invented word – to enter the dictionary. These days, everybody, it seems, has been infected with the need to photograph themselves and publish the images far and wide. No matter that one’s arm is extended awkwardly, to hold the camera; that angles are askew; that silly smiles predominate; that people crowd the frame, even if a chinbone or cowlick are all that appear.

Well, it’s fun. Evidently, because everyone, inevitably, smiles. Facebook would look like a dry ledger-sheet if selfies were banned. The Pope has been in selfies. President Obama even took a selfie with Prime Minister David Cameron and the hottie Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning Schmidt, at what should have been a somber occasion, the funeral of Nelson Mandela. (You remember: Michelle Obama, NOT in the selfie, was not amused.)

History, and the history of art, tells us something about the changing manners and mores of societies. Some cultures and religions proscribed images of faces. Peoples have believed that depicting individuals robbed them of their souls. “Iconoclasm” originally was a term applied to those who were against any artistic portraits, and believed that icons led to idol worship. For several generations, photographic portraits of presidents and peasants mirrored stone faces and serious miens. Eventually, people in family portraits and on driver licenses felt the need to smile like fools.

Whether selfies are narcissistic or merely an amusing triviality will likewise come and go, similarly hinting at what our civilization is about, or not. The relevance of such things has a shelf-life, with expiration dates.

So maybe we should call them shelfies. In a sense, selfies have been a part of human history, because – whether we have cameras or not – we humans tend to gather with our like-kinds. We want to be seen with certain people, whether friends or celebrities. We want to remember, and be remembered. We are joiners, we form loyalties, we associate. With or without photographs, humans have always tended to compose selfies.

In this form of “virtual” selfies, how often is Jesus one of the group of people who gather around you?

Think back over your “crowded hours.” At significant times, was Jesus next to you? Was He one of the smiling pals? Was He in your circle of friends? Have you, by implication, always invited Him, wanted Him near, held him close?

The answer about whether Jesus has been next to you… is Yes, of course. Even if you have not regularly included Him in your activities, associations, and fellowships. He is always with us.

Go deeper and you can realize that Jesus is “in” those virtual photos, in the virtual album of your life. But is He a background figure, waiting for your invitation to get in the shot? Or have you let Him be a major presence by your side – in moments of joy, or times of sadness; in triumphs and trials; in happiness and grief?

The answer to such questions, the title on the cover of your life’s family album, so to speak, will reveal whether smiles in those selfies and shelfies are real and warm and life-affirming, or silly and frozen and artificial.

Say “cheese!” Someone IS taking a picture.

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There is an old folk song that deals with the regrettable aspects of life’s random snapshots, if we let sadness overtake us, if we choose to be pictured solo. A lot of people think Hank Williams wrote “A Picture from Life’s Other Side” because he a great version; but it was an old standard when he recorded it. Likewise the Blue Sky Boys and Bradley Kinkaid. Some people think that J Frank Smith wrote it, when it became the first big seller in recorded gospel music in 1926 (by his Smith’s Sacred Singers, a shape-note quartet)… but it was an old standard even then. It existed as sheet music in the 1890s. But, its message is timeless. This is a Mac Wiseman cover. The “Voice With a Heart” was inducted in the Country Music Hall of fame this year – long overdue for the man who has kept traditional American ballads alive than any other recording artist

Click: A Picture from Life’s Other Side

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