Monday Morning Music Ministry

Start Your Week with a Spiritual Song in Your Heart

Eyes and Ears, Hearts and Minds

6-10-19

It is hard to hear the voice of God when we are stressed.

This is something most of us know, especially in these days when stress is blamed – probably correctly – for myriad ills from emotional problems to actual physical afflictions. It is the epidemic of contemporary life in many societies.

My son-in-law Norman McCorkell recently delivered a sermon on this message. At moments of high stress, we can not only miss the wisdom of God, but the words of those around us, and even that “still, small voice” of our own convictions. Stress can be like the moon in a full eclipse, blotting out the sun.

There is a frequent reaction among the faithful who occasionally feel abandoned that God has grown distant. Well, He does not grow distant – we move; He doesn’t – but when stress somehow keeps us from hearing God, the problem is not God’s voice, and maybe not even our internal “ears”… but our eyes.

We can seek God, not only in prayer, but by reading His Word.

It is human nature (which we must try to fight) that we seek God less when things are going well. When challenges, problems, crises – stress – comes, then we despair. Do we blame God? We pray and seek Him in those times.

If that is true, then short of physical sickness, should we not think, or fear, that God might allow those things, even stress, to cross our path… if that is a trigger for us getting closer to Him? It should make us shiver.

My late wife Nancy used to say that the devil is not really after our minds. After all, through life we believe this and that, learn and forget things, follow old or new theories. But the devil is after our hearts. He hates us not because we have pulses, but according to the amount of Jesus that exists in our hearts.

Head-knowledge is nothing when compared to heart-belief.

When your heart is serene, you will find that frustration over “hearing” the voice of God, or of friends, or of your own feelings, is less demanding.

And. Less. Stressful.

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Click: Till the Storm Passes By

Who Would Pray For Half a Miracle?

5-6-19
There is a particular pitfall in Christianity, or rather the “walk,” the life, of Christians. Even sincere and fervent Christians – I would say maybe more so with dedicated believers.

It is a type of presumption, and is totally natural: our human nature. I am not talking about rebellion or faulty belief. Perhaps we can characterize it as total faith but imperfect understanding. Believers, acting by their human natures, sometimes tend to assume, or presume, to know what pleases God.

Is this a good thing? Usually. To address this pitfall has pitfalls itself, I know. Bear with me. I will paint an exaggerated picture; but I know it is true because I have fallen into this pit myself during my Christian walk.

Of course we want to please God. And He knows when we are in the Word; and not. He hears us when we pray; and when we don’t. He knows the burdens of our hearts; when we grieve and cannot pray well – we tell ourselves – the Bible assures us that the Holy Spirit groans in Heavenly languages before the Throne. Yet we pray, and we should, fervently, and we are promised in all these things that God hears the prayers of the righteous.

Have you ever prayed about a crisis – a nephew on death’s door; an unsaved loved one; an issue with your marriage, job, finances – and prayed something like, “Thank You, Lord, for hearing my prayer. Thank you for restoring my spirit. Thank you for the guidance that you will speak to me.”

What I mean is, have you ever prayed, in effect, “Thank You, God! I’ll take it from here”?

If we pray for a miracle… why take half of it back, before God even acts?

I shook my fist at heaven for all the hell that I’ve been through, Now I’m begging for forgiveness and a miracle from You.

We sometimes – maybe oftentimes – have the spiritual feeling that a good Christian just needs a little boost, some prayerful reinforcement, that “just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.” And then, all our training and Bible-reading can kick in.

I suggest that this attitude might be something we design to impress God… not beseech of Him. God wants our total mind, soul, and body… but not merely up to a point. He needs our total commitment, and total surrender. Especially in times of total trouble.

I’ve tried to fight this battle by myself, But it’s a war that I can’t win without Your help…

Let us consider, among many personal challenges, the example of alcoholism and the ravages it inflicts on people and families. I suggest that it is not wrong to ask God for “help,” “strength,” “understanding,” a family’s “patience,” a boss’s “forbearance,” and God’s “forgiveness.” Fervent prayer… even hundreds of prayers.

But, as long as we have God’s ear, so to speak, how many of us pray for a miracle – beyond, say, receiving one more chance from a spouse; but the kind of miracle only God can enact. For instance, losing the desire? being freed from “those places”? waking up a New Creation? Not when you need more than a “fix”! When you need a miracle, not a break.

Once upon a time You turned the water into wine, And now, on my knees, I’m turning to You, Father: Could You help me turn the wine back into water?

Think, when you pray, to realize what is the nature of your Loving God, and all He wants for you… what He can do for you!

When you pray for miracles, be mindful not to pray for partial-miracles. You have taken it as far as you can go; He knows. Let Him take it from there!

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A song written and sung by T Graham Brown. Guest slideshow by a man who has lived this song:

Click: Help Me Turn This Wine Back Into Water

Easter Has Some Riddles and Sayings

4-8-19

I actually am a respecter of what I call “bumper-strip theology.” Sayings, aphorisms, Bible truths that can fit on a bumper strip on cars. Or note cards, or refrigerator notes, even on T-shirts. When lacking in formality or reverence that they threaten to be sacrilegious, no – but usually the wearer or bearer intends to honor God.

And… if there is an easy, attention-getting way to convey Bible truths, it is a good thing. I know one of one example of a lady who first saw the ubiquitous “Footprints” poster in a discount store… was profoundly impressed by the message … and became a devoted Christian. Holy ground? Think about it.

Pretending to possess no such wisdom as the creator of that graphic seashore image and legend, I have however thought of some phrases appropriate for the Easter season… that might encapsulate the Easter message; or the gravity of the Passion of Jesus; or the nature of the Incarnation; or the blessings of the Resurrection.

Bumpers… fridges… bulletin boards… caps and T-shirts… texts… go for it.

You can tattoo on your hearts, too.

Jesus Willed 

To Be Killed

 

His heart bled… for you

 

Surrender Led to Victory

 

What makes you think you’re so special?

…Just because Jesus did?

 

The world’s first evangelists were women!

 

He was born to die

 

Our sins helped drive those nails

 

He has risen indeed!

 

He was on the cross,

but you were on His mind

 

Would you sacrifice YOUR son for strangers?

 

It is Finished!

 

I find no fault in this Man.”

 

Would you have denied Jesus too?

 

If I be lifted up,

I will draw all people to me.”

 

Even though I die…”

 

He died for you while you were yet a sinner

 

If He’s not in the tomb, where is He?

 

Render Unto Jesus

Your Everlasting Soul

 

HE LIVES!!!

 

Father, forgive them…”

 

Who do YOU say that I am?”

 

What man meant for evil, God meant for good

 

Quick: Name another leader who rose from the dead!

 

For Christ’s sake… Think of what He did for you.

 

You can tattoo these on your hearts, too.

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Click: Bach’s “We Thank You, God, We Thank You.”

What’s Good About Good Friday?

4-15-19

The week started great, remember? Jesus enters Jerusalem, hailed by throngs on all sides with praise and Hosannas.

In rapid succession, it dissolves. Conspiracy, trumped-up charges, accusations, kangaroo court trial, arrest, persecution, torture, betrayal, denial, imprisonment, humiliation, death sentence, crucifixion, agonizing death.

And the crowds that sang His praises only days earlier, now cursed and spat at Him.

What could be worse than that Friday? In world history, what could be worse – from the perspective of confused followers of Jesus, I have tried to picture the excruciating period between the death on the cross and the Resurrection.

Where did He go? What did we do? What about His promises? What happens now? Is hope gone…?

In the larger sense, for followers and observers alike, many would have seen irony in the fact that this day would come to be called Good Friday. Remember, the earth shook, the sky turned dark, the veil in the Temple was rent top to bottom. Even a Roman centurion said, “Surely this was the Son of God.” The Jewish historian Josephus, who never was to believe, nevertheless recorded the facts of the crucifixion, Resurrection, and Jesus’s subsequent appearances.

Indeed people still wonder, through it all, why it is called Good Friday.

“Good”?

There are etymological theories that the German Gottes Freitag (“God’s Friday”) or Gute Freitag (“Good Friday”) were the origins; the Ancient English Godes Friday (“God’s Friday”) is also cited. In parts of Europe the day is called “Great” or “Holy,” not “Good.” In Denmark the ancient Angle term “Long Friday” still survives. In Greek Orthodox practice, the day is called “Holy and Great Friday” in the Greek liturgy. In parts of southern Europe, “Holy Friday”; in middle Europe Karfreitag (“Sorrowful Friday”).

Clearly – no mystery – we understand that in God’s view, in His holy plan, the sacrificial death of His only-begotten Son was good for Him, and we humans, if we would realize it. We have a means to be reconciled by that substitutionary death.

Anyone who has lost a child knows how horrible it was for God to allow – no, to plan – the death of His son. But it was good; it was good for the rest of His children.

And it was long prophesied: What man meant for evil, God meant for good (Genesis 50:20). It was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer (Isaiah 53:10).

All for us.

That is good.

Specifically, all for you. You, and me, individually. I believe that if had been possible that you or I were the only sinners in history, God would still have delivered Jesus to the cross, that the Atonement would be applied even to you or me.

That is good!

Can we comprehend such Love? Don’t try; it is overwhelming. Rather than fully understanding, we should wholly respond… in gratitude, honor, praise, contrition, repentance, humility. In… faith.

That is good.

When we are able to sincerely thank God for his Goodness, we have a sense that the Crucifixion, as horrible as it first seems to us, is God saying “You’re welcome.”

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Click: The King Is Coming

Death Could Not Hold a King

Saturday, 4-21-19

Luke 23: 33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

35 And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.

36 And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar,

37 And saying, If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself.

38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This Is The King Of The Jews.

39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

45 And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

47 Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.

48 And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.

49 And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.

50 And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just:

51 (The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God.

52 This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.

53 And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.

54 And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.

56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

Luke 24: 1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

8 And they remembered his words,

9 And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

10 It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

11 And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.

14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?

19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:

20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.

21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.

22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;

23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:

26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?

27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.

29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.

30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?

33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,

34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.

35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.

38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?

39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.

41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?

42 And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.

43 And he took it, and did eat before them.

44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:

47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

48 And ye are witnesses of these things.

We are witnesses of these things. He is risen!

Click: The Night Before Easter

Unworthy 

3-11-19

There are many “new” Christians, converts, and born-again believers, who experience many fresh insights into God; or at least their relationship with Him.

One of those feelings, and I speak from experience, is to be overwhelmed by an awareness of God’s majesty, and all those Omnis – Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent.

Sometimes that flood of awareness is manifested in the type of awe that makes us feel unworthy. We realize that we are “the apples of God’s eye,” and that He loved us so much that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to provide a way for our salvation.

And we know that we can “boldly approach the Throne of Grace.”

But we become aware that our righteousness is still as filthy rags compared to the glory and holiness of God.

So many of us consider a proper prayer to begin with the confession that we are unworthy in His sight. We humble ourselves, begging that He deign to hear our prayers.

Even seasoned Christians, not only “baby Christians,” will pray to God in this manner. He created the heavens and the earth; and despite His knowing the numbers of hairs on our heads, it easy to see ourselves as microscopic sinners in the great hands of a God such as He. Whether He is angry or merciful, surely we should be humble and realize how insignificant we are –

– except that we are not.

If you want to pray properly, you should see yourself properly. That is, as God sees you. The Bible more often says “worthily.” Not to be Unworthy – meaning that Worthiness is to understand and respect God’s own perspective.

We are Worthy because it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.

We are Worthy because He loved us with an everlasting love, before we were formed or born.

We are Worthy because He became flesh and dwelt among us; the Incarnate Jesus identified with our pain and suffering and joys; He was persecuted, endured agony, injustice, torture, rejection, desertion, crucifixion, and death for us; and rose and ascended to assert His divinity that we can believe and be saved…

Would the Lord do all that if we are unworthy?

Ah, some might say, we were unworthy while we were yet sinners. And now things are different. Yes! Just so. But if you understand that dividing-line… do you act like it?

Without being presumptuous, we must realize that – whatever our sins of the past or present; or however we might feel about ourselves for the moment – God cannot see those things!

When you pray, and Jesus is in your heart, God sees not you, but Jesus. He hears your prayers, but sees not the “old you” but the Jesus in you. When He looks down, so to speak, you might think He sees the sinner, but when you are covered in the blood – the sign of atonement and forgiveness that was foreshadowed ages before Jesus, in the “Pass-over,” – He sees the Blood before He sees you. And He will hear your prayers, but you need to remember that the Holy Spirit also groans and sings and advocates for us.

Guilt is drowned out; guilt has been paid for; guilt has been erased.

Understanding our relationship with God – our true standing – makes us Worthy indeed.

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Click: Victory in Jesus / Power In the Blood

People “Care.” What Is It, Though…?

2-25-19

When Obama ran for president the first time, one of his campaign slogans was “Yes, We Can!” Remember?

I wondered at the time – and still do – why the mesmerized people did not pause to ask, “Yes, we can WHAT?”

Ever the cranky grammarian, it bothered me less as a political postulation than as a sentence with a noun and verb lacking an object. Can What? I wondered why people bought into – or did not question – the lack of a literal object; vision; goal.

We have become a people supposedly more literate than those of past generations… but surely less literal. When our language is imprecise, I think it reflects the lower standards of our beliefs. We are less assured about past assurances. Our values have lost their value.

“Caring” is another word that has been cheapened by over-use and under-appreciation.

Also rising from the political swamps, memes like “I care…” and “They don’t care…” have become weapons, mostly offensive in both senses of that word.

OK, so we should think of “caring” as transitive – that is, caring about something; caring for someone. Not an expressed emotion, merely, but a quality that will have a result. That result can be “successful” or “futile”… but the cause or especially the person being cared for knows whether a cliché or something heartfelt, earnest, sincere is at work.

Obviously – once we start this sort of deconstruction – we think of people like Mother Teresa, who cared and acted. Of Albert Schweitzer, who cared and served. Of Billy Graham, who cared and shared. Of Cardinal Mindszenty, who cared and sacrificed.

“Caring” as an action verb.

Taking nothing from saints and sages and relatives and neighbors, honestly, we can be touched by them, savor their work, honor them, esteem them as role models… but (again, no offense meant) their caring can only extend so far.

They were humans. Humans are fallible; or, put another way, their ability to “care” is finite, and usually defined by their ability to act and affect your life, or the problem they address.

You know what’s coming: There is only One – and only one, throughout all of history – who Cares with infinite care. Whose caring can profoundly change the cause of our hurts or problems or grief or sorrow. As He brings peace that passeth understanding, He cares in ways that touch our souls.

Jesus is the only One whose job description is Caring. And to know – to feel – that perfect care can change your circumstances, your day… your life.

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Click: Does Jesus Care?

Heart and Mouth and Deeds and Life

1-21-19

January 21 is the anniversary of my wife Nancy’s death. It often seems easier for people to say “passing” instead of “death”; and with many people, about many situations, “passing” is perfectly appropriate. Not like passing, say, over the River Styx. In Greek mythology, that river separated the living from Hades, or hell, and grief was associated with that last journey.

In Christian typology, we pass from this life to Heaven, to Paradise, to Eternal Life. It sometimes has been corrupted by fictions of Limbo and Purgatory, but those way-stations are not in the Bible. Believers can be assured that upon death we will be in the presence of Jesus; standing before the Throne.

Sometimes it is called the Great Hope, also known as the Blessed Assurance. During Nancy’s long illness – several heart attacks, then transplanted heart and kidneys – she started a hospital ministry, praying with patients and their families, and conducting weekly services. This was on the Heart Failure floor of Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

She waited four and a half months for a new heart after being listed. The ministry – a family ministry on the floor, with my children and me fully participating – continued for many years. Nancy could identify with hurting patients, because she also was plagued with diabetes, celiac disease, cancer, five mini-strokes, amputation, dialysis. The counsel of people who have shared your pain or problems always resonates.

Remarkably (no, for Christians, “predictably”) we saw conversions, a few miracles, family members and casual visitors touched in vital ways. Jews attended our open services. Blacks loved the Southern Gospel music we sometimes would play; rural farmers discovered the blessings of Black spirituals. One woman whose husband died after transplant told us she believed that her husband’s heart failed just so he would wind up at Temple and attracted to our services, where he became a Christian. A “God thing,” she thought. That is not biblical… but those were the sorts of emotions and testimonies.

I could write this message about hearts around Valentine’s day, too; but the messages are universal. Also… Nancy received her new heart, ironically, on Valentine’s Day. That became her new birthday, but we also remember much on the day of her home-going.

“Home-going” is what some Christians call it. Properly. Other terms were natural about Christianity and salvation… when confronting heart failure. “Give your heart to Jesus”… “Create in me a new heart, O Lord”… so many verses. It made it easier, or frequently more challenging, to construct messages or offer a prayer. But, oh, the church services (funerals; “home-goings”) we discovered, for instance in the Black churches – “preach-offs,” joyous singing and dancing. The ecstatic prayers and songs of the Pentecostals.

One focus of Nancy’s ministry was to enforce and reinforce the point that “head knowledge” was not enough for a child of God. Passing a quiz, reciting Bible verses, even merely attending church gain you nothing in themselves. We had emotional adherents who had never been to churches in their lives; one big fella cried when he confessed to never having prayed, publicly, in his life… before he did so in our fellowship. But Nancy did not feed them weak milk.

“You must do more than know things in your head,” she said. “You must know in your heart… believe deep down in your heart.” That Jesus is the Son of God; that He died for our sins; that God raised Him from the dead. Heart knowledge.

That basic message, the “old, old story,” is all that humankind needs. Head knowledge will follow. Good works will be the result of a redeemed life. The “fruits of the spirit” come in the life of a born-again believer. But Nancy preached about the nature of those “fruits,” what the next steps were after one’s spiritual heart was transplanted.

The heart, even more important than the mind, is the first change in the life of new-born believers. An ancient German hymn is titled, “Heart and Mouth and Deeds and Life.” Tending to those things is not only a road-map for Christians, but wisdom for the lives of every person. In all aspects and ramifications.

Nancy tended to those matters in life, and was an example. Christ’s example, of course; the light unto our paths.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata, number 147, based on those words. It is one of his most profound, and contains several passages that are commonly heard today. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” for instance, is the 10th movement Chorale:

Jesus remains my joy,
my heart’s comfort and essence,
Jesus resists all suffering,
He is my life’s strength,
my eye’s desire and sun,
my soul’s love and joy;
so will I not leave Jesus
out of heart and face.

Let us remember, from the Beatitudes of Jesus: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

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Click: Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben

Bread and Circuses vs God and His Handiwork

1-14-19

What impresses people these days? Rather, let us think about how we are impressed in contemporary society… how we measure success… how “success” conflates with validation… and how we let ourselves be seduced by twisted value-systems.

Ratings? Polls? Fads? The newest trends, dance moves, drinks, celebrities and their endorsements? “We like sheep have gone astray…” In contemporary life it seems like everybody salivates for the latest cultural marching orders.

We should not be surprised by a chintzy value system when the values being pursued are debased. In tragic synergy, we have lowered our standards; the core aspects of our civilization are cheapened; and they in turn inform the next generation. A downward spiral.

Exhibit A, among myriad bellwethers: throughout history (until the Modern Age in Western civilization), virtually all artistic expression was expressed heavenward. Praising God, celebrating His works. Canvases, sculpture, music, architecture. I am ready for nit-pickers: music sometimes was social; art could also be purely decorative. Ancient sculptures to their small-g gods? – still religious in nature. Architecture from, say, public buildings in ancient Greece? – Plato commended artists to reflect the spiritual Perfection that he discerned in the world; Aristotle taught people to strive for the Golden Mean, less abstract, but as spiritual.

But since the Modern Age, coalescing during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, mankind has elevated Self instead of God. We have turned inward – all the while convincing ourselves we are turning outward, with broader visions, and universal sympathy.

Works of art now “explore” ourselves; “explain” our problems; depict our low estate; obsess over our contradictions, flaws, conflict, and doom. Social scientists can say – and artists say, when they process the situation – that confronting problems is the first step to solving them. That analysis is glib, not profound.

There is no way to traffic in humanity’s misery without making it attractive, or at least compelling. Movies, for instance, have to make evil and corruption glamorous, if not inevitable, in order to sell tickets.

At one time, men and women – who knew quite well the problems of the world and the flaws in human nature – dealt with such basic challenges not by depicting awful things in ever starker details, but by glorifying God, employing Biblical standards, discerning His answers for this troubled world.

In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the man with the muck-rake was to be scorned – a man who forever focused on the mire and mud, never looking up.

It is sadly inevitable, absent superhuman enlightenment and discipline, that a civilization that empowered the Individual, encouraged literacy, and expanded democracy, would eventually replace God with Self. “Self” is human nature, which all but naive sociologists would agree is flawed. Our various communities cannot help but be flawed as a consequence. Art is debased, government is corrupted, tradition is discarded.

Again inevitably, when disaster impends, mankind in this “value” system tends not to reform but to justify. To double-down. To blame everything and everybody except… our selves. The fault, if we would stop and see it, is not in the stars, but in our selves, that we are underlings.

When Rome began its decline and fall, its leaders reacted to warning signs by distracting the populace with, famously, bread and circuses. And the Roman population, from nobles to citizens to slaves, were happy to be seduced.

The sad proof of our depravity – of the rotting core amid material glitz – is what we celebrate in art. The sensual; self-gratification; the banality of evil. These barometers reveal the reality of broken homes and broken lives; a multitude of addictions; abuse and oppression. Yet we look down, instead of Up.

A re-discovery God and His ways is not the best solution to mankind’s sorry state… but the only solution.

Revival will only come if it is sought. Salvation of the soul is still offered by God to hurting people, as always. But to understand the redemption of a society, we can advance, ironically, by looking backward. If we are not immediately impressed by God Himself as we behold the range of artistic expression, we are mightily impressed by men and women… who gave themselves over to God in profound ways.

A lost paradigm, but not irretrievable.

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Click: Bach: Air On the G String

Let God Make Our New Year’s Resolutions

12-31-18

The French have a saying, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It often seems apt, and is of course a variant of a Biblical principle (God usually nails it, right?) found in Ecclesiastes – “There is nothing new under the sun.”

These sort of thoughts occur to many of us around New Years, or I might say, specifically after New Year’s, when our resolutions wither and die. The French phrase translates to “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This is not necessarily white-flag defeatism, but rather a reflection of human nature. And January received its name from the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of endings and beginnings.

Many of us do not merely make (and break) resolutions around now. And we will not address that famous “road to hell” that is paved with good intentions, because pledges to improve, or reform, or lose weight, or clean the office, are fungible; and at least reflect proper impulses. We also, at this time of year, often grow nostalgic… remember friends… regret mistakes… miss family members… plan to renew old acquaintances. Also proper impulses.

Perhaps the fatal flaw with intentions and resolutions is that ol’ human nature. It seems wiser to pray that the Holy Spirit equip us to be tender and resourceful and sympathetic, rather than relying on our own lists and computer calendars and strings around our fingers.

Implicit in New Year’s resolutions is a whole lot of Self – we can discern; we can assign; we can choose; we can self-motivate; we can mark the dates and goals.

We can… but we often don’t.

I am thinking of this week. Most people are happy (surveys say) with the course of the economy and “optimistic about the future.” Unemployment numbers are good … and so forth. How many people have a bounce in their step as the new year unfolds?

In my own little world, I am happy enough, and grateful to God for my blessings. But just in the past few days, I have learned, or been reminded, of friends and relatives with radically different prospects. A friend whose happily married daughter is… not so happily married. The sudden death, perhaps from meningitis, of 26-year-old commentator Bre Payton, a rising star. A friend whose daughter and grandkids went into hiding because of an abusive husband. A friend whose husband has been ill for months, in pain and not eating, wasting away. A friend whose daughter has been estranged for two years, rejecting outreach and severing relations with grandsons caught in the middle. A friend whose only child is mercurial to the point of heartbreak, variously cheerful and abusive. A friend who has just gone on Hospice.

Is everything seen, all of a sudden, as the “glass half empty”? (– or half-full? I never understood the proper term or distinction of that). No. Of all my friends above, with one exception where “negative confession” is her reaction of choice, these people do count their blessings, and are mindful of silver linings. Another friend whose daughter impulsively got pregnant, got married, and got separated in mind-numbing and sad rapidity, nevertheless praises God for clarity and rededication… and so does her precious daughter. My friend on Hospice is in a situation that would make people cry, yet is full of life and enthusiasm that is inspiring.

We must always remember, or realize, that behind every storm cloud the sun still shines brightly. Storm clouds pass, but the sun shines always, after storms and after dark nights.

Our job as Christians, trying to live as Christians – and maybe to be, or to reflect, that sun to others – is, if I may put it this way, how to order the gloomy news and the hopeful news. Joy… BUT? or horrible news… BUT!

But there is hope; but there is redemption; but there is the bright day ahead.

So, here we go again, in January. Rather than relying on our own “Do-Better” lists, why don’t we all make a New Years Resolution to let God order our ways, light our pathways, and inhabit our praise?

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For all the friends with challenges and grief I listed here – and for each other – let us pray. Farther along, we’ll know all about it…

Click: Farther Along

Progress, the False God of Our Age

9-24-18

It occurs to me more and more, lately, that we – all of us; not only Christians or Westeners; but everyone with a pulse these days – should be a heck of a lot humbler than we are. In fact, not too many residents of the 21st century are humble at all, so we all have a long way to fall.

We have gone, over the past 500 years, from pre-modernism to modernism to post-modernism. From the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason to the Age of Skepticism to the New Age of Personal Inventions of Belief. From Agrarian to Industrial to Post-Industrial Virtual Reality. From the Gothic to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to.. confusion: societal anarchy, cultural nihilism.

All of human history is characterized by evolution and change, but it has never been this radical, or, actually, as sudden when considered in the arc of human history.

There are many social scientists – probably a majority of “experts” and faculty members dealing with such things – who view all this as perhaps inevitable, but certainly welcome. I believe they feed the cancer that is devouring us in myriad ways. The arcs I described, and many similar ones that can be limned, are not evidences of progress.

Rather the opposite. “Progress” is the meme of our time; the secular religion; the brand-identification of contemporary life. Progress, whether contorted to define a political commitment, or as the assumption behind everything that changes or is new in our lives, encourages us. Forgives us. Animates us.

Not only is Progress a false god – is it really inevitable that everything gets better, is better, will be better, as the globe spins into the future? But Progress is frequently corrosive. Not merely false in its promises and scenarios, but cruel.

Humankind “advanced” to the 20th century, achieving, yes, many industrial marvels, medical breakthroughs, and economic blessings. At the same time – and partly assisted by these very tools of Progress – the 20th century saw more slaughter (wars and oppression) than all previous 20 centuries, combined. More torture, displacements, death, than in all previous 20 centuries. Humankind has developed means to live healthier and longer… and invented more efficient means of killing and ending life.

We have fooled ourselves into believing that, in the name of Progress, killing babies is life-affirming. That euthanasia is not killing but is “mercy.” That slavery is obsolete but sweat-shops around the world, keeping WalMart shoppers in cheap sandals, is… Progress. (By the way, more people around the world are in literal slavery today than during the “slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.)

We have progressed to the point where we cringe at the thought of skinning baby seals or hunting rhinoceros tusks. Yet aborted babies are not merely ignored but celebrated in some quarters. We have “progressed” past pagan societies of the past, that practiced infant sacrifice. Yet today, babies are slaughtered to the gods of Pleasure and Convenience or (if you don’t like my one-note sing) – we have sacrificed a generation of children to the hells of broken homes, acceptance of drugs, the corruption – theft of their innocence – of awful music and movies. Progress.

With so many things swirling about us – the thick fog of sensations, pleasures, and diversions – is it possible, actually, that we are missing something in contemporary life?

Yes. We are missing God.

Oh, He is still there, still here. But at one time – the grandest time and times of human history – we were dedicated to Him. Humankind was sold out to God. Painted for Him. Wrote music for Him. Worked, or worked extra, for Him. Wrote poetry, served, wove, sculpted, carved, built, for Him. Lived for Him. Lived for God.

Today we live for ourselves. We eat, drink, and be merry. Even our politics (and I balefully expect revolution in the streets of America within the decade) about which we think we serve the Lord with such fervor, is empty and futile. The same for the “other” side.

Psalm 127 begins: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord inhabits the city, the watchmen are useless.”

The Monday Morning Music Ministry blog’s catch-line is “Start the week with a song in your heart.” This essay, today, is not of cheer. But the truth seldom is, except for the promise it holds. A remedy for our parlous times is to keep the songs of the Lord in our hearts first. That – and true repentance for what we have squandered, where we have strayed – will restore real Progress to humankind.

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Click: Trauermusik

Be Honest: Who in Hell Cares About You Anyway?

7-23-18

At one time during humanity’s long march, whose trudging we cannot escape, death was almost too horrible to face for most people.

And Heaven was almost too wonderful to imagine.

The proper view (inescapable after all) is that life and death are part of the same Great Adventure… and this has led the devil to make this life seem like the end of everything. Evil forces try to persuade us that there IS no tomorrow – and therefore no consequences of this life’s choices; no eternal perspective; no judgment. No Heaven, no hell.

And when Heaven was marketed – yes, sometime by churches themselves – as too wonderful to be reached without those churches and their rules and additions and conditions and games and systems of bribing God – uncountable substitutes were invented.

Substitutes not only for Heaven, but for ways to become a citizen there, with God, for eternity.

Therefore, ironically, the devil and the church-system both have often lied to us. And the contemporary world, too, lies even more. The secular realms, all around us, have piled on. Everyone wants a piece; the contemporary world needs to reinforce the lie that contemporary life contains and offers all we need for happiness.

When humankind rushes to that message, it runs away from the Cross.

Peace? Healing? Reconciliation? Love? Forgiveness? Broken homes? Heartache? Disappointment? Addictions? Betrayal? Insecurity? Rebellion? Lack of respect? Loss of self-esteem? Pride? Failure, fear of failure? Loneliness? Rejection? Abuse? Discrimination? Grief?

Negative and positive; real or threatened; momentary or long-lasting… The secular, contemporary world tells us that these things, and more, and anything and everything, can be solved by dental work and face lifts; tummy tucks and yoga classes; diets and exercise; different clothes and newer cars; the right friends from malls and concerts; hotter obsessions in sports; cooler mastery of games; music, movies, TV series; political correctness; and, of course, drinks and drugs in general.

The bitter, bitter truth is this: the world jumps like a trained dog, believing that these lies from the devil are true about the afterlife – but they obviously, clearly, self-evidently are lies about contemporary life too. Today. Now. Music of this dance of death that people choose.

Who cares…

Who cares when your children split away from you? The music producers? Who cares when your marriage is on the rocks? Hollywood? Who cares when you feel horribly alone, maybe betrayed? Game designers? Who cares when you lose a job, suffer insecurity, are hit with loss of self-esteem? Brewers and distillers? Who cares when you need forgiveness? Celebrities and star athletes? Who cares when you endure abuse or discrimination? Superheroes?

Ah. The pharmaceutical industry. How could we forget them? Oh, and the politicians. Plus all those government bureaucrats, of course… they care. They all care, right?

That’s called a rhetorical question. The devil does not care, except to hate your soul. The glitterati do not care, except to exploit you and your misery. Even – as hard as it is to state the truth – in many cases we cannot even trust friends and family to care, when all is said and done.

But…

Jesus cares. We know He cares. When the days are weary, the long nights are dreary, our Savior cares.

Put aside your “theological” arguments, if you have any, resisting this love of the Savior. Evil hates us. Friends, even family, can be unreliable. The “world” cannot care because its motives are rotten. What’s left? Who cares? Jesus, lover of our souls.

But… don’t really put aside theological arguments! Think on these things. The very foundation of life, and the irreducible fact of our existence, is God’s love. Brought to us by Jesus’ care.

Someone is reading this – or might read it in the future, thanks to the permanent presence of the internet! – who needs to know it, not only for a minor challenge along the road. Or a major crisis that looms. But to confront life, see life, and live life in a new way.

To know, really know, that the Creator of the Universe cares. He cares. Who cares? No one, hardly, on earth… and surely no one in hell; nobody in hell cares about you like Jesus.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven. – Paradise Lost, I: 254-255

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Click: Does Jesus Care

God’s Promise Book, the Alt-Version

7-9-18

I recently delivered the message at a friend’s memorial service. I was asked by her mother, who had only three months ago lost her husband too. Life and death are not supposed to run that way, mothers burying daughters. But I have learned of other sicknesses and deaths in my circle. And people who came to me after the service also shared many stories of recent sad news, deaths, and afflictions.

Life happens.

What should not happen is that we, God’s children, take comfort in fantasies of our own imaginings. Not that these things happened at the service, but we often hear and perhaps say – and I pray not believe – that so-and-so is now dancing with angels. Or reunited with his or her favorite pets. Or watching over us.

Such fables perhaps are well intentioned. But to describe Heaven, or to contemplate our own eternal lives, in such ways, reveal that we do not know the Bible. Or, if know the Bible, we thereby presume to know more than it says. Are we wiser than the revealed Lord? Will He turn the universe of His creation upside-down because we hope to act in a fictional play of our own desires?

Whatever we do NOT know of death and eternity – indeed, all of life’s mysteries – puts us in the position of wanting to create God in our own image. Let it not be so! The riches of His glory are so great, so literally indescribable, that we cannot begin to choreograph what He has in store.

Remember that truth, that whatever we cannot imagine is so much greater than that which we know. Trust God: there is a reason we do not know all. Trust Jesus: “In My house there are many mansions [prepared for you], if it were not so, I would not have told you.” Trust the Holy Spirit, who has been sent to lead us to all Truth.

Coping, as we must, however, with life’s challenges and griefs, and with all the mysteries of life, not to mention death, it is natural that many of us turn to books and tracts that collect Bible verses of comfort. They are sometimes arranged by category of concerns; otherwise a Bible concordance can serve the same purposes. They contain “God’s Promises.” Yes, from God’s word.

In all respect, literally, to God and to all of you, I say that we must remember that another “Promise Book” can be compiled from many proverbs, warnings, commandments, epistles, sermons, and exhortations in the Bible. These “other” promises are also God’s words, after all.

God, by His inspiration of writers and prophets and judges and apostles and disciples and missionaries, spoke of many things.

We are promised hard lives when we witness for God, when we follow Jesus.

We are assured of rejection. The Word is specific – that we will lose friends, that authorities will persecute us, that the world will hate us, that families will split apart because of our love for Jesus.

Many will suffer death as Christ-followers. This has been so for 2000 years… and happens in greater numbers today than all previous centuries combined.

You might lose jobs; your family and neighbors might think you crazy; you will be a lone, and very lonely, voice defending the truth.

These are not threats or warnings, strictly. Coldly, these are promises of God. The way of a Christian is not easy… never has been… never will be. In God’s providence, He did not mean it to be easy. Jesus took up His cross, and we were told – yes, promised – that we must do the same to be worthy of Him, worthy of Eternity.

A downer? No! Even more Bible promises assure us that it is a privilege to die with Christ. We are His ambassadors here on earth. He lives within us, and His Holy Spirit empowers us… that we will be more than conquerors.

And those trials of life? Challenges, disappointments, rejections, fear? I ask you to look at the promise that He would never leave us nor forsake us, and remember some incidents.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have been spared the fiery furnace if God chose to destroy it. Yet they displayed faith, and were protected through the fire. God could close up the Valley of the Shadow of Death… yet when we walk through it, we are protected by His rod and His staff; they comfort us. By faith, Abraham was even willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, yet the Lord stayed his hand, blessed Abraham and his descendants, and gave us a picture of Jesus’s sacrifice when God was willing. And so on – the list of God’s promises, and their fulfillment or puzzling postponement, that Mystery of His ways.

“God had planned something better… so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” We are parts of that “scarlet thread of redemption.” The powerful truths of His promises do not depend on our understanding of them! He asks only faithful obedience.

If you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:19).

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Click: Come Harvest Time

What’s It All About, Alfie?

5-21-18

Some of you might remember that song title. I am dating myself (which actually is a useless pastime, dating yourself – you always wind up with half the food going cold and saying things you already know) but it was a movie from 1966.

It is hardly remembered today. It was the film that made a star out of Michael Caine, and the first movie to be “Suggested for mature audiences” by the Motion Picture Association of America, precursor to a PG rating. Its theme song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was sung by Cher and flopped; a later release by Dionne Warwick was a hit. The movie was very “Sixties,” with Caine playing a wastrel and what that age called a womanizer – #MeToo alert – whose escapades and affairs led to broken relationships and abortions. In the end, Alfie is bitter and alone, very alone, and a swinging theme that trafficked in glamour ends sadly.

Ironically, the “naughty” and edgy movie presented a moral. Well, that was the 1960s. It was the “Me Generation,” in Tom Wolfe’s phrase, before MeToo… the social chickens coming home to roost… which provides us a moment for a detour to mourn the passing of Tom Wolfe last week. As famous as a celebrity for his foppish attire as he was significant as a 20th-century American author, he was able to infiltrate and dissect the fashionable limousine-liberal Establishment in a series of social-commentary essays and novels, as well as flag-waving Americana, for instance in The Right Stuff.

And little remembered is that Tom Wolfe also was a brilliant cartoonist and biting caricaturist.

To return to the ‘60s, as I was familiar as a teen with the movie of this essay’s title, What’s It All About, Alfie? As well as the tectonic shifts in society around all of us. From trivial things like bell bottoms to substantial factors like relationships, it’s hard not to notice major changes in society.

Or is it? The title song What’s It All About, Alfie? went through my mind recently when the unusual name Alfie popped up in the news. Do you remember it? In Mercyside, England, home of the Beatles, Alfie Evans, 23 months old, was dying of a mysterious nerve ailment. In brief, the hospital’s doctors judged that he was brain dead, and ordered life-support removed. Since Alfie responded to stimuli and opened his eyes, his parents objected. A glimmer of hope!

Lawsuits, appeal after appeal, went to the High Court, which also ordered that life-support should end. The parents approached the Vatican, and the pope made an appeal for mercy. The Italian government granted emergency citizenship to little Alfie, that he might be taken to Italy for treatment. The British government barred the boy’s travel and prohibited the parents from attempting any such measures.

In the end, the hospital and the government prevailed. Life-support was removed. Alfie lived another five days on his own, and died.

What’s it all about, Alfie? A generation ago, euthanasia was a taboo subject, yet people pushed the law and argued for mercy killing. Ten years ago, a vice-presidential candidate warned of governmental “Death Panels”… and was widely ridiculed by liberals. Yet – abortion itself aside – today we have the government preventing parents from exercising medical rights over their children; sanctioned killing of Down Syndrome children (at a 90 per cent rate); and death penalty verdicts for impaired children. No matter what the parents desire.

Yes, Alfie’s case was in England. But we take note because it made more news than most comparable horrors. It happens across Western Europe… and, more and more, in the United States.

The Founders had to prioritize their major priorities desired for the nation they built – LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But now unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable judges hold the power of life and death over their subjects. In a different flavor of significance, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case has been decided by the Supreme Court, and its decision – probably with a surfeit of concurrent opinions and dissents – will be handed down this summer.

That such a case was brought, much less having risen to the Supremes, is enough of a barometer for us to gauge the state of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the United States. You have heard of the case: a pair of homosexuals sought to have their “wedding” cake decorated in a certain way, and for their nuptials; and having found a Christian baker, Jack Phillips in Lakewood CO, who said “No thank you” on the basis of his religious beliefs, they and their backers filed suit.

Jack had maintained courtesy, and offered to sell any other cake and any other decoration; and he recommended other local bakers who might accommodate them. But their intention was to sue. After years of court appearances, decisions, appeals – and a business harmed; a family’s life rocked – Jack, and the world, are about to learn whether the Founders deliberated, and patriots lived and died, for the sake of cake decoration.

Of course it IS more important than that. Because the Left and Secularists have made it so. Freedom of action – that a shop owner can exercise his own standards. Freedom of speech – argued on both sides. Freedom of religion – can Jack, and therefore all of us, be coerced to act contrary to conscience? Artistic expression – must an artist, yes, a dedicated cake decorator, be told what he can design… or not? Civil rights – are the homosexuals harmed, as Blacks were under Jim Crow laws? Freedom of association – Rather a different level than public restrooms or seats on a bus or the right to attend neighborhood schools, can a court force people to fraternize, even via simple business transactions?

If the Court says that Jack Phillips must accede to antithetical messages being produced in his workplace… would it follow that a Jewish baker must fulfill a demand to decorate cakes with swastikas on Hitler’s birthday?

These ARE questions with significant import… and deeper implications. If the Court decides against Christians who want to act like Christians – fill in names and beliefs of anyone these days, except the politically correct and approved – it will let loose the Establishment’s fury against sermons (hate speech?), Bible studies (already proscribed in some San Diego neighborhoods), parental authority (expect more “divorce petitions” filed by children against parents, yes), more restrictions on prayer in public places… et cetera, au nauseum.

It is coming. It was predicted in the Bible. No surprise.

And it was forecast in a quirky film in the Crazy 1960s.

What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?

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Click: God Of Our Fathers

He Is Risen… But Then What, They Asked.

4-9-18

Three men meet by a well in a Jerusalem square. Around them, women draw water, men walk their sheep to market, people haggle at the market stands.

“Did you hear? More news about the Nazarene. First he came into the city and everyone praised Him. A week later, everybody wanted His blood…”

“And they got it!”

“Yes, they buried what was left of His poor body. And now I hear…”

“We are all hearing about it! They say He rose from the dead!”

“He did! I saw Him! I heard Him preach yesterday in the hills!”

“I saw Him too, walking past the temple. There were crowds of people following Him! More than when he was just a teacher.”

“My neighbors went to listen to Him preach. They say He looks like He used to… but more handsome, almost serene… except for the nail-scars in His wrists…”

“It’s just like it used to be. He’s preaching and teaching and healing and talking to people one-on-one too.”

“What do you think? He never really died?”

“Don’t be crazy. He could have faked death? What about the whip-marks and the spear-thrust and the crown of thorns and all the pokes and scratches and…”

“Right. His body looks perfect. Jospehus, the Jewish historian, saw Him and said the Nazarene came back to life just like He predicted.”

Another man, who had been listening, joined the conversation. “It was not only Jesus’ prediction, friends; it is just like the Prophets foretold.”

“Yes… He is reminding us of those Scriptures. Daniel. Isaiah. It is hard to count all the things that are happening just as the Holy Books said they would.”

“What now? Will He live forever? He speaks to multitudes; He visits the sick; He puts His arm around widows and the persecuted; He teaches and preaches; then nobody sees Him for a while… Does He sleep? Where does He go…?”

The stranger spoke up again. “No. He won’t walk these streets like this forever, like the man we remember. Remember, He told us, ‘It is better that I leave, for if I do not, the Helper and Comforter will not come to you. But when I go, I will send Him to Believers.’ That was also His prophesy…”

“But why stay here for a time?” one of the men asked.

The stranger said, “To bear witness to the Jews who demanded His death, and to be seen by the Romans who killed Him, to show His resurrected body even to His followers like Thomas, who doubted. To inspire accounts even among the heathen and those like Josephus… To silence the skeptics.”

“OK,” wondered one of the men, “But I wonder where He disappears to at times… where is He when the crowds go home, when He is not seen praying with a few or healing one by the gate…”

The stranger spoke up again. “He has proven Himself the Son of the Living God, and who Himself lives, having conquered death and hell… so I am not being disrespectful, or trying to put my thoughts on His actions…”

“Yes?” the others asked.

“It could be that, in His own way, Jesus is rehearsing for Eternity. Because just like He did in His ministry here, and just as He promised about the Holy Ghost to come… God walks the dark hills.

“… the ways, the by-ways. He walks through the billows of life’s troubled sea. He walks through the cold dark night, the shadows of midnight. God walks the dark hills… Just to guide you and me.

“God walks the dark hills, to guide our footsteps. He walks everywhere, by night and by day. He walks in the silence, on down the highway… God walks the dark hills… to show us the way.

“God walks in the storm, the rain, and the sunshine. He walks in the shadows, or through glimmering light. Helps us walk up the mountains so high, cross rivers, through valleys…

“God walks the dark hills… ‘cause He loves you and me.”

The men were silent for more than a moment. The hustle of the neighborhood’s activity continued on its way, however. When they looked up, the stranger was gone, but they looked at each other and agreed that their day’s business could wait. They wanted to find this risen Lord… to listen to Him more carefully… to remember the things He preached.

And somehow in their minds they knew that if they lost their way in life, if they strayed from the Truth… Jesus would would be walking the dark hills that sometimes surround us… and find them. We want to – we need to – look for Him. But, no worries, He is willing to walk the dark hills to find us where we are.

‘Cause He loves you and me.

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This haunting Gospel song was written by a woman in Oklahoma about whom little is known; and who, evidently, never wrote another song again. A gift…

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

April Fool’s Day

4-2-18

The arcane vagaries of the church calendar are not necessarily negative. Jesus was not born in December; and the observance of Easter is on different dates each year, and across various Christian sects. If the changeable dates oblige us to focus more on the events and their significance, and less on the secular-tending aspects – Holy days, not holidays – that can be a good thing.

Occasionally Easter coincides with April Fool’s Day, a secular day if there ever was one; a tradition devoted to pranks, whose origins are appropriately shrouded in obscurity.

There is another association between Easter and a silly practice that is more profound than would first seem.

The late Anthony Burger, remarkable Christian pianist, told the story of his young son in an Easter pageant in Sunday School. The boy had the unlikely role of Jesus – unlikely because he was probably the youngest of the children in the play; but his only acting assignment was to emerge from the tomb.

On the evening of the performance, the nervous parents and the curious audience waited – and waited – for “Jesus” after the Resurrection moment to walk out of the tomb. And nervously waited long moments more. Then, finally, in the portrayal of God’s miracle-working power, but also a testament of the beautiful innocence of childhood, the boy leaped from the cardboard tomb and yelled…

“Ready or not, here I come!!!”

Laughs, relief, sympathy. And – “out of the mouths of babes.”

In a real sense, Sunday-School pageants aside, that virtually IS what Jesus said when He conquered death and emerged from the tomb. Uncountable prophecies were fulfilled; He confirmed His role as Messiah; Satan was defeated; hope was extended to a humankind that had chosen sin and death; new life was proclaimed; eternal paradise in the presence of this resurrected Jesus was available to all.

Salvation is free, but a price must be paid. That holy anomaly is explained not only in the terrible sacrifice of the Incarnate Savior. There is a price still to be paid by you and me, beyond what Jesus “paid.” It is inherent in the ironic truth in the symbolic shout –

“Ready or not, here I come!” That actually is what Jesus meant; what He virtually said.

As the Bible teaches, we must believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God; and confess with our lips that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10: 9,10). Not as easy as it sounds, but… Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

To be a New Creature in Christ, we must be, well, new creatures. Changed attitudes, new priorities, a rebirth. Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

Believing, confessing, and forgiving – oh! Forgiving, as we need forgiveness ourselves! – and yielding to the tugs of our new best friend, the Holy Spirit who will guide us and inspire us and empower us. Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

So the child’s deceptively simple transference of the “Ready or not, here I come!” game teaches us a profound lesson.

During Lent, this year, there was another game in e-mail threads and social media that diverted eyes from the truth and power of the Resurrection, rather than focusing our proper attention. And this was frequently perpetrated by “Christian” sites and “experts.”

You might have seen them: articles about Who killed Jesus? Was it the Jews or the Romans? Have the Jews been smeared by anti-Semitic charges? What does the Bible really say? What have recent historical studies suggested about Roman law in their courts and Jewish rules in their temples…?

Academic pabulum, scholasticism that diverts.

God killed Jesus. To put it another way, Jesus virtually scrambled up the cross.
Jesus’s “killing” was God’s plan, set out long before. His Will was done, and Jesus the Messiah – even Jesus the Man – submitted willingly. A sanctified suicide, in its way, for our salvation. Nit-picking about Roman laws and politics, Jewish traditions and rules, does little but to move the focus from the Savior’s vicarious act to take our sins upon Himself.

These “experts” seek to persuade us that it was not that “God so loved the world…” but that “Roman authorities and Jewish leaders so shaped events…” This view is evil. We should not consider for a moment that the most heinous acts of cruelty and suffering, the shedding of Holy Blood, was – Ready or not, here comes the truth – anything but an act of love.

The most extreme form of punishment was endured so that we would not endure it ourselves at the hand of a Just God. For God so loved us. And when Jesus emerged from the tomb we were graced with the means to avoid eternity in hell – which brings up another fairy tale of this season, a church leader’s reported intimation that there IS no hell. This is for another discussion, but Jesus’s death and Resurrection were in vain if this were so.

In the meantime, welcome the risen Savior with open arms! But be “ready” for the implications of the New Life.

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Without denying the undeniable joy of the Resurrection, I have tried to suggest today that in the freedom of the New Life comes a spiritual responsibility that is profound, for our own souls and those of our families and friends. In that sense, the tears of former life are mirrored in the tears we shed as born-again believers for the unsaved, and tears of joy as New Creatures in Christ.

Therefore I chose this video clip, “Have Mercy, My God,” from Bach’s “St Matthew’s Passion.” Julia Hamari, solost; Otto Büchner, violin; Karl Richter conducting the Munich Bach Orchestra and Choir.

Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears! See before You heart and eyes that weep. Have mercy, my God. / Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen! Schaue hier, Herz und Auge weint vor dir bitterlich. Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

Click: Heart and Eyes That Weep

Mama, I Just Don’t Understand

3-26-18

The night was so different from all the rest,
And a silence covers the Earth;
The stars have no glimmer, the moon tries to hide,
For in death lies the Man of their birth.

In a room filled with sorrow, a mother cries
For Jesus, her Son, now is gone;
Her Child sent from heaven was taken away,
Heart broken, she feels all alone.

At the feet of a mother a little boy cries,
Saying, “Mama, I don’t understand;
I remember the look of love in His eyes,
That I saw, by the touch of His hand.”

The King of all ages, the Giver of life,
For a moment lies silent and still;
But a power from heaven comes breaking the night,
And death must bow to His will!

A stone moves, the Earth shakes, birds start singing!
The sun shines, the Earth warms for new life that’s bringing;
The little boy stops crying, the mother is smiling –
For death could not hold a King!

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We all know “The Night Before Christmas,” but have you thought about the night before Easter…?

These lyrics were written (and here sung) by Donnie Sumner, gospel singer. The nephew of legendary singer J D Sumner, Donnie sang with the famous Stamps Quartet, his own groups, and behind Elvis Presley. Caught up in show biz for a while, he overcame addictions to gain a powerful testimony, which fueled his “second career” as songwriter and minister.

Click: The Night Before Easter

About God and Broken Hearts

2-12-18

St Valentine is one of those saints who has become known as much for not having lived as for the sacred ascriptions to his disputed existence. The Catholic Church removed him from its calendar of actual saints some years ago, bowing to the back-canonical aspect of his legend. Like some other former saints, he might have been invented to fill a need.

Or, there having been several priests and martyrs named Valentine during Christianity’s first few centuries, the saint associated with love and high interpersonal devotion might be an amalgam.

In any case – and to the extent we keep in context the elements of remembering loved ones, and the power of love, and the encouragement to love – we can affirm the flowers and cards and hugs. Hallmark and ProFlowers and CandyGrams aside, it is good to revere love in the larger sense.

Love, actually, is not love if considered, and exercised, outside the “larger” context. People have tried to define the distinctions between humankind and beasts – laughing, cruelty, imagination, disco music – but Loving must be the predominant quality. We can receive love; we can offer love; we can act according to love, at least when we are not hating, and this explains a lot of history’s art and music and literature and poetry.

Can we understand it? Not fully, I say… but that is part of its allure and fascinating essence. I also think we are fated to only imperfectly express love: and even then only to the extent we can receive it.

“Love is patient, love is kind… ”

Which gets us face-to-face with God’s love. His love created the world – the universe and all therein. His love supersedes His vengeful aspects in that while we were yet sinners, He sent His only Son to become flesh and dwell among us, and take upon Himself the punishment we deserve for our rebellion. That is love.

As I asked above, Can we understand it? As I answered, not fully. We never will. But we can accept it.

Recently we shared thoughts here about unanswered prayer. Can a loving God say No to our earnest pleas? As God, fulfilling His job description so to speak, He knows what we need, even when we are persistent about things we want. The basis of that (as if He needs to justify Himself… but understanding this helps our faith) is… Love.

The heart is a fist-sized organ with fleshy tubes in and out, chambers, valves, and uncountable pulsations. How this hard-working bloody thing came to be associated by poets and painters, saints and sages, with the tenderest of often indescribable emotions is another thing I will never understand.

Yet we draw heart shapes when we are in love, despite the fact they don’t resemble hearts. We send drawings of them to those we love; we carve them into tree trunks. Even the worst characters in history have loved someone – a girl or guy; their mothers; a pet. It is a disease for which there is no immunity. Thank God.

On the other hand, the human race is not immune to the Broken Heart either. In a way, these sad experiences validate the positive truth and power of romantic love: it is not abstract, not an illusion. To paraphrase the poet: Love is real! Love is earnest!

Returning to the God-foundation of these matters (as He is the foundation of all things), even God has not escaped the reality of a Broken Heart. He identifies with our sorrow, our grief, and to the aspect of love that can “leave a hole” in our emotions.

God Himself? Yes, despite His plans and ordained Will, He knew – He knows – what it is like to lose a Son. But God so loved the world…

Please think of love, then, as more than the cheap theme for a holiday; and don’t let it ever become a cheap theme in your life.

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Click: Open the Eyes of My Heart

People With No Country?

2-5-18

Edward Everett Hale wrote a short book, originally a magazine story, about a sailor who denounced the United States, was convicted of treason, and was sentenced to sail the seas thereafter for entire life, never allowed to step foot on American soil nor receive any news of the US from fellow sailors.

Gradually this Philip Nolan grew repentant, then homesick, finally desperate, for any news of his native country. In his final days he invited another sailor to his cabin, there to see flags and eagles and patriotic symbols painted on the walls. He died and was buried at sea, a “man without a country.”

Published in 1863, the tale is a message about loyalty, clearly a metaphor for the Civil War and the essential appreciation of patriotism. It also addresses the primal attraction we have for Identity. “Identity Politics” is a theme of our day – everything from joining clubs to trying to choose one’s sex midway through life. It is a very different thing than nationalism or even chauvinism. As Abe Lincoln said, about as alike as a chestnut horse is to a horse chestnut.

We choose names for our identities and loyalties, usually good tries, but usually insufficient.

President John F Kennedy, at the height of the Cold War, famously spoke in front of the recently constructed Berlin Wall, the city’s demarcation from the Communist East. Before an enthusiastic half-million people, he twice delivered a pledge of solidarity: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

There were a few problems with the stirring line, despite the audience’s raucous response. He spoke in his trademark Boston accent, a challenge to local English-speakers. He was prompted to pronounce “Ich” as “ish” – more Yiddish than German, causing some confusion about his intention. Despite subsequent historical revisionism, however, the crux of the speech’s reception was the identification with Berlin.

Europeans often name foods after cities. Frankfurters and Hamburgers and Wieners are the kinds that originated in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. We can know where Limburger cheese and Bologna originated. French toast and English muffins are virtually unknown in France and England; but marketers knew the value of geographic identification. A popular pastry from Berlin is called by the locals a “Berliner.” Basically a jelly donut.

So, yes, John F Kennedy declared to half million people, the Soviet leaders, and the world in general, that he was a jelly donut. I think I mentioned that the crowd noisily erupted. As I said, revisionist historians have since disputed… what they cannot really dispute.

In a way, that story can unmask patriotic passions as sometimes being silly, or at least futile. But in the end, most of us still are proud of our backgrounds and our nations. Perhaps in fewer numbers, but many of us still get misty-eyed when the National Anthem is played or a veteran is laid to rest. For those who do not, shame on them. For athletes who ostentatiously dismiss the flag, more shame.

I have said I regard patriotism as a primal impulse, and basically one of self-protection, pride, and nurture. Like the difference between country and nation. In Europe, volk translates to more than a population – the family of fellow countrymen; the group with shared values and experiences. Similarly heimat is more than home or homeland or community. “Soul” and “soil” are more than cognates.

We don’t have such earnest but inchoate words in English, or in America. In our case, however, we inculcate – because we have inherited at great cost – values like Democratic Republic; free enterprise; equality of opportunities; freedom of religion, press, assembly, speech.

It is why a Swede, say, moving to, say, Argentina will always be called “that Swede down the street”; and an American in Paris will always be… an American in Paris; not a Frenchman. But – as current debates reinforce – immigrants and migrants are fairly soon called “Americans” after they arrive. And are so.

The Bible addresses this issue, because there are larger truths involved. We are spirits, intimately known to God while yet in the womb; and will live eternally according to Judgment and the Grace of God. That is, in this vale (valley) of tears, we are passing through for a moment of all eternity.

“We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace” (I Chronicles 29:15, NLT). “Sojourners” in some translations; “Pilgrims” in others. “Strangers” in all.

This world is not our home. We reside here awhile, and sometimes it seems all too real, and hard. Sometimes we fully experience, or occasionally have mere glimpses of, joy. I am not a cynic, but a reporter: it is useful to remember our “temporary status.” As Christians we have green cards, so to speak, because we are on the way to another place… a better place.

God creates a universe, and a wondrous world, and His family of children, to live a relatively few seconds in His eternal Forever? No thought is needed, and our heads would start hurting anyway. It pleases Him to design things this way. We pass from life to death to… life eternal. Somehow that seems like a good deal. Heaven will be our home, with mansions. “If it were not so, I would not have told you.”

God could have made us as jelly donuts, but He created us in His own image. He loves us passionately – enough to create us with free will; enough to have given us a “Get out of jail free” card in the form of His Son assuming our death sentences. Enough that, wherever we live or die, we are not people without a country.

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Click: The Sojourner’s Song

Saving You From Yourself

1-29-18

Any believer, whether casual or seasoned, whether a “baby Christian” or steeped in the faith, who does not have a “promise book” somewhere on the bookshelves, has not gone through a common stage of spiritual evolution. It is not necessary or requisite to have that book of life’s challenges and predictable crises, but it happens frequently among us. Arranged by category they are, with lists of comforting Bible verses, also instruction and encouragement.

Useful things, these promise books. I am in no way minimizing their value. If you don’t have one, get one; there are many you can find. A lot of them are pocket-size, to keep at the ready.

But. After a while their verses will make their way into your memory, at least as the Kingdom Principles of God – the uniform and unified major themes of scripture. The Bible says that we are to know the intentions of the Lord, and “hide them in our hearts.” Consistent study of the Bible itself results in this.

Perhaps the most dog-eared pages in those Promise Books are where the categories address Approaching God; Lifting Petitions and Requests; How to Receive; and Answers to Prayer.

There are verses in the Bible that we often distort. We presume when we should not. Devout believers in solitary prayer closets can do this, just as earnest televangelists speaking to thousands in arenas sometimes do too. “Say to the mountain, be thou moved”… “the faith of a mustard seed”… “greater works you will do”… you must know the verses.

Are they not true? Yes, they are true – God does not lie and can not lie.

However, the whole of scripture also reminds us that Jesus wept on occasion; that He left towns because the level of unbelief prevented even His miracles from being manifested. So… how to proceed? How to appreciate the context of verses?

We must be careful not to treat Promise Books like Wish Lists. Lifting the burdens of your heart to the Lord should not take the form of a shopping list. Even mature Christians can confuse requests with demands.

When you pray, believing, the first beliefs must be in the Sovereignty of God; of His love; and a trust in His will for our loves.

This brings us to an essential element of true faith. Lest I sound like like a skeptic in this essay, I once was persuaded by the “name it and claim it” variety of faith. I saw miracles, yes, and experienced some. My wife prayed healing for her failing heart, and was miraculously healed… by a transplant. And we gave God the glory. Two years later she was diagnosed with cancer, and she submitted to an operation… until the doctors confessed to one of those “we can’t explain it” situations. All traces of the cancer were gone. Answer to a largely unspoken prayer.

That God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform is a non-Bible verse that everyone knows; and is true. It is also true – and our faith is not weak when we accept it – that when God answers prayer, sometimes the answer is No. Sometimes the answer is delayed. Sometimes the answer is different than we hope (or demand).

But all the time the answers remind us that God is God.

It is He who hath made us; and not we ourselves. The same with prayer: we need to remember that when we pray in spirit and in truth – that is, in genuine trust – the Holy Spirit inhabits our prayers. In fact, the Bible assures us that when we are confused, weak, lacking confidence, the Spirit takes over! The Spirit will groan, if necessary, before the Throne of God, with the desires of our hearts.

And that principle is what should save us from ourselves, so not to approach God unworthily.

We know our desires, and want to lift them to God.

But He knows our needs, and will always meet them.

Our desires and our needs are two very different things. We cannot always know them… and we very often confuse them. God knows them. Trusting in His lovingkindness, sublimating our own view of things, is when Faith acquires meaning in our lives.

God reads our hearts anyway, so we don’t need prayers to “make points” with Him. Pray believing… pray trusting Him… and pray knowing that His whole book is full of those Promises.

He knows how to keep them.

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Click: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

That’s Life

1-22-18

There is a verse in James that admonished us to be “doers of the Word, and not hearers only.” The Bible reminds us often that God sees all we do; and so do the “Heavenly cloud of witness” of Hebrews 11. Often we might be tempted to wear two hats – the secular (when we argue about politics) and the sacred (when we forgive all, forget all).

That is shameful. We all live at the intersection of Sacred and Secular. There is no forwarding address.

I offer this on Celebration of Life week, Sanctity of Life Sunday.

When the mists, or smoke, of current controversies are swept away, I believe the world will see abortion – the act, the arguments, the very concept – in a different light. Most likely the “old” light, history’s traditional attitude. I pray.

Of course, the attitudes of various societies have been mutable, little different than any stands on any controversy. Honestly, there has not been a straight line in manners and morals on monogamous marriage, infant sacrifice, slavery, the role of women, personal freedom and liberty, democracy, even monotheism until the Revealed God revealed Himself fully.

Despite infant sacrifice, with its essentially different set of foundations, abortion is an act that mostly has been regarded as anathema at all times and in all places. By whole societies and by single women. Its sanction, and its approval, have always been exceptions. Mostly it is regarded as something to be discouraged because of the implicit recognition that it is horrible, contrary to human impulses.

Until our generation.

The anguish and severe challenges presented by unplanned, unwanted pregnancies are significant. They represent dilemmas that are endemic to the human family, and – no matter how much abortion might be outlawed – they will take place. To recognize this fact is not to approve of it. But to accept it as the price of a community, a society, maintaining consistent standards and trying to codify a moral code, is, well, the price to pay.

A lot of the world preceded the US, or closely followed us, in the legalization of abortion. Today, we have been reminded this week, we “surpass” most of the world in providing free abortion services… and we are among the few human-rights garden spots like North Korea and China that allow late-term abortions, killing babies otherwise viable outside the womb.

We should not need numbers like almost 60-million American abortions since Roe vs Wade… nor photos of aborted babies… nor facts like the bigoted Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder) encouraging abortions in the black and brown communities especially… to come face-to-face with the horror of abortion.

Fifteen years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey, the “Roe” of Roe vs Wade, who had regretted her manipulation, reversed her views, and became a Christian. Pro-Life. Her testimony confirmed my views, but did not change them. That happened earlier; for a long time I was indifferent to the issue, and saw it as more a matter of convenience than morality. I even took that point of view in public, and now am conscious of blood on my hands.

But one does not have to trade Pragmatism for Christianity to realize that abortion is murder.

Why is America so militant, now, about abortion? Why is it a litmus test in broad swaths of society – why does the Democrat Party, for instance, forbid convention speakers and candidate endorsements to “pro-life” people?

I return to looking forward to the mists parting. Whether we go deeper into self-indulgence, or return to traditional values, abortion WILL be the litmus test. One does not have to abandon feminism, or denigrate women, to oppose abortion. The Big Lie that women are pro-choice and men want disposable women and babies, is belied by the profile of marchers at Pro-Life rallies; by fervent advocates I have met; by counselors (like Pam Stenzel, a friend from Grand Rapids MI) who speaks to kids about pre-marital sex – herself a product of a rape, whose mother decided against aborting her at the last moment.

If you don’t like being a woman who is “wired” to bear babies, don’t conceive. You cannot reverse nature. A lot of times it stinks to be a man, but, whatever. People have intimidated the culture to an extent; but they cannot reverse nature. They can tinker with the plumbing, but we still are men and women. Period; no pun intended.

Therefore, abortion, as a litmus-test, is a symbol. It is the result, not a cause, of America having become a Culture of Death. Abortion, homosexuality, the decline of marriage, all are symptoms of impulses that resist life and the advancement of the species – which of course sounds clinical and impersonal. But the truth is VERY personal. We respect life, or we don’t.

And the debate continues, often distracted by questions of a once-in-a-decade death sentence, or war in faraway places. Those arguments are healthy; but in the meantime, many of us CAN do something about the Culture of Death in our midst.

When we have become desensitized to death, we have become desensitized to life.

There is a common impulse behind the totalitarian lockstep attitude some people have toward abortion. It is common to militant homosexuality, to gender-bending, to newfound “rights,” to sex-change operations. To the redefinition of “marriage,” not to welcome legal precision, but to make it socially meaningless. To the ubiquity of Political Correctness. The apparent anarchy of PC attitudes is really the New Religion – the replacement of God.

We are witnessing – and, God help us, enabling – the slow death of God… in the way that Nietzsche really meant his phrase: when God become irrelevant in a society, He IS dead to its people. God is not really dead, of course: if you listen quietly you can hear Him weeping.

And those other sounds, if you listen closer, whether from unmarked graves or hospital dumpsters, are the cries of millions and millions of babies.

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Click: Psalm 139 – Jesus Loves Me

Those Lights Along the Shore

1-8-18

Sometimes, when our minds wander, we think of inconsequential things that seem important for a moment, no more. This evening, for instance, I started wondering about souls in hell – When some other soul makes them angry, where do they tell them to go?

Frankly, beyond the fraction of a chuckle, that does suggest a serious matter. There is a hell, it is a place of everlasting damnation and torment. We are told there are eternal fires burning there – but I have had visions of a worse reality. A couple times when I have felt apart from God – when I have forsaken Him, not vice-versa – I have a sense that there is no worse feeling, or fate, than being separated from God. The prospect of that loneliness, apart-ness, solitude in Eternity, represents a coldness to me that seems worse then any flames.

Which is all a reminder that part of our jobs as Christians is to work to save people from hell. Is this the same as steering people toward Heaven? Actually, yes: there is no third way, no alternative destination.

Sharing Jesus and the Gospel – the good news, literally – is to have people confess with their mouths that Lord Jesus is the Son of God, and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead. They will be saved, according the Romans 10: 9, 10. Thus forgiven and redeemed, souls are spared judgment unto hell.

The job, as I call it, of believers is relatively simple. Not unimportant – quite the opposite. Too many Christians make the Great Commission from Jesus to go and make disciples to be a complicated or onerous job by thinking everything is on their shoulders. They risk offending the Holy Spirit… whose job it is to “close the deal.”

We are only charged with planting the seeds. The Holy Spirit cultivates… and harvests.

In that way my wandering mind today recalled how the Bible is replete, in virtually every chapter, with symbols, “types,” meaningful numbers, minerals and woods and gems that have specific and consistent import. So has been religious art, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass windows, poetic verse, Christian literature, and the lyrics of songs and hymns.

One reliable symbol of Christ in song and story is the lighthouse. A couple of favorite hymns or songs build on that symbolism – Ronny Hinson’s I Thank God for the Lighthouse; the Rend Collective’s My Lighthouse.

I want to share here that we miss a sweet truth if we seize that symbolism and take from it a lesson that we should be lighthouses that attract sinners, unsaved loved ones, the “lost.” In fact the imagery that reflects the Bible’s truth is that Jesus is the lighthouse – His beams are seen by those in peril; the piercing light attract those “at sea” in their troubled lives.

Our jobs, however, are different but vitally important. In the words of an old Dwight L Moody sermon that inspired hymn-verses by Philip P Bliss in 1871, “Let the lower lights be burning.” What are the lower lights? Once ships in dark and stormy seas know where the shore is, where safe harbors might be found… lighthouses have had lower lights that shine, not ‘way out over the dark waters and to distant horizons, but that illumine the rocks and shoals and harbors and docks.

God shines, Jesus calls, the Spirit guides… and then we, as the “lower lights,” welcome the lost. Provide safety. Care for the struggling seamen. Am I nit-picking about God’s commands and our role in discipleship? No. Understanding where God wants us, and what He would have us do in the Kingdom, is essential to understand.

It is interesting that despite the passage of time and the development of technology, lighthouses still are used! I spent every boyhood summer near the famous lighthouse at Barnegat Beach NJ; and my parents lived in the shadows of the Twin Lighthouses at Atlantic Highlands NJ. Now I live in Michigan, whose periphery is dotted with dozens of picturesque lighthouses.

Lighthouses, even those that double as maritime museums, often still operate. Lights – once flames, then incandescent, might now be halogen – but still send their beams across the waves. Seamen and shore men might use sonar and computers… but somehow, also, still rely on the time-tested beams of light. And the “lower lights” to guide ships to safety.

Let your lower lights keep burning. Hurting friend, weary pilgrim, struggling seaman… welcome home!

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Click: Let the Lower Lights Be Burning

Don’t Mess With Mr In-Between

1-1-18

There is a pop-music classic, and American show tune, that has been covered by every great singer, at least of the Jazz Age. Written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, and its first recording by Mercer – a terrific vocalist whose own singing has been neglected through the years – it has been a hit for many artists.

“You’ve Got to Accentuate the Positive” is sometimes spelled with the song’s lilting “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” but often referred to by its catch phrase, “Don’t Mess with Mister In-Between.” From a 1940s musical, the lyrics were inspired by, and made reference to, a revival sermon:

Gather ’round me, everybody – Gather ’round me while I’m preachin’, Feel a sermon comin’ on me. The topic will be sin and that’s what I’m against. If you wanna hear my story, Then settle back and just sit tight , while I start reviewin’
The attitude of doin’ right.

You’ve got to accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, And latch on to the affirmative! Don’t mess with Mister In-Between…

Performed in a variety of styles, many Americans today are familiar with it, and it lives in playlists and even commercials. It was background music in the movie L.A. Confidential, and Jerry Lee Lewis frequently uses the phrase – perhaps preaching to himself – in soliloquies at the piano. Its message is deeper than the lyrics of many show tunes, and has applications for revival congregations, moviegoers, and anyone with ears to hear.

Is it grist for a New Years essay? Like any good gospel message, its points are pertinent any day of the year – just as Christmas and Easter sermons ought to be re-visited in seasons apart from those holidays’ traditional festivals.

But if this is a time of year when we all look backward, look forward, and make resolutions (even if, like many promises and laws, they are made to be broken), then it is time indeed to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative… but most importantly, look out for Mr In-Between.

Why should Mr In-Between be avoided?

Jesus Himself provides the obvious answer – obvious and usually ignored or avoided by Christians – speaking to John in the Book of Revelation: And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

This advice is harsh because it cuts to the core of our souls’ sincerity, our position before God. We cannot be lukewarm about spiritual things!

Either God exists, or He does not.

Either Jesus is His Son, and believing in Him, confessing our sins, leads to forgiveness and eternal life, or not.

Either there is a Heaven and Hell, or there is not. Either Jesus is the only way to achieve salvation and eternal security, as He said, or not.

Don’t mess with In-Between. These things cannot be almost true; or mostly true. It’s like being almost pregnant. In the Book of Acts, Chapter 26, Paul’s appearance before King Agrippa in Rome is recorded. He defends himself against charges of the Jews; he relates his own persecution of Christians; his conversion; and his evangelism, the miracles he had seen; and the powerful presence of Christ in his new life.

Agrippa, listening and absorbing all this, admits to Paul that he was “almost persuaded” to become a Christian. This was meant as a compliment to Paul’s testimony.

But a preacher once said that to be “almost” persuaded is to be not persuaded at all; to be “almost” saved is the same as being totally lost. In these times we all seem to seek for compromise… the Golden Mean… the middle position, to satisfy everyone.

But Jesus would have us hot or cold, not lukewarm. To compromise with evil is to be evil. He will spit us out!

The American hymnodist Philip P Bliss heard a Dwight L Moody sermon on this subject, and wrote one of the powerful exegetical songs of the American church: Almost Persuaded.

At New Year, it is a good time to examine where we stand with God… with ourselves, our standing in Eternity. To be almost persuaded is to be certainly nothing. We fool neither ourselves nor our God. Be hot or cold – one of them! Choose today; do not be lukewarm in life. Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.

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Click: Almost Persuaded

Advents

12-18-17

This the Advent Season in Christian churches. In ancient rites its observance actually began four or six weeks, or 40 days, before Christmas. And some contemporary churches today might be surprised that there is such a thing – feasts or fasting or celebration or contemplation, looking forward to the birth of the Savior. Christmas is just another day?

“Advent” comes down to us as a word related to “Coming.” Jesus is coming: this is the promise of the Messiah that was seized upon by the faithful for generations. It became real to Mary when the Holy Ghost came upon her and she was told by angels that she had been chosen to bear the Incarnate God, the Messiah, God-with-us, coming to save humankind from its sins. The “Magnificat” is her humble, holy, awesome prayer.

There is an odd fact – so strange that we seldom think of all its meaning – about the Christmas story. Its clarity is not helped by the limitations of language… or, frankly, the limitations of our ability to fully understand or describe certain things.

In the Advent of generations’ hopes and devotions, Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem (plus other, uncountable bits of prophecy). But believers watch and wait, too, for His Second Coming. He will come again with glory, in the twinkling of an eye; the dead in Christ shall rise first to meet Him in the air… you know the verses: the Rapture of the saints, in which we shall share.

“Jesus is coming soon.” Another Advent we observe.

No less solemnly or hope-filled did the followers of Jesus welcome Him to Jerusalem before Passover. “Jesus is coming!” Advent.

When they laid Him in the tomb, those few disciples who had not lost their faith remembered His promise that He would rise from the dead after three days – as, of course, He did. “Jesus is coming!” Advent.

After the Resurrection, He roamed the land for 40 days, preaching, affirming that He was alive, and ministering. I am sure that, just as in most places and some times during His three years of ministry before Crucifixion, the word spread among multitudes, especially the sick, sinners, and the forlorn… to see Him, hear Him, touch His garment. “Jesus is coming!” Advent.

Today, His remnant church knows He will return for us. The New Jerusalem will be established; the devil and his minions will be defeated; and, crossing Beulah Land, we look expectantly to spending eternity with Him around the Throne, evermore singing “Holy, holy, holy.”

“Jesus is coming soon! Maranatha!”

They are all Advents, hallelujah. Here is where I referred to the sorry limitations of understanding and of language. A thousand years is as a moment to God. Jesus came… and He is to come… and He is here, with us. At the same time. The facts of history are real; and the spiritual realities are facts too.

We think of the Babe in the manger, and cannot help but see the Man of the Cross. We learn of prophecy that came before, and cannot help but see the promises ahead. One God, the Three-in-One – food for thought at the Feast of Christ’s Mass next week.

After Christmas, keep those Advent thoughts going. Advent is more than calendars with chocolates behind the little doors. It must be a way of life.

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This is a Gospel traditionally sung to remind believers of the Rapture of the church – Christ returning in the clouds. But it is rock-solid appropriate in this season, too! Recorded in the great lobby of the lodge at Billy Graham’s “Cove” retreat in North Carolina.

Click: Jesus Is Coming Soon

I Am Sorry… If You Are Offended

11-20-17

This is something of a silly season. These days there is a revolving-door of silliness, actually – fads and fancies of the moment; ever-changing manners and mores.

I am referring to the spate of sex scandals. They are not silly in themselves: I think harassment is deadly serious; and rape should be ranked with murder by our justice system.

What is silly – it is difficult to find a better term – is that this issue is “new.” That people are surprised by the surprises. That anyone pretends that it was not common knowledge that this went on in our culture before a few months ago. It has been a virtual cliché, even the stuff of jokes – by men and women alike – that there were such things as “casting couches,” “favors for promotions,” “indiscretions.”

It is not a surprise but common knowledge that Hollywood producers, Washington politicians, all sorts of celebrities “slept around”; but, more, wielded power through, by, and for sex. The list was long even before Weinstein and the deluge of politicians, actors, and big-shots clogging the headlines lately.

Did President Kennedy’s reputation suffer because of the common knowledge of his affairs? I think he was more often secretly admired by many. Alfred Hitchcock? I think people laugh at the twisted stories. Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton? It depends on your political affiliation, let’s be honest; the same with Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Anthony Weiner, Al Franken.

So this is not new, but reports proliferate as does the selective outrage. As I recently have written, it would be a good thing… if the outrage were to last (not the incidents). I am not so naive to think that the human race will ever be free of dalliances and flirtation, sexual favors and even adultery. But to be frank – not scriptural – about this, a well-functioning and even largely moral society operates on the pragmatic admission that the Big H happens. Hypocrisy. Do I condone it? – that society preaches one way and lives another? Of course not, but on this side of Heaven, the alternative is outright licentiousness.

Which we are near now.

I am convinced of a couple things I have not heard discussed, virtually ever. One is that a large percentage of guys who flaunt their appeal and drape blondes on their arms, usually look gay: they try too hard. Just a theory (think of Hugh Hefner, Exhibit A).

Another theory is that many men who get “caught” in affairs often resemble toads. I am thinking of Newt Gingrich and Roger Ailes and Anthony Weiner and Harvey Weinstein. My theory is that “getting caught” is less important to them than announcing to the world, “Look at me! Women actually want me!” They are willing to endure opprobrium.

A third observation surely is less talked about, but I believe to be true – that as a rule, women are as prone (sorry) as men to seek affairs and use sexuality as a tool, if not a weapon. Mitigating details arise from the relative physical sizes and strengths, and society’s traditional roles, of men and women. But from “attraction” (cosmetics for women; grooming for men; fashion for both) to outright aggressiveness, we are talking about motivations common to all. Maybe not predation, but something of a two-way street. Nature’s old “dance.”

All of which means what? NOT that we should forgive these social horrors as in the past, or ignore them even more; no. It DOES mean that – yes, just as the Bible commands – we should all commit to respecting others. We cannot do that until we all respect ourselves more. And we cannot do that until we all respect the Word of God.

People can hide affairs, sometimes, but they cannot hide from God’s Word.

Another observation: all these sex scandals are really not about sex. Certainly not about love; nor about loneliness or rejection. Excuse me, but [fill in the blank of the rats’ names in the news] often have spouses of evident attractiveness; or a string of such spouses. OR, to be vulgar, in today’s America, they easily can rent sex. To be trashier, they can crawl around alleys and back streets for it.

But I believe most of these people, when you think of how they act, actually desire to be caught. Really? Sure: evangelists subconsciously invite judgment; media stars live to flaunt.

To continue on the Biblical track, and since I have characterized the sexual motivation as secondary, I believe the real sin is that of PRIDE. Predators want to exercise power… they “do” it because they “can”… they derive pleasure from intimidating people. Otherwise self-preservation, if not morality, would determine their actions.

Finally, I have taken notice of all the mea culpas, apologies, denials, excuses, reasons, deflections, and confessions from the predators and their defenders.

You have heard them too. The 21st century’s default apologies – “I am sorry IF I offended someone.” “I really don’t remember.” “I was drunk.” “I agree, it sounds horrible.” “I will get therapy.” And so forth.

You know what we don’t hear? If it is a secular person – “Yes, back then I was a jerk, and in may ways a horrible person. But I have turned my life around, and apologize to the victim, my family, my followers. There were reasons… but no excuses. However, I am a changed person. All this was my fault, and I will be different.” Someone like, say, Sen. Al Franken could say this, and gain respect, perhaps forgiveness. But they never do!

And why can’t Christians – let us say Judge Roy Moore IF he is guilty of the charges, which I am not presuming; but people in his position – say, “There was a time I sinned and made bad choices. Like all of us. But unlike all of us, I have repented; I have been redeemed; I walk with God now as best I can. No excuses; I sinned. But for years I have been a new creature in Christ.” But they never do!

Those are statements we never hear, at press conferences that are never convened.

I am not one to cast stones, believe me, but I search for ways that society can cleanse itself – rather I want to express God’s desires and commands in new ways to new people. That should be the work of all Christ-followers.

If the problem in contemporary life, at this moment, is more Pride than Sex, so is the unfortunate response of too many people today Arrogance and not Humility.

There is too much preying, and not enough praying.

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Click: Jesus, Take a Hold

The Priesthood Of All Believers

10-30-17

I recently have been thinking, and writing about, the Protestant Reformation, whose anniversary is October 31 – the 500th anniversary, and traditionally observed on All Saint’s Day, when Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses (arguments, theological complaints, debating points) to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

Regular readers here might be tired of these reflections, but on the other hand, “hits” and “shares” and comments have increased, to use internet indications of response. Speaking personally, I think that, as with other spiritual topics, it is good for us continually to contemplate certain things.

So: back to Luther on this birthday party of sorts. Readers will know that I revere Brother Martin as a biblical scholar whose dedication opened his mind to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. That his clarity of thought was what the church, and Western civilization, needed at that moment in history. That his personal bravery was a thing to admire, and is an example to beleaguered believers in our day.

And that we need to compile, and dedicate ourselves to engaging, 95 theses – at least – today.

But I will finally address the significance of Martin Luther and the Reformation from a different perspective. Yes, he sparked a spiritual purgative, even a catharsis, in the Church that he never intended to split. I want to consider the secular aspect of Martin Luther.

Lost in the ecclesiastic disputes is the fact that Martin Luther was a transformative figure in Western Civilization. Apart from theology. Let us appreciate his contributions to culture, and where we might be, or might not be, today without him.

He stood for the individual against the state – the Establishment of the day.

He elevated the role of Conscience and personal responsibility.

He advocated turning the Church’s role in every life and institutions to the opposite – bringing Christian sensibilities and priorities into civic life.

He democratized worship: under Luther, services were held in the local languages; singing was permitted by members of the congregation; women became participants in services.

He translated the Bible into German, and encouraged other translations into other languages. Of “the people.”

He championed the “priesthood of all believers” based on the Bible (I Peter 2: 5-9 and other passages) – the assertion that believers do not need intercessors to approach God; not fathers or nuns or pastors or even saints or Marys.

Also citing the Bible itself, he led to the disposal of man-made additions to scripture like Purgatory. Contending with the Book of James, but citing the Letter to the Ephesians, he recalculated the Catholics’ reliant view of works in God’s (ultimate) judgment unto salvation… and saw that by grace, through faith, we are justified; and that, instead, good works flow from a pious heart.

He held that Salvation was not mere “fire insurance” (i.e., avoidance of hell) but a thing much to be desired, and that Christians can have the assurance now, not dependent on prayers of survivors, their offerings, candles, beads, or lists of good deeds.

He encouraged literacy, was responsible for home libraries throughout Germany, which spread the concept of schooling and the education of women.

The German princes who hid Luther from persecution and death were emboldened to assert their independence from Rome and the political arms of the Holy Roman Empire. The “Germ theory” (no pun) of political liberty such as led to the American constitution, fostered in the forests of Germany, was godfathered by Luther.

He challenged other extra-biblical traditions of the Roman church. Priests marrying – after his excommunication, he married and had children. Mariology – he denied the divinity of Mary, arguing that the temporal mother of Jesus was not the Mother God, and pointed to scriptural accounts that an incarnate Deity in the person of Mary would not have done.

He was not perfect, and Luther immediately and violently silently stopped any such talk, even that he was a Prophet. He was an imperfect man but for the shed blood of Christ. He sometimes was intemperate; he had a bawdy sense of humor; he was prejudiced against Jews of his day; he drank and argued more than, perhaps, he should have.

And he was not a revolutionary, by design anyway. He was forced to rebuke his followers for excesses against Catholic churches and clergy. (In his wake was Rome’s Counter-Reformation… spawning what history knows as the Counter-Counter-Reformation.) In his aftermath was the Concordat, which made peace between German princes of Catholic, Lutheran, Pietist, and eventually Calvinist communities. Yet religious differences contributed to wars like the Thirty Years War in the 1600s that left one-third of the German population dead. Luther would have deplored such things.

Yet even the deplorable conflicts sorted things out throughout Germany and the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire. Independence, literacy, increased liberty, and a stable middle class all followed. As part of universal education, musical instruction was promoted in and outside the church. Johann Sebastian Bach, although his birth was 200 years after Luther’s (and in the small town where Luther had hidden from assassins) was a virtual disciple. It is he and not Luther whom history has called “The Fifth Evangelist” – but Bach was a firm and learned Lutheran.

Christians, even adherents of the Roman Church, therefore still have much to learn from Martin Luther’s theses, his debating-points. But citizens of Western Civilization, indeed the world, are also indebted to the teachings, the boldness, the influence of this priest from the small German town. He was no special priest, he would tell you; but however no less a priest than the Pope himself in God’s eyes.

All that was left, in his teachings and the examples of his life is… that what he did was not in vain. That we, today, exercise the fidelity to scripture, a mature understanding of grace and faith, and the boldness to stand, as he did – a humble servant who declared his conscience “captive to the Word of God.”

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Today’s clip is not a music video but a full-length movie. The magnificent 1953, award-winning (and two-Oscars nominated) “Martin Luther.”

Click: Martin Luther

Let Goods and Kindred Go

10-23-17

America, 2017. When our story is written we will note the bizarre nature of our national discourse at this frozen moment in time. Serious and silly. Aggressive and passive. New values and no values. Decadence versus… degeneracy.

The Wasteland of the Free?

What I have called Soft Anarchy accelerates. I do not assess based on an overheated stock market, but by spiritual, moral, social markers. Let us look at events clogging the news headlines. Harvey Weinstein and the tsunami of rumors, revelations, and regrets – America’s new Three Rs. The death and accolades surrounding Hugh Hefner. The continuous confirmation that Bill O’Reilly is a sleazy boor.

Two latecomers to the anti-Weinstein party have caught my eye. Scott Rosenberg, whom I once knew peripherally in the comics business, has come come out in sackcloth and ashes, confessing that he was well aware of Weinstein’s loathsome habits for years.

Almost 25 years ago, I had a Yugoslav friend who wanted to establish a publishing beachhead in America, and recruited me as a partner. The venture would have been called Spring Comics, and for various reasons including my disinclination to be a pawn instead of a partner, I faded from the enterprise. He hooked up with Scott Rosenberg. Soon afterward, he wanted to sue a cartoonist acquaintance of mine whose idea (about cowboys and Indians vs invaders from outer space) clashed with his own similar idea. My Yugoslav friend wanted me to do all I could to support that claim, but I could not join the claim, based on my knowledge of the timelines of their concepts. My foreign friend – up to then, a better and older friend – bitterly dropped me like a nuclear potato. But he soon took Scott Rosenberg as a partner.

The two “went Hollywood,” produced a movie about cowboys and aliens; and TV series; and books, if I remember. Then – gee, what a surprise – they had a falling out: attorneys, lawsuits and counter-suits. Did they deserve each other? I left those angels to dance on the heads of pins.

But last week Rosenberg went public with tales, and tears, about his eventual relationship with Weinstein. He knew (a phrase repeated again and again in his mea culpa: “I knew,” “I knew”), but the benefits of membership in the Friends of Harvey club had been too seductive for him.

The director Quentin Tarantino issued a similar confession, also recently – he knew, he knew (even that his girlfriend Mia Sorvino was sexually assaulted by Weinstein) and he did nothing. These men and others have cited all the familiar excuses designed to exonerate themselves. They knew, they whispered to others, they sublimated, they feel bad now. I have friends who admire Rosenberg’s newly minted “apology,” which is a repulsive farce: whether they are sorry for his inaction or their inaction (sorry that Weinstein got caught, that is) is immaterial.

None of the saints with dirty faces like Rosenberg and Tarantino in their “confessions” ever admit what they should have done: confront Weinstein himself. They would have lost work; been kicked off the gravy train? Likely so. But today’s hollow confessions condemn, not excuse, them.

The new “O’Reilly Factor” Talking Point should be How can anyone be surprised about Bill? Night after night the FNC host alternately leered at women and demeaned them. Calling male guests by their last names was merely rude; calling females by their last names was distasteful. The manner in which he treated Lis Wiehl on his TV panel and especially on his mercifully canceled radio show, where she was a sort of co-host, was a recurring nightmare of a predator on display. The $40-million “settlement” recently revealed says all we need to know.

The recently departed Hugh Hefner widely has been praised as a free-speech pioneer and – bizarrely – credited with raising the status of women in our time. I never met him, but have many mutual friends because Hefner first dreamed of being a cartoonist, and routinely attached vellum overlays to cartoon submissions with his little changes suggested in pencil. Ultimately, of course, he was not a cartoonist but a successful and gold-plated pornographer.

The objectification of (airbrushed) women – and, in ultimate irony in his magazine’s tribute issue, a “transgender” being – did not free women, or men, from voracious and predatory sexual perversion. It dignified and codified such things. Sexual Revolution indeed. And its curious prophet! Even as a young boy, naturally curious about such things as found in Playboy, I wondered about this obviously gay man posing amid mammaries and strangely dressed, or undressed, women-as-ornaments. He evidently thought that pipes, silk pajamas at three in the afternoon, and Admirals’ caps were… sexy? Manly? He established a sexual landfill, not a Sexual Revolution.

The ways of nations – even nation states, their boundaries, their thrones, even their treasures – come and go. It has always been thus. But our hearts and souls are eternal; our civilization, the children we bear, and their security, are things that must take priority in our daily lives. We are warned against the lifestyle of eating, drinking, and being merry.

My point is that the pig Weinstein, the bully O’Reilly, and the smut peddler Hefner, could NEVER have succeeded for a week if America were not receptive or envious of them; or willing, vicarious, partners. Not only customers, but junior Weinsteins and Hefners. America has been a fertile field just waiting to be planted with seeds of destruction. These things do not surprise us from behind and force attitude adjustments. If Playboy offended people, there never would have been an Issue 2. If the facts about Weinstein were stated and circulated early, decent people would have boycotted his movies before the next popcorn was popped.

The activities of Weinstein and O’Reilly, long condoned and ultimately encouraged or rewarded, were blatantly egotistical fingers thrust at the world, not individual women. When all is said and done, pathetic people like them have problems with pride more than sex. “Pride goeth before a fall…”

Shakespeare correctly observed, “The fault… is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Jesus said (Matthew 7:13-14), “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

It is not difficult, really, to see the Right. For many it is a challenge to do the Right. It should be the opposite, but this is America, 2017.

Which returns us (did you expect otherwise?) to this month’s theme, Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Brother Martin saw the Right – fetid corruption at the highest levels of the Church. He knew what was right – to create the conditions for average believers to read the Word of God. He calculated the risk of Righteousness – a world-system that threatened him with excommunication, torture, and death for his convictions.

Instead of merely (merely?) standing tall in the face of the most powerful forces of his day, Martin Luther, 500 years ago, composed a checklist of complaints about the Church, the spirit of the times, and the world in which he found himself. Ninety-five “theses.”At first, his was a lonely voice.

How many Theses would you compose today? How many complaints about our contemporary world?

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This Sunday is the traditional observance of Reformation Day, commemorating Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the Church door at Wittenberg. Get thee to church where this is celebrated; or think anew, be rededicated, to Reformation.

Click: “Reformation” Symphony by Mendelssohn

It All Depends

10-16-17

You have heard the expression, “It all depends whose ox is gored,” or maybe you haven’t. It is the basis of a common-law precedent, and even a couple of Biblical references. Back when just about everybody had some beast of burden for a little farming or transport, or I suppose for eventual food, we kept oxen or cows or old horses.

If a horned ox injured another, or a person or property; or was injured somehow itself, the bedrock question of adjudication and responsibility – and an owner’s attitude – often boiled down to depending on whose ox was gored.

Outrage was relative; demands for justice were dependent on whether you were the aggrieved party – or owner – or, well, had no control over what a dumb beast did on its own…

The phrase in other words meant and means that our reactions often relate to how much we will suffer inconvenience or liability. Your ox? Get over it. My ox? I demand compensation!

The formal term for this attitude, most exercised in religion and philosophy, is “relativism.”

In broader terms today – taking it, as our culture does, to its logical extension – relativism is a moral disease that infects religion. The contemporary church, in many of its corners, defines Right and Wrong not by traditional biblical revelation, but by what is thought to be right and wrong in each situation – an ethical lapse also known as Pragmatism.

In the legal world, neither the 10 Commandments nor even English Common Law are called upon as they once were, by common consent. What seems right? What can be explained away? What is convenient? Who can say what’s “right” and “wrong”? These attitudes echo in our courtrooms.

When people reject standards and values, there are, by definitions, no standards by which they can live, or will be governed. It is what American society has slipped into: Soft Anarchy.

Relativism? Sex scandals in politics and the entertainment industry? The left howls when preachers and newsmen (for instance) are exposed; and the right drives the stories of political leaders and major entertainers committing atrocious acts.

Relativism? Political and financial corruption are decried by the right and left… selectively.

Relativism? The sanctity of life… attitudes toward war and military action… which Constitutional amendments or principles to champion or ignore… how God’s earth and Creation itself is to be respected… when protest is legitimate or crosses the line… all “depend on whose ox is gored.”

It is hard to remember that at once time the world – the West, the United States – had values and standards that nearly every person honored. If they did not believe them all, they were anyway observed in the breach. A priori ideas were first defined by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, but the idea of theoretical truths whose validity is independent of deduction or experiments, extended back in time past Kant, to Luther, to the Magna Carta, to Augustine, to the Gospels, to Plato, to the Old Testament – the Decalogue.

Once, despite all the other problems and challenges to humankind, societies operated on accepted truths, agreed-upon principles, “givens.” That is hardly the case in America, in the West, any more. Soft Anarchy. That we roll along, deluded that we advance, is more inertia than progress.

I mentioned Martin Luther, and have in recent essays, and will again until the 500th anniversary month of the Reformation has passed. His revolutionary life (I am ever more persuaded that he was a revolutionary, not simply a reformer) was more than the nexus of previous centuries’ growing contradictions and the world’s future vistas of faith, democracy, literacy, and liberty.

More? Yes – more, to us, than these possibly abstract principles. Luther’s imminent persecution and death; the challenges to his mind and his conscience; the affront to his relationship with Christ – the “free exercise thereof”; where have we heard that, since? – were on trial that fateful day 500 years ago.

He defended himself before the Holy Roman Emperor, to representatives of the Pope, to influential princes present in the court… and to us, 500 years in the future. Would he recant (deny) his writings? As legend tells us, he said:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted; and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.

I cannot, and will not, recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me.

These words, properly, should thunder through centuries, down to us.

But how many Christians, say, think abortion is murder, but fail to do anything for fear of offending their neighbors? Or are outraged that the Bible has been taken from schoolrooms, instructions, and the courts, yet are too timid to act? Or are bothered when their churches stray from the Word of God, but label their own lack of response “not wanting to rock the boat”?

Our oxen are being gored every day, friends. What are we doing about it?

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Click: “I Can Do No Other”

God’s Truth Abideth Still, In the Face of Death

10-9-17

We observe the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, of Dr Luther nailing his 95 Theses (complaints to be debated) on the Church Castle door in Wittenberg, Germany.

What momentous forces collided in that sleepy burg! The Holy Roman Empire was shattering; Medievalism was ending; Humanism and the Renaissance were dawning; literacy was sprouting, and with it the seedlings of personal freedom; the arts fiercely bloomed; the Enlightenment was nigh; European land wars and incredible maritime exploration commenced – both of them fueled by nascent commercialism and appetites of a growing middle class; serfdom was yielding to feudalism… and in turn, soon, to democracy and republicanism.

In the death-throes of the Old Order, hoary courts and royals entrenched themselves by  committing atrocities of race, religion, and conscience. The Church of the humble Savior had grown opulent and gaudy: corrupt. To finance the construction and ornamentation of St Peter’s in Rome, schemes like the selling of indulgences – buying late relatives spots in a fictional rest-stop to heaven called Purgatory.

We have outlined this, and I have lost some subscribers, presumably because I mention 500-year-old theological disputes (which objections I do not dismiss strictly on the basis of the vintages). But let us look beyond theology!

Martin Luther was the prophet of a new age. He stood for the individual in the face of organized power. He stood for popular culture, if I may go there, because he reformed the church’s trappings – the Bible for everyone to read; German, not Latin, scriptures and liturgy; congregational singing; priests who could marry; and so forth. He stood for scripture; “Scripture alone,” he bellowed to councils and popes.

He stood.

That, to me, is a notable takeaway from the life of Martin Luther. He was a Reformer, but also a Revolutionary.

In America there is a controversy over people kneeling during the National Anthem. To me, ironies abound: On matters of conscience, Luther stood, he did not abjectly kneel. Viewed from another angle, the press and the liberal Establishment in America (not to mention the NFL) condemned Tim Tebow for kneeling instead of dancing silly after touchdowns. A short prayer to God. However, countless black players are praised for kneeling symbolically to criticize their country. Consistency, thy name is not America 2017.

Luther, standing, was extraordinarily brave. There is a letter in his hand, written the night before his trial, in the Museum of the Bible that is soon to open in Washington DC (I saw it in Steve Green’s traveling exhibition). In the letter Luther calmly assumes he will be put to death and instructs his friend how to dispose of his possessions. And he asserts, once again, his “stand” for truth and for his conscience as informed by the Holy Spirit.

The Individual had come of age in humankind’s history. In Luther’s mature view, he realized that he stood for a world of more, not fewer, responsibilities – something that is scarcely appreciated today.

The crisis of the age – and for many ages – was upon Luther’s shoulders. Ironically (as we may think in the 21st century) Luther fit no mold. He was a Medievalist, not a Modern, even in the dawning days of Modernity. He really did not want to break from the Catholic Church, much less have a denomination rise in his name; but merely desired to reform it. And as the Age of Reason approached, he proclaimed that Reason is the enemy of Faith.

Yes, this New Man, harbinger of a new era and individualism – he considered Reason the enemy of Faith. So he was not a simple contrarian – he had clear but complex standards, living by them; and was prepared to die for them.

Martin Luther would die for what was sacred to him. In 21st-century America we have become a society where nothing is sacred but pleasures of the moment. Life is disposable, increasingly so, at birth and at death. Drugs supply counterfeit tastes of heaven, and our cultural heritage widely is mocked. Our civic life has devolved to games of “gotchas” and revenge. Self-indulgence and materialism are the new religions.

To the remnant and faithful, crises await our contention. We no longer have to wait, surprised when a serious life-dilemma confronts us. But we are at one of those moments in history when crises are unavoidable… and likewise our engagement is unavoidable, every one of us.

I cry for our culture; I cry for what we have squandered of our religious heritage, Western civilization, and our intellectual patrimony.

And I cry, too – every time in my life, I think, when I sing the last verse of my favorite hymn: Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever!

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Click: The “Battle Hymn of the Reformation,” A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

Here I Stand

10-2-17

This month is the occasion for a grand remembrance. The last Sunday in October traditionally is observed by Protestants as Reformation Sunday, when, on All Saint’s Day, Father Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses – basically, theological complaints – to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

Extra special is the fact that his act was in the year 1517, so the 500th anniversary is now observed. Half a millennium, roughly 25 per cent of the age of Christ’s Church on this earth. Even unchurched people know the basics of the revolution that commenced with those hammered nails – Luther’s nails ironically recalling the nails that Christ endured as He offered Himself a living sacrifice for us.

I wonder how the church will observe the “anniversary” of the Reformation. I have noticed that package-tour groups are available to cities in Germany and places associated with Luther’s life. More than that, I don’t know. I made a pilgrimage of sorts to Augsburg, Germany, in 1983, the place and 500th anniversary of his birth. In the Augsburg Cathedral I had reasonable expectations of a grand worship service, and a stirring rendition of his great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

There was, however, a small service attended by mere dozens of worshipers, in a side chapel and a charming but very modest, ancient free-standing pump organ.

Martin Luther is honored only in the breach, as they say, in many of the lands where his spiritual revolution once seized the hearts of men. The reforms of the reform-ation are evanescent; or in dire need of revitalization. Brother Martin is, possibly, in 2017 more of a historical than a theological figure.

I have said that unchurched people know something of his life. That is, to be precise, only to the extent that anyone knows much or cares much about history these days. To paraphrase George Santayana, those who have not learned from history are already doomed. The young Luther, training to be a lawyer, decided after what he perceived to be a life-saving miracle to join the clergy, and became an Augustinian monk. God’s hand might have been in that choice, because there are clear philosophical and theological lines from Platonism to the early Church fathers to St Augustine to Luther.

As a faithful clergymen he made a pilgrimage to Rome, walking from Germany. At the Vatican he was repelled by corruption and open scandals. Even back in Germany, the Roman church was becoming an agency of money-hustling, famously among other acts selling “indulgences” that promised poverty-stricken givers that souls of dead relatives would be boosted closer to Heaven in proportion to their “donations.”

Other offenses Luther identified, such as non-Biblical cosmology, veneration of saints, and Mariology, also led to the 95 Theses. Local Catholic clergy, representatives of the Vatican, and the Pope himself were much displeased, especially as Luther’s critiques gained currency. Germany was a land of greater literacy and ecclesiastical freedom than other corners of Christendom. Rome, already making a practice of suppressing and executing other critics (Luther was not the first voice of protest) sanctioned Brother Martin; demanded that he recant his many writings (including, strangely, those that were quite orthodox); excommunicated him; and sought to imprison him.

Luther was certain that Rome intended to kill him for his ideas, as it had done with previous reformers like Jan Hus in Prague and John Wycliffe (posthumous excommunication of desecration of his remains) in England. But the rising spiritual sophistication of German princes coincided with their growing desire to be free of the Catholic Church’s political and military dominance.

Religion, culture, and politics coincided. So did another great factor: Literacy. The average German could read better, and with more depth, than other Europeans to whom words and ideas were anathema, as so decreed by Rome. Largely proscribed from reading their Bibles and having to sit through Latin church services, Christians outside the German states beheld Christianity as dear to their hearts but largely alien relative to their daily lives.

My Catholic friends will dispute my characterizations of the fervor of Catholics of the day, or of the spiritual hunger of Luther’s fellow Germans and Scandinavians, yet two counter-arguments stand: Luther’s foundation-stone, based on Ephesians 2: 8,9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, Not of works, lest any man should boast,” which confronted the authority of the Pope and efficacy of indulgences and putative good deeds. And… the empirical evidence, the speed at which the Reformation spread through Europe. And the world.

A lightning lesson. We will visit some other aspects of the Reformation in coming weeks. When I refer to “literacy,” I mean more than Luther translating the Bible into German, and common believers having access to God’s Word. We must understand:

Suddenly, men and women could read the Bible themselves. And think for themselves. They could write, and publish, and exchange ideas. Literature, poetry, and philosophy flourished – contemporary works, and those of the past – and political ideas were exchanged. Luther became the patron saint of democracy and the Enlightenment (although he must be considered a Pre-Modern, just as his musical disciple J S Bach, two hundred years later, must be similarly regarded, theologically).

Not a Humanist, yet of the Age of Humanism; living during the Renaissance but not a typical Renaissance man, Martin Luther astonishingly bridged the worlds of total subservience to Word of God, and the absolute independence of the human spirit. The soul. By looking back, to the faith of Jesus Himself, he was able to portend the future.

Threatened in the Church’s kangaroo court in the city of Worms – knowing that torture, burning at the stake, and death awaited him – he nevertheless refused to recant any word he had written, any sermon he had delivered, any “thesis” in his list of complaints.

No.

“Here I stand,” he said. I can do no other.”

At that moment one of the great souls of Christianity, and one of the greatest figures in Western civilization, changed the course of history. Fortified by utter conviction, Luther was also secure in the fact that when when one stands by God, one never is truly alone.

Martin Luther challenged more than Rome – he challenged humankind. In the face of authority, in the face of injustice, he challenges us today.

How would we have responded? How do you respond today… because Authority and Oppression are ever present. No less threatening, even more dangerous.

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From the sublime to the ridiculous? Many readers might consider the knee-jerk reactions of football players during patriotic exercises, in relation to Luther. They kneel; he stood. Not an absurd contrast to discuss. We shall take it up.

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Protestantism has spread worldwide. More than one-fifth of South Korea, for instance, is Protestant. Here are the famous SoKo Christian singers “Golden Angels”: –

Click: Where No One Stands Alone

Truth Doesn’t Have a Side, But Does Have a Champion

9-25-17

This weekend I had a conversation with Dr Bennet Omalu. He has been in the news lately and you will know his name as the doctor who identified, named, and fights the brain injury CTE. Or the man whose challenges are upsetting applecarts of the National Football League and network television because people have become acutely aware of the virtual certainty of long-term, debilitating effects of concussions. Or that he wrote a bestselling book, the basis of a popular motion picture, Concussion, where he was portrayed by Will Smith.

You might not know, but would not be surprised, that Bennet Omalu has received tremendous, vicious, and unrelenting pushback, even persecution, because of the discoveries he has made. Specifically, because his discoveries have rung true… and because he has been an effective advocate. Not just Big Money but favorite pastimes are jeopardized.

Anyone can have an opinion, but if they keep it to themselves, they will be of no consequence in life. You can spot a fire, but if you do not raise an alarm or help extinguish it, you are complicit when a structure burns down. If you have faith, but hide it under a bushel, as Jesus painted the picture, you betray the gifts God has bestowed.

So, you might not know, but should not be surprised, that Dr Bennet Omalu’s latest battle (or a variation of continuing as Valiant-For-Truth) is a spiritual battle. It is the theme of his new book, Truth Doesn’t Have a Side.

This is not a departure for Bennet Omalu, because he has been a committed Christian all his life. The ultimate harmony of the Christian life was reinforced to me once again when I chose the lamp-under-a-bushel allusion. Jesus’ parable is found in the Gospel account of another of history’s great doctors, St Luke!

This current chapter of the amazing Dr Omalu’s fascinating life is a logical extension of all that has gone before.

“I believe I was led to diagnose CTE [Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the neuro-degenerative brain disease most often caused by trauma] by my faith. When I examined Mike Webster [the Pittsburgh Steeler player whose last years exhibited bizarre behavior] I saw me on that table.” Dr Omalu was aware that we are all made in the image of God, and that he, given other circumstances and life choices, could have been a similar victim.

He was motivated to dig deeper into “sports injuries” that were once the subject of jokes… but represent serious dangers. Football. Boxing. Rugby, Hockey. And lifelong conditions in the military and construction. Veterans and retired workers who were “punch drunk,” had “shell shock,” “took one too many to the head.” These phrases were not jokes to Dr Omalu: he saw serious problems, ruined lives, grieving families, and tragedy.

Possibly needless tragedy, he began to think. Spurred, and sustained by, his faith, he knew that naming the brain-trauma condition and conducting further research might lead him to conclude that some sports simply are not safe… no matter how many rules on the field are tweaked. Some games are not safe… no matter how many bionic helmets and industrial shoulder pads are invented.

And that many parents, first unknowingly but now – given the publicity of Dr Omalu’s discoveries – face hard choices… now aware that they commit virtual child abuse by allowing their children to participate in many contact sports.

We return again to Bennet Omalu’s faith, because he had to proceed in faith; and his faith has gotten him and his family though the tsunami of organized opposition and the multi-billion-dollar defensive playbook of the sports industry and entertainment colossus. For a while, he virtually was a lone voice.

But truth does not depend on the opinion of those who receive it.

Dr Omalu’s research, tenacity, and struggles in his profession, career path, and home life, were documented in Concussion. But the story of his faith – tested, tried, and triumphant – is brilliantly shared in Truth Doesn’t Have a Side. “My spirit is like a boat on the sea,” he says humbly, acknowledging that he trusts God and the Lord’s guidance.

The maturity of his faith is illustrated in his favorite Psalm, 27, an inspiring combination of humility and boldness upon which a believer can draw. I asked about coping with the pressures arrayed against him these days: “It is not easier now, no. But I have the elixir of daily faith exercises. I pray every morning, certainly every day; I read the Bible daily; the Spirit leads me to two chapters or passages that always speak to me in a special way. I am more conscious than ever of the Blood of Jesus!”

Dr Omalu does not speak in cliches. His message, like his whole story, is heartfelt, sincere, passionate. He chokes back tears when sharing letters he has received from people – often mothers – who have been touched by his message. And his conversation is frequently interrupted by unrestrained laughter that mirrors a joy only the believer can know.

I asked if he had an inkling, as a boy in Nigeria, that in some way or other he would grow up and change the world, even in a field he could not then know. I expected a rote answer about premonitions or ambition.

He laughed and said, “No! Not an inkling! I never imagined where I’d be!”

The world cannot imagine either where Dr Bennet Omalu might be in another 10 years. His intellectual and moral vision continuously surveys the horizons of life. “But ‘not my will, but Thine’ is how I have lived,” he says. “My middle name, given back in Africa, means ‘Life Is the Greatest Gift of All,’ and the Spirit reminds me of that every moment.

“I am not afraid to let people know I am a man of God. These days I speak to all sorts of groups – faith itself is not a religion! And so I am led to share. We must do everything we can.”

And everything in Dr Bennet Omalu’s case means in science, medicine, healthy life choices, and spirituality. For all of his crises and trials, and what the rest of us behold as a journey of boldness and bravery, he makes it all seem so logical:

“I follow the example of Jesus, who reminded us that He came for the sick, not so much the healthy!”

And he let loose another irrepressible laugh, this doctor who also ministers to the soul, the unlikely preacher who does not preach but who lives his Christian message.
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Dr Omalu’s new book can be found here:  Truth Doesn’t Have a Side

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Click: I Will Roll All Burdens Away

Jesus Wept.

9-18-17

Near the beginning of my relatively modest career as a political activist, I committed an act of passivity rather than activism, de-fusing instead of igniting.

It was during the Vietnam War. I was a student at American University in Washington DC, and during a stretch of time when there were almost monthly Marches on the Pentagon, huge protest rallies in the Nation’s Capital, and sit-ins on campus, AU was the focus of “activity,” if not activism. I bought into none of the anti-war theatrics – despite my actual opposition to the sitting-duck war of LBJ – and was a frequent sole “no” vote on the student Senate, whether the issue was opening dorm rooms to protesters from around the country or resolutions to (virtually) make the political sun stand still.

The student body was not composed purely of aimless hippies. Some of us went on to prominence, even accomplishments of sorts. Petra Karin Kelly returned to her native Germany after graduation, founded the world’s first viable Green Party and was elected to the Bundestag. (She later died in a murder-suicide with the elderly retired German general with whom she lived, ugly on world news reports.) Patricia Glaser of West Virginia was Chair of the Board of Culture when I was a member, and we also had frequent exchanges. Patty is now partner in Glaser, Weil in L.A., a high-profile entertainment lawyer, and “one of America’s Top 100 Female Litigators.” She has again been in the news as representing a reporter sued by Fox News anchor Eric Bolling. The harassment charges against him unfortunately are the least of his worries right now.

Anyway, one day back around 1969 there was a huge crowd of students gathered on the steps of the student union building. Someone had provided a portable mike-and-loudspeaker; and, impromptu, kids stepped up and railed against This and That. Each pronouncement was met with cheers and boos and clenched fists. I noticed that the “dead” time between harangues grew longer, from seamless to seconds to half-minutes.

Realizing what was going on, and that few students wandered away, I finally stepped up to the mike myself and said, “That’s all. Who cares about more of the same? Disperse, and go do something useful.” Sheepishly, the assembled liberals and hippies shuffled away.

It was an afternoon, back then, of dissatisfaction in search of a voice – sheep, indeed, looking for a shepherd. It reminds me of America today, especially after Charlottesville and copycat riots, protests, and statue desecrations.

We have noticed – because we cannot avoid noticing – 24/7 press coverage of certain such events. On the ground. Reporters bumping into each other. Nonstop helicopter views. If there were not blood in the eyes of protesters, the media virtually pleaded for theater.

Going back to my days at AU, one Friday afternoon, the “respected” electronic journalist Martin Agronsky, whose career spanned ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS, showed up with a cameraman and collared a few students. He asked us if we would be willing to stage some sort of disruption for his camera at the coming weekend’s event.

I learned early about partisans’ willingness to perform; and Big Media’s eagerness to manufacture.

Fast-forward to our current “crisis.” We are seeing those sorts of seeds, planted in the turbulent ‘60s, sprouting today. The apt description for a contemporary social malignancy is “identity politics.” Who you are has become important than what you believe or how you act – when “who you are” means your race, your sex, your political affiliation, and NOT your beliefs, loyalties, standards.

It is lack of integrity on both sides of the equation when people demand to be known by their superficial qualities, and their agendas; and when society today – the press, the educational establishment, and, increasingly, employers – are content to accept others by those rubrics.

Judging, or pre-judging, people by, say, the color of their skin was wrong when there was resultant bias against them… and is wrong when there is prejudice the other way. Left in the dust is the free marketplace of ideas; honest treatment of honest people; and a culture that seeks the truth. As so much of the anger and radicalism and violence stems from economic critiques, we should remember that the sin of envy is no less corrosive than the sin of greed.

There is a spiritual component to this 21st-century malady. Of course: when societies decline, it is all aspects – none in their own vacuums. Compounding the cultural and economic offenses is the number of churches that participate in the hijacking of tradition and heritage.

They mask their headlong descents into relativism and heresy with kindly bleats about “changing with the times.” Many churches are so nervous about losing members, or presiding over shrinking membership rolls, that they undertake mad dashes to be “relevant.” Relevance should be judged against Scripture and Revealed Truth, not how many people a church “runs” every week (where did that phrase originate?)

Churches that deny the Virgin Birth of Christ are keeping people from someday, in Glory, meeting the Virgin and the Incarnate Son. Preachers who deny the existence of hell pave the way for their followers toward an eventual encounter with that very real place.

The Bible talks about a time when people will have “itching ears,” when they will prefer to hear about their desires instead of uncomfortable truths. And, in the End Times, we are warned, even the saints shall be deceived by false teachers and false prophets.

And false news?

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Sometimes Jesus was moved to righteous anger. But sometimes — as when he grieved for his apostate and wayward people — He wept.

Click: The Holy City

Warnings, Judgments, or Weather Reports?

9-11-17

Our recent visits here have centered on phenomena of nature – hurricanes, floods, wildfires, rare solar eclipses, and, before them, Donald Trump. And parts of America, we tend to forget, are still in drought conditions. Further, other hurricane systems wait patiently behind the paths of Harvey and Irma.

I am not making light of them – some day a wildfire, a flood, and an eclipse might all descend on me at once – but it does occur to me that some people might make too much of them.

I am referring to some Christians, and I refer to theological subtexts. I cannot gainsay peoples’ scholarship nor their prayerful conclusions about what the Bible has said, or what God might be saying, to America through these phenomena.

Are these Signs? Bible history is replete with examples of God speaking to His people. Actually, to all the human race: judgment and destruction to wicked generations and sinful peoples. Rebukes and chastisement to His wayward children. Rules via the Ten Commandments; the plan of Salvation through Christ’s atonement.

Often the judgments and sometimes the punishments were preceded by signs, natural phenomena, and prophesies.

God ordained some of these signs, even numerology and divination by dreams. But the Bible has also warned against “signs and wonders” – at least against our looking for them, if not to them. In the End Times they will appear in accordance with prophesies of the Apostolic Times and Old Testament days.

But – here I wonder about signs and wonders – not too many prophesies since the time of Jesus.

That persuades me to think about “signs” my brethren and sisters see today. Are they correct, that a solar eclipse, for instance, portends the Final Judgment? Are End Times finally here, signaled by wildfires in the Northwest and hurricanes in the Southeast?

I am persuaded against the idea. Oh, I think we might be at End Times… and sometimes I wish we were. Do we deserve judgment in America? If not (I am also persuaded) Sodom and Gomorrah could demand apologies.

But… are America’s sins black enough to bring the whole world into judgment? Can the expanding Church south of the Equator be a momentary expiation in God’s eyes for humankind’s rebellion, or the spiritual sins of North America and Europe?

In short, I wonder whether well-meaning students of the Bible might be focusing more on Signs… than what they think the signs might be signaling (the same root word). In fact I have asked such questions of armchair eschatologists, who often have replied – as if it should be plain for me to see – that signs have been sent by God to help us see our sins… to point to abominations in His eyes… to warn of coming judgment.

What is plain for me to see, actually, is something different.

Unless judgment is nigh, signs (and wonders) is not how God has dealt with humankind since Jesus’ day. I believe in gifts of wisdom and prophecy; and I know that ancient prophetic visions were given to be fulfilled some day. And that day might be soon.

However, fellow saints, we are horribly failing our God, His call on our lives, indeed the Great Commission, if we continually look for signs. Jesus was the sign!

Do you seek a sign of coming judgment? Look to pictures of mutilated and aborted babies in your local hospitals.

Do you seek a sign of coming judgment? Look at the suffering and the poor, “the lame, the halt, the blind” all around us.

Do you seek a sign of coming judgment? Look around the world, and in our own nation, where persecution of Christians is on the rise.

Do you seek a sign of coming judgment? Look at the Land of the Free and the Home of abuse, trafficking, drugs, divorces, sexual perversion, and twisted values in schools and the media.

Do you seek a sign of coming judgment? Look at many of our churches, where relativism and secularism have replaced the Gospel; where the Bible is no longer honored as the Infallible Word of God; where His Son is not lifted up as our incarnate Savior.

Signs and wonders. Let us leave cosmic coincidences to astronomers, and weather reports to meteorologists and TV reporters. The signs of our corrupt times are all around us, and we should not need to be reminded of this proper perspective… because we ourselves have allowed these conditions to take hold.

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Click: When He Calls Me, I Will Fly Away

Eclipse

8-14-17

The Eclipse will come. And go. A magnificent coincidence of nature, it is virtually a mathematical impossibility that our earth, sun, and moon are of such sizes. The moon, occasionally in its orbit, can precisely blot out the sun, like two stacked quarters. Or that, between the sun and moon, the earth’s shadow occasionally covers, neatly and precisely, the entire moon, without even a crater rim peeking out.

Well, you know those facts, and many more, because of the Eclipse-mania that has filled the news lately. This excitement about science has itself eclipsed the concerns about possible nuclear war, government scandals, and protesters killing each other. For a moment, anyway.

I have noticed that, more and more, people marvel at scientific wonders AS scientific wonders; mathematical improbabilities; freaks of nature. Less and less do we hear average folk discern the Hand of God… or even His marvelous Fingerprints. So to speak.

That three large and ancient celestial objects can align so precisely is… chance?

Maybe so, maybe so. But skeptics would also have to believe (and they do) in other pseudo-scientific fairy tales like the Big Bang. I’ll stop there. Apart from the fact that the Big Bang Theory sounds suspiciously like a counterfeit Genesis Creation description, what – without God – was there the moment before the Big Bang? Who created matter, whether size of a proton or of a huge volume? Where does the universe end? – and what, then, is beyond it?

Secularists say that questions difficult to answer do not, in themselves, prove the existence of God. This is true. But neither does their ignorance prove the non-existence of God. Myself, I am more concerned with the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks. I know God exists because He lives in my heart; I have met the Savior.

To return to the Eclipse for a moment, I have a friend who read all the dust-up about one of the last Great Eclipses (they seem to come every 12 years ago or so, always advertised as the last of its kind we shall see for 320 years…). Anyway, she read all the warnings against looking directly at the sun; about the dangers to the eye; advice about making pinholes in cardboard, and what kind of smoked glass to look through; and so forth.

During that Eclipse, I was in California and I can still remember the sudden and very strange purplish semi-darkness that overtook, and then vanished, from San Diego. My friend in New Jersey, on the other hand, burned holes in her retina.

She read the advice about making pinholes in cardboard. She got the cardboard, she made the pinhole. Then (obviously missing the rest of the directions) she thought the pinhole was to use in order the look at the Eclipse. She held it next to her nose, squinted toward the sun in the sky. Brrr-zap.

I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” This is not a Bible verse, but was written by Alexander Pope, who also wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine,” which also is somewhat applicable here.

In ancient barbaric cultures, eclipses caused people to panic. Wise men and priests reacted in mad ways, even ordering child sacrifices. Today, we know more about science… and, contrary to the secularists, this has drawn us closer to God, not further from Him.

The Eclipse specifically reminds us that behind the darkness is light. That truth can be hidden, but only for a while. That, whether from nighttimes or eclipses, the sun is always there. Just like rain clouds – even in the worst of storms, the sun still shines, above those dark clouds.

Yes, I mean the storms of life, not only rainstorms or strange Eclipses. We poor creatures might panic or fret or fall prey to confusion, even burning holes in our eyes. But the sun still shines; God remains steady, immovable; and He is in control.

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Click: From the Rising Of the Sun

St Patrick, Relevant To Us

7-17-17

Sent from Ireland this week, revived while visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

Unlike some saints of trinkets and wall-hangings, Ireland’s Saint Patrick was real, and is real.

St Patrick knew persecution. There understandably is some obscurity about a man who lived in the late 400s, but two letters he wrote survive; there are records of his deeds; tremendous influences surely attributable to him are still felt; and he did die on March 17. These things, and more, we do know.

He was born in western England and kidnapped by Irish marauders when he was a teenager. As a slave he worked as a shepherd, during which time his faith in God grew, where others might have turned despondent. He escaped to Britain, became learned in the Christian faith, and felt called to return to Ireland. On that soil he converted thousands, he encouraged men and women to serve in the clergy, he worked against slavery, and quashed paganism and heresies. Among his surviving colorful lessons is using the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity, the Triune God, to converts.

He was an on-the-ground evangelist – possibly the church’s first great evangelist/missionary since St Paul, planting churches as far away as Germany – and he preceded much of history: living more than a hundred years prior to Mohammed; 500 years before Christianity split into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy; and a thousand years before the Reformation.

I am not Irish; I am American. And my background is not at all Irish; it is German. But propelled, I am eager to admit, by a remarkable book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill, I have learned about a gifted people. Not unlike other ethnic groups, the Irish endured persecution through generations, but in many ways in special ways. I have learned about a land that was repository of many tribes, not least the Celts, until its craggy Atlantic coast became the last European stand against pagan barbarism. Those tribes became a people, and their land virtually became, for quite a while, the defiant yet secret refuge of literacy and faith, in lonely monasteries and libraries. You know, the “Dark” Ages. Which were not all that dark. Plumbing was neglected, perhaps; but faith thrived.

As Lori Erickson recently wrote in a series on St Patrick for Patheos, “In the eighth century, Celtic Christians created a masterpiece of religious art called the The Book of Kells, whose vividness, color, and artistic mastery reflected Christian traditions laced with Celtic enchantment. The Book of Kells is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the four Gospels. While scholars don’t know for certain, it was likely created on the remote island of Iona off the coast of Scotland, and later brought to the monastery at Kells, Ireland. Made from the finest vellum and painted with inks and pigments from around the world (including lapis lazuli from Afghanistan), the book is almost indescribable in its loveliness, with designs that are convoluted, ornate, sinuous, and dreamlike in their complexity. Some scholars have called it the most beautiful book in the world,” she wrote. I can add that it can be seen as an early graphic novel.

It is on display at the magnificent Trinity College Library in Dublin – whose famous, cavernous, multi-balconied library room is akin to heaven for bibliomaniacs like me – surrounded by back-lit photos and displays of enlargements. It sits in an environment-controlled case, one page at a time turned every few months. To behold that book, so magnificent in its reproductions, in its reality, was one of the great experiences of my life.

The Book of Kells is awesome for what it is, surely one of the greatest artistic achievements of the human hand, head, and heart. A majestic monument to faith, all the more remarkable for being anonymously produced, unlikely by one person; possibly by a virtual army of creative souls. The Book of Kells is significant, too, for what it represents:

The tenacity of faith; the triumph of trust; the assumption of lonely devotion in the face of worldly temptations and the world-system’s persecutions; the joy of creativity; and obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Knowing Him; making Him known. Not incidentally investing artistic beauty along the way… and having obvious, visceral, evident fun in the process.

Back to Saint Patrick. When the ancient masterpiece we behold as The Book of Kells was created, the man Patrick who bravely and no less tenaciously fought for the Gospel on that beautiful soil was already, himself, 500 years in the past. Our faith has been blessed with famous noted saints like Paul and Augustine; and those who touched souls for Christ but never were designated saints subsequently, like Martin Luther and J S Bach; and many, many saints who mightily served Christ in obscurity, like the monks who made The Book of Kells, and uncountable missionaries and martyrs.

Saint Patrick, born a pagan, made a slave, once a fugitive, was transformed by a knowledge of Christ. He taught us how to overcome challenges, listen to the Holy Spirit, formulate a vision, and change the world. Not just his world; but the world ever after.

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For more than a millennium a hymn, set to the haunting Irish tune “Slane,” and using St Patrick’s teaching in the words of the 6th-century Irish poet Saint Dallan, has spoken to the hearts of believers and non-believers: God is our All-In-All: Be Thou My Vision. It is performed here – with obvious and profound extra layers of meaning – by the blind gospel singer Ginny Owens.

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Click: Be Thou My Vision

What It Means To Abide

7-9-17

I am reviving this message today from Ireland, where, among other peregrinations, I am visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildrem Elsie and Lewis.

I noted a few years ago that we frequently tend to think about times we have gone through, and days facing us. About short-term anxieties and losing sight of God’s long-term blessings, and His care. Headlines about good economics news… and anxiety about our finances. “Have a good week!” is the implication of sharing messages on Monday mornings, and is a common wish we speak to each other. Almost (too often) like a mantra: “Have a good day,” “Have a nice week,” even a vague “Have a good one.”

My friend Chris Orr of Derry, Northern Ireland, put these pleasantries in perspective to me a while ago. He wrote, “It is great to start the week knowing that time does not exist to God. He already has seen the end of the week. Because of that, He has no worries at all about any of His children… so why should WE worry? … and, after all, we are only given one day at a time.”

Chris’s insight made me think of the hymn Abide With Me — a musical prayer that God be WITH us, that we be blessed by the realization of His presence, every moment of every day, right now and in the limitless future.

It was written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847, as he lay dying of tuberculosis. Once again, the Holy Spirit strengthened a person at life’s “worst” moments with strength enough for that person… and for untold generations to take hope from it. Many people have been blessed — often in profound, life-changing ways — because of this one simple hymn.

Mr Lyte died three weeks after composing these amazing words.

I urge you to watch and listen to the wonderful Hayley Westenra’s performance of Abide With Me … and then return here and read the full words to the hymn.

… and then ask God to abide with you today, and this week. And ever more.

Abide With Me

Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close, ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changes not, abide with me.

Not a brief glance I beg, or passing word;
But as Thou dwelled with Thy disciples, Lord—
Familiar, condescending, patient, free—
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea—
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus abide with me.

Thou on my head in early youth did smile;
And, though, rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord: abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

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Click here: Abide With Me

Be Not Deceived. God Is Not Mocked.

6-26-17

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

That familiar verse – or maybe not familiar enough – is from Galatians 6:7. The rest of the verse is: A man reaps what he sows. And another translation of this verse reads, Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked.

This is one of the most profound verses in the Bible. In a way, a chilling spiritual threat by God Almighty. Throughout the Bible God is revealed variously as a God of Mercy and Anger and Love and Vengeance and Compassion. He is, and has been through all of humankind’s history, all those things.

As humble believers and fallible souls, sinners yet saved by Grace… the aspect of God that might concern us the most is when He acts as a God of Justice.

For it is just that we deserve punishment. We fall short. We are sinners in the presence of a Holy God. Yes; saved, we are covered by the Blood; God does not expect perfection, but He demands that we seek perfection. Yet… surely, as bold as we can be to approach the Throne of Grace, we may fear the justice of that Holy God.

What is it to “mock God”?

If you know His Commandments, but willfully rebel,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

If you are a regular church-goer, and pay your tithes, and can list good deeds; and think that you therefore deserve Heaven,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

If you were a fervent Christian, but have “back-slid,” yet still have good Christian friends and think your membership the local church, or your kids in Sunday School, are enough to please an “understanding” God,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

If you are a leader; or a pastor, priest, or rabbi, with a hidden sin, yet think that influencing the community for good will tip the scales in your favor,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

If you believe that Jesus was a great teacher but not necessarily the Son of God; or that the Bible is book of well-meaning myths and stories but with powerful lessons; if you believe this,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

This is all to say that we humans have an infinite capacity for self-deception… but in vital cases like these, our “selves” are the only people we deceive – maybe a few weak minds around us – but certainly not God.

There is a God; He is Holy and He is just; He does not require more of you than that of which you are capable. Many people think that applies only to grief or temptation or worries… but it applies to obedience too.

Do not plan to discover loopholes or plead extenuating circumstances:
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

In Glory we will discover the ultimate fate of ancient peoples, or faraway tribes that never hear the gospel. That has nothing to do with you. We cannot know what we cannot know, but in the meantime, in this land of many churches, and ministries on all airwaves, even atheists cannot claim never to have heard the invitation of Christ. Skeptics cannot say they never were confronted with arguments about sin. Believers in other gods have still heard the claims of Christ.

These people might maintain that, thanks to their willful cocoons, they never actually heard that Jesus is the Son of God; that He died to spare us the judgment for our sins; that He conquered death; and that belief in Him assures us eternal life. You can you say that you never heard these things in the past… except that here, at least, you have just heard them.

And if readers share this message, or reproduce these words, other folks who claim ignorance of the Good News can no longer avoid the consequences – the choice God presents.

And then, be not deceived:

Neither can God be deceived. And God does not countenance being mocked.

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Click: Abide With Me

Growing In the Valley

6-12-17

A guest blog essay this week by my old friend Pastor Gary Adams of the Kelham Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Gary and I went to high school together in Old Tappan NJ and shared, among other things, an admiration for William F Buckley. I could quote Bill, but Gary was able to add a dead-on impersonation and the distinctive pencil-tapping of the conservative hero.

Our most memorable adventure was the afternoon we got booted from Mr LaFemina’s Economics class. Our crime? Gary made a joke, and I laughed. The teacher was actually the funniest person in the entire school, so this must have been a bad day for him. Silver lining: we were banished to the History Department Office… where I cleverly (?) engaged its chairman, Mr Newman, in a discussion of our favorite scenes in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

We turned an embarrassment into a plus; climbed from the valley to a mountaintop that afternoon. Well, sort of. This is a segue to Gary’s guest column here, inspired, he suggests, by our Monday Ministry blog last week about life’s valleys. He wrote this for his church’s newsletter, Kelham Korner, and he packed a lot of Biblical history and Christian wisdom into an e-mail’s confines, better than I did.

In last week’s blog, titled “Are You Tired of Living in the Valley?” Rick mused on mountaintop experiences and mentioned a song by Dottie Rambo, “In the Valley He Restoreth My Soul.” The song notes, “Nothing grows high on a mountain, so He picked out a valley for me.”

I had never really considered that.

Some quick research revealed that in Colorado’s mountain communities “only three non-indigenous species (not native to the area) were found thriving above nine thousand feet,” the Piñon pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, and Green Ash. Food crops that grow at high altitude include leafy greens (lettuces, spinach, collards, turnip greens); root vegetables (carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, potatoes); peas; broccoli; cauliflower; Brussels sprouts; as well as various herbs. Some growers have had limited success with varieties of corn and pumpkins and Russian tomatoes (under cover). Food crops generally grow poorly on the mountaintop. Too little moisture, harsh conditions, and limited space to plant contribute to the difficulties of growing enough on which to survive when living on top of a mountain.

Mountaintop experiences draw our attention in the Bible: Noah and his family landing the ark on top of Ararat (Genesis 8); Abraham offering Isaac and receiving God’s promise of a Lamb (Genesis 22); Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ arms (and staff) in the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17); Moses receiving the Ten Commandments (Exodus 32); David buying the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24); Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18); Peter and James and John with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (Matthew 17). All draw us into visible signs of God’s presence.

Each mountaintop experience comes surrounded by valleys. The ark rested on Ararat after the greatest worldwide disaster in history in which all but eight people died. Abraham journeyed to Moriah knowing God had called him to sacrifice his only son. Moses’ experience against Amalek came after the people of Israel were on the verge of stoning Moses for having no water.

While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the people of Israel were in the valley building and worshipping a golden calf, and three thousand Israelites died as a result. David bought the threshing floor to build an altar to God to stop the plague that came as a result of his foolish numbering of the people. Elijah’s confrontation with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel came in the midst of widespread idolatry and suffering (a drought of three and a half years) and was followed by Elijah fleeing to the cave in the desert where he heard God’s still, small voice call him back to complete his service.

And Peter and James and John’s experience on the mount of transfiguration followed Jesus’ announcement of his coming betrayal and crucifixion, followed by rebuking Peter for acting in the place of Satan.

Then there was Mount Calvary.

Truly, that was a great mountaintop experience for us. We sometimes forget it was preceded by Jesus’ sweating “as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44) in the garden of Gethsemane. We forget that on Mount Calvary our Savior paid the horrendous price of bearing our sin. Could Jesus have borne the sufferings of Calvary without the prayer of Gethsemane?

Just as few crops grow on the mountaintop, we cannot live on the mountaintop. Rambo’s song says, “The Lord knows I can’t live on a mountain, so He picked out a valley for me…. Then He tells me there’s strength in my sorrow and there’s victory in trials for me.”

While we might prefer the mountaintop, the conditions for growth lie in the valleys. If we were never tested, we would never know God’s strength. If we were never tried, we would never know God’s faithfulness. If we were never broken, we would never know God’s ability to remake us and mold us into His image.

Craig Curry’s song, Still, is a declaration of faith in the faithfulness of God affirming that we will still trust, we will still praise, even when we are broken and wounded and in the valley, because “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. … to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:28-29).

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Click: Still

Are You Tired of Living In the Valley?

6-5-17

Mountaintop experiences. We yearn for them. Many of us have experienced them. Ministers promise them.

Significantly, Jesus did not promise them, not all the time; very seldom, in fact. His ministry was about meeting us where we are, as we are. When we are spiritually transformed we are not promised a transfiguration to a mountaintop except, perhaps, in poetic terms. But even then, it it clear that the Lord wants us, when called, to stay where we are, or go where He wants us, and do His work… sometimes to live and work in places far removed from any semblance of an exalted mountain top.

This will not be an invitation to exult in sorrow, as some religious extremists seek to do, thinking that self-willed suffering proves their faith. In both earthly destinations – the bright mountaintop and the dark valley – we dishonor God if we substitute residency for seeking and accepting His will.

We should be careful, naturally, if we send ourselves into dangerous overseas missions or domestic ministries – or if we send our zealous children – without fervent prayer. But my real concern today is with people who long for the “mountaintop experiences,” and, sometimes prodded by certain preachers, think they are missing God’s favor, or out of His will, if instead they continue in circumstances generally regarded as “living down in the valley.”

You know it… and probably have felt it at times. Never able to get out of financial challenges. Unlucky in love. Frustrated at work. Suffering aches and pains.

“Is such a life a good witness, to the world, of what a Christian’s life is?”

Maybe.

Actually, I will add to that. It has little relation to what a Christian’s life is.

What the world looks at – what God looks at – is not where you are but how, as a Christian, you deal with it. If you are there for a reason, if He has given you a task or even a burden, you insult God Almighty by lusting all the time for that shiny resort up on yonder mountain.

Dottie Rambo wrote one of her most profound gospel songs with the following lyrics:

When I’m low in spirit, I cry, “Lord lift me up, I want to go higher with Thee!”
But nothing grows high on a mountain, so He picked out a valley for me.

Then He leads me beside still waters, Somewhere in the valley below.
And He draws me aside to be tested and tried, In the valley He restoreth my soul!

Dark as a dungeon, the sun seldom shines, And I question: “Lord why must this be?”
But He tells me there’s strength in my sorrow, And there’s victory in trials for me!

Then He leads me beside still waters, Somewhere in the valley below.
And He draws me aside to be tested and tried, In the valley He restoreth my soul!

Yes, more things grow in the world’s valleys than on the highest mountains’ tops. And that can include you and me, growing. I have been in both environments, literally and figuratively. Oh, there is beauty, and great perspectives, from the heights; and we should never disdain the upward trail.

But in the meantime, the valleys can be special places.

Let us remember – a propos the valleys of life – that even the most horrible valley described in God’s Word, the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” is not a place from which our loving Father promises to spare us, no!

Psalm 23 assures us, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

We can not avoid such places in our lives. We can not escape such moments in our “walks.” Rather, we should trust God; lean on the Everlasting Arms. He does not promise to find detours for us. He promises to be with us, protect us… and comfort us, when we are in those dark valleys.

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, neither did He send His disciples to the mountaintops of all the world, but to all the world.

One more perspective, based on personal experiences. I have been on mountaintops – high above the “pine line” in the Rockies, with friends after Christian Writers conferences in Estes Park. We behold the vistas and have been moved to sing, “This Is My Father’s World.” Moving. I have also been so high in the Alps that nothing grows but lichen, that moss-like composite of fungus and algae (yes, this IS my Father’s world! Who could imagine that hybrid organism, not a plant?) – wondrous and mysterious and ancient. Yet… moss-like.

At the other extreme, to find something indigenous, think of the beautiful, fragrant, colorful Lily. “Of the Valley,” as it is known and loved.

There is victory in trials, the song reminds us. If mountaintop people never have trials, they can not lean on the promises of God; or savor His protection; or experience His sweet comfort.

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Click: In the Valley He Restoreth My Soul

What Does God See in You?

5-22-17

The worst prayer – the worst kind of prayer – that a Christian can pray begins from the attitude of “Forgive me, a poor sinner”; or “Unworthy!” or “Lord, I am not fit to approach Your Throne of Grace”…

We do need forgiveness, all the time. We are poor sinners. We are unworthy and not deserving of being in His presence. These things are true…

Except for the factor of Jesus. The Person of Jesus. We are less than worthy, but we are more than conquerors.

I do not contradict myself although, like Walt Whitman, I sometimes say, “Very well, I contradict myself!” But not as to what the Bible teaches – the core of Christianity. Above, I said that prayers offered with those ATTITUDES are mistaken. If we see ourselves in those relational positions, we reject the Truths of God to whom we pray. We insult the work of Jesus on the cross. We insult the Holy Spirit of God, who is sent to be our Helper, our Guide, our Counselor.

What do people think – what do Christians think – God sees when He looks at them?

Through history, many Christians have thought, hoped, and operated on the belief that He sees our good deeds. He does… but scarcely the totality of what He sees.

Many Christians take comfort that He sees their charitable activities, missions works, volunteer efforts, even the merciful acts performed. Surely the case… but, I submit, not the main things He looks for.

There are Christians who are confident, even in spiritual modesty, that their sacrifices and their service, their sweet spirits of forgiveness, please God. Of course these “fruits” please God… but we are told that such things are as dirty rags to a Just and Perfect God if we believe that they guarantee our home in Eternity once God sees them.

The Bible is full of believers who were at the other extreme of spiritual modesty: presumption. We know of “whited sepulchres”; of show-off givers; of those who pray loudly in the temple to be noticed; of hypocrites and vipers and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Of these types God will say… “Be gone, I never knew you! Depart from Me!”

So, what does God see when He looks down (or up, or over, or through) us? Many Christians will say, “He looks at our hearts.”

Yes, He does look at our hearts. He knows us better than we know ourselves. I happen to believe that if there is a choice – however, this is not a choice in life – but if there had to be one direction of “knowing the heart,” we should desire more that that we seek after God’s own Heart, and fear that He sees ours. Which is the point of this message.

Yes, when God sees us, He sees and knows our “hearts” – our thoughts, motives, desires. But that is STILL not what sees first, last, and most important when He looks at us.

I want us all to be reminded, and take comfort, and seize for dear life, the spiritual truth that when God looks at a Christian, a believer, a Christ-follower, those who believe in their hearts that Jesus is the Son of God, and confess with their mouths that God raised Him from the dead…

And when we are in that proper relationship with God… He does not see our deeds or our merciful works or our sacrifices or our forgiveness or our offerings or loud prayers or our memorials and names on church buildings or seminary dorms…

He sees these things, and He sees, yes, our hearts.

But what God sees first and, I believe, most importantly – He sees the Blood.

When we accept and confess Jesus, we are “covered in the Blood.” As surely as its foreshadowing – the blood on the doorposts of the pesach lambs, so the Angel of Death would Pass Over – the believers in Christ are shielded from judgment.

Those who truly believe on the Saviour can be free of guilt and shame and fear. Because when God sees you… He sees your elder brother Jesus, His only-begotten Son. The precious Blood was shed in order that God’s judgment would pass over your sins and shortcomings and failings. “Do not fear,” as Jesus so often said to people.

And the precious Blood also completes what you started, in faith and hope at your best times, in areas of charity and sacrifice and forgiveness. Jesus “finished” many things on the cross, among them the spiritual assignments we accepted when we first believed.

Thank God we did not conceive these things in our puny minds, but by the Great Commission He would have us undertake. We cannot really do them except by the teachings and directions of the Christ. We cannot find the required strength and wisdom but by His Holy Spirit.

Hallelujah, when He sees us, God rather sees the Person and the Blood of Jesus. What does God see in you? He sees the Blood covering you, and the Christ in you. The proper relational understanding of God, and the confidence we can gain, should give us confidence in the ATTITUDE of the prayers we raise to God!

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Click: Come Thou Fount of Blessing / Nothing But the Blood

May Day

5-1-17

Recently we noted that throughout history, pagan observances and celebrations often were co-opted by the Roman church, roughly conterminous with the expansion of the faith. And when expansion was not tractable in lands or with peoples, organized-Christianity found ways to incorporate the names of tribes’ festivals, or certain practices, or pagan gods with new names. Theories abound about the word “Easter,” for instance, and the calendar-date of Christmas.

Such traditions of organized religion better can be filed under “marketing” more than theology; ecclesiology more than evangelism.

Christendom since the Reformation has split in two ways in this matter too. Generally, Protestant peoples of northern Europe have revived Springtime pagan observances, often calling, and sometimes believing, that they are mere celebrations of Renewal, Nature, and Fertility. Holidays run the gamut from countryside dances to dedications of animals, seeds, and celebrants’ resolutions for the year ahead. Catholic lands often have named or invented saints who overlook the prospects of farmers and planters; Harvest Festivals in advance.

From back in hazy pre-history, May 1 was the date agreed upon as the appropriate day, regarded as the beginning of Spring (advent of Summer in some ancient cultures). It is roughly halfway between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice.

The fertility goddess Maia, a figure in both Greek and Roman mythology, inspired the name “May” and other related words in many languages. Springtime celebrations of fertility were common to all societies. Singing, dancing, special pastries, and the presence of flowers, as in the May Pole, were common to all. So were bonfires, whose smoke was deemed to have protective properties. Faces were sometimes washed in the day’s morning dew.

In Nordic lands, Walpurgisnacht festivals still are held – nighttime activities including bonfires, wreaths of flowers, planting of seeds, and burning of branches, lending a pagan veneer that even an attempt to retroactively honor a patron saint cannot dispel (Saint Walburga is claimed to have introduced Christianity to German lands… but history bestows that honor on St Patrick). In countries like Estonia and Poland, May 1 – Walpurgis Fest – is a national holiday. In Germany, people still gather around bonfires and dance around May Poles festooned with Spring flowers.

In Ireland and nations of Celtic origin, “Beltane” is honored still, even in sight of ancient churches. Neopagans and wiccans have revived the old practices, often adding incantations. Italians harken to pre-Christian days, celebrating Rebirth in its larger senses as “Calendimaggio,” but retaining pagan rites of the ancient Etruscans and Ligures… whose languages are lost to us, but whose superstitions endure.

In Catholic lands, statues of Mary frequently are adorned with wreaths of Spring flowers. (She is the “Queen of May,” to the uninitiated.) In Britain, Morris dancing, decorating May Poles with garlands of flowers, and such outdoor rituals date back to Anglo-Saxon fertility fetes when May was called the “Month of Three Milkings.”

There is another May Day with which we are all too familiar. Known alternatively as International Workers Day, many people assume its own origins are also shrouded in the musty past and in obscure lands, or at least as a holiday of Socialists and Communists, the progeny of Karl Marx or Soviet conspirators.

The red May Day, however, was inspired by an event in America, as recently as 1886, thereafter adopted by Bolsheviks around the world. Disaffected radicals – workers and farmers, anarchists and socialists – agitated for a national strike in 1886, but in Haymarket Square, Chicago, things turned ugly when a bomb was thrown by persons unknown. When the smoke cleared, police and strikers were dead, many injured. The radical Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW or “Wobblies,” was founded there soon afterward. The Haymarket Riot inspired Communists to commemorate it with labor’s May Day.

From the Soviets’ Moscow to Beijing to Havana to Pyongyang to Harvard and Berkeley, that traditional has continued.

The other May Day we know about is the international distress signal. It is only about a century old, displacing wireless telegraphy’s SOS soon after it was first implemented by the sinking Titanic. “May Day” was the vocal shorthand, as the Morse Code was superseded, for emergencies, probably the transliteration of the French “m’aider” – “help me.”

I am not sure whether towns and schools, in the US anyway, have May Day events any more – at least not like when I was a schoolkid, when there actually were dances around Maypoles, threading garlands of flowers; and assigned essays about Spring, and we were allowed to mention God. Now, in this brave new world that is realizing the dreams of Socialists, from Europe on the brink to major forces in the US, every day is May Day.

But the May Day that has the most relevance – that is, immediate import – to Patriots and Christians, is the international Distress Signal.

We are indeed adrift and in distress. As a society, as a culture, we need help. We need to be rescued. “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

IFs aplenty. We need revival, but we cannot pray for God’s magic wand. He has never worked that way. We cannot effect it without the Holy Ghost; but God will not bring revival if we do not repent.

Unlike the distress call that went out when the Titanic was sinking, we have the ability to influence our rescue. We can save our lives as He heals our land. But May Days will end sometime. Help us, Lord.

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Click: Help Me

The Truth About Progressivism

4-24-17

Not quite the same thing, but I might address the Fallacy of Progress. Being skeptical of Progress is akin, in these times, of ancient heresies deserving of the stocks and public derision.

Our human family, “advancing” through culture, literacy, prosperity, science, and democracy, has ambled through history, ultimately through eras of Humanism, Enlightenment, and Universal Democratic Principles, to the Twentieth century. Was the promulgation of a “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” a landmark of humankind’s progress… or a shining example of human folly, pretentiousness, and folly? Its self-delusion might be measured by the effectiveness of its “universal” application since 1948.

In any event, its Twentieth Century – even after its somber adoption – was a period of unimaginable cruelty and barbarity, which saw the shedding and squeezing of blood from uncountable millions; wars and scientifically refined methods of slaughtering one another; virulent hatred and oppression, and mothers’ tears, probably exceeding those of all of history’s previous centuries.

We, humankind, have arrived at the present time, riding into town, as it were, on the horns of a dilemma – which sounds like a Dr Seuss animal, but represents, rather, a crisis in world history. All nations and peoples have come to realize that monarchies and serfdoms and dictatorships are dysfunctional at best and brutalizing at worst…

No. All nations and all peoples have NOT realized that. Only dullard high-school teachers and meaningless United Nations resolutions maintain this fallacy. Is this Progress? – billions of people around the world live under dictatorships; some of the enslaved people are restive and desperate, but some are relatively content because they have creature comforts their parents lacked. Some percentage of humanity retains a totalitarian strain, happy to profit by it at least in some emotionally selfish manner. If they are not among the persecuted, of course.

Even in America, the first nation to overthrow its monarchy, many citizens still act like subjects. That is, a fannish slobbering over “Royals.” Seemingly a trivial fascination, this reveals that the average American craves to be subservient to random groups of “superiors.” No offense meant to Queen Elizabeth, especially at the time of the old girl’s birthday, but how any of her breed should be called “high-ness” or “majesty” is degrading; a mystery to me.

The American obsession with subservience extends beyond Accidents of Birth. It is no different, but surely costlier, when Americans idolize athletes, movie stars, and “celebrities.” Not heroes, but Personalities, that bizarre euphemism for people otherwise lacking in admirable characteristics beyond good looks or the ability to pretend to be other people before cameras. The modern equivalents of taxes paid to the local lords are higher ticket prices and higher product costs due to funding their salaries, endorsement fees, etc.

Have computers and the internet brought heaven on earth… are not they proof of Progress? Surely the increase in knowledge is impressive, and has vast potential for good. Yet pornography is the most-visited category of web hits. Students have access to virtually limitless data, yet are ignorant (and increasingly so, each year that passes) of foundational facts of government, history, and religion.

Able to learn about history’s greatest figures, and humankind’s most significant conflicts, Americans choose the Kardashians and video games.

If one accepts that human nature is dark, then any system with few restraints is going to be dark too. That applies to democracy and politics, or lowest-common-denominator popular culture. The computer’s mouse makes a sorry compass. Human nature, allowed freedom to its Nth degree, is not going to turn benign because we take a wrong turn in the direction of Instant Gratification.

The horns of that dilemma I spoke of is this: We cannot turn back any clocks. It is rare when a nation votes itself fewer freedoms. When it has happened, an awareness of sclerotic licentiousness is never the reason. “Those who surrender freedom for security end up with neither.” Churchill is supposed to have said that “democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider any alternative.” Yet democracy has brought us corruption and self-indulgence.

The malicious impulses behind democracy and finance capitalism are cancers that have, and will, spread. I pointed to the celebrity culture as an example of a free people returning to false values again and again, as the Bible describes dogs returning to their own vomit. The Caesars knew: bread and circuses keep an exploited population fat and happy… until a culture rots from its core.

Progress? The word is becoming odious. “Turn back the clock”? History never really regresses, either. The answer is a Third Way. It is in the Bible – the wisdom of the ages for all things. It holds the answers to all questions. Its knowledge is dispensed from the Throne.

Two verses from Proverbs, of course, are keys that can unlock the door of our cultural dilemma:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (1:7); and

“Gold there is, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel” (20:15).

If our land were to rightly regard the Source of all knowledge and wisdom, and lean not to our own understanding and lusts, that dilemma would be tamed, and we could know genuine spiritual progress indeed.

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Click: Do You Know?

The King Was Coming. Mere History

4-10-17

We recently observed here that Bible passages in many printed versions have italicized verbs. The old King James committee was making theological, more than grammatical, points. Philological, really: to be exquisitely precise; to use the correct words that reflect the correct context, correct meaning, correct implications.

Not to be pedantic (although this realization has enormous significance), and to encourage readers to comb their Bibles is never a bad thing. But notice the number of times that Jesus referred to something that previously had happened, but spoke in the Present tense; and described things of prophecy likewise in the Present tense.

In fact, philology fans, that brings me to my point after only two paragraphs – Holy Week, more than any other time of the year, focuses our attention on things that seem ancient, but are of today. The Present.

Jesus made His entrance on this week we commemorate. People rejoiced at the news of His coming. Steadily, however, the people’s enthusiasm waned. Their leaders, both religious and secular, denied His status; they dismissed His message; they denigrated His divinity. From officials to individuals, Jesus the Christ became the inconvenient and marginalized Jesus the mere rabbi and troublemaker. Their adoration turned to indifference, which turned to rejection, then to hostility. He endured it all – friends who disappeared; disciples who betrayed Him; recipients of His miracles who found other things to do other than plead or weep for their Friend. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He did that to take away the punishment the people deserved for their sins. Till the last moment, He forgave them.

Or… to use the King James method of reminding us that God’s truth of yesterday is identical to the truths of today and eternity – that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever – let us apply the Present tense to the previous paragraph:

Jesus makes His entrance this week. People rejoice at the news of His coming. Steadily, inevitably, people’s enthusiasm wanes. Our leaders, both religious and secular, deny His status; they dismiss His message; they denigrate His divinity. From officials to individuals, Jesus the Christ becomes the inconvenient and marginalized Jesus the mere “teacher” whose teachings are annoying. Our adoration turns to indifference, which turns to rejection, then often turns to hostility. He endures it all – friends who disappear; followers who betray; recipients of His miracles who always find other things to do other than serve or worship their Friend and Savior. For us, He is the continuous reminder of obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, ever willing to bear the punishment we deserve for our sins. Till the last moment of time, He will forgive us.

All that He requires is that we repent and ask for that forgiveness; to believe in our hearts that He is (not merely “was”) the Christ who made that sacrifice; and that God raised Him from the dead.

The only aspect of this Holy story that is not timeless – that is, an element that actually might expire – is the chance you and I have to accept Christ, to embrace the simple requirements Jesus offered. Or, using the Present tense, offers. You and I still have the awesome, and potentially awful, power to accept or reject Jesus.

There is no time like the “Present.”

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Click: The King Is Coming

The Time of the Songbirds is Come

4-3-17

A guest essay by one of my favorite writers, Leah C Morgan

Winter serves its purpose necessary for cycles of life and growth. Including sorrow and darkness. But no one mourns its departure. There are no weeping farewells, no fierce clinging to its coattails. Winter’s last cold breath could easily be mistaken for a communal sigh of relief.

But Spring. . .

Spring is like hope, often suppressed by doubt and crushed by fear before finally bursting out of the barrenness with such lush beauty we would think it audacious if it were a woman crossing the landscape.

Or a dream on the horizon.

But Spring is so universally pined after, we allow her to paint the town in pastels and festoon it with flowers. To declare a new season and prophesy a resurrection of all dead things. We are so in need of warmth, we want to believe.

Snow comes just as we’re tempted to forget coats and gloves; and we’re buried again in self-doubt, certain that winter is eternal. And that second chances, green buds, and fresh starts are myths.

Then the smallest patch of sunlight shines its way indoors, warming our faces. A song of warbled notes reaches our ears, and the perfume of living things wends its way to our senses. Our hearts thaw. Something flutters within and pushes its way forward like a new beginning.

And there we are against all odds, in spite of the dead branches and brown grass, joining the parade, waving banners, and getting all caught up in the longing. We believe in the getting up, in the rising again.

If forgotten bulbs buried beneath the frozen ground can resurrect their remembrance, and dormant plants survive long months of deprivation, if distant birds are spurred to make lengthy migrations in expectation of better days, and insects lie quietly in wait for a feast about to commence, how can the human heart settle for dearth? The very bowels of the earth offer up an invitation to rejoice. To hope. To muster up enough courage to try again.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Spring is the season to put away the wool and furs, the weighty things that make for despair.

It is the reminder that buried things are not always dead things, and that dead things can live again.

Spring is the occasion to pray for the miraculous, for rebirth and resurrection. It is the opportunity to enjoy perpetual youth. Nothing is so young as new life, and new life can sprout in the faith of a fertile mind, coming to life in a fresh idea. It can spring up in the purpose of heart, taking the shape of brilliant creativity.

Buried talents, forgotten intentions, failed attempts – they all want to be born again, and Spring makes the yearning reasonable. If daffodils can fan out their pretty bonnets after keeping still for a year, what unexercised muscle of faith might be stretched out in the light of understanding?

The time for understanding has come. Flamboyant Spring steps forward on a pale, monochromatic stage to pantomime the Gospel in living color. The Old Man Winter is past, and now a light shines in the darkness, its transformative power producing new life. The fields and forests are born again, their naked knolls and branches clothed in glorious wardrobes. They develop, mature, producing fruit and dropping seeds. The seeds are buried, left to die and decay, before shedding their form to be resurrected, coming forth from the ground in a new body.

“Sown in weakness, raised in power” (I Corinthians 15:43). How we begin is not how we’re destined to remain.

A sweet, scented breeze is blowing, whistling a melody. And a voice that sounds a lot like Spring sings:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Solomon 2:10-13).
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Click: Rise Again

This Should Be Your Favorite Bible Verse

3-27-17

The title I have given to our thoughts here is, on its face, presumptuous. I do not mean to dislodge anyone from their verse or passage of personal affection or wellsprings of faith and strength. Nor is there is there any reason to intrude on the essential symbolic and subjective value of a Bible passage any person holds dear.

In a larger sense, objective rather than subjective, I have often held that Red-Letter Bibles contain unconscious irony. “The words of Jesus in red,” the title page reads. But in a true sense the entire Bible should be printed in red type, no? Every word is inspired by God; dictated, as it were, by the Holy Spirit.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work” (II Timothy 3:16 NLT).

Another pitfall in addressing “favorite” verses, or being too mechanical about them, is my recollection of a youth group getaway when I was young. A few of us snuck off to the chapel one night to read the Bible together. We had fervor, but we had nervousness too. We went around the circle, reading our favorite passages. I prayed for God to back me up, and trusted to share whatever page’s verse I opened to. It turned out to be one of the interminable lists of “begats.” Not only endless and, in that context, thin of relevance… but I scarcely could pronounce any of the ancient Hebrew names in the genealogy.

There is the story, too, of the businessman who had escaped debts by declaring bankruptcy. He cited the Bible as his inspiration – that he opened the Book one night, pointed his finger at random, and saw it was on the words “Chapter 11.”

But to be serious, John 3:16 is often claimed as a favorite verse, and surely it is a foundation stone of our faith, or the essence of the gospel message. Other verses and passages sum up the law; or the doctrine of Grace; or the distinction between works and faith; or promises about healing, salvation, or eternal life.

At one point in my life, enduring measures of distress, I heard the passage about God feeding even the sparrows; three times in one day, from three different sources – radio, TV, and a friend. That day I knew that God was shouting, not whispering, a reminder of that promise to me. And that has become a favorite passage.

But my suggestion of a verse that could join every believer’s list of favorite verses is what Jesus said on the cross as He breathed His last earthly breath:

“It is finished.”

The verse demands more attention than most of us give; and it deserves more contemplation than most of us exercise.

Some teachers explain that it was Jesus’s way of saying was dying. Like, “I am finished.” To graft a Message sort of street-parlance contemporary version, “I’m outta here.” Please forgive the unplugged spirituality – or in evitable worldly devolution of the Bible’s sacred aspects. But, Jesus was not saying at that moment that He “was finished” as a man, or even as Emmanuel, God-with-us. Neither was He saying that His earthly ministry was finished, although this is closer to the implications of His words.

“It.”

What was “it” that was finished?

Especially, now, during Lent, as we should be looking forward to the significance of Holy Week, it helps if we think of the Easter season – the rejection, suffering, sacrifice, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord – as the nexus of history. Before then, everything looked forward to the Jesus moments. God’s love; God’s forbearance of His people’s rebellion; God’s commandments; God’s wrath; God’s forgiveness; God’s laws and requirements of sacrifices; God’s miracles; God’s prophesies; God’s promises, ultimately, of a Saviour.

Then came the events, foretold uncountable times in written and oral history by many and diverse writers in prose and poetry and song, looking toward the plan God always had – the salvation of humankind. The means to be reconciled to God. The only way to avoid damnation for our sins. The only path to communion with the Holy God. The plan of forgiveness. “It” is the gospel message.

All of humankind’s history turned during those days… centered, as it were, on the cross itself, literally where His heart was. All Heaven and Creation listened, and all of us, afterward, hang on those words, even as He hung on the cross.

Or… we should hang on those words. Favorite Bible verse of ours or not, the meaning of “It is finished” can be cherished as the perfect synopsis of the Bible’s gospel message – the entire history of God and man in one phrase.

Because with His sacrificial death, “It” was more than the ending of His ministry — No more healings? No more miracles for the Palestinian locals? His teachings were finished? All these things were true, but He had already promised that the Holy Spirit would come, enabling and empowering believers in Christ to do great things as He had done. However, none of those factors is the “it” Jesus meant.

Returning to Red Letter Bibles, I will note that older translations have verbs in italics, in many passages. This is because original texts wrote of events that HAD taken place, or WERE of earlier prophesies, but written in the present tense. Not “were,” for instance, but “are.” Or “will be.” Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It could be confusing to readers, but the original texts spoke of spiritual matters of their times, or earlier times, in the present and future tenses.

In the same manner also, Jesus did not live – He lives. As my friend Rev Gary Adams of Kelham Baptist Church in Oklahoma City has pointed out, “tetelestai,” the word for “It is finished,” grammatically is the perfect tense. Completed action! Jesus dies for us every day… present tense. And we must die to self, and live for Him, every day.

When Christ said “It is finished,” he was not referring to a chapter that closed when He breathed His last earthly breath. He means that at that moment that a new chapter begins. A chapter about each one of us, chapters in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Comprised of many favorite verses!
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Click: It Is Finished

What Is Plausible About God?

3-20-17

I hope you will indulge me a stroll down Memory Lane.

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I have had several careers – I was a writer for Disney Comics. That was back in more innocent days. Having been weaned on Disney, “visiting” with Walt every week on TV, I had my own pair of Mickey Mouse ears when I was six. OK, I wore them into my 20s, but we all have our affections. OK, probably into my early 30s, but it’s my own business. Still on my wall office, amid a few other awards and citations, is my framed membership certificate, my name printed in red, in the Mickey Mouse Club.

My work with Mickey and Donald was back in the day when Disney comic books were experiencing a lull in interest. Superheroes, television, and video games were making it tough for the ducks and mice. Sales of the comic books were almost nil in the US… but thriving in Europe. So my work, at great page rates, and more pages assigned than I could well handle, was for European publishers. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, Finland. I had monthly editorial meetings, either in New York City, or in Copenhagen.

I felt especial warmth for the late Uncle Walt in those days. Again, this was before days at Disneyland or afternoons watching a theatrical Disney cartoon were comingled with gay rights rallies.

Along that ride, I conceived of a story “hook” that I thought was pretty clever. Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the nephews, in the style (I hoped) of the master cartoonist Carl Barks, would be on an adventure, in a remote jungle, on a quest for treasure. They stumble upon an unknown small lake and discover, almost too late, what superstitious natives knew: it is the dreaded Fountain of Old.

The Fountain of Old, to be avoided – of course – at all costs: a sip of its waters turns you older… and older… and older. Eventually to die, if you drank enough.

A switch, of course, on the legendary Fountain of Youth that enticed and eluded Ponce de Leon and so many other explorers through the centuries. Ah! A happy twist on a popular legend. I don’t remember the details – whether Scrooge or Donald, or perhaps their rivals, drank of the waters; or fell into the lake; or got into a dilemma, or escaped. Immaterial now.

My editor nixed the story proposal. I was deflated; why? “Who ever heard of a Fountain of Old?” he asked. My response: “Nobody. That’s what will make it an interesting story premise.”

“No, Rick, it’s not plausible. How could there be such a thing?” he asked. I thought a moment, mostly incredulous. “Well, there can’t be such a thing. Neither can there be a Fountain of Youth, yet that is a common theme in history and fiction.”

“That is my point. Many people through the centuries have sought a Fountain of Youth. Nobody thought about a Fountain of Old,” he asserted. “Rick, it simply is not plausible.”

He was correct, or course. But irrelevant. We went back and forth. “Not plausible,” he had me there.

Finally I came to what was left of my senses, and I said, “Wait a minute. We are discussing talking ducks. The richest duck in the world, his irascible nephew; all dressed up top, and naked on the bottom. And mice who dress the other way around; and talk, and reside in suburban houses. A dog, Goofy, who has a “real” dog, Pluto. And so forth.

“Where does ‘plausible’ start and end?”

We all live in different realms of reality. And non-reality. We choose to live in these zones, and we choose to suspend belief or non-belief as, frankly, it suits us.

People who follow horoscopes and read tarot cards dismiss the Bible as mumbo-jumbo. Kids who are obsessed with superheroes don’t want to think about Jesus walking on water or through walls. Victims of terminal illnesses will grasp at copper bracelets and expensive herbal remedies and the Power of Wishful Thinking, but reject the Lord Who Healeth Thee – and discard documented cases of miracles.

What is plausible?

Is it “plausible” that the Creator of the infinite universe created each of us… loves us?… knows us and everything about us?

Is it “plausible” that such a God created us with free will, and that humankind chooses to sin, and that a Holy God cannot accept sinners in His heaven… but provided a substitution for the punishment we deserve? That He displayed His love – His willingness to forgive – by becoming incarnate, a spotless man-god whose death would be ransom for ours; whose resurrection would confirm His divinity; that belief in Him would save us unto Eternity? Is this plausible?

Is it “plausible” that we can have this God live in our hearts; an actual Holy Spirit who can fill us, guide us, comfort us, empower us?

Is it “plausible” that, while many millions throughout history have accepted this simple plan of Salvation, many, many other millions of people have rejected this God? Have cursed this gentle Saviour? Have blasphemed the Holy Spirit?

Is it “plausible” that so many people cling to superstition and errors and frauds and lies… and death? They can have life, and that more abundantly, despite the promise offered them.

These things are not only plausible; they are true. There is a supernatural world. There are spirit beings. Biblical miracles are documented and happening still today. These plausible truths are waiting to be embraced. Many people choose not to.

They reject the beautiful promises, the Truth of the Gospel. They choose to wander about in their ignorance and rebellion. Whether they know it exactly or not, they are looking for the Fountain of Old.

Rejecting Christ, they are sure to find it.
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“Escapist” entertainment. To America in 2017, the fantasy has become the reality. Is life in America so awful that we need to construct alternate universes, false heroes, and new versions of what is genuine, authentic, and… real?

Click: It’s a Small World, After All

Two Hands, One Heart

2-27-17

There was a wise saying that was popular in the time of the Jesus generation, the Born-Again movement, and I am a great believer in it, as in most every example of bumper-strip theology. “God gave us two ears and one mouth! Try listening!”

A wise aphorism. A life lesson. Indeed, a rule to live by. I stink at math, but I understand the irresistible logic of this saying. Two ears, one mouth.

A friend recently employed a variation of this. Whether it is an old saying I never heard before (very possible) or new to this clever friend, its logic is also irresistible and powerful.

“God gave us all two hands, two eyes, two ears… but one heart. That makes it our job to find that other heart, to complete the picture.”

That can have poetic and romantic, even mystical, applications, but also spiritual relevance. Just as the actor-comedian-author Orson Bean, a late convert to Christ (and, incidentally, Andrew Breitbart’s father-in-law) said, “We were all born with a virtual hole in our middles, in our hearts, by God’s design, because the Holy Spirit was sent to fill it.”

And nothing other than God’s love can soothe our hearts; nobody other than Jesus can save our hearts; nothing else than the Holy Ghost can fill our hearts.

In this world, we are ultimately lonely people in a lonely place. It does not have to be so, but often it is. Finding love is rather a rare thing. Facebook unintentionally teaches that we can have a lot of “Likes” and “Friends,” but there is no category of “Loves” in its galleries. On dating sites, profiles ask “Who I seek,” but not “Who I need.”

I realize that every person, especially the emotionally needy and vulnerable, would be reluctant to expose their neediness.

On the other hand – and to continue the spiritual aspect of these common but seldom-discussed truths – we humans are different in uncountable, sometimes radical ways. Different sexes, different colors, different talents, different sizes, different values and attitudes…

But there is one common element. We share one thing, whatever other things are different —

We all need a Savior. We all are sinners. Each of us… has one heart. And like the poetic, romantic, mystical imperatives to which my friend referred, our spiritual hearts are lonely too. Even pagan savages look to heaven; inchoately desiring something greater in life; and – as do the most “civilized” amongst us – instinctively know that a greater power exists.

Paganism does not stop there. And how sad that there are so many superstitious and secular and paganistic people with whom we interact every day. Not in far-off jungles, but our neighbors, in this land of many churches.

But that “greater power” does not have to be a mystery, as many people make it. He is Almighty God, Creator of the universe and lover of our souls. He revealed Himself, becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us. When Jesus ascended to heaven, He said that it was better that He leave, because One would follow who would be the Comforter; and that greater things we will do when the Spirit comes.

Into our hearts.

In that way, we find that “second” heart; our hearts are joined as one with the Lord’s. In the same manner as the promise that whenever two or more are gathered in His name He will be in our midst, that union of our lonely hearts with His perfect heart… makes us complete.

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Back when I was Director of Product Development at Youth Specialties, I conceived a project wherein some performers at our Youth Workers Conventions could work on two print and video projects for us. One would be for them to write new music, or least new performance versions, of classic hymns and gospel songs. The other would be to devise lessons and demonstrations for worship leaders and church music directors.

Too often, contemporary worship leaders would sing random songs, randomly repeating lines, aimlessly segueing to other music. Sometimes this was blamed on “Holy Spirit leading” but mostly it was lack of discipline… spiritual discipline. Chris Tomlin was great at intentionally building ascending keys and tempos, knowing when to pause for prayer, and be sensitive to worshipers’ reactions, and so forth.

For various reasons that never happened while I was at YS. Some singers and bands subsequently have done these things in published formats and in seminars. I am not claiming to have planted any seeds, at all, but I am grateful for the discussions I had with Chris, with David Crowder, and with Paul Baloche.

Paul is truly gifted as a composer, writer, musician, and worship leader. His ability to communicate his inspirations is impressive. Maybe his most beloved worship song is “Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord.” Listen in the context of today’s essay.

Click: Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

Frienemies

1-30-17

“The old order changeth,” and sometimes it changeth pretty dang fast. With the sum of human knowledge doubling every 17 months, they say – whoops, this just in: it doubles every 16-1/2 months – our heads spin.

Surely this is the case beyond facts and scientific data. Common folk feel a disconnect with changing morality, musical styles, social policies, and fashion. Such things have always evolved, but never before between breakfast and bedtime. To the extent that essentially evanescent matters change, humankind has always been assured, and relied upon, and embraced the Word of God as immutable, everlasting.

That contemporary churches and denominations are re-shaping their brands of theology to accommodate contemporary mores, instead of the opposite, is disturbing. It offends the faithful, subliminally. It is incendiary to spiritual activists, Christian soldiers, as the hymn identifies us. It is odious, we are persuaded, to God Almighty, whose Word commands that we not conform to this world.

The nature of friendship has changed, or rather has been changed. Once upon a time if you fell out of affection with an associate, you discussed the problem. In the misty past, and in extreme cases, opponents would fight duels… but only then after elaborate notices, challenges, appointments, nominations of “seconds,” and scheduling. Swords or pistols must have seemed virtually inconsequential after all those preliminaries.

Fast forward to today, when people Unfriend others on Facebook. It is the equivalent.

Inherent in Unfriending, except when clearing one’s In-Box (or re-establishing order and sanity to the daily grind, another topic) is condescension, disapproval, and exclusion. Safer than swords or pistols, the e-version of casting someone from your social circle and yelling “unclean!!!” is to Unfriend.

It has happened to me lately, although not specifically. I have been gathered, like a happy fish minding my own business, in wide nets cast in the waters by people who demand that folks who voted the way I did recently remove myself from their site. Anathema! – we are denounced, condemned, excommunicated.

In a few cases I have taken the trouble to say, in effect, “It’s been swell; have a nice life.” In every case the response has been that their outburst was not personal, and, gee, we can still talk and Message (now a verb, ugh) but simply avoid politics. My cheek should become Unslapped by the glove.

Beyond the evidence of a culture hurtling toward terminal superficiality, there is a deeper and more disquieting trend at work here at the nexus of Politeness and Politics. Relevant Magazine recently published an article about the dangers of social isolation and the resulting indifference to other people and their needs. It is true that Internet Etiquette has transformed our computer and smart phone screens into virtual shields, or allows us that option.

I think it is an objection without full force; apart from spiritual regrets we might have, it is largely a mechanistic argument. In any event, what is more alarming to me is the visceral effect: it is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us.

The election of Donald Trump – I would say the America of both Obama and Trump – has our society in a more contentious state than at any time since the Civil War. This is a major malady, no longer a possible passing case of civic indigestion. We are headed for some form of crack-up; it is inevitable.

As in the Civil War, families are split, arguments are heated, friendships are… Undone. I have not one single (or married) friend who does not have a story about dinner-table arguments, holiday disruptions, emotional scenes, snide insults, rolling eyes, snarky comments, about politics in general and the election specifically. Liberals AND conservatives. In person, and online.

Before and during the Civil War this was the case, despite the issues being deeper and the bloodshed flowing redder. But every family and every neighborhood was affected, and tensions were high; friendships ended.

I cannot think of other civic strife in America that tore the social fabric more. Civil Rights? The Vietnam War? Prohibition? Perhaps back to Senator John Calhoun’s calls for Nullification (which I lump with Slavery issues) or Andrew Jackson’s dissolution of the National Bank… no. New England’s threats of Secession in the 1810’s? Not likely. Those issues fomented debates, not divorces. Maybe the Revolution itself, when Loyalists, Revolutionaries, and the indifferent split the Colonial population into thirds.

Now there is a national nastiness, and the word proudly has been appropriated by the women and “others” who marched on the day after the Inauguration. Despite protestations, the national media largely has waged an ideological war on the public, and the public’s awakening to the assault is branded illegitimate – so says the man behind the curtain in the Emerald City.

My daughter Heather, thinking about this dilemma in our midst, wishes for a National Game Night that might re-set the meter of comity and amity. But she knows that dream is a metaphor: unrealizable wishful thinking.

The Bible’s words to be “in this world, but not of this world” shout to us more than ever before. I have shared the impulses, for years, of gathering the communion of saints around us; encouraging one another; joining home schools and small groups. Yes, we should witness. No, we should not leave the non-believers outside the camps. Christians are withdrawing into spiritual cocoons. Good or bad?

I understand that God is our real Friend, an ever-present help in time of trouble, and in every other aspect of life. When we are Unfriended by a hostile world, are we to sigh Relief? Or find new friends? Or Re-friend? It is not an Internet “meme” yet, but might become one: Refriending.

“Hear ye now what the Lord says; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice” (Micah 6:1).

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Click: Prayer

Thank You To the god Janus

1-1-17

Our secular world inherited a lot of things from ancient cultures and societies that have gone before. This is logical, as life is a continuum, not a shoebox of snapshots. History is ongoing. This is also proper, because we learn from history (or should) and, at the other end of the spectrum, it is interesting to learn what trappings have remained of customs, beliefs, names, and traditions.

Even the Christian religion owes much to ancient and pagan religions. The name of Easter; the dates of Christmas and Easter; the veneration or invention of some saints, are among the inspirations or compromises that made Christianity palatable to pagan peoples.

Christ’s Resurrection speaks of New Life; Springtime does too; ancient tribes used to celebrate nature’s regeneration in the Spring and face East, where the sun rises. “Branding” Resurrection observances with the associations of Spring – if not taken too far – does not violate any theological truth, and in fact seems virtuous.

… which is a long way around to invite a consideration of January, this January. The month is named for the Roman god Janus, the representation of endings and beginnings; the past and the future; of gates and doorways; of old and new; of transitions; of changes. Janus is called the Two-Faced god not because he was a hypocrite, but as his representations show, the fellow looked backward and forward. Our modern world has inherited more than a month’s name from him. For instance, understanding his traditional characteristics, we know better why New Year’s Resolutions are made in his month.

He bequeathed much, from special stones at the doors of Roman houses, to all manner of traditions and names. When in Bologna, Italy, I stay at the magnificent ancient villa named Torre di Iano – literally, the Towers of Janus. (Twin emotions, of sorts: I love to go; I hate to leave!

Here we are at another January, as always an invitation to contemplate the Old and New. We will welcome a new administration which, partisanship aside, bids fair to be a momentous and history-making (or -changing) presidency. Janus-like events ahead. An inordinate number of prominent people have died this year. But overall, and in deference to ol’ Janus, the numbers of deaths probably will be the same next year as last year. The more things change, the more they stay the same? Sounds wise and likely is wise, as it reflects Ecclesiastes’ “nothing new under the sun.”

Questions about Old and New invite profound thoughts, or trails toward them. They might mostly be variations on glasses “half empty or half full,” which I have never precisely understood; but I know what people grapple with. In nature, we see Janus-attributions everywhere, every day – and how we regard them says less about nature than ourselves.

Things die: flowers, trees, animals, people, theories, civilizations. If you choose to see death all around you, there are myriad examples.

Yet things live! Plants regenerate; succeeding generations of animals and people arise. Even seedlings fight their way between cracks in ugly urban jungles; after the worst of wildfires, “dead” trees grow buds, little animals appear, seemingly from nowhere; even the driest of deserts occasionally bloom – and with the most colorful flowers imaginable.

A variation of the sameness and dullness of life – to those who choose to be gloomy – is the belief that the world of people and the flora and fauna around us, plod on and on and on. Herds of dumb beasts; the bleakness of winter snow; the dulled masses of people.

Yet, facing the opposite direction, we see – and we serve – a different God. The animal and plant world He has created with infinite variety! No zebra nor giraffe has the same markings. Wild animals are different and sound different, one from another in the most populous of species. A rose is not a rose is not a rose!

And, for good or ill, people are different too. That is not only a cliché: we would not it any other way, would we? Approaching seven billion people on earth, there are doppelgangers – our “doubles” exist only in fiction. We miss loved ones, we regret the passing of favorites celebrities, but time marches on. When a harsh dictator or a brutal terrorist, say, dies, those people are almost instantly succeeded in the mortal coil by a baby whose smiles can make the hardest person feel new too… whose innocence blots out any imputed evil record… who is, again and again and again, a symbol of the Newness in life.

The Newness OF life.

We need to be reminded – from ancient traditions if we see them aright, to the vibrancy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – that things die “unto” life. That for every old and even regrettable thing, there are second chances, U-turns, and life more abundant. That God is a god of New Life.

Happy January!
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Click: St Patrick’s Breastplate

Many Happy Returns

9-26-16

Leave it there, leave it there,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there;
If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there
.

One of the many remarkable things about the Lord – the God of the Bible we worship, and the faiths that are built on His word – is that He instituted the gift of prayer.

Other religions have gods, some of them have myriad gods. Gods who might be worshiped, or demand sacrifices, or exist as dead prophets or wise men, or statues. The God of the Bible we know, who revealed Himself by inspiration, intervening in history, causing laws to be written, performing miracles, and ultimately revealing Himself through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, also bestowed the gift of Prayer on His children.

We take this for granted, but other “gods” did not do this. They cannot have conversations with their followers. Those religions are one-way streets. We should daily be awestruck that God wants to hear from us. He wants to know us. He wants to whisper truth and love to us, answering our prayers.

We can take our burdens to the Lord. And what’s more, in the words of the old hymn, we can with confidence “leave them there.”

If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold,
And you have to get along with meager fare,
Just remember, in His Word, how He feeds the little bird—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

I have a personal connection with that old gospel song. The story behind its writing is a wonderful story.

After the heart and kidney transplants of my wife Nancy at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, she and I and our three children conducted a hospital ministry to heart-failure and transplant patients. For six years until moving to California we conducted services and visited patients’ rooms once or twice every week.

In our services, Leave It There became a favorite hymn, often requested by patients, some of whom heard it for the first time in those services, and by patients who came and went through the years.

If your body suffers pain and your health you can’t regain,
And your soul is almost sinking in despair,
Jesus knows the pain you feel, He can save and He can heal—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

After a time I learned the amazing coincidence (?) that the gospel song had been written only a few blocks from where we met for those services. Charles Albert Tindley, born in 1851, was the son of a slave. By age five he was orphaned, but at 17, after the Civil War, he had taught himself to read and write. He moved from Maryland to Philadelphia, working for no pay as a church custodian but, aspiring to the ministry, he learned Greek and Hebrew. The African Methodist Episcopal Church accredited him on the basis of outstanding test scores and preaching skills. For several years he was placed in different churches in different cities, impressing his congregations and winning converts.

Eventually Tindley received a call to a congregation in Philadelphia, and this servant of God became pastor of the church where he once worked as an unpaid janitor. When he preached his first sermon there, 130 members sat in the pews. Eventually under him the church had more than 10,000 worshipers. He preached, he championed civic causes, and he wrote astonishing hymns and gospel songs. One of his hymns, I’ll Overcome Someday, was transformed with different words and tempo into the Civil Rights anthem We Shall Overcome. Tindley Temple United Methodist Church was his “home,” and today there is a C A Tindley Boulevard in Philadelphia.

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

When your enemies assail and your heart begins to fail,
Don’t forget that God in Heaven answers prayer;
He will make a way for you and will lead you safely through—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

Today I write to recall those great truths, that we can communicate with God; to remember those days of ministry and sharing Jesus with people who were wracked with pain and, sometimes, doubt; and that we don’t have to bear our burdens alone.

But I also want to remind us that there are many prayers and petitions and requests and burdens at the foot of the cross, left by God’s children… but, I wonder, are there the proper number of thanksgivings, praises, prayers of gratitude?

It is our human nature to turn to God when things are bad. He welcomes these prayers, never turning away a hurting heart that contains sincere anguish or pain or confusion or repentance. Never. But it is human nature also to turn to God less often when we have joy.

Do you find this happening? When there are problems, we seek God. Even insurance companies call disasters “acts of God” (boo, by the way). But when things go “right,” how often do we ascribe it to good luck, or the result of patience, or brag about our talent or hard work…?

No, bring Gratitude to the Lord, and “leave it there.” There is room at the cross for that, too.

I humbly would add to this great hymn, about the glory side! One of my verses would be:

When the answers start to come, and your days no longer glum,
And God’s blessings have so sweetly cleared the air,
The joy is not your own; Father sent them from the Throne!
Take your praises to the Lord and leave them there!

+ + +

Leave It There became a signature song of the husband-and-wife duo Joey + Rory. Their bittersweet story has “gone viral.” Rising stars of gospel-bluegrass-country music, their fans were happy when sweet Joey became pregnant; and shaken but prayerfully supportive when their baby Indiana was born with Down Syndrome. Soon thereafter, Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Her illness, prayers, surgeries, and “life at home” was shared with fans and prayer partners… right to the end. Joey died on March 14, 2016. This video shows singer Bradley Walker – who has Muscular Dystrophy – with Val Storey and the legendary Carl Jackson. They sing Leave It There where Joey Feek is buried, a wooden cross marking her gravesite.

Click: Leave It There

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... Rick Marschall is the author of 74 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia magazine called him "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture") to history and criticism; country music; television history; biography; and children's books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 20 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals and magazine articles; he was co-author of "The Secret Revealed" with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the “Christian Encounters” series was published by Thomas Nelson. He currently is writing a biography of the Rev Jimmy Swaggart and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Read More