Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-28-25

Mary was an old lady in our church. Maybe “the”old lady in our church. Nobody knew much about her. Widow or “old maid”? She always kept to herself. In fact, some of the other women thought her name was Marie. She was elderly, not ancient, and sometimes it was hard to understand her.

Poor old Mary had a skin condition. It seemed stretched over parts of her body, and it pulled her mouth tight. Everybody thought it must have been painful, but it was uncomfortable for others to look at. Poor old Mary. Nobody really wanted to shun her, but it sort of worked out that way.

We can say she kept to herself, but partly she arranged such a thing. When the invitations came to pray at the altar… she always was the first to limp up front. When prayer requests were sought, she was the first to bring her burdens to the Lord… and usually continued in prayer long after others stopped, and even sometimes till the church was nearly empty.

After a while her prayers, as they could be understood by the rest of us, were praises. Praises for having been healed. She didn’t look like there was any healing, however. In fact, over the months and years, she looked worse off – her skin looked progressively worse. Tighter… almost shiny across her face… ugly marks on her skin… her body was twisting worse… It seemed harder for her to walk… and harder for us to understand when she talked.

Poor old Mary.

We prayed for her, of course. Not always with her. I have to say that we all thought the prayers were futile – clearly she was not getting better – and it certainly was hard to form words of thanks when she clearly was getting worse. We could understand her words, barely; and sort of looked the other way when she limped around the sanctuary’s perimeter in one of her plain house dresses. And we sort of understood when she petitioned and thanked the Lord, ever more loudly.

But she continued to attend church, responded to the requests for members’ health and healing, and, louder and louder each Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, called out praises for being healed. In her mind. Frankly, our discomfort turned to embarrassment. After all these years…

This could not go on, many of us buzzed. And it did not.

One Wednesday evening she entered from the rear as usual. At least we thought it was Poor old Mary. This lady wore one of those dresses, and her hair was sort-of made up like Mary’s. But she was not bent over. She did not limp. It was her voice, familiar to us from the repeated requests and praises… but now we could understand her. Her lips were not stretched tight, and her skin was clear of those splotches and stretches.

And Mary did not limp down the aisle to take her usual place at the end of the pew up front. She ran around the perimeter of the sanctuary where so often she limped, mumbling her prayers. She ran. Now her arms were totally upraised. Her smiling face was hers, not a stretched disfigurement. “Thank you Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!” were now heard clearly.

When she reached her usual seat, many of us gathered around her. She couldn’t sit – not because of the pain, but because she was irrepressibly happy – and we scarcely could ask her a question between her torrent of praise and tears of joy. But it was Poor Old Mary. “Poor” no more, after all this time!

“Mary, Mary!” we succeeded in getting through. “When were you healed???”

She looked up at us, one by one. It was, again, a little hard to understand her – but this time it was because she was laughing and crying tears of joy and was exhausted from running around the church. But she said:

“When was I healed? Two thousand years ago!”

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Click: The Healer

4-21-25

As we awoke this morning my wife asked me about the “to-do” list I had scribbled out the night before. Oh yeah. Let me see what was important last night and what I somehow forgot to remember but needs attention. Sometimes that happens to all of us.

Actually I can check several to-do lists, because I seldom throw things away. Sometimes I find old scraps of paper and notes like that. Oh, here’s one:

Friday.

After breakfast, clean up yard, take kids to game.

Noon. Join friends to watch the Savior of Humanity be nailed to a cross at Golgotha. Mock Him. Watch Him die.
Evening. Have dinner with friends.

Of course I am not quite that old, but this could have been my to-do list for that first Good Friday. It probably describes how many people spent that day. Sometimes I come face-to-face with the likelihood that the previous week I would have recorded that my activities, planned or unfolding, would have included praising this gentle Jesus as He entered Jerusalem, laying down palms and garments; watching as He rebuked money-lenders outside the Temple and challenged the religious Establishment; become convinced that He was dangerous and needed to be… executed. Watching Him be whipped until nearly dead. I would have spat on Him as He dragged His own cross to Calvary.

Sometimes I realize that of course I would have done those things. Everyone else did that Week. Am I any different? Are you?

If I had kept a diary, some notes after the Crucifixion might have noted:

Watched Jesus be nailed through the wrists and feet.

Watched the soldiers slam the mocking crown of sharp thorns on His head.

Heard Him moan in agony. Heard Him ask God to… forgive the soldiers.

Heard Him ask God to forgive me… all of us.

Then,

Saw Jesus look down through His sweat and blood and tears… at me.

Sometimes I know that is how my diary would have read. Because He did look down at me. Not a 2000-year-old story-version of me… but me, today, now, here. God’s only Son looked down on all of us in those moments, supernaturally at us all, in that crowd, across Jerusalem, around the world, through time to today.

Jesus suffered and died for all of us. Yes, He made eye-contact. He knew us. He knows us. He loves us. To those who believe He was and is the Son of God, and that He would be raised from the dead to conquer sin and death – Oh, what a to-do list and diary entries for Easter Sunday would have been like! – He promises eternal life with Him.

Well. Back to the present. Despite the truth, not a story, the Salvation experience does compress time and space. The Bible tells us that the pre-incarnate Jesus was the Person by whom the universe was created; that God is the Great “I am,” not “I was” or “I will be sometimes”; that Jesus is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

The only thing that changes in these realistic stories is me. Oh… and you: the everyday folks who plan their days, go about their business, take the kids to games, and casually watch the Savior of their souls be mocked, tortured, and killed.

How would your diary entries read?

What would your to-do list be like?

Two thousand years ago, or now, you still can fill out your to-do list. You still have things to do. If they include meeting His loving, forgiving gaze, and responding to Him… do that item on that list. Think on these things this weekend. Sometimes it causes you to tremble. Or it should.

“Were you there” when they crucified our Lord?

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Click: Were You There?

4-14-25

I have spent a good portion of my years commenting on social challenges and political problems. As a political cartoonist, columnist, speaker, and blogger (and, I suppose, curmudgeon) one of my well-worn hats has been Commentator. So I am going to comment on matters that have been impressed on me lately – different realizations, different responses, than I, and most of us, I think, have considered.

For all of America’s vaunted blessings, we have been cursed, too, with myriad maledictions. “American Exceptionalism” does not mean, as professional detractors claim, that we believe that a US birth certificate bestows special privilege; it means that the American experience has been unique in practice and promise.

… or used to be.

Despite American dominance in trade and military might and financial activity we all sense that these are roller-coaster rides at best and, currently, chimeras at worst. Are we living past the expiration-dates of such aspects of national life?

I think that throughout most of history, if we asked average citizens of this country or that land or some territory what they thought their greatest Problem was – for all peoples have had some complaints – the responses would be hostile enemies, or persistent illnesses, or cruel leaders. Welcome to life; the human condition; societal struggles. Ask sentient Americans, however, and the answers would be different.

Most people would go straight to a long list of problems, challenges, and American crises. They would choose the most onerous or threatening to their conditions. Their fears and face over-extension and essential concerns would be reflected by their choices. Different than history’s list of civilizations and their discontents, the average American would tick off things like low morals, drug addiction, failed marriages, crime in their actual neighborhoods, corruption, low literacy, the anarchy of gender dysphoria, and similar social malignancies.

In other words, today’s threats – America’s threats – are more of attitudes and morals than of physical intimidation and dangers. With few exceptions (the Roman Empire, for instance, after centuries of strength and a robust economy before it slid into decay) civilizations have not dissolved in the way that America has. There is an inertia of good fortune (squandered) and a matter of false security (strength; manipulation of conditions; and the bully’s attitude of global hegemony – a hallmark of empires when they approach collapse). The malignancy of imperial passions is one of the confirmations of the Law of Civilization and Decay, in the parlance of Brooks Adams. A pattern from which societies have not learned.

It strikes me that the current state of analysis of American problems is, as a discipline, weirdly schizophrenic. “Deep thinkers” and academics of the Left, long dominant in America and Europe, lately have been answered by intellectual technicians of the Right. The debates go on, and are robust.

But so does the dissolution of our society. We have social theories, but few social palliatives. We have some new answers, but many more new questions. To endemic challenges to the human condition, we tend to return to failed, even disastrous, modes despite the attempts of History to teach us.

Pollsters and analysts discover “new” things. They draw conclusions from wrongly posited questions. They address the superficial, even as the Emperor parades before them, scarcely clothed. Omar Khayyam wrote,

All the saints and sages who discuss’d

Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn

Are scattered. Their mouths are stopp’d with dust.

I believe that our current age, and “pundits” especially, have missed the main points of the crises we endure – whether from ignorance, strategic distraction, or naivete. I used the word “moral” above, describing the nature of the threats we have allowed, and which will be the vehicle of our destruction. This is our fate. But a moral crisis only partly defines the origin of our situation.

We have a spiritual problem.

And only a spiritual response can overcome it.

Nobody can argue that America was not founded on spiritual principles; nor that the Founders and Framers – even “Deists” – did not revere Biblical injunctions and models by which to fashion a society and government; nor that laws were written (and obeyed) adhering to Christian precepts. We are a Christian nation, the Supreme Court once declared. God is acknowledged on public buildings, including Congress, and on our currency. Dozens of our presidents have invoked Christ and pleaded for His guidance.

… until recently. The sick and destructive elements of Everyday Life in America are man-made, and not mere absent-minded choices, but willful rejection of God’s commandments and Jesus’s teachings. After uncountable generations of spiritual laws and spiritual examples… we now think we can tell God that He made mistakes when He assigned sexes to His children? That love and marriage are trivial matters? That we no longer need to obey His commands?

Our destruction is sure unless we, as a nation, return to God, to Christian principles.

Politicians need to discover humility. Cultural icons need to acknowledge and respect God. Pundits and pollsters need to discard reliance on false premises (because statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do). The clergy needs to shed ephemeral political correctness and return to the Word of God. Parents, and children, need to ignore the seductions of what is “in,” and follow the Bible in their daily walks. Corporate leaders, the military, the educational-industrial complex, need to follow God and not whims.

Spiritual problems are at the core of the crises we face and will destroy us… unless America experiences a spiritual revival. And God will not send a revival: We must be the conscious, willful agents of such a change.

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Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown

4-7-25

There is a Bible verse about rain falling on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:5). King Solomon said that time and chance happeneth to all. Jesus says that the sun rises on evil people and the righteous alike, and rain – or misfortune – pours down on everyone. These are reality-checks, not notes of resignation. We are to be aware that not everything in life is specific to individuals, rewards or punishments on this side of Eternity, but rather that we must rise above our circumstances (yes, even look beyond blessings). And, importantly, that hope and redemption always are available to all.

Ultimately, these factors are all components of faith. When we are among the people who love God, accept Christ, and endeavor to do good, yet suffer misfortune, we affirm our humanity when we wonder, even for brief moments, why bad things visit us. Why? Why?

The hard answer is that there is sin in the world, a condition that transcends our righteous efforts, no matter how sanctified some folks might be. It is a world that God created, but that human nature has corrupted. Our charge is to resist evil, to be overcomers. As we travel life’s paths, we realize that God does not tempt us… but He does test us. This is not to play with us or our emotions; but it is to enrich our spiritual maturity, to strengthen our faith.

Some applications of faith come supernaturally. It is Biblical to not only exercise faith but to pray for faith, for an “increase of faith,” and to realize that the Holy Spirit was sent partly and specifically to gird our faith. God requires much of us. He has issued commands throughout human history. Jesus shared many lessons and “marching orders.” But faith is the virtual foundation-stone of communication with the Almighty, and receiving blessings.

This week I endured some “rain falling” in my life. Moving my household goods and a massive collection of rare books, original artwork by famous illustrators and cartoonists, complete runs of many vintage magazines and newspapers to the house I will share with my new wife Mickey, the moving van took a rainy highway exit too fast, rolled over twice, and spilled its contents. Not a stick of my furniture survived, and my archives spilled over the road and wet ground. It was a valuable archive that took a lifetime to assemble (and I am old). Friends try to reassure me – “it’s only paper”; “insurance might cover the loss” – but, signed first editions and such aside, that was my life passing before my eyes.

Yet what was catastrophic for me pales in comparison, I quickly remember, to life-altering matters I once shared. My late wife Nancy sustained health “challenges” all her life long: diabetes; celiac disease; five heart attacks; several strokes; cancer; amputations; a heart transplant; a kidney transplant; ultimately Lewy Bodies syndrome, a form of creeping dementia. “That all must have been hard on you,” friends again said, reaching for sympathy. Are they kidding? Even a spouse cannot fully comprehend such curses. In our case, everything I experienced were mere inconveniences… especially as I beheld her life of acceptance, optimism, witnessing to others. Faith.

Where does one find the kind of faith that, like peace, passes understanding?

An underlying message of all God’s instructions – the bedrock requirement of those who would be children of God – is that we have faith. Faith in God’s Word; faith in God’s promises; faith in revealed supernatural things. Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11). If you have never found these characteristics difficult, you need a check-up from the neck-up. It is why we plead for the Holy Spirit’s help in times of emotional need. Can we be so faithful on our own?

Remember, we are told that to be saved it is as simple in God’s eyes as confessing that Jesus is the Son of God and believing that God raised Him from the dead. Faith.

I wrote a message some time ago that I had the “Big C,” and many readers thought I meant Cancer. OK, I rattled some cages, but what I meant by the Big C was… Christ. Faith in Christ does not make us immune from life’s vicissitudes; but it gets us through them, and even triumph over them.

This week, these truths – the only, only sane manner by which to endure and triumph over life’s storms – were brought home to me in ways I have not felt since the crises of my family’s “challenges,” even more poignant than my archives’ recent calamity. Pastor Loren Larson, of Family Worship Center, Baton Rouge LA, returned to the pulpit after months of coping with brain cancer, cancer throughout his body, attendant disorientation and, naturally, emotional distress.

His message is remarkable, and is Must-See TV for anyone dealing with cancer, suspicious of having cancer, a relative of a cancer victim… or anyone experiencing any challenges – shaky faith, lack of faith, or difficulty in exercising faith. Brother Larson admits, freely, to “human moments” when his fervent trust and beliefs were undermined; when those still, quiet moments bring terror instead of reassurance.

As he shared with prayer partners in the message, many of the tumors are shrinking, though some remain. He retains faith in the God who heals; and trusts that prayer can move the heart of God. Still, Brother Larson cannot shake the “human moments.” He praises God – not only for the evidences of healing, but reaffirming the truth that faith can heal the soul as well as the body. What can he, and we, do but trust and obey? Faith.

Faith in God is essential in our daily walk. Having, myself, chosen it (and often pushed into the mode by the Holy Spirit!) I cannot imagine going through certain situations without it… whether the situation is a little misplaced document or an impending life-altering calamity.

Faith in God is not merely the best way to navigate life’s journey, but the only way. It is God’s provision for us to keep dry from the “rain.”

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Click: I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief