Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-2-23

New Years is a sort of anti-Lent. We resolve to do things as New Year resolutions; and many people vow to give things up for Lent. There is a similarity, however: very few of us carry through on either category of intentions. The more interesting survey would be to track the average number of days people “keep” such pledges.

I have a new idea for New Years resolutions.

It involves neither self-sacrifice nor a “self-help” box to check, although you will feel good for having done it. But you will make others feel better – a pretty good way to start the year. Of course it does not have to be on the first of the year… but many of us need some “hook” to hang our good intentions on. (I think that is the justification for a lot of holidays on the calendar.)

There is not one among us who does not know, or know of, an “angel.” Not a literal, sent-from-Heaven angel (maybe), but friends who do good deeds. People who reach out to folks in need, even in mere moments of loneliness. They encourage. They involve themselves in local causes, perhaps with no fanfare. They sacrifice or volunteer. They smile when smiles are hard to come by; they weep with you when nobody else understands.

Praise God, every family, every neighborhood, has these people. Sometimes they never know how they are appreciated, because they go through life without being thanked… but they do not bless others in order to garner praise.

I suggest bringing a few of those people you know – because surely you do – to mind. One of them; three of them; whatever. And let them know they are appreciated, sincerely. Arrange to see them… write an anonymous thank-you note… send a non-anonymous, personal, thank-you note or e-mail… express your appreciation over coffee… whatever.

The form is not as important as the will to do it; and the will is not as important as the deed. I will name three or four such people I know. I will decline to use their names here, although that would honor them. But angels like this do not operate for glory or honor, and I want to inspire similar outreaches among you.

One friend has been a teacher in Texas, also is an author, a church worker, a selfless volunteer at conferences. She has managed difficult family situations, and may never get over the loss of her husband to cancer. She is chiefly, however, an encourager of others. She has blessed uncountable other people, not the least with her famous sense of humor; but some of us know she cries as many tears as she causes smiles. In all, an angel – a saint – and the type of friend who deserves the type of note I suggest for a New Year resolution.

No less spiritual, but active in other realms important to Christians these days, is a friend whose faith motivated her to be active in local, then state, politics. School curricula, mask and vaccine mandates, governmental intrusion, moved her to attend school board and legislative hearings. Often stonewalled, she climbed the ladder of activism, only to be frustrated further. Even at her state capital, deliberate snubs. She and other “moms” banded together and ran for offices. She challenged her state’s senate majority leader. She lost but, again, was frustrated when she requested to see vote totals. Time, trouble, and expenses racked up. She and her fellow moms – Christian Patriots all – are now primed for future crusades. Our whole nation should be filled with selfless angels like her. Her children are out of school, but she battles for the Kingdom.

I have another friend who similarly believes that Christians must be active in the public sphere – that we are seeing the heritage of our faith slip away. He had been brand-manager for a well-known international fashion company, jet-setting around the world doing consequential work. He gave it up, returned to his family’s fifth-generation home in rural Michigan… and still is a jet-setter of sorts, but now he attends conferences, speaks at events, organizes large meetings. His two spheres, now, are Christianity and the political crisis we face. As the previous angel is doing, my friend does not merely complain or advocate; he has rolled up his sleeves as a poll-watcher and attends meetings from the local to the highest levels. And his greatest joy – I have seen this over and over – is sharing Christ, witnessing to others. Baristas, handymen in town, celebrities he knows. It is what angels do.

Another friend is an angel in work overalls. He was an assembly-line worker who was obliged to retire when he developed a disease that made it unsafe to continue on his shifts. In his wonderful family he has a wife and two beautiful daughters who have debilitating, degenerative afflictions. I have never heard any of them complain or display anything but smiles and good cheer, goodwill. My friend uses his skills to manufacture or retrofit lifts for people’s vans, or stair lifts for their homes… and many of these folks are virtual strangers to him. Angels come in all forms.

In situations like these I have described, the “angels among us” do not have to be old friends from their address books… but are, after all, the best friends many folks could want.

Or need.

You surely know some Angels Among Us. Bless them with a warm reminder that you know about, and appreciate, their ministrations.

+ + +

Click: Someone is Praying For You

12-25-22

As we have shared here, often, the birth of Jesus, His ministry and even His death and Resurrection, were not events that took place in a vacuum.

The ancestry of Mary and Joseph are delineated in the Gospels, generation by generation. Myriad prophecies were fulfilled in the person of Jesus in so many aspects that would baffle statisticians. Hundreds of years before Bethlehem, the Book of Isaiah described things like the betrayals Jesus would suffer; even his physical appearance.

Whether from ignorance of Scripture or the Hallmarkization of our culture, a lot of us think that Mary looked up one evening and wondered “Who’s that angel?” Oh, she was surprised. She certainly was humbled. But… she knew Bible prophecy.

She knew that God had planned that a virgin would conceive in the City of David… that the Baby would be the Incarnation of God… that His purpose would be to serve as the Salvation of His people. His job description, we might say today.

And she knew – as she knew Bible prophecy so thoroughly; as did her betrothed, Joseph – that her baby Boy was destined to be the Servant King. And also the Man of Sorrows. She was humbled; she was full of joy; she knew there would be smiles, and tears. Perhaps the lot of all mothers. But Mary knew.

Her response to the angel, and with her cousin Elizabeth, has become known as The Magnificat. It is one of the Gospel’s tenderest and most profound passages, part of many liturgies and church music, including one of J S Bach’s foremost works.

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

For He hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden: For behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.

For He that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is His Name. And His mercy is on them that fear Him, throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich He hath sent empty away.

He, remembering His mercy, hath helped his servant Israel: As He promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, forever.

Mary knew, because she knew prophecy, because an angel had visited her, that her beautiful, innocent baby Boy would do great miracles; heal the sick; comfort the afflicted; indeed, save His people and be the Savior of humankind.

And she knew no less that her beautiful baby Boy would grow up to be despised and rejected; acquainted with grief; wounded, smitten, and whipped for the punishment sinners deserved; brought like a lamb to the slaughter; put to death with the wicked. Mary knew.

She rejoiced to be used of God in such a role. But how excruciating nonetheless to be a mother in all these moments. Mary knew.

So she prayed her Magnificat – “my soul doth magnify the Lord” – and she planned with Elizabeth the birth of their babies; and traveled with Joseph (again fulfilling prophecy) to the spot where Scripture said the Messiah would be born. Humankind’s Messiah. Her baby.

No room in the inn? We know the story. So humanity’s Savior was born in a manger. Once again, try to erase the greeting-card scenes from your mind. “Manger,” from the Latin “to eat,” is where the animals chomped their hay, and it is reasonable to assume that the Christ Child came into His world amidst a few bugs and some animal spittle. A little town, a crowded hotel, the backyard where cattle and sheep slept and ate. Mary thought she already knew “humble.”

But that evening, the rough manger piled with straw became a King-sized bed. Mary knew.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Mary, Did You Know?

12-19-22

Do we realize that the birth pangs of the first Christmas were not Mary’s alone?

The Bible tells us that all the aspects of Christ’s Birth were not unalloyed joy. The birth pangs of Mary were prophesied in Scripture, even from the Garden, and birth pangs are frequent Biblical metaphors for the distress believers will endure, even persecution unto the End Times.

Specifically at Christmastide the reference is not solely to one mother’s labor.

There was the grief of Judean mothers. It is ironic, especially in our secular time when the Divinity of Jesus is questioned – even in the pulpits of “liberal” churches – yet the pagan Roman ruler Herod acknowledged the mysterious, incarnate Savior to the extent that he ordered the slaughter of little boys under the age of two when he was told of prophecies.

This is no surprise when we remember that the devil himself acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, Son of the Living God. Herod was an amateur when we consider other enemies of Christianity; and the devil ultimately will be defeated (was defeated at the Resurrection). Yet birth pangs, too often, enflame the faithful, from tearful mothers of those baby boys, to mighty saints and martyrs.

Please, at least for a moment, put aside the Hallmark cards and boughs of holly. It is important to remember that He came… why He came… and how He came. In fact, Jesus was born amid tears; He dealt with tears; and He died on the cross – which was His mission – amid tears. Even 700 years before His Birth, Jesus was identified as a Man of Sorrows.

He shall grow up… as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned each of us to our own ways; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth…(Isaiah 53)

What has come to be called the Massacre or the Slaughter of Innocents today, as a historical fact, is described in Matthew 2:16-18. It has become a symbol, too – a twisted, evil inspiration to uncountable people around the world who slaughter innocents today. The abortion nightmare is not waged to thwart a Savior, but to save peoples’ comfort and convenience. I am in no way callous to the angst of these mothers when they make tortured decisions; believe me, I am specially tender, but we must always opt for life.

Some believe – or want to believe – that America marches lock-step with the contemporary world on this “issue.” But the US, with Communist China and North Korea, is virtually alone among nations in allowing the cruelest of procedures, and late-term deaths. Merry Christmas, by the way, to all survivors.

One of the most beautiful-sounding Christmas tunes is the lullaby we know as the Coventry Carol. Mother sings to child, “Bye, bye, lully lu-lay,” a transliteration of Old French. It is sweet, certainly; but many have forgotten that the mother in this lullaby is whispering good-bye to her son, about to be slaughtered. It is so named because this song, in Old English first called “Thow Littel Tyne Childe,” had its origins in a “Mystery Play” of Norman France and performed at the Coventry Cathedral in England. The play was called “The Mystery of the Shearmen and the Tailors,” based on the second chapter of Matthew. The earliest transcription extant is from 1534; the oldest example of its musical setting is from 1591.

How can it be that the grieving, almost insensate, lullabies of mothers, their dead babies in their laps or facing imminent slaughter, can reflect a matter of foundational faith? That is a question I cannot answer, either as a man or as a reflective Christian. Yet the Coventry Carol tells the story of this awful occurrence in a way that is achingly haunting and beautiful.

Many people – many mothers – superficially think the ancient carol with its Old French roots of English, “Bye, bye, lully, lullay…” is merely a bedtime song. Yet the lullaby (which word derives from the lament) is a reminder of the hideous opposition the world harbors against the Gospel; and it commemorates the price, sometimes, of being a Christian. For all its beauty, it is the lamentation of an innocent mother cradling her innocent slaughtered child in her lap: a horrible reflection of birth pangs.

Its plaintive melody is one of the great flowerings of polyphony over plainsong in Western music.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Coventry Carol

12-12-22

This weekend I attended a performance of Messiah, the famous oratorio by Handel. Inspiring, always. Familiar, too. The musical miracle of Handel’s many great works, all three hours or so composed in about 23 days, invariably is heard this time of year, in concerts, on radio, even in snippets on TV commercials.

It is associated with Christmas but Handel intended, and lyricist Charles Jennens arranged Biblical passages, to tell the whole story of Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us, the Incarnate Lord, Jesus. That is, not his “biography” but the dramatic glory-story from prophecies to the Millennial Kingdom.

I mention the words and concepts of the masterpiece because many people assume it is only Christmas music. As we shared here recently, the songs of salvation should never be filed away for one day or one holiday season – because that would mean they are neglected for the rest of the year. God forbid!

Handel, the “Greatest of English Composers” (1685-1759) was in a sense three different men: The German Georg-Fridrich Händel, born in the Saxon town of Halle; the popular composer of Italian operas Georgi Federico Handel; and the English George Frideric Handel. He settled in England, serving occasional patrons and arranging his own concerts. His string of operas (the fad of the entertainment world then) gave way to religious oratorios through the years. He became more and more religious as he grew older.

It is often misstated that he was brought to England by the Georges, kings of Hanoverian birth. But he did execute many works for them (they craved the association) and among his early works in England (1717) was a commission for King George I, the Royal Water Music. The Royal Fireworks Music is equally famous.

Händel was born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach, slightly more than 100 miles from Bach’s town of Eisenach; and attended Martin Luther University. Händel and Bach, the two masters of Baroque composition, were aware of each other, but never met. They were born only months apart, and Händel outlived Bach by nine years. Ironically, they both suffered from blindness at the end of their lives, coincidentally treated by the same eye surgeon. Tragically, the doctor was something of a quack.

Händel, once nearly bankrupt in England, was relatively wealthy by the end of his life. He was always generous with his resources. He had financed the new organ that had its first use in the debut of Messiah. Händel conducted that first performance, and annual concerts (in London) occurred every year until his death, all the proceeds going to his beloved charity, the Foundling Hospital.

Messiah was first performed in Dublin, in the New Music Hall. Significantly, two choirs were engaged: from St Patrick’s and from Christ Church (Trinity) – a symbolic bow to Catholic and Protestant “harmony.” Its initial presentation was over-subscribed; the crowds trying to enter resulted in SRO, and advance-ticket holders were turned away. Händel offered to conduct a second performance to satisfy the demand.

Among his many great works, Messiah was beloved of Händel. When he was close to death, his last prayer was that he lives until (and die upon) Good Friday – which would coincide with that year’s performance of Messiah. God granted this wish, by hours. The version we know today was enlarged in scope by Mozart; the oratorio has been touched by history’s greatest masters.

At this season, with such magnificent music, it is virtually impossible not to think of “other things” during the moments we pause to listen to the music… and the words. Oddly, the church where I attended a performance this weekend was in Flint, Michigan. “Oddly,” I say, because a news story was published on Friday that by some metrics or other, Flint was judged the worst city in America among almost 500 in the survey.

But in that beautiful church, hearing talented amateurs sing and play, proclaiming and believing the promises and reality of the Savior of humankind – unto us He was given – all the news and noise of the neighborhood and the world melted away.

The reality of a God who sent a Messiah to our world while we were yet sinners, must overcome the “reality” of this corrupt world.

And, for Christ’s sake (literally) do not pack away that truth in some box, to be forgotten the rest of the year.

+ + +

Click Video Clip (one short passage from Messiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, 600 years before Jesus’ birth): Unto Us a Child Is Born

12-5-22

An old friend of mine is Mike Atkinson, although he is not that old. But about 20 years ago we both worked at Youth Specialties, the youth-ministry resource outfit founded by Mike Yaconelli. It seems like Old Testament days ago, and our “Promised Land” was around San Diego.

I was a “Director of Product Development,” which meant editing several dozen books a year for youth pastors and yoots themselves. Mikey was lord of all web matters, computer stuff, and e-outreaches. I guess. Among YS’s activities was arranging three youth-worker conferences a year, each attracting 5-6000 registrants. Many superstars of Christian music gratefully received their first exposure at those conferences.

Since those glory days, I resumed my “work” as author, speaker, cartoonist, and… well, blogger. Mikey and his wife Stacy have been crowned Prince and Princess of Pacific-Coast Plumerias. That makes them petal-pushers, surveying the lei of the land in East County San Diego. He also continues to be an “it” guy (I think he means IT work) and hosts the daily web blast of humor and encouragement, “Mikey’s Funnies.” It is free, clean, and indeed funny – except when it is not. That is to say, occasionally he dispenses wisdom, and it usually is of the sort you tape to the refrigerator or share with your friends: the symptoms of good stuff.

This week he posted a list. I love lists, especially those that dispense advice or wise counsel. If I am feeling confident about life one day, I will try to remember all the items. If too many of them make me uncomfortable, I pretend to think that it is a multiple-choice quiz.

Since I began this blog a dozen years ago or so, I have listed Mickey’s Funnies on the list of recommended links on the home page. I hope you will visit some of them.

There is another touchstone I have with Mr Atkinson. He is a kidney-transplant recipient; as was my late wife, although she bested him by glomming a heart transplant too. God has blessed his health and the entire challenge he came through, since the experience. Mikey is also related by the marriage of one of his sons to a precious friend of mine. All that said, I would never describe him as a “sorry” individual. In fact he is just the opposite, which enabled him to share a list of ways for us not to be sorry as we wend our ways through life. Wend a willing ear to this:

You will never be sorry…

… for thinking before acting.

… for hearing before judging.

… for forgiving your enemies.

… for being candid and frank.

… for helping a fallen brother.

… for being honest in business.

… for thinking before speaking.

… for being loyal to your church.

… for standing by your principles.

… for closing your ears to gossip.

… for bridling a slanderous tongue.

… for harboring pure thoughts.

… for sympathizing with the afflicted.

… for being courteous and kind to all.

… Seriously.

+ + +

I recommend listening to this message’s song. It is a great arrangement from the Baptist’s Redback Hymnal. Neither Mikey nor I are Baptists, but those folks sure make some good music. We are not Catholic, either, but the singers are the Nunn Sisters. If they can’t decide whether they are Nuns or Sisters, it’s their business, but they sure sing purty anyway.

Click Video Clip: I’ve Never Been Sorry

11-28-22

I was with friends for Thanksgiving, and one of the activities after the dinner was the teens getting their violins, violas, and cellos out, to play some Classical music and hymn tunes. Musical scores for choruses from Handel’s Messiah were passed out – one of the area churches will be performing it at Christmastime – and singing that supernal music.

Hmmm, I thought; not typical American teens, nor typical playlists of youth today. Another box checked in my mind: maybe there is hope for America.

But a thought came to my mind about that great oratorio Messiah, which I know quite well. I am like many people who know it and love it: we tend to play it, and hear it in malls, or on radio stations, or at church concerts… around Christmastime.

Yet Georg Friedrich Händel composed it (and Charles Jennens wrote the lyrics, incorporating Scripture) about the entire life of Christ. (In 45 days, be the way. A miracle on its own!) Not just His birth, but the prophesies. It closes not only with His death on the cross, nor the Resurrection, nor the Ascension, but promises of believers’ salvation, and the Millennium. The entire life of Christ; the entire scope, and point, of the Bible.

All of which would make it appropriate to listen to Messiah at Easter, too, or in August. In fact I sometimes think in these messages of posting some Christmas carols in Springtime or around the Fourth of July. Why not? Easter hymns around New Years!

My point is that the story – the Truth – of Jesus’s Incarnation is vital for us to think about every day of the year, not what Hallmark says. Even more, the Message of the Cross, and the power of the Resurrection, is essential to our faith, and should be in our thoughts every day.

This mode of thinking is really a plea for us as Christians, and also as citizens, to stop compartmentalizing everything in our lives!

Christianity is more than holidays!

Citizenship is more than elections!

Parenting is more than rules!

Education is more than quizzes!

Charity is more than tax deductions!

A profession is more than a job!

Marriage is more than a handshake!

Love is more than sex!

Life is…

Well, here, more than any other word in or out of the Bible, love has meanings, and nuances, and definitions, and suggestions, and poetic allusions, even more cynical aspects, than almost any other word. I cherish Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s reflection:

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

To me, the point that suggests itself here is that we ought to appreciate everything we can in their larger contexts and fuller implications:

Remember that Jesus’s suffering, death, and Resurrection were not merely His duties, or His assignments… but so we don’t have to bear the penalty for our sins.

Martyrs of the Faith died not only for their beliefs… but so that we don’t have to suffer persecution as they did.

In an American context, those who have gone before – patriots and soldiers – sacrificed their “lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor”… for us. People they never would meet, to live as we do today..

… to live as we do today? Is America worthy, today, of those sacrifices? What would those patriots and military servicemen think of the America they died for? Corruption, crime, abuse, drugs, deviance, consumerism, selfishness, hate, abortion…?

America… is more than that.

Martyrs of the church suffered persecution, torture, and death, so that the post-Modern church can distort Scripture to please sinners, instead of converting souls to salvation?

Christianity… is more than that.

Jesus died on the cross so that humankind can be saved. He offers salvation, yet we can reject it, and millions, sadly, do. The Message of the Cross, and His Resurrection and Ascension, are not squares on calendar pages. Except when they prompt us to meditate upon these things.

Jesus… IS that living sacrifice.

So please do not be “glad that Thanksgiving (or Christmas, or Easter) is over for another year.” They are “evergreen” – relevant every day, every moment of our lives.

Timing is everything.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: He Took Your Place

11-21-22

Occasionally around this time of year I challenge friends, or groups to whom I speak, to take notice of something and keep informal tallies of something related to Thanksgiving.

Have you noticed that “thank you,” as a phrase, is on the way out? To say “thank you” is not quite formal or stuffy, so not yet obsolete; but listen for the numbers of “thanks,” “thanks a lot,” and substitutions like “I appreciate it,” are taking its place. We all do it; and on TV and radio a forced informality has taken hold. And that’s why it takes an effort to notice it.

But more interesting is how “You’re welcome” seems consigned to the Endangered Species list. See: say “thank you” – or even “Hey, thanks!” – to someone this week, and see how many of these replies are returned:

“No problem.”

“No prob.”

“You got it.”

“Sure thing.”

“You bet.”

So on and so forth. An odd thing, really. Personally, I would prefer replies that we often hear turned into jokes… but should not:

“Thank you!” “No… thank you!”

This little exchange – depending on what is being exchanged or acknowledged, of course – gets to the essence of what’s behind the social and conversational convention. Thanking someone, and saying so, indicates gratitude and praise, in fact a very civilized way of sharing outreach of some form. And “you’re welcome,” (and even more so “thank you”) in a little way seals a bond of mutual respect and good will. It is what we call a social grace.

And it has a spiritual aspect too. The origin and observance of Thanksgiving is peculiarly American as a national holiday. From the first days on these shores, Pilgrims who sought religious freedom designated a day to thank God for their protection and the harvests that sustained them. As part of the tradition handed down to us, Native Americans participated too, of course in a spirit of gratitude for provisions, but as well the spirit of amity that was established with the new settlers.

That spirit survived and thrived through the establishment of other Christian communities; the guiding principles of the foundation of the Republic, and – after Abraham Lincoln, who first named and proclaimed a National Day of thanksgiving, praise, and prayer – presidential proclamations until recently have sounded more like sermons than political documents.

In Lincoln’s first proclamation, he wrote: “I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.”

In my own prayerful study I have been moved to see Thanksgiving as more than a one-way path of rendering thanks to God. As with every Holy Day, commemorations are on particular days of the Church calendar, of civic anniversaries, etc. But without exception they ought be observed throughout the whole year, to be remembered on every day. Celebrated; contemplated; revered. Not allowed to become taken for granted.

Further, a thought about Thanksgiving in general and the first Thanksgiving that inspired all subsequent Thanksgiving Days. I have said it should not be a one-way affair. Giving thanks to God, of course, is essential. But I think we can have a richer appreciation of Thanks-giving as a concept if we consider that maybe God inspired Christian Pilgrims to receive thanks as well as the heavenward offerings.

That is, the bountiful harvests and safety and amity wherewith God blessed the Pilgrims might plausibly have been His grace and gratitude extended to a people who honored Him, who dedicated a new land and their individual communities, to Christ. To their burning desires to worship Him in a place of freedom. To the incorporation of Biblical principles into the early governing documents of the settlements, colonies, and country.

Isn’t it possible that the blessings for which the Pilgrims were grateful were bounties and gifts that were one of God’s ways of expressing thanks to His faithful people? It happens… when we serve and honor God.

“Thank You!”

“No… thank you!”

+ + +

Of many hymns and songs about Thanks, this classic Ray Boltz songs always brings tears to my eyes. Especially so because, mirroring the lyrics, my own daughter was around eight when missionaries visited our little church and she promised God that she would pursue missions work. She eventually served in Africa, Russia, and Northern Ireland.

Click Video Clip: Thank You

11-14-22

The history of humankind proceeds not on a straight line but in waves and bursts, progress and regress, prosperity and misery, exploration and stasis, freedom and… the yearning for freedom. It is interesting to trace history through topics and not calendar pages: the effects of history’s many epidemics, for instance. The search for gold, riches, a Fountain of Youth. The extent to which food and agricultural items have shaped the course of nations – the “routes” and wars over sugar, spices, tobacco, cotton, opium.

The cycles hold true for ideas, too. Do not dismiss this view. The imposition of mere loyalty to flags and rulers – changing peoples’ minds – has resulted in constantly changing borders and uncountable lost lives. The appetite for Communist hegemony among its police-state borders led Stalin to liquidate – he embraced the term – millions of people, including a virtual depopulation of Ukraine. The “Cultural Revolution” in China annihilated an estimated 60-million people. Pol Pot in Cambodia slaughtered an estimated million peasants, and he was proud of the mountains of skulls he displayed.

The battles for hearts and minds have been as consequential (and often bloodier) to “progress” than wars for riches and treasure.

Thank God, there have been intellectual movements that have proceeded more peacefully. Among these has been the spread of the Gospel. I will save correspondents their ink and electrons by noting that Christianity sometimes engaged in “imperialistic” and fratricidal conflicts. Often, doctrinal disputes morphed into persecution and death. Much of the spilled blood also was in defense of the faith against fierce attacks by such as Islam, Communism, and state-secularism.

But thanking God further, many of the Christian movements affecting world history have been bloodless. Missionaries to minds, bodies, and spirits were beneficial in many lands. During the Reformation, not every reformer was challenged by Catholic Inquisitions. With notable exceptions, the followers of Luther and Calvin, as well as Pietists and Anabaptists were unmolested. With exceptions, again, Methodists and Quakers in England increased their numbers of adherents.

… and when they were persecuted, at vital inflection-points in history, they said farewell to their fractious societies and sailed to the New World. Eventually in the Colonies and the United States, these faith traditions enjoyed for virtually the first time in human history freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. Freedom to worship.

These movements have labels: everything from conquest to imperialism to trade wars to military hegemony. And “the spread of Christianity.” In America, especially as we look forward to Thanksgiving, the unique exercise of religious freedom was not a static thing. Rather than retreating, liberty grew and reaffirmed itself. Some of those growth spurts resulted from revivals, evangelism, and missionary work.

But they often were labelled – and are better understood now because we need another wave today – Awakenings.

“Great Awakenings” were major factors in the establishment of the American nation. The nurture of civic virtue; patriotism in the early days of the Republic; the impetus behind the movement to abolish slavery; the inspiration of social-reform movements in the Industrial Age – all were not populated by leaders who happened to be Christians. They were, rather, by-products of massive waves of evangelism and revival, conversions and commitments to the Gospel — positive movements led by Christians.

In Colonial America a man named William Tennent established The Log College whose graduates spread into the frontier, converting red and white people to Christ. In his history The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt described week-long revivals and camp meetings on the frontier.

The most famous person associated with any of the Great Awakenings was Jonathan Edwards. A powerful preacher (Yale graduate and eventually president of Princeton College), his sermons sometimes lasted four hours, delivered to rapt congregations and large assemblies. His many books influenced the Founders.

George Whitefield was a preacher who toured the Colonies in the years preceding the Revolution. It is arguable there might not have been the Declaration of Independence or a movement to secede from Great Britain without Whitefield’s effect on the population of American towns and cities. From the disparate strains of Christian faith, he wrought unity of fellowship and purpose. His listeners in the streets and parks of Philadelphia numbered as many as thirty thousand at a time. Among them, every time, was an admiring Benjamin Franklin.

The next Great Awakening commenced around 1803, led by Timothy Dwight, grandson of Edwards and president of Yale. He led half the student body to Christ, which inspired transformations at other colleges. Charles G Finney was an attorney who was converted to Christ and thereafter converted thousands of others. He held a revival in 1830 that spread and lasted, uninterrupted, for more than a decade. By many reports, where he preached, bars closed, churches opened, and crimes decreased.

These movements resulted in more than folks being nicer or changing their social customs. America practiced widespread piety and charity. When the Frenchman Alexis deToqueville visited America at this time he was astonished (by more than anything else) at the bedrock Christian faith, the number of churches, and the moral standards throughout American cities, towns, and frontier villages.

“America is great because America is good.”

The life-changing effects were of course manifested in social reforms, the conscience of a population. In 1857 the businessman Jeremiah Lanphier inaugurated weekly lunchtime prayer meetings near Wall Street. The sessions grew in attendance, and soon more than 10,000 people joined daily prayer meetings across New York City. A few years later the Civil War commenced, and it was widely acknowledged that the millions converted during this Great Awakening accelerated the urgency of Abolitionism.

Since then there have other waves of revival, evangelism, street preaching, media ministry, Pentecostal and Charismatic renewals; and popular, effective preachers like D L Moody, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Billy Graham. It is tempting, however, to see these latter-day movements as blessings somewhat more modest in scope than earlier Great Awakenings.

At a time when many believers behold a nation fallen far from its spiritual moorings and Biblical foundations, another Great Awakening is essential. Our society has become hostile to Christianity. Its new standards are sexual immorality, a drug culture, crime, abuse of children and women – and not only acceptance but the promotion of such.

The recent elections have exposed the unfortunate fact that many Christians have put disproportionate faith in the political system, and less in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Widespread apostasy in American churches has clouded the vision of well-intentioned Christian patriots.

Set your alarms. America needs less Woke and more Awake – a new Great Awakening. Everything, including politicians and elections, is futile without another such move.

+ + +

From a 1995 Promise Keepers event (my son and I were in attendance):

Click Video Clip: Amazing Grace

11-7-22

Revolutions come and revolutions go. Thomas Jefferson noted – and implicitly advocated – that political and social revolutions need happen every generation, and their Trees of Liberty be watered by the blood of patriots.

It was an extreme prescription, but his was an era of extreme distress; of discontents, panaceas, and actions in the New World, in France and other boiling pots across Europe. Oftentimes revolutions are followed by counter-revolutions, as in France but mercifully not in the United States; and those counter-revolutions often are as bloody as the initial revolts.

When historians look back in the “come and go” mode a cynicism may be inferred; or a discounting of the issues and import of violent revolts. But in truth we must avoid such attitudes, not the least because we might become inured to the legitimate urgency of imminent revolts in our own day.

There are two main reasons we tend to dismiss the earthquake-aspects of earlier revolutions. One, the passage of time dilutes the details of history-bending events: we tend to classify them in the same way we record floods and plagues and migrations. More important, the changes wrought by revolutions, good and bad, settle into the reality of subsequent eras. Old complaints seem less legitimate when revolutions succeed.

When revolutions succeed in varying degrees, when the contending forces do battle and either claim victory or lick their wounds, revolutions routinely are reclassified by history as Revolts. Another truth about history’s revolutions and revolts is that they never occur spontaneously, nor without a host of factors long fermenting and brewing.

But what we call these days “perfect storms” summon the inevitable flash-points. Such was the case in Martin Luther’s time (as we recently marked Reformation Sunday, the anniversary of his nailing 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church)… and is the case today. Let us be aware.

+ + +

Some people think that the Protestant Reformation began when the monk Martin Luther, upset with the corruption of the Papacy and the heretical selling of indulgences (in effect, paying a priest to elevate the dead into Heaven) aimed his challenges at the entire structure of the Church. And that Germany, and much of Europe, spontaneously erupted in flames.

In fact it was no such thing, and Luther meant no such thing… but, given time, it was close to what happened. Theological opposition to Roman (Catholic) authoritarianism was at least 200 years old when Luther acted. Rebellion – sometimes as innocent as wanting the Bible to be translated into the language of their people – stamped out clerics like John Wycliffe in England. Jan Hus in Bohemia, and William Tyndale in England. By “stamped out” I mean excommunicated. But so rabid was the hatred of the Catholic Church that Wycliffe’s body was exhumed and burned; Hus was merely burned alive; and Tyndale was strangled to death and then burned.

As often happens in revolutions, those sorts of flames of immolation result in firing up further rebellion.

So Luther had the examples before him: of ecclesiastical dilemmas, an intransigent establishment, and examples of protest – and martyrdom. But those Theses he announced were meant as a call to debate. An agenda for meetings. Topics for discussion. Posting such notices was one of the traditional purposes of that church door.

On the other hand, Luther courted disaster by alleging (with increasing fervor) the sins of the papacy (popes and their edicts and their mistresses and such), and the corruption of the Bible (man-made rules that supplanted Scripture). The Vatican and the Holy Roman Emperor dug in their heels.

Finally, the eye of Perfect Storm settled over the city of Worms in Germany, on the occasion of a Diet (an assembly of religious and secular leaders). Luther was detained; called before it; and, with his many books and sermons spread on a table before him, was ordered to denounce and renounce all he had written.

A Perfect Storm? With the Trees of religious liberty, freedom of thought, and the rights of citizens and Christian individuals watered by the blood of martyrs, Luther’s defense was a thunderclap, a nexus of history:

Since your most serene majesty and your highnesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this:

I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons… I neither can not nor will not retract anything; for it cannot be either safe nor honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience.

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

Luther assumed he would be tortured and burned to death. In Washington’s Museum of the Bible is a letter he wrote the night before his defense, calmly commending his soul to God and discussing the disposition of his worldly belongings. But instead, that Perfect Storm swept him away, “kidnapped” by friendly princes, hidden for a time (during which he translated the Bible – horrors! – into the everyday language of the German people), and finally emerging as the putative leader of many things.

Those things, across the landscape of Western Civilization, included personal relationships with Jesus; access to Scripture; literacy; the respect for individual liberty; political empowerment; the Enlightenment. Assisted by the invention of printing and a political revolt of princes against the Holy Roman Empire, Protestantism (Protest-antism) spread. To some things Luther disagreed, or would have. He chose to reestablish, not tear down. The Modern Age began with the Reformation, and Luther rejected Modernism. In fact he characterized Reason as the enemy of Faith.

Yet – contrary to many of history’s evolutionary moments – his Reforms, the Reform-ation, had truly revolutionary effects.

+ + +

I referred to “today” above. How is our time like Luther’s?

We are at an inflection-point in history. Viewed large, there has been a conflict brewing – across many “hot” and “cold” battlefields – between the Individual and the Establishment. Since the Reformation and then the American Revolution, it has been the Individual on one side, and the power of the State on the other. The State has taken many forms: the Church; “royalty”; finance capitalism (as opposed to Free Enterprise); dictators; Communism behind many masks.

“Macro,” the Individual has fought and survived by the devices of Republican Democracy in civic life… through the Free Market in social life… through fundamental Christianity (whose center of gravity increasing moves south of the Equator). And the oppressive Establishment has with relentless acuity and insidious subterfuge waged war upon us through seductive appeals to sinfulness and selfishness… through attacks on traditional values and standards… through arguments in favor of secularism.

“Micro”? The great storms and tides of history are mirrored in the lives of each of us individuals. The sanctity of our families and the protection of our children are the battlegrounds of today – they are not separate, but essential to, the preservation of our Republic. Our culture turns more rotten by the day.

No battlefield – no squall of that storm – is too little or too local. Martin Luther, after all, when he made that history-bending defense, still saw himself as a lonely monk wanting to register some complaints, hoping that the Establishment might mend its ways. He had little realization that he stood atop a volcano, much less called down that Perfect Storm.

In our own “assemblies,” even with few people watching (except angels of Heaven and God Himself, remember) we must see clearly… decide to fight… act with integrity… and embrace truth.

Here we stand. We can do no other. So help us, God. Amen.

+ + +

I never fail to weep at the power of Luther’s words in his “Battle Hymn of the Reformation”:

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still –

His Kingdom is forever!

Click Video Clip: A Mighty Fortress

+ + +

An award-winning movie about the life of Martin Luther:

Martin Luther | Full Movie | Niall MacGinnis |

10-31-22

I was planning to write a message about Reformation Day, but this has been a week with many distracting events, some sad; and thoughts about reforming the church, confronting corruption, does not need an anniversary-day to assert its relevance. Next week.

Among the sad events of this week was the death of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Somewhat anticipated, even the subject of false rumors, Jerry had a stroke a couple of years ago and, with the lifestyle he led – often on death’s door; in some ways tempting death many times through the years – he was, in the words of one of his recent nicknames, the Last Man Standing.

That reference is to the class of talented Southern boys who burst on the American musical scene in the mid-1950s. They were all unique, with utterly distinct styles, yet their common roots and similar stories was a most astonishing coincidence. Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison… and others: all born in the mid-1930s; all dirt-poor Southerners; all of Pentecostal or Fundamentalist faiths; all attracted to, and amalgamating in their music, the traditions of country music, Gospel, white and black blues; all separately showing up on the doorstep of a small recording studio in Memphis, hoping to find an audience. Remarkable.

When I was a kid and rock ‘n’ roll was young too, it was Jerry Lee Lewis who caught my ear, so to speak, and I never looked back. Through the years I interviewed him maybe a dozen times; traveled over half the continent to attend concerts and see him backstage; and eventually met, and became friends with, some of his relatives – cousin Mickey Gilley; sister Linda Gail Lewis; other cousins like Rev David Beatty; band members like Ken Lovelace; associates like Jack Clement.

In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, I worshiped in the Assembly of God Church where the cousins grew up; and spent time with Jerry and Linda’s colorful other sister Frankie Jean. I became a follower of Jimmy Swaggart, I suppose first hooked by the “bait” of the music, and have worshiped and interviewed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, too. Closing the circle, I interviewed Mickey and other Gilleys, too.

I am in the process of putting all those meetings and interviews to work, and to share with the world a book that will profile them, principally Jimmy Lee and Jerry Lee – why I am putting aside thoughts on Martin Luther’s Reformation five-hundred years ago.

In a sense, however, there is a connection. The rediscovery of Bible-based belief and worship that Luther promoted has its current manifestation in Fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches. Of course many people will think this is unlikely – an affinity between nascent Protestantism of the 1500s, and the subsequent majesty of the Baroque master Bach; and the perfervid preaching in white-frame rural churches and the back-beat, three-chord exuberant music of Southern Gospel. But, Amen – so be it. The scarlet thread of redemption is actually a ribbon of many threads.

My book has found a theme beyond the blood relations (a gene pool the size of a teardrop) and family tree (more like a tangled vine!), and it can be found in the title: “Cousins – The Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings of a Remarkable American Family.” For, besides the abnormal, almost miraculous, musical talent and astonishing piano stylings that the Cousins possess, there is the common element of Pentecostalism.

Music and Christian salvation rescued and redeemed the branches of that family and many similar families in that region and that time. Of course the Pentecostal experience is as old as the Days of the Apostles, but has only reasserted itself in the past century. Now it is a worldwide phenomenon – to choose one proof, the number of Pentecostals in Brazil today is more than the Catholic population.

In Jerry Lee’s case, the preaching and music were part of his life. He attended Bible College in Texas until he was invited to leave because he would not (or could not, he told me) stop “juking” traditional Gospel songs like “My God Is Real.” Pastor Charles Wigley was a fellow student, playing sax in a little pickup band, and he told me that Jerry occasionally snuck out at night to listen to music at clubs in Dallas’s Deep Elem neighborhoods.

Jerry Lee’s virtually instant stardom when Sun Records heard his demos propelled him to what the public has known since then – TV appearances; multiple wives including one to his 13-year-old cousin; ups and downs; scandals; problems with drink, drugs, and taxes; movies and worldwide tours; and so forth. His cousins had somewhat similar experiences.

Yet all of the family, from the most casual church-goer to the world-famous evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, never rejected the “Sunday morning” component, no matter how many “Saturday nights” there were. You will understand the symbology.

The world might scorn (sometimes correctly) the repeated confessions of some folks; repentance, pleas for forgiveness, embracing the cross. Again and maybe again. But, we are all sinners. Some of us sin more loudly, or more colorfully, even more persistently, than others. But woe be to those who judge.

Many who sin never do desire to repent. Or never – God help them – feel the need for forgiveness; never really are conscious of their sin. Never knew, in the first place, a God who sees them and loves them and judges but has already provided a means of redemption in the cross – the shed blood of His Son.

Putting aside the massive talent and compelling music of Jerry Lee Lewis, his life on earth, now ended, can be seen as one hewing to the Gospel nevertheless, wracked with sin-consciousness when he strayed, having hundreds of conversations about his guilt; reforming, pledging, backsliding, interrupting some concerts to switch to Gospel music – working out his inner conflicts in public.

When he was training to be a preacher, he told me, a favorite theme was “the devil’s tail sticking out of houses” – when people had television antennas on their roofs. Ironic that his cousin Jimmy Lee Swaggart based a major portion of his ministry on televangelism. Ironic, too – or appropriate – that at the end of his life Jerry (once again… but clearly sincere) gave his heart to Jesus. Cousin Mickey Gilley did so, too, before his recent death. “Made things right with the Lord,” they each said.

Jerry Lee Lewis’s last recording project was a duet album with Jimmy Swaggart – long discussed over the years, but never produced. Traditional hymns and Gospel songs, it was released only months ago.

The world already is realizing that Jerry Lee was far greater than memorable hits and scandals and tabloid rumors. Even last month, before his death but after decades of snubs, the Country Music Hall of Fame finally elected him to its list of honorees.

Now he will be transformed from a popular personality to the true, exceptional icon he always was despite himself. His real story, as with many great figures in history, has come a full circle.

I pray that we can all have personal counterparts in our “walks,” and I don’t mean music or a particular lifestyle. Jerry Lee Lewis was taught the Truth of the Bible by his mother Mamie and Aunt Rene and in the First Assembly of God Church. He “hid the Word in his heart.” When he strayed he listened to the Holy Spirit, was troubled, and sought forgiveness. He shared his struggle with the world. In the end, it was not his new plaque in the Hall of Fame, but the old pew where he once sat, learning about Jesus and singing the songs of amazing grace, that was his real home. And where he was fulfilled.

“His” versions of those Gospel songs have prevailed after all. Whether there is a little more shaking going on in Heaven, we’ll understand it all by and by…

+ + +

Click Video Clip: In the Garden

Click Video Clip: Jesus, Hold My Hand

10-24-22

How often do you hear the testimony of someone who has “found Jesus”? Perhaps it is your own testimony, the feeling you had when you came face-to-face with your need for a Savior… and then face-to-face with the Savior Himself. I pray that this has been your experience, or will be soon.

“Finding Jesus” is a common way of describing Salvation – knowing Him; believing He is Who He says He is; surrendering to His Will for our lives.

We would do well, in terms of perceptions of reality, and “how we shall then live,” to see this blessed sweet communion with Jesus as, at best, a two-way street. More realistically, to think of it as Jesus finding you.

Yes, we all seek… for something. Every person in humanity’s long history was and is different, except for the common situation that we all sin; all need a Savior.

Yes, we all seek… for something. Is it happiness, security, forgiveness, acceptance? Most likely it is all of these things.

Yes, we all seek… for something. And what a menu the world provides: pleasure; sex; drink; drugs; entertainment; malleable standards; changing values. Lies.

God’s menu, however, offers only one item – one that will satisfy all needs, and Living Waters besides: Jesus.

And in that regard we should recognize that most of us – no: all of us – spend our lives seeking the wrong things. Empty calories of life, we might say. But the point is that we seek after so many things. Once we have checked the boxes of education and providing for family, we scurry about like mice on crack, seeking short-term and false goals.

The irony – astonishing, really – is that whether we also, at some stage of spiritual maturity, “seek” Jesus; or rejoice when we have “found” Him… we never had to seek, or look far, or wrack our brains somehow to seek and find Him.

First, He never was, or ever is, far from us. He is no stranger needing to be discerned, searched for, as if He somehow is hidden. Rather, He never leaves or forsakes us, but is a constant friend (not only “in times of trouble,” but always), and is closer than a shadow.

Second, too many of us have it backwards.

He seeks us.

But we hide from Him.

By our actions and inaction, by our inclinations, we avoid Him. We put Him off. We put other priorities before Him. We ignore Him when we sin. We do not study about Him, when the Bible always is open before us. We twist His commands. We dress Him up in our own wardrobes of excuses and distortions. We demote Him to a mere wise teacher. We assume His Words are not for today. We take His Name in vain. We recognize His form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. We reduce Him to a holiday figure, and not the Incarnation of God. We act like His miracles died in the tomb with Him; and did not rise for His followers today.

These are not the acts of people who seek Him.

We have many pictures, illustrations, and parables. Jesus Himself told us that He stands at the door and knocks. Get it? We are not knocking on His door, as much as He knocks at the door of our lives, asking to come in. Or maybe if we can come out and play, so to speak; for He is our friend.

He pursues, not merely seeks, us.

And I suggest that if that persistent, ever-present, inexorable, hounding, unrelenting, continual, Man of the Cross does not occasionally annoy you… you are not aware of your own situation. We hide so often, and in so many ways, that we cannot honestly say that we always seek Him.

… except, usually, in times of trouble and crisis. Bless His name, then we realize, in our mess, that we do in fact need Him. Ha, we call that “finding Jesus.” Well, fine. And by the way, if that is how humankind works, can we blame God for occasionally permitting crises to come into our lives… if that’s what it takes for us to “find” Him?

In another piece of irony – or maybe not, if it’s God’s plan – with all the seeking and hiding and finding, when we have become Children of God, one with Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, we play a new sort of “hiding” game.

We no longer will hide from God, but accept His offer to be our hiding place. From the storms of life, we will seek the shelter. He has formed a cleft in mighty rocks where we will be safe. “No other refuge can save, but Thee.”

At the end of this journey, who-found-whom is not really as important as the fact that we can “hide ourselves in Thee.” And we do not need to stand atop that Rock of Ages, shaking our fists at the world. What the Lord offers is refuge; happiness, security, forgiveness, acceptance.

The things we felt the need to seek all along.

You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. – Psalm 32:7

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Hide Thou Me

10-17-22

Grace is something that has a special meaning for me.

It was my mother’s first name, and is my granddaughter’s middle name. More than that, and to be serious for a moment, grace is something we should practice more than we do, and that can be addressed to anyone in the world who has a pulse. Because Christians are the recipients of grace – as special a gift as any God bestows.

For by grace we are saved through faith, the gift of God; and not by works, lest anyone boast.

It is that passage from Ephesians that hit the monk Martin Luther like a thunderclap, and which understanding – and expository viewpoint, through sermons and writings – that changed the course of Western Civilization.

“Grace” routinely and properly is defined as “unmerited favor.” We sin against a holy God, and cannot redeem ourselves or “earn” our way to Heaven, even by good deeds or spiritual merit badges. The only “work” required of us is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God; that He died to take our punishment on Himself; that He rose from the dead and is One with the Father. If we believe in our hearts, and confess with our words, God’s Grace is upon us.

Salvation cannot be bought – it was paid for by Jesus at a great cost – but therefore is free to us.

That is amazing grace.

I read a story this week that explains Grace better than my poor words can. It appeared in the e-mail newsletter Mikey’s Funnies, a free and wholesome source of chuckles by my old friend Mike Atkinson. He shares one-liners, several-liners, and shelf-liners… no, no, I mean sometimes poignant messages. And wisdom. Great stuff to impress your friends; or slip into your own e-mails so you can pretend to be as funny as Mikey. Sometimes, however, you’ll need a Kleenex or two… as the story he passed on from another source:

[This is a true story that happened to one of our readers years ago in a Youth Ministry college course. — Mikey]

I left work early so I could have some uninterrupted study time right before the final in my Youth Issues class. When I got to class, everybody was doing their last-minute studying. The teacher came in and said he would review with us for just a little bit before the test. We went through the review, most of it right out of the study guide, but there were some things he was reviewing that I had never heard. When questioned about it, he said that they were in the book and we were responsible for everything in the book. We couldn’t really argue with that.

Finally it was time to take the test.

“Leave them face down on the desk until everyone has one and I’ll tell you to start,” our prof instructed.

When we turned them over, every answer on the test was filled in! The bottom of the last page said the following:

“This is the end of the Final Exam. All the answers on your test are correct. You will receive an ‘A’ on the final exam. The reason you passed the test is because the creator of the test took it for you. All the work you did in preparation for this test did not help you get the A. You have just experienced… grAce.”

He then went around the room and asked each student individually, “What is your grade? Do you deserve the grade you are receiving? How much did all your studying for this exam help you achieve your final grade?”

Now I am not a crier by any stretch of the imagination, but I had to fight back tears when answering those questions and thinking about how the Creator has passed the test for me.

Discussion afterward went like this: “I have tried to teach you all semester that you are a recipient of grace. I’ve tried to communicate to you that you need to demonstrate this gift as you work with young people. Don’t hammer them; they are not the enemy. Help them, for they will carry on your ministry if it is full of GRACE!”

Talking about how some of us had probably studied hours and some just a few minutes but had all received the same grade, he pointed to a story Jesus told in Matthew 20. The owner of a vineyard hired people to work in his field and agreed to pay them a certain amount. Several different times during the day, he hired more workers. When it was time to pay them, they all received the same amount. When the ones who had been hired first thing in the morning began complaining, the boss said, “Should you be angry because I am kind?” (Matthew 20:15)

The teacher said he had never done this kind of final before and probably would never do it again, but because of the content of many of our class discussions, he felt like we needed to experience grace.

Have you thanked your Creator today because of the Grace you’ve experienced?

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Grace Medley

The Happy Goodman Family was one of the great groups in Gospel music. Their talents, varied styles, and heartfelt messages through music – sermons in song, really – have touched uncountable people since the late 1940s. Brothers Howard, Rusty, and Sam, and Howard’s wife Vestal were icons; and Rusty’s daughter Tanya continues the tradition today.

Rusty was the group’s songwriter, and in fact some of his music has transcended Gospel shows and hit records, and found their way into many hymnals. But Howard, the front man for the family band, wrote one that summed up his life, the Goodman Family’s journey. And mine too.

Can you identify, at the end of the day in still, small moments, with the confessions and testimony Howard shared?

I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord,
I don’t regret the times I’ve trusted in His Word.
I’ve seen the years go by, many days without a song,
But I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord.

I’ve dreamed many a dream that’s never come true;
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn.
But enough of my dreams have come true
To make me keep dreaming on.

I’ve prayed many a prayer that seemed no answer would come,
Though I’d waited so patient and long;
But enough answers have come to my prayers
To make me keep praying on.

I’ve sown many a seed that’s fallen by the wayside
For the birds to feed upon.
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hands
To make me keep sowing on.

I’ve trusted many a friend that’s failed me
And left me to weep alone.
But enough of my friends have been true-blue
To make me keep trusting on.

I’ve drained a cup of disappointment and pain,
And gone many a day without song.
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of life
To make me want to live on.

I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord,
I don’t regret the times I’ve trusted in His Word.
I’ve seen the years go by, many days without a song,
But I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord.

The italics here are mine.

I pray that they are yours, too.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: I Don’t Regret a Mile

10-3-22

There are many Holy Bibles “in the market,” in stores and online. It seems there are new translations every year. Actually there are, certainly if you count the world’s many languages and dialects. It is hard to comprehend, but the number of languages including sign-languages, and distinct dialects are more than 3300 that have translations of the Bible, in whole or in part.

There are approximately 1700 versions of the Holy Bible available online alone. Christians rejoice at this evidence of evangelism. Skeptics will suggest that the message of Gospel likely is diluted or manufactured during such processes. Are Bible translations like the parlor game of “telephone,” where mistakes are rife and misunderstandings endemic?

It is an odd word, “translation,” when I focus on new (and ever newer) versions in English. A very incomplete list of English-language “versions” of the Bible available today include:

King James Version, New King James Version, New American Standard Bible, American Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, The Holy Bible in Modern English, Young’s Literal Translation, Douay, The Geneva Bible (“Breeches”), Knox Translation, Today’s English Version, The New English Bible, The Moffatt Bible, New International Version, The English Standard Version, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Bible, The Living Bible, The Amplified Bible, Phillips Translation, The Message…

I am not including the plethora of Commentaries and Concordances like time-honored, multi-volume Strongs, or excellent study Bibles like Ryrie and the Expositor’s Study Bible.

For centuries the Roman church forbad any translation of Scripture from Latin; indeed it frequently opposed the personal reading or ownership of the Bible, even in Latin, to anyone but clergy. These policies were enforced under penalty of death, and the list of martyrs, both famous in history and anonymous, is long.

The honor roll of those who believed God wanted every believer to have access to God’s Word (and were cruelly persecuted) is long: Wycliffe, Tyndale, Hus; Luther’s offense was not only criticizing the corruption of the papacy, but daring to translate the Bible into German. He escaped the death sentence.

One of the first English translations followed Luther’s, that of the Frenchman living in Switzerland, John Calvin. It was his “Geneva Bible” that was standard in English and was relied upon by the King James translators – and was the Bible carried by the Pilgrims and read by the Colonists in North America; those who designed our government

I was honored to be on the editorial team that produced, after centuries, the first reprint (changing nothing but thees and thous and grammar) of the 1599 Geneva Bible.

Reverting to the inevitable carping of skeptics, the great number of translations, versions, and updates is not necessarily evidence of a diluted message, but rather the reinforcement of truth and integrity. How the Bible came to be, so to speak, is either a miracle, an implausible coincidence, or proof of Holy Spirit inspiration.

The Bible includes 66 books, written by many different people over different centuries and on different continents. Yet they have common themes and references; prophecies and predictions made and fulfilled; and – when you think about it, maybe the most profound distinction – this Book has affected millions of people. Changed lives. “Spoken” to multitudes from wildly disparate backgrounds, circumstances, and… languages.

It is a Miracle Book, a book of miracles, written in so many ways “under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” Inspire means to “breathe into”; God whispered to the hearts and minds of those who wrote Scripture.

I will confess here that I am not a fan (not quite a rejectionist, but sometimes close) of recent translations. Some projects are so concerned with contemporary readers’ inability to understand big words; or they are so motivated by Political Correctness, that they corrupt Scripture. It is not yet the case that the Ten Commandments are being changed to the Ten Suggestions… but, for instance, “gender neutral” translations are dangerously close to claiming that “In the beginning, He, She or It created heaven and earth…”

No, the message is simple. The Eternal God created everything; His children incline toward sin and rebellion; we cannot be reconciled with a perfect and a just God without a remedy; He provided means of forgiveness, redemption, and sanctification by offering His Son as a sacrifice to put the punishments we deserve upon Himself; and by believing that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died for our sins, rose from death, and ascended to Heaven… we are assured of eternal life with Him.

Yes, that is pretty simple. Humankind – those darn intellects and pride and jealousies – make it complicated. Denominations get in the way. Publishers need product.

In the 1930s, the Limited Editions Club published, unbelievably after several centuries, the first major Holy Bible in the original King James format – that is, without verse numbers, citations, notes, and superscripts. I read “that” Bible (there have been others since) and was thunderstruck. Study-formats can help us, yes; and bless us. But reading only the texts – God’s story; His conversations; in many places reading like a novel – was like reading some familiar passages for the first time. I recommend it!

I was a little snarky above about the motivations of Bible-revisionists. As with the Geneva Bible reprint project, it can be useful to have access to contemporary language and grammar. Of course. I have a set of Shakespeare’s folios, and the spelling and language of those times make them virtually inaccessible, requiring modernization. But, again, that is the language, not the message.

So. People try to change the Bible for a variety of reasons, some good, some bad; some sensible, some questionable. But I pray that we never lose sight of the very pertinent issue.

We are not meant to change the Bible. The Bible is meant to change us.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Tell Me the Story / I Love To Tell the Story

9-26-22

God forbid, to coin a phrase, but sometimes I take for granted the love of God, the power of the Gospel, the New Life offered by Jesus. I don’t lose faith, although my faith loses its savor and blessings are forfeited, but I allow the “newness” of salvation to become “old.”

Have you ever been there? “The joy of the Lord is my strength”… and we become weaker when we lose that joy.

Knowing this is error, there are a couple things I turn to after scolding myself and beseeching the Holy Spirit to get me back on track. I will share one of these tools with you.

I fix upon a familiar (“too” familiar?) passage of Scripture and change the pronouns. No, this is not a grammar lecture. When holy lessons are given to us, they should not be seen as stories about Job or David or Peter… but Words spoken for us, about us, and to us, also.

Some of your Bibles will have certain words of Jesus, in the middle of a sentence, in italics. Have you ever wondered why? In some of those cases, the translators wanted to emphasize that the events were centuries ago, but Jesus speaks in the present tense to us today, whenever and wherever we are.

So in that way I feel secure that I am not violating Scripture or God’s intentions… and I read things in a new light, receiving fresh inspiration.

Here is an example. Many of us have memorized the comforting 23^rd Psalm. We hear it often, not always in worship situations. It is intoned at funerals and memorial services. But when I am alone on occasion, I marvel how the most personal set of loving promises of God can open my heart to a greater awareness of His loving comfort, when I change the object of the loving assurances… and see it in a new light.

It is almost like, instead of hearing David’s confessional prayer, I become aware of God’s focus on me, His promises, and my proper response. See if it might speak to you that way:

The Lord is your shepherd; you shall not want.

He makes you to lie down in green pastures: he leads you beside the still waters.

He restores your soul: he leads you in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil: for God is with you. His rod and His staff will comfort you.

He prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies. He anoints your head with oil; your cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life: and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And I rejoice in the promise of “surely” as the Lord opens the eyes of my heart.

+ + +

Years ago when I was Director of Product Development at Youth Specialties, I proposed a book and video package, and training tracks, for instructional ways to approach the conducting of music worship; I approached some of the talent at our youth worker conferences, including Paul Baloche. The powers that be, or were, after Mike Yaconelli’s passing, nixed the idea, referring to Paul among others as being too old.

Well, Paul Baloche, neither then nor now, was too old. His song “Open the Eyes of My Heart” will always be a fresh call unto God… as fresh as the psalms of David himself, the Sweet Singer of Israel.

Click Video Clip: Open The Eyes Of My Heart | Paul Baloche

9-19-22

A recent dust-up on the Internet – or in “real” life, about the Internet – a pair of zillionaires addressed the evils that lurk in this new world of skewed values, formed and furthered by the Internet. They focused on the relatively sudden change in society’s standards, and the various dangers represented by “bots,” attractive lies, and the web’s seductive appeals to youth.

Charlie Munger, the Vice Chairman of Berskshire Hathaway, seemingly took a swipe at the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who agreed with Munger’s premise but is fighting his own battles against bots and bias of sites like his targeted Twitter.

I am grateful for the subjects to be raised; the men are close to the truth – a disturbing truth that has malignant implications for Western Civilization. Munger said at a conference: “The world is not driven by greed, it is driven by envy.” Elon Musk, in a separate screen statement, responded about a specific site, “Instagram is an envy amplifier,” referring to its toxic temptations. He is getting warm.

Those temptations? They are common to movies, TV, Facebook, YouTube also – not only for people to feel pressure to look better, but if necessary to act differently. Changing one’s (web) personality is a step away from changing one’s real personality and standards, to some abstract web-defined perfection. Then, another baby-step to adopting alien values and standards to be acceptable to invisible judges on magazine covers, music videos, movies, and the web. Musk even admitted to being addicted to Selfies and the urge to Photoshop them.

Enough people are doing the same thing these days, so the willing victims feel safe and… welcome.

I keep myself from calling these human chameleons “kids,” because adults are dancing to the same tunes. With “itching ears,” as the Bible calls the willing dupes, they say to the culture, in effect, “lie to me.”

Yes, adults, too. I am astonished by how many teenage girls I see in malls trying to look like 40-year-old skanks; and how many mothers try to look like teenagers.

Munger and Musk are close to Biblical truth, whether they know it or not. Greed and envy are subsets of Pride. The Church has long warned against the Seven Deadly Sins. That list is not in Scripture itself, but is inherent in Commandments, proverbs, and church teachings. They are, generally:

Gluttony

Lust, Fornication

Greed

Despair

Anger

Sloth, Laziness

Pride

Few would argue that, deep down, prudent respect these anti-virtues for the poison they represent. Yet humanity continues on its way. For all of God’s warnings and laws – going back to the Garden, really – in my mind the chief of all these Deadly Sins is Pride.

I see all sins, all offenses against God, as flowing from Pride. Adam and Eve thought that they could evade God. Satan thought he could outmaneuver God. Rebellious souls think they are cleverer than God. Individual sinners think that God will give them a pass. Gnostics think they know more than God. Legalists think that good deeds will impress God, despite what He said. Secularists, when they grant the possibility of a God, think they will get brownie-points for “caring” and being nice people.

All of them think they know more than God, or have an “in” with Him, or can explain away their sins, which are, after all, not worse than those of their faulty neighbors…

It is all Pride.

C S Lewis said that Pride “leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind…. Pride is understood to sever the spirit from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving Presence.”

Benjamin Franklin said that none of our passions more than Pride, is “so hard to subdue…. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself.” In his famous fashion, mixing humor and wisdom, he said, “Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

And, famously, the Bible said that Pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18). It sounds like a gentle warning, but it is a grim promise of what happens to people under God’s eyes, and reject His grace.

“Lovers of selves,” instead of God. Pride. Have you heard these words? Also not a warning, but a prophecy. You tell me: Are we in those End Times?

There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. – II Timothy 3:1-5

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Who Am I?

9-12-22

Labor Day marked the end of Summer, no matter what our thermometers or gardens say. But we prepare in advance for the Fall things it conjures up by staging a rush on cable knit sweaters, wool jackets, and suede boots. We’re ready now for the ideals of the next season.

[A guest message from our friend Leah Morgan.]

It reminds me of the way a lady in her mid-fifties once introduced herself to me, “I’m old, fat, and ugly.” August’s ninety degree weather with its ninety-nine percent humidity hadn’t yet passed, but her words had her bundled up in scarf and gloves like February snow had avalanched her in.

I heard the message again today from another lady, “He’s too old to find another job. Who would hire him now at his age?”

What are they really telling me? Change is off-limits for anyone fifty and over? Settling for misery is delegated to a certain age bracket and becomes age-appropriate behavior? I’m not a participant in my health or life pursuits?

Should I book a double knee-replacement right away, find a good deal on a recliner, learn to watch more news, complain about the world, and strive for a sedentary existence? Is this an age-demographic persona we take pride in, while chiding the younger generation for not wanting to work?

We model the next generation into their current form more than we can lecture them into our ideals. Either our values are walked out, or they’re mere fantasies talked about.

I do a hard about-face. I reject these notions. This contrary outlook clarifies and solidifies my own convictions. The Maker of life does not grow bored with our days and turn His focus on a newer, shinier person to become engaged with, leaving us to putter aimlessly through a dull existence, shelved until death.

I step outside. My rose garden waves me over and dramatizes the truth.

Early June was its prime blooming window. Its strength and beauty shine brightest then. Yet, here we are, late in the season, on the brink of pumpkin-love with orange and brown on our minds, shades of pink so Yesterday. If roses were retail clothing, they’d be in the clearance section. They’re expired. Out of season. But we’ve had significant rainfall this summer. The consistent watering that roses really crave caused them to flourish beyond their stereotypical expectations. They’re outperforming themselves, growing at an unprecedented rate in an unlikely season.

They are still producing. Still beautiful.

Look how you’ve made all your devoted lovers to flourish like palm trees, each one growing in victory, standing with strength!

You’ve transplanted them into your heavenly courtyard, where they are thriving before you, for in your presence they will still overflow and be anointed.

Even in their old age they will stay fresh, bearing luscious fruit and abiding faithfully.

Listen to them! With pleasure they still proclaim: “You’re so good! You’re my beautiful strength! You’ve never made a mistake with me.”

(Psalm ‭92:12-15‬‬‬)

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Where the Roses Never Fade

9-5-22

An emotional week around here, capped by a funeral this morning. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this” – I have attended too many lately, and occasionally I have been inspired to share thoughts, with your indulgence. They all are not “funereal” these days, as services do not have to be maudlin. When my family conducted a hospital ministry, we were introduced to joyous “home-going” services in Black churches; and they altered our various perspectives.

But today’s instance was about the hardest of all challenges to a family and friends, because 17-year-old Aaron – not his name, but it will be here – decided himself that it was time for his home-going. Permit me the euphemisms.

Hard enough, of course, but the act was more jarring because only hours earlier he was out with friends, laughing in diners, taking selfies. Only weeks before he decided to be baptized, and even presented his testimony of renewed faith in Christ and the joy it brings. Only months before he had “graduated” from a program that works with youth who experience episodes of depression, sometimes having attempted extreme measures to escape the anxieties they felt.

Yes, Aaron had for several years been in and out of ugly depression and occasional feelings of rejection, self-loathing, irrationality. The world saw the happy kid – intelligent, handsome, popular, and always (counter-intuitively?) faithful to Jesus. A daily Bible reader. Keeper of theologically introspective journals.

Questions. Of course there are questions.

Despite what our contemporary world insists we blithely believe, that “nothing matters anyway”… we need to ask questions, but there are no answers. Certainly not to everything; no Googling, no experts, not even – horrors, can I say it? – not even in the Bible. Listen: if we knew everything, we would be God. The Bible has answers for all that we need, but not every thing we want, or wonder about. And as soul-searing as some things are, even “sanctified” curiosity will remain mysteries until we gain Eternity.

That’s hard, but it’s true.

We ask, WHY?

And the world mockingly answers, Why not?

I think God answers, The important question is not Why, but What – in this instance, What did Aaron make of his life? What did he do in his life? What are the ways he touched people? What difference did he make?

The “why” questions involve a sort of permissible selfishness, as I recently discussed in this space. Of course we feel horrible for the soul who has “passed,” but the largest ingredient of Mourning is… mourning for ourselves. How we will miss our child, sibling, or friend. Mourning for the sudden hole in our lives. And that is OK.

But I had the thought during the service that every life means something. Every. Life. Modest people might think that’s true for others but not for them. No. That’s not life’s way. It’s not God’s way.

We all have meaning, we have effects. We can see this… or not. We can plan it… or not. It can be acknowledged… or not. Effects can live after us… No: they do live after us. Our lives matter; what we do matters. All of us, in little ways or big, actually want to make a difference.

So in that way, whether you live 17 years or 117 years, what you do matters. It matters to other people. It matters to God.

In that perspective, our friend Aaron packed a lot of “meaning” into 17 years. Impressing uncountable people with his good nature, adventurous spirit, and Christian activities. In a bizarre and seemingly cruel circumstance, it was precisely a year ago that his cousin and best friend, almost the same age to the day, was laid to rest after suddenly dying of a brain aneurysm; he also had packed an A+ personality and smarts and Bible study and social activity into a “brief” life.

I know it’s not a Bible verse, but we think of the phrase “Quality, not quantity” in the cases of young men like them.

In my own family’s hospital ministry mentioned above, the toughest questions we were asked by transplant-listed patients, families, or survivors was Why? Why me? Why my brother, why my son? I finally felt liberated – able better to minister in some small way – when one morning I answered, “I don’t know!!!”

The important and essential follow-up is, “Let’s pray about it. Let’s seek God.” Maybe we can cope a little bit better; maybe we can find peace; maybe there is healing indeed under the shadow of God’s wings (Psalm 36:7).

And maybe we can discern, and celebrate, and savor, the meaning of that person’s life… and as tough as it seems, choosing instead to look beyond only the length of his days.

If we can receive those blessings, we can start to make sense of things. And that’s a good road to travel when other paths lead to bitter tears and confusion and anger and resentment.

Life can be mean… but we must seek out the meaning. The seeking, itself, is a balm. And then we realize, as I asked above, that death can be a detail, but life is a fact.

+ + +

Video Click: Does Jesus Care?

8-29-22

Many physicists and indeed many average folk are agog over the first images from the James Webb Telescope. I personally have almost exhausted my supply of agogs, and I am not even sure what an agog is.

In fact, the more that the newest of humankind’s massive, far-flung telescopic cameras shows us… the more it does not show us. Quickly I explain: the pictures reveal more stars – indeed more galaxies and nebulae – than we knew existed. (“We,” meaning everyone from early humans Ug and Glug looking up at the night skies and scratching their heads, to egghead professors only months ago.)

But at the same time, scientists mix their astonishment and excited discoveries with questions. There are not only new pin-points on charts of the heavens, but anomalies, contradictions, challenges. More questions than answers? Maybe.

It is all galvanic, of course. I find it satisfying to see Americans revive a little bit of the amazement that spread across the land during those early space shots. What I do not see is what I am experiencing: the translation of these staggering mysteries – their scope, their extent, their significance – to increased confirmations of belief in God. Further proof, we might say.

The Creator God. In ancient tongues, among many names ascribed to God, Elohim.

The statistics and explanations, inadequate as they are, rekindle thoughts from the Ug-and-Glug stage of my own sentience.

• We have a new, seemingly tangible, awareness of how big the Universe is. But do we? What is beyond the farthest we can see? Where does it end? Can it end? What is on the “other side” of the end?
• We are told that the old estimate of the Universe having a sextillion planets might be a modest estimate (one sextillion is even larger than the latest inflation numbers). How, really, did the planets all form?
• We have measurements of the “farthest” galaxies – the newest discovery estimated at 13.5-billion light-years from earth. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year; that is 186,000 miles per second or 5.88-trillion miles a year. If correct, that’s 13.5-billion x 5.88-trillion. Years. You do the arithmetic; my brain hurts. These are scientists’ numbers. How old is old?

You might see where I am sidling. It amuses me to hear scientists talk about the Big Bang (often omitting that is the Big Bang Theory) and I wonder why their brains don’t get cramps, as they invent and rely on elaborate denials of a Creator God. Certainly it is the case that the increasingly erudite explanations of the Big Bang increasingly resemble the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. Hmmm… The Webb’s snapshots incite in me, too, more questions. At random:

• If there was a “moment” of the Big Bang, Who or what caused it… and what was “there” previously? And for how long back in time?
• In every other aspect of life, something that has been created had a creator. Why does the scientific mafia think that life, itself, is the exception?
• Every one of the sextillion (give or take a skillion) planets in the perceived Universe is spherical (or generally so: oblate spheroids, given isostatic adjustments). Why? Friction? No, there nearly is no matter in empty space that would wear them down. “Gravity” is the agreed-upon culprit.

We have “theories” of Relativity and Evolution; and “laws” of Gravity… but I do not need the “what” of Gravity explained as much as the “why.” With virtual shrugs of shoulders, scientists call Gravity an “invisible force.” As a former Editor at Marvel Comics, I confess that this sounds more like the Silver Surfer than Albert Einstein.

Yes, Einstein postulated that Gravity pulls on light as well as mass. That’s the “meta” explanation; the “micro” evidence is the moon pulling on mighty oceans. Gravity pulls “downward,” essentially inward, which explains planets being spheres (but not why we have never observed an evolving “new” planet still in the shape of, say, SpongeBob SquarePants); but my brain hurts again. We still don’t know the How of all this. Or Why.

And that’s Okay.

The Big Bang Theory initially sounded silly to me; now it is discussed with gravity (sorry) by professors. The latest quest – to formulate a “Theory of Everything,” I kid you not – sounds sillier.

And yet the skeptics challenge us: “Because you can’t explain something you just say, ‘Oh, it’s God’.” (My friend Gary Adams has reminded me that Dr Frank Turek calls this the “God in the Gaps” argument.)

My response: Yes, pretty often. Now that we understand that, let’s move on.

My further response: “You folks, when you can’t explain something that generations of people have trusted, but challenges your ways of thinking… when your “accepted facts” of science are disproven, overturned, or superseded in the face of factors like architectural and anatomical discoveries… when things you dismissed as legends are revealed as actual history… you just say, ‘Oh, those are anything but God’.”

My final response: The Creator God, Elohim, has revealed Himself in uncountable ways. His fingerprints are on all of animate and inanimate creation. He has redeemed you through the Blood of His Son Jesus Christ, telling you that you are the most precious of His creations – including bright stars and colorful planets. With those photos from an outer-space telescope, He chooses to remind us of His sovereignty and majesty. I know these things because I see them; because He told us; and because I personally have been blessed by that Creator God. His Son, you see, is my best friend. And He reassured us: “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

We don’t need a “Theory of Everything” when the Bible already provides us the Answer to Everything.

I close with a quatrain I memorized as a kid, from the Rubaiyat, but that expresses my message here:

All the saints and sages who have discussed

Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth;

Their words to scorn are scattered; their mouths are stopped with dust.

It’s a big universe, after all. But there’s no place like Home.

+ + +

An old Gospel song with a spoken reference to God flinging the stars across Creation:

Video Click: When All God’s Singers Get Home

8-22-22

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

My high-school English teacher, Mr Edward-Peter FitzSimmons, occasionally reminded us of people’s curious reliance on (ultimately futile) ancient wisdom, time-honored sayings, and fortune-cookie guidance.

He pointed out that virtually every wise word of advice had an equally wise (-sounding) opposite. Sort of like a rhetorical version of Newton’s Third Law of Physics.

“He who hesitates is lost” contradicts “Look before you leap.”

“Strike while the iron is hot” is challenged by “Better late than never.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is confronted by “To thine own self be true.”

When all is said and done, a stitch in time saves nine. Um, I know that has an origin, but it is lost on me, just as many proverbs – and, today, internet memes – are lost on me. I think the most reliable proverbs are the ancient Proverbs written by King Solomon. The passage above was from his book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3: 1-8.

Those paired sentiments, the apposites of each line, separated by semi-colons, are not contradictory, as in Mr FitzSimmons’ examples. They remind us of the “both sides of life”; the unity of all the circumstances that God has charted for our journeys; the “turn, turn, turn” of the folk-song lyrics that were inspired by this passage.

We savor – or we should – every time of life, because every time has its unique blessings; youth, middle age, old age. When my three children were growing up and I was asked by someone how old he-or-she was, my stock answer was to cite the age and then say it was my favorite year for children. I’ll admit I was trying to sound a little Solomonic, if not solemnic; but I believed it, and do believe it.

At the recent funeral of a good friend who died in his 80s, there were many church friends and neighbors, and many of his family members who had moved to Texas through the years. Two who could not attend were on their honeymoon; recently married! The only factor making the scene more life-lesson symbolic would have been the birth of a grandchild on the day of the funeral.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Much of the small-talk I overheard in the Fellowship lunch afterward centered on children, being the end of Summer – going back to school, leaving for college, even going into the military. These happy, exciting, or melancholy events also are locations on that wheel of life. “Seasons.”

I have written these weekly messages now for about a dozen years, and I seldom repeat messages or music videos, but this is one song I love to share every few years at this time. (As you go through life, you realize that a few things tend to repeat themselves: history; bad sauerkraut; and old bloggers).

I hope you will take a moment to watch the little video. It is a secular song about a mom “sending” her daughter off to college. I first heard it before my first daughter left for college almost 25 years ago; and it made me weep. Now… she graduated… my other children two subsequently went off to college… all have careers… and ol’ Pop has four grandchildren. I still weep because every Good-bye is never fully nullified by the occasional Hello.

Parents, of course, can never “regret” any empty-nest situation. It is a part of being a parent. “Seasons” – as the days drag on, the years speed by. Bittersweet, we say, sometimes forgetting the “sweet” part of such moments. If our tears seem bitter, we are reminded in Scripture that God provides a “balm in Gilead” — healing reminders of his sovereignty, His will for our lives, His love.

And His Seasons.

+ + +

Video Click: It’s Never Easy Letting Go

8-15-22

A friend and neighbor of mine, Gary Mueller, died this week. He was in his 80s – a sweet, enthusiastic, generous white-haired gentleman of my church who became a buddy when I was a newcomer. We shared a hundred coffees in McDonald’s; we shuffled around farmer’s markets together; we talked religion and politics (agreeing, happily); I have laughed endlessly with his wife Edith; and I met his grandson Matt from Texas. We worked grills at many VBS days.

But mostly (in my memory, now) Gary loved Jesus. And it showed: he “reflected” the Savior. Gerhard was born in Jaegerndorf in central Europe; his German family had been separated and passed through West German towns, escaping Communism, working as they could; then to the United States. He met Edith, who had a similar life-path, and they were grateful to God and to America for the freedoms wherewith they were blessed.

Gary was always hale and healthy, on his jobs and especially, after retirement, in our church – anything that needed doing, it seemed that Gary was there before pros were called. But he got sick recently, and had a cancerous kidney removed. My late wife had a kidney transplant, so my prayers were focused (not that God requires the use of medical terms and medicines). As I understand it, he returned home somewhat uncomfortable and requested a follow-up. Cancerous tumors were found elsewhere through his body. All so quickly, Gary died.

It might seem odd that my grieving over Gary’s death brought me to think about selfishness, but please stick with me – and be merciful to me, as I have asked of God. I honor Gary; I grieve for Edith; I am grateful for our friendship. In fact, a week ago I wanted to hand-write a letter to Gary telling him (reminding him) of how I loved him, and what he has meant to me as a friend. But I never got around to writing that, much less mailing it (e-mails pretend to be personal, but never will be).

I have book deadlines. I had meetings. Yada yada, I had “things to do.” Hours turn into days; days turn into weeks; weeks…

When you are too busy to write a friend, or call; when you are too busy to connect with a friend, or to re-connect with an old friend; when you are too busy to “just say Hi”; when you are too busy to say you appreciate someone, or share a Jesus-moment, or ask “How are you?” and really mean it…

… you are TOO busy.

But this is not about scolding myself or anyone. Gary is gone, and maybe he never would have seen that note anyway. I was not trying to impress Edi. No, I found myself consumed about MY thoughts, MY regrets, MY tardiness. And eventually, MY grief, MY loss that I will feel. I realized I was being selfish. “Why are MY feelings so important?”

As I prayed for wisdom, I realized how strange grief and mourning are – when our loved ones are in the arms of Jesus, healed and glorified. Isn’t our grief, somehow, actually a bit of mourning for ourselves? How we will miss the husband, the grandfather, the friend?

And if so… is that bad?

Self. This life is not a dichotomy of self versus the rest of humanity. Not “either/or.” Not us and everyone else. God wants His children to be thinking of us AND everyone else. When Jesus went to the cross it was for all of humanity; all of the sins of “whosoever.” He looked into your eyes and mine. We as individuals were as important to Him as… all the other individuals! We should not feel guilty about our feelings, hurts, regrets in that view, because Jesus did not lay that on us. We must bear each other’s burdens, as He bore ours.

I am not talking about sins of omission. I am talking about a proper discernment of what God would have us do. That is, to DO — not obsess over what was missed. “Look out for Number One”? If we are effective ambassadors of Christ, we cannot drag baggage around on our missions.

We can be faithful stewards if we serve God by serving others. And rely on the Bible, not Rules of Etiquette. I am talking about being bold for Christ who lives within you.

Think ahead and imagine the end of your life, without being morbid of course. I mean – do not let yourself be in a position where you had been too busy to to write a friend, or call; or you were too busy to connect with a friend, or re-connect with an old friend; or when you were too busy to “just say Hi”; when you were too busy to have said that you appreciate someone, or shared a Jesus-moment, or had asked “How are you?” and really meant it…

Jesus cares for you, not only “humanity.” Take heart, and take action.

+ + +

Please watch and be blessed —

Video Click: Does Jesus Care

8-8-22

I am risking censure to say that I am not an automatic fan of NGOs and a type of charity work that has become prevalent in our society. In fact I have a major problem with it.

So I must explain: first, I am not against charity per se, the impulse that God planted in our souls, Jesus taught us to act upon, and the Holy Spirit encourages. There are myriad commands, and many examples, of common people and sainted people in the Bible extending love.

Saint Augustine’s interpretation of “the poor ye always shall have with you” is not accepting the plight of unfortunate folks, but a reminder that others will always need our attention and compassion and action. And love.

We can find those folks in our very neighborhoods. And usually within our circles of friends, even our families. If we feel led to reach out to the lame, the halt, the blind; the needy, the sick, the endangered in other countries, there are amazing mission groups and charities that we can locate with little trouble. We can be Samaritans walking paths and encountering the abused and abandoned. Of course, vulnerable people are our neighbors in faraway lands too.

I have grown uncomfortable with corporations and governments, however, who decide on charitable works – perhaps quite commendable ones – without asking us. Sometimes there might be causes we decline to support; often they are handled by agencies without accountability; frequently we “donors” know little where the funds and efforts end up.

Enormous sums of government money are sent to victims of hurricanes and diseases, yes; but also as “aid” and “charity” to unknown destinations in unspecified places, with foggy accountability. “Oh, it’s for a good cause…” And how many TV commercials and product labels tell us that “a portion of every purchase…” will be sent who-knows-where; or “every sale will support..” such-and-such.

My objections are those of Augustine, and of Jesus. These myriad and coercive actions by government and the corporate world are as much about their marketing and public relations as about genuine charity.

Basically, day by day, year by year, they rob us of fostering our own charitable impulses. When governments take our money without permission and send it here or there, that is not the act of a caring public but, at best, a lazy public. When corporations earmark a portion of money we pay them, again without asking… it masks a sweet-sounding surcharge for their own tax breaks and image-campaigns.

In both cases people should be allowed to make their own donations as they see fit, and who soon will rediscover the beautiful impulses to give… to act… and to love.

The real definition of “charity,” after all, is love. In I Corinthians 13, Paul wrote: “Now abides faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” In the original translations, the word was “love.”

The NGOs (non-government organizations) I question are not the completely independent agencies, or even those who do work on the ground independently (increasingly, governments have bureaucratic and ideological strings attached…) – but there are many individuals and groups who are in all ways independent. They answer to their donors, to their consciences, to the recipients, and to God.

One such is Garden of Innocents which has many local chapters across America. Its volunteers provide dignified burials and memorials – sometimes “naming” ceremonies – for abandoned babies and children. “Dumpster babies” is the distasteful term but is the truth in many cases. The volunteers arrange with local cemeteries to apportion a dedicated area of a cemetery; the volunteers make the custom little wooden caskets themselves; and burials with markers honor those most helpless among us.

Another, of many I know, is Grand Staff Ministries, whose hearts are turned to eSwatini in Africa, the former Swaziland. It is a country of a million people with the highest incidence of AIDS in the world, perhaps half of the population with the disease. About 200,000 children have been stripped of their parents – fending for themselves, often with no adult to feed them or send them to school. Becky Spencer and her husband Tracy visit the land from their home in Kansas, supporting schools, ministering to health needs, and… providing love.

In the United Kingdom there is an organization that promotes awareness, does not engage in high-pressure fund-raising campaigns, but compels our attention… and our hearts. Missing People is a Not-For-Profit organization that focuses on the appalling number of children, who disappear or “go missing,” and the families and communities who miss them. There are hundreds of thousands in England each year, and millions, horrific to say, in the United States. Runaways? Abductions? Trafficking? Violent ends? Mental or emotional issues? Ill-advised escapes from family turmoil? – Any and all of the above.

Anguished loved ones suffer for these Missing every moment, sometimes years and years later. Missing People reaches out to the friends and families, engages in education and publicity, coordinates searches; and helps the “Left Behinds.”

Remembering the charitable/loving impulses we need to discover and cherish, all of us need to feel for abandoned and murdered babies; orphans enduring poverty and AIDS; and the runaways or trafficked, and grieving families. But we ought to extend that charity and love to ongoing needs in our midst, too, that perhaps are more prosaic.

A widowed father whose children have moved away and maintain sparse contact; grandchildren he seldom hears on phone calls or has seen in years despite living close by. His nightly tears are almost as bitter as parents in worse situations. The Gospel song says “Tears Are a Language God Understands,” but every morning is cold.

Troubled children – rather, children in troubled situations – might figure that running away can provide solutions. But we should be just as concerned with bringing peace to families while they are together, as much as grieving when they split apart. And the same should pertain to marriages.

Burying dead, anonymous babies is a precious act. But our society should be just as dedicated to preventing those tragedies; ministering to mothers before they make those decisions. Overseas ministries? Giving – to not-for-profits – is admirable, of course, but most agencies need volunteers too; workers; helpers; prayer partners.

We talk, here, of the vulnerable, the abandoned, the missing. Life. What we need to remember – and not let governments and corporations steal from us – is that our Savior Jesus Christ came to remind us of the same things, the same people.

In fact He came not only to have us love such people, but to see that we ourselves are such people. In so many ways each of us has been, or is in a larger sense, vulnerable, abandoned, missing.

Jesus looks for us. He finds us. He loves us. What is our response?

+ + +

Video Click: The Missing People Choir

8-1-22

If a poll were to be taken, for instance at ComiCon International, whose annual fest just concluded in San Diego; and let’s say especially in such a control-group sample of geeks and nerds (take it easy, I spent a portion of my career serving them) – and the question was about superheroes…

Let’s say, Who is the greatest superhero of them all? or Who has the greatest powers? Whose conflicts, challenges, victories are the most impactful? Who can endure anything, from bombs to betrayal, and maybe come back stronger? …The answers would be many, and even cosplay attendees might start shoving each other around.

The questions do not arise from preconceived habits or childhood favorites, but rather the intricate premises of the Marvel and DC (etc) “universes,” and the passionate investment that young fans (and older college students) (and adults) make in the worlds of these characters and the consistently maintained cocoons of comics and movies.

When I was an editor at Marvel Comics (and generally regarded as someone who was always bewildered by such things) there were periodic bullpen, or bull, sessions, brainstorming new ideas, directions, stories, and costumes. More than once I proposed a concept and was shot down. “That’s not logical!” “That could never happen!” – as the editors returned to discuss piercing the Sixth Dimension or stealing the appearance of a villain after drugging some interplanetary potion.

“OK, I understand,” I said. But I didn’t. When I left Marvel I spent a few years writing comic-book stories for Disney. Somehow, talking mice and half-naked ducks seemed closer to reality.

Stan Lee used to talk to us about comic books and superheroes being reliant on the “suspension of disbelief.” That basic formula (actually promulgated centuries ago by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, not Stan Lee!) has provided an appeal to young readers since the 1930s. As I wrote last week, it seems to me that the well has been a bit poisoned. In comics and spun-off movies, good versus evil is obsolete, or at least superseded and made somewhat nuanced by political correctness, a desperation for newer premises, and the culture’s general decline in values that I think propels the increase in sex and violence.

All while art imitates life imitates art in society. But in one corner, there is a growing active and fertile group of creators staking a claim – not only for traditional values and wholesome storylines… but for Biblical Christianity. Good guys who are good guys, and who win.

I call this new corps of Christian cartoonists “disciples,” maybe more numerous than Jesus’s original gang, but spreading the Good News nonetheless. Al Nickerson (The Sword Of Eden) is one of the best, and a favorite of mine. Daniel Hancock is part of the creative ferment at Terminus Media (https://www.terminusmedia.com ) where he collaborated with Daryl Peninton and Matt Baker as editor on “Samson: Rise,” and works closely with Dr. Barron Bell as story/scriptwriter of the sci-fantasy graphic novel series Dominion: Fall of the House of Saul. He is also founder and director of Bible Actors Productions, creator of End Of Darkness, a full-cast audio drama on the life of Jesus.

Daniel shared a statement from Terminus: “We want everything we do to honor the Creator who has authored the greatest true story of love and redemption that the world has ever seen. We want to love our neighbors (all our neighbors) by using our gifts and talents to entertain and equip them to live abundant lives.”

Outside the traditional comic-book realm everyone remembers the ubiquitous Veggie Tales, all Bible-based. Tom and Tony Bancroft, Barry Cook, and Jeff Keane, are superb animators and committed Christians. There are groups and studios of creators but probably the largest – a fellowship of very professional business minds – is the Christian Comic Arts Society (https://my.christiancomicarts.com )

This group deserves a careful look, at least at their website with its impressive mission statement; and the roster of member cartoonists, including aspirants. The members produce all sorts of stories – yes, also serving kids who were weaned on gritted-teeth fights and explosions and breathless rescues – but it is refreshing to read the creators’ testimonies and visions; their commitment to Christ; and – my view, speaking from the outside – their efforts to redeem the culture.

I will mention other Christian cartoonists of the day, wanting to give honor to those who honor God through their work. They additionally include Eric Jansen, Chivas Davis, Art Ayris, Doug TenNapel, Scott McDaniel, Steve Crespo, and Paul Castiglia.

Al Nickerson (The Sword Of Eden – www.theswordofeden.com ), was an artist for DC Comics, Archie Comic Publications, Marvel Comics, and Warp Graphics. He has been a designer and animator for Sesame Street, MTV Animation, and Nickelodeon. The Sword Of Eden is an inventive series, arrestingly drawn, and revolving around retrieving the legendary sword used by angels to keep Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. The speculative adventures includes demons (which, of course, do exist in Bible narratives), villains, and a possible detour to locate Noah’s Ark.

“Comics, sequential art, is a powerful literary art form,” Nickerson said; “a wonderful medium through which to share the Gospel message…. I have the opportunity to create Christian comics that Christian readers can enjoy without feeling attacked.

“There is a bias [against Christianity] in entertainment. Modern Western culture promotes a godless woke agenda. The world hates Jesus, Christianity, and Christians. Therefore, it is vital to support true Christian entertainment. Don’t let the liars and people who are filled with hate influence your work or what you have to say. We live in a broken and sinful world in need of the Savior. The message of repentance and belief in Jesus the Messiah unto salvation should always be shared.”

My new best friend, introduced by the amazing facilitator Gordon Pennington, is Jim Krueger. He wrote the story script for Midway Games’ Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks video game, which won the Satellite Award for Best Action/Adventure Video Game. In the comics field, his main focus, Jim wrote the 12-issue miniseries Justice with Alex Ross for DC Comics. It was a New York Times Bestseller, and won an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel. About a decade after I left Marvel, Jim became its Creative Director.

His original works include The Foot Soldiers; Alphabet Supes; The Clock Maker; The Runner; The High Cost of Happily Ever After: and The Last Straw Man. Jim’s other work for Marvel Comics includes the Earth X trilogy with Alex Ross; Avengers; X-Men; and Avengers/Invaders. His comics work for other publishers includes Star Wars; The Matrix Comics; Micronauts; Galactic; and Batman. Jim’s company is “26 Soldiers,” where he serves as president and publisher.

Jim is a committed Christian, even now working on new projects, and will guest on this blog soon.

Good and evil, in mainstream commercial comics and movies, have become tokens, not gems nor compasses. I was invited to write for the animated TV series ThunderCats years ago, and the creator emphasized that there were to be “lessons” at the end of every episode. In fact he called them “morals,” but they were neither (to my emerging conscience) – the template sounded good, but the “story bible” forbade spiritual messages or, certainly, Biblical values even sanitized. Empty clichés: the way of contemporary society.

Christians must realize and act on the premise that any values divorced from Biblical truth are counterfeit. Viewers and readers being presented, say, “New Gods” while the old God was ignored, dismissed, and, most tellingly, disbelieved are enabling evil. Innocent people are encouraged to find comfort in the saying that believing something… is enough. A false choice when Revealed Truth is available to us.

A society with no core beliefs cannot, by definition, operate on any positive standards or values. A culture that does not recognize right and wrong; practices Relativism; and rejects Absolute Truth… will die at the hands of forces that create their own rules. If you doubt me, check out the nightly news.

People who follow horoscopes and read tarot cards usually dismiss the Bible as mumbo-jumbo. Kids who are obsessed with superheroes don’t want to think about the Jesus Who walked on water and through walls, made the blind see and could read minds, and conquered death. Victims of terminal illnesses will grasp at copper bracelets and expensive herbal remedies and the Power of Wishful Thinking… but too often reject documented cases of real miracles by the “Lord Who Healeth Thee.” Tragic.

In the parlance of today’s comics culture, Jesus was the greatest superhero of them all. He was sent to earth; He knew the past of prehistory and could foretell the future; He turned water into wine; He fed a multitude by praying an increase over a basket of fish and bread; He raised people from the dead, and rose Himself despite agonizing torture and putrefaction in a tomb. He changes lives like mine, maybe the grandest miracle I know.

His costume was a simple robe, except for the holy Blood that covered Him in line with uncountable prophesies and predictions. And He did this all for us sinners while we were yet in our sins.

And Jesus was not a fictional character, but indisputably a historical figure.

I knew Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who invented Superman as teenagers in Cleveland. “It seemed like a fun character, a fun story to think about.” I asked Bob Kane how he came to create Batman. A similar story – at least no high-culture or pop-culture babble about cosmic forces of evil and revenge. “A fun idea,” he claimed.

Christianity is nothing if not about the supernatural. Welcome to Reality, not Fantasy!

All hail the POWER of Jesus’ name!

+ + +

Video Click: Power In The Blood 🎵 The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir

7-25-22

It is almost impossible lately, during at least one week in July or August, not be aware of costumed heroes, red-carpet interviews, breathless announcements of new video games, and outrageous prices being paid for ancient, fragile comic books. It is the week of “ComiCon,” the San Diego International Comic Convention.

Even if you are not (in order) a fan of superheroes, celebrities, new movies and games, or collectible comic books… it is difficult to avoid cable-TV coverage, entertainment-show stories, news packages, and internet views of scholars and nerds, 135,000 of them, crowding the aisles of the Convention Center in otherwise placid San Diego.

It holds my interest for several reasons. I was in that world – and of that world – for much of my life. Actually more than one career, for I have been a political cartoonist, scenarist of strips and graphic novels, syndicate comics editor, editor of Marvel Comics magazines, writer for Disney, comics anthologist and historian, etc.

More, I have attended many of the comics festivals around the world, usually as a speaker or guest. Many are larger, and at one time more scholarly, than San Diego. But my first ComiCon was in 1976, and in those days they were small affairs, held in old halls or hotel basements. In fact ComiCon basically was a collectors’ swap meet with celebrity panels. As Editor at Marvel, I arranged for us to be the first major publisher to rent space and display new releases there. (I humbly confess that a strong motivation was to have Stan Lee sign off on 10 fun days with my staff in sunny California…)

Before the Con was largely subsumed by films and games I was kind of tight with board members of SDCC, so I was in its orbit. But these days it takes the James Webb Telescope of the Comics Universe to spot me. My interest in the art form has not waned at all – I am deep in a couple projects about comics history – but, as I said, SDCC is more about movies, games, and toys than strips.

But superheroes still stalk the halls, the representatives of comic books and their Hollywood spin-offs.

I have never fully understood America’s fascination with superheroes – before, during, and after my tenure at Marvel. We are too deep in the forest to see the trees; if the world survives, it will take analysts of the future to explain America’s obsession with violence and sex; protagonists who rely on muscles, weapons, and absurd powers to pursue justice. Other civilizations built the heroes of their myths (commonly agreed standards and values) on integrity, courage, and wisdom. Many of their heroes failed, the source of literal “tragedy,” a term that is, significantly, misused these days. But in contemporary America, every “hero,” every sketch drawn for fans at ComiCon, employs grimaces, knotted brows, bleeding scratches, clenched teeth, and, usually, a ravished buxom woman at his feet.

Why has America developed this conception of a hero, and why has an audience demanded or welcomed such characters, for surely they are synergistic factors.

Having worked in the “forest,” as I said, all my career, I can discern the trees but cannot identify them, nor explain their sustenance. Even my cherished Disney characters, whom I cast in countless scripts as I wrote premises and stories, have been transformed. I no longer recognize the denizens of the Magic Kingdom; No: I do recognize them, and I don’t like them. They don’t like me. Walt must be turning his grave like a rotisserie chicken. (I recently wrote about this for a national magazine.)

There are signs of hope, reasons for optimism, evidence of some redemption. Not only for desperately needed diversity of content, but as push-backs against the troubling vortex of thematic rot. Villains, and even heroes, I knew as a kid and during my time at Marvel, have now engaged in serial excess – demonology, satanism, perversion (“oh, we must give the good guys something to oppose”), rougher violence, and bloodier graphic representations of it all.

But subcultures of Christian cartoonists are creating stories and inventing heroes with positive virtues; self-publishing, when necessary, and with… happy endings. Or, for discerning readers, pointing to the Truth. Among these creators are very talented artists and writers. Many of them are at the ComiCon, and many are exhibiting, offering their work to the public, and… well, evangelizing. Missionaries in a hostile world – America, not only fan conventions.

When I was young I knew Al Hartley, who was permitted to draw a line of Archie comics for the Christian market; Hank Ketcham did the same with a line of Dennis the Menace comic books. Today’s new breed has taken the fight as St Paul did: “all things to all people” — there are series of heroes; fantasy themes; humor; adventure. The creators do not hide their faith, hoping to lure unsuspecting pagans… but rather, they share their witness boldly and cleverly.

Once there was Jack Chick, who published controversial comics as tracts. There was political cartoonist Wayne Stayskal, who also drew for religious publications. There is the Australian pastor Ian Jones, for whose anthology of Christian strips Pearly Gates I wrote an Introduction. I had many conversations with Charles Schulz who, early in his career, evangelized on street corners; he grew weary and wary of organized religions but always discussed Christian faith.

Of the “rising generation” there are many. And many of them are at ComiCon, individually and as members of the Christian Comics Society. This activity might surprise some Christians; but if the work was more widely read and discussed, the whole world might – and should – know of it. In the next blog message I will highlight some of the cartoonists and their work.

In the meantime, I will note that it is inspiring that some cartoonists are working not to impress each other or attract fans by whatever means they can use… but are conscious of the One Reader they seek to please.

+ + +

Video Click: It Is No Secret

7-18-22

Almost all of us know the story of the adulteress brought before Jesus. Almost all of us have not considered the myriad aspects and many lessons, nor asked – much less answered – the questions it presents.

From The Gospel of John, Chapter 8.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning, He came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and He sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test Him, that they might have some charge to bring against Him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with His finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask Him, He stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more He bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before Him.

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

And Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”…

I will share some thoughts I have, among many, from this story about that scene. I trust you will have more. Needless to say, I discern messages for our time, and for our lives, my life directly, as always happens when the Bible opens itself.

• Jesus did not minimize the woman’s sin. He maximized repentance and forgiveness.
• Religious leaders sought tricks to corner and twist and block the righteous. (They still act the same way today.) It is clear that the Pharisees, the professional religious hypocrites, were less concerned with the Law of Moses or even the woman acting justly, than trying to trick and discredit Jesus.
• Jesus FULFILLED the law, and did not seize upon it to condemn people. The harsh punishments of Old Testament rules were abolished by the Person and the Ministry of Jesus the Christ. Adherence to those laws was impossible, and righteousness is now found in true fellowship with Jesus.
• Jesus was writing in the sand with his finger. What was He writing? The Bible does not say. I believe He was not drawing doodles nor scribbling nonsense. In my mind’s eye He was writing the numbers 1 to 10 for all to see. Why? So the people might begin thinking about the Ten Commandments… and how many of those laws each of them had kept… or broken.
• The woman was face-to-face with her Savior. As He freed her, forgiveness flowed. How powerful is God’s forgiveness, and its “reach” into our lives? Jesus forgave before she asked… just as Christ gave His life for us while we were yet sinners! Our response then is to resist the sin nature, working to “sin no more” in life as the Holy Ghost enables.
• When He said, “Go and sin no more,” it closely followed the absolution… but the next verse indicates that the hypocritical Pharisees remained close by, and that message was directed to them too. And to us: Go and sin no more.

You might think I will relate this incident and its lessons to events that swirl around us today. You might be right.

I don’t have to do this, because the messages of the Holy Bible, and the Words of Jesus, stand on their own with applications for all people in all places at all times. Yet we are commanded to apply these truths.

Contemporary debates about abortion, and court decisions, and laws, relate to the incident of the woman… as well as to the attitudes of those who condemn her. Deeper is the motivation of the religious hypocrites: they hated Jesus and schemed to silence His message; and they had no compassion for the woman or her situation.

Her dilemma (and many Bible scholars believe that she specifically was unmarried and pregnant) is described as a consequence of her adultery. Jesus did not criticize her past actions, but lovingly sent her back to her home with the admonition to change her ways.

The abortion “debate” today is clothed in everything from cries for freedom to love for babies not yet born. Freedom and love somehow morph into violence and hate. Myself, I am not equating the two sides, like people who say “at least they’re sincere”: I believe abortion is murder.

Yet I see some sort of resolution to the current maelstrom of malice by returning, if we can imagine it, to that spot in the shadow of the Mount of Olives where the religious leaders tried to corner Jesus, and used the woman as a pawn.

Jesus identified the crisis of that confrontation. It was not mere adultery; it was sin. To the crowd, He defused their fury by confronting them with their hypocrisy. After her encounter with the Savior, she could not undo her sin… but she could repent, and she could change her life.

That is all Jesus asks when we accept Him.

And those numbers 1 to 10? If that’s what He wrote, it is significant that they were written in the sand. Irrelevant? No! But written by, explained by, and fulfilled by, Jesus Christ.

Let us go and resolve to sin no more.

+ + +

Video Click: Take My Life and Let It Be

https://youtu.be/qQfxc_zhlvA

7-11-22

At times all believers wonder – no differently than do secular folk – Why do the “good” suffer? Indeed, why do sinners prosper? Where is God? Why is it necessary to go through trials at all? Why did my spouse die? How can I survive this economy? Can a blessing please come my way?

God answers prayer, yes; but why is the answer so often No? Why does God seem to delay His answers… or seem seldom to answer a specific pleading?

… Why does an all-powerful God, who loves us so much – and which we hardly doubt – where is He when we cry? Why must we suffer anguish? We feel we are not selfish, but why, God, are You so often late??? Have you cried out with such questions?

I have friends who have been in that place lately, and so have I. Our souls cry out, even as we know the truths, and we know His word: we don’t need Bible college to know that He is sovereign. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, as Hebrews Chapter 11 states. “Trust and Obey,” the old Gospel song assures us. There are hundreds of Bible promises. “Father knows best!” Even that has spiritual application!

But yet we hurt. And wait. And listen. And, sometimes, our spiritual shopping-list seems to have been ignored.

Among many clues to these questions in the Bible, I think today of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, and a special friend, we read, of Jesus. Lazarus was sick… Jesus was sent for to pray healing over him… Jesus was “late,” arriving four days after his friend died and was entombed. Why, why, cried the women and many other followers, Why were you late, Jesus?

Jesus wept (the shortest verse in Scripture), we are told. He prayed to His Father that His divinity might be manifest in that moment, to assert (once again) to witnesses that He was indeed sent by God. He instructed mourners that the stone over the tomb’s entrance be rolled away… despite protestations that there would be ugly putrefaction from a four-day-old dead body.

But Lazarus walked out. He was whole and healed.

Jesus directed that the remaining burial cloths be removed. The Lord was, we see, not the only example of a resurrection recorded in Scripture… and neither the last. (Many are to come!)

The lessons are many. First, regarding timely prayer requests: Was Jesus “four days late”… or was He, rather, precisely on time? I urge you to watch the short music video below, enacting the scene but sharing the Truth better than I am doing.

And we ought to practice humility. Our agenda is not God’s; our urgency is not His. My comment about a shopping-list is too often how we approach the Lord. That is not communication as God desires.

Also there is the point about God’s sovereignty. Jesus’ timing was perfect… but we need to learn that Jesus did not raise everybody from the dead. He might have healed everyone He met, but the Bible does not claim that. He loves us, but His ways are not our ways.

Do you begin to see the “problem” we sometimes have with prayer? The problems can be with our approach, not His hearing. The ultimate lesson is to have faith. “Be still and know that I am God,” He tells us.

I was persuaded, years ago, to have an all-in belief in Divine Healing, close to the “name it and claim it” theology we hear discussed. Then one day I realized that an evangelist I fervently followed… wore glasses. And his wife talked about sharing Jesus… during her physical therapy sessions. Hmmm.

My late wife underwent heart and kidney transplants despite praying that she be supernaturally healed instead. A year later she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, was “prayed over” but underwent surgery, after which the doctors “couldn’t explain it,” but there were no traces of cancer cells.

God is sovereign. Why do we always need reminders?

I take away one more lesson from Lazarus. He was from Bethany, but he is also a Metaphor, if you will forgive me. Lazarus was dead… and before Jesus shows up in our lives, we too are dead in our sins.

And others might pray for us… but only a personal encounter with the Savior will bless us.

Also: instead of thinking of yourself as a Mary or Martha or an onlooker… imagine yourself as Lazarus. He was not only dead by all the ways they could measure. But, remember Jesus ordered that the bandages and burial cloths be removed? Let us think about that: we often, and in many ways, are encumbered, and bound, by our sins. Burial cloths, in a way of thinking, restraining us.

Death accompanies such restraints – sins – on our lives. Jesus looses and frees us from them. And like Lazarus, we may be born again.

+ + +

Video Click: Four Days Late

7-4-22

When my children were young, my wife and I had them memorize our family’s address, in case they ever strayed from home or lost their way. To orient themselves or assist those who would help.

In these times, we would do well – all of us, adults as well as children – to memorize another Address ourselves. We have, in many and substantial cases, strayed from Home as a people. Our culture seems to have lost its way.

On the Fourth of July we observe a national birthday, commemorating the date affixed to the Declaration of Independence. With the Constitution and other founding documents, speeches, and sermons, it is testimony that the nation and the very “idea” of a Republic were endowed by our Creator.

Many Americans have grown cold or indifferent to those ideals, and we see examples of citizens taking their rights and blessings for granted At the other extreme, radicals denigrate those ideals and besmirch the Founders and Framers.

However, elsewhere in the world there remain lonely and courageous freedom-seekers who are inspired by those words. There are young and fragile governments who model their struggles on those words.

There should be American children and, yes, adults, too who commit to memory some of the ringing words of our heritage.

July Fourth is a unique day for several reasons. Among them, the Declaration was signed; it was when Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders secured San Juan Hill in a bloody battle; and it was the day (actually one of three days) that the consequential Battle of Gettysburg was fought.

There are some people today who reject the idealism of statesmen and soldiers of our past. They dismiss the sacrifices and hard-fought benefits of our difficult civic evolution. They reject the blessings of God; His working in a land when His guidance was sought; they deny God Himself.

Among other heresies, people claim that the conscience of a nation was not roused by the cancer of slavery; that other motives animated a civil war. But I have archives newspaper and magazines of the era, and it is striking how simple citizens – even newly arrived immigrants – affirmed and reaffirmed allegiance to a nation they could not abide splitting apart. And there was a burning determination to end slavery. As President Lincoln said, “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong,” and hundreds of thousands died so that bondsmen they did not know would be free.

When I was in grade school I chose to memorize Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I am still moved when I recite it, or read it, or hear it spoken. It is only about 250 words long, and when Lincoln delivered it, the address followed a two-hour speech by that event’s “main” speaker. Witnesses say that the assembled crowd had barely settled, after stretching their bodies and routinely applauding, when it ended!

But its words – Lincoln’s message and meaning – were soon regarded as profound. It is now regarded as one of the great orations, great essays, of humankind.

I am afraid, to use Lincoln’s invitations, that if we cannot re-dedicate ourselves to what constitutes “this nation, under God,” we are lost as a people. The world might indeed little note nor long remember whatever it was we have done here in America.

We need to be reminded of our home addresses, so to speak, for we have lost our way.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

+ + +

Video Click:

6-27-22

Certain events in my life have caused me to dread headlines – not every day; and for years as a newspaperman it was my business to write headlines – but we all have been conditioned to expect surprises. Weather, wars, assassinations, disasters. I was just beginning a new job in San Diego, living amidst boxes in my new home, when the TV showed the breaking news of what we now call 9-11.

That I knew that Manhattan neighborhood well, and had been to the top of the Towers, added but little to the shock. Even today, almost every time I turn on the TV news in the morning, I wonder whether a similar headline will confront me.

In a similar way, and not only as a student of history, there are events that I would happily anticipate as headlines – hopes and dreams that might be fulfilled some day. Usually these thoughts are futile. But sometimes they happen: dreams do come true.

I was astonished, for instance, that “the Wall fell,” and Communist governments not only collapsed across Europe – one after the other, like dominoes – but that hardly a drop of blood was shed! Oh, maybe someone hurt themselves as the Berlin Wall was razed; and excepting the Romanian thug Nicolae Ceauşescu and his immediate family there were no fatalities, either by regimes’ defenses or by freedom fighters. (Strangely, in college I briefly had dated the daughter of the government minister who fleetingly tried to assume power in the dictator’s wake.)

My point is that a headline, “Communist Governments Overthrown, Bloodlessly; Democracy and Capitalism Come to Europe,” was one I never expected.

A similar headline – “Roe vs Wade Overturned and Invalidated by Supreme Court” – is one I dreamed of for half a century, and simply never believed would happen. Indeed as with the subsequent “Casey” ruling, I was certain that America would continue down (!) the path of disrespecting and dismantling our cultural heritage. Declining. What I have called “The Culture of Death.”

My friends know that in the days of “Roe,” those almost nihilistic times, I was untroubled by the idea of abortion… unpersuaded by opposing arguments… and approving of its legalization. Those views and actions are never merely abstract in debates and events; when you choose sides in such matters you become a complicit enabler. There are few things from which I have reformed that have caused such bitter tears and prayers for forgiveness. So I became an activist on the “pro-life” side.

… and therefore I was, frankly, astonished to learn that Roe vs Wade has been overturned. And without violence or bloodshed (except, that is, for the 63-million babies that have been killed since the Court decided it).

Growing from my concern and activism, in 2005 I managed to secure a magazine interview with Norma McCorvey, the “anonymous” Jane Roe (a female “John Doe”) of the landmark case. She was famously reclusive and granted few interviews. Her own baby (of the case’s focus) in fact never was aborted, but was given for adoption. After her “win,” she worked in abortion clinics… was disgusted by what she witnessed… became a Christian… and then worked to counsel other women.

That interview will soon appear in a national magazine, and I will share it here, too, in coming weeks.

But let us not celebrate too soon or too enthusiastically. Just as Communist governments fell, but Communism lives on – in other governments; in academia; in the media; in “progressive” politics – so abortion will continue. Sobering facts to realize and remember:

• Overturning Roe and Casey does not end abortion in the United States. It merely lets states accept or reject the practice. Some do, some don’t; more will, more won’t. Just as drug laws are local, so will legal abortions be available here and there. I have been to “dry” counties and towns in Kansas and even California – where alcohol is outlawed – but people drive a little bit; and they will for abortions too. Vacation packages might be designed around abortions.
• Abortifacients will abound; “morning after” drugs probably will become more common than weed; and even in proscribed locales, “procedures” likely will become as common as Botox treatments. They always were, of course: what has really changed in our lifetimes is this: what people once whispered about, many people these days brag about. Savage, but true.
• Is the Court’s decision, therefore, futile? No. Societies define themselves by laws, art, and literature. So the “overturn” might in a larger sense be a codification of our nation’s essential standards. IF it stands, or holds. No sure thing.
• So the “fights” will continue, but in state capitals, in town councils, in local elections. That is the point of the Court’s reversal: the Framers meant that some matters (not only concepts and technologies they could not anticipate) are best decided in communities. Of, by, and for communities. We might not be perfectly united, but we are states.

There is another point that might not be appreciated going forward… but it is a lesson in democracy. For all the tumult and shouting about guns and abortions, and about election frauds and discredited stories about Russian collusion, “impossible” dreams do come true. Communist dictatorships did collapse. The guarantee of self-defense according to the Second Amendment finally seems secure. And contrary to social drift in America, and standards in other countries (our abortion policies are generally more permissive than dozens of other countries’ around the world)… we are in fact reading headlines that bring hope on the issue of infanticide.

Other battles remain to confront us: crime; abuse; drugs; the breakdown of the family; education reform… but we can sense redemption from pessimism!

And perhaps the most unlikely surprise among startling news is the “vessel” who successfully carried water on these issues. The Bible has many examples of unlikely or unknown or untested people who God used to exercise His will. In a future generation, Americans will read in history books, not only newspapers, the headline: “Orange Man Good.”

+ + +

Music Video Click: Unplanned

6-20-22

Recently, here, on that other Hallmark Holiday (Mothers Day) I presented a view of motherhood that I fear is being lost in the shuffle of modern culture. To our cultural and physical DNAs, the role of mothers and the bonds between – let me be Politically Correct – between “Birthing Units” and their Tax Deductions are immutable.

I argued against the tugs of the Post-Modern lunacy that reigns today. The radical elements of the French Revolution actually tried to change clocks and calendars, not only religions and governments. Today’s revolutionaries attempt similar social atrocities. They are in our midst, not, as in “the best of times, the worst of times,” in barricades and city squares on the other side of Paris. They already run our government, the media, the entertainment industry, the education-industrial complex, and thanks to our electronic hypnotists called the internet, our minds.

… or nearly so, which is why we need yet another Great Awakening.

Before commencing a counter-revolution, and essential to it, is a basic rediscovery of our Christian heritage, and from a secular perspective at least, a commitment to its core values and disciplines. “To go forward we must first look back,” a Classical Italian thinker wrote. We are lost enough as a people without furthering the self-swindling lies that we can, and should, discard old values and discover – or invent – new ones.

I am not talking about… excuse me: I am not only talking about the Athenian Republic; nor Roman laws; nor the “Germ Theory” of self-governance that arose in Germanic forests; nor the Magna Carta; nor the Renaissance of art and thought in Florence; nor the mercantile and capitalist systems that arose in Augsburg; nor the Reformation explosion of literacy; nor the Enlightenment and Great Awakenings that inspired bourgeois revolutions and prosperity…

As magnificent as this March of Civilization has been, it seems incredible that a persuasive portion of our contemporary establishment despises its thrust. Liberal secularists seek to overthrow the basic premises of Christian society (not only to distort Christianity itself). As with most revolutions and revolutionaries, the proponents know what they hate; are dedicated to destroying institutions; and, typically, have an inchoate idea of what will constitute their brave new world.

So their imperative is to… CANCEL. Cancel what they can, tear down indiscriminately.

At the moment, in much of the world, especially Europe and America, they are quite successful. Are they clever, or are Christians, traditionalists, patriots lazy and defeated in spirit?

I began these thoughts by revisiting my Mothers Day message, and for a reason. On this Fathers Day. There is little that is more elemental to our essential selves than parenthood. The ties with our mothers and fathers. And for those so blessed, with children of the next generation. I tried to express my ineffable amazement of motherhood, the psychic (and all other) forces that exist, fierce, tender, and everything in between. That truth is what should make us despise and defeat those disordered social malefactors among us who want to destroy families, “change” sexes, and play God in uncountable ways.

But this is Dads’ Day. I did not, of course, disparage fatherhood by pausing to savor the role of mothers. But how unique is the inheritance fathers can bestow – literally, a patrimony. How special are the roles and duties God ordained: leading, providing, instructing. God Almighty has self-identified in Scripture as a He (which I am willing to concede is likely a construct of language’s limitations more than a description He must transcend as He does all matters of understanding) – which ultimately means that we are to look to His qualities with His children to form our relationships with our children.

So as a “point of personal privilege,” I am going to spill some attitudes of the best human father I knew, and share my appreciation and what I learned from his examples.

His own father was born in Germany (as were all my forebears) and was a gentle old man, yet I saw the razor strop in the closet by which he enforced discipline.

My father loved jazz as a boy, and his father let him listen and play (he was to perform with ensembles) but Sunday was the day restricted to hymns and… opera. My father developed a passion for Classic music too; as I did – through his example and the ubiquity of the music in our house, But never forced.

My father was a polymath, member of Mensa, interested in myriad things. I would not have become an obsessive collector, I think, without his example. On Saturdays he would bring me to Book Store Row in Manhattan, those ghettos of used-book stores. I caught the bug!

Dad never wrote, but when I became a journalist and author (now almost 80 books) I never have finished a piece without wondering what he would think or say.

He never drew, but he collected cartoon books and subscribed to a dozen papers so he could read – and save – the color comics. He charted my course without intending it, as cartoon work became a vocation.

He was a chemist, but never urged that profession on me (to the world’s relief, believe me). We used to argue politics until my mother cried – but it was never substantive: Mom never understood how we always flipped a switch to chat about Jack Benny or the latest best-seller. He taught me disputation, and to defend my ideas. And have them. (He became a conservative…)

He was a dedicated churchgoer, a Lutheran. Our family prayed daily and attended church weekly, but like many ‘50s families my parents smoke and drank and partied in suburbia. When I was to leave for college I told Dad my faith was getting shaky, and I wouldn’t want him to think that college would be changing my mind. “Oh, it’s just a stage,” he said. “You’ll stick with Jesus.”

At the time I thought he was a lazy Christian or indifferent about my soul! But I knew it was his brand of confidence-building. I soon did appreciate the quiet endorsement, his style.

I could go on, but most of you did not know him; maybe do, a little bit, now. I rolled out these snippets for a reason beyond nostalgia. I hope you all have similar stories, similar touchstones, and can identify through memories of your own.

There are two things to do with the collective memories we have of our fathers. We realize that we cherish not only their faces or personalities, their jobs or hobbies, even their successes or shortcomings. Those aspects combine to make one single, and singular, person. Especially if it is too late to say it to them, we must cherish our fathers.

But more, we must cherish the motive force behind fatherhood – and that is an aspect ordained by God. The continuum of family lines… our spiritual inheritance… responsibilities and joys…

With our fathers (and of course as I have said, mothers in different and special ways) we are not mere individuals thrown together by accident. And a family is not a club; a house is not a home. God has ordained the family unit, and as He is our Heavenly Father, must look to – and be – examples of the special nurturing only fathers can provide,

+ + +

The gifted songwriter Steve Goodman wrote this emotional tribute to his father. Don’t skip it!

Click: My Old Man

6-13-22

I’m not going to go Theological on you here. I will take a moment, however, to invite us all to consider a glaring matter (I believe to be a problem) in today’s churches.

The root of “Theology” literally is “the study of God,” so I might break my promise before I start, but I rather think in this matter we should study not God so much as contemporary worship, the practices of Western churches, and the evolution, yes, of denominations.

Simply: I think significant portions of Christendom – north of the Equator, generally, and in America especially – have sublimated important aspects of Christian doctrine. That is to say, the Church that Jesus inspired and the Apostles established.

Stick with me: Essential elements of Christianity, the accepted teaching over many centuries, and the foundational beliefs of Christians… are often ignored today. In Christian churches themselves.

Many Christians are being taught incomplete Gospels, if taught at all.

An incomplete Gospel is not the Gospel at all. Churches and their traditions and denominations used to proclaim “a full Gospel” and be dedicated to “know Christ and make Him known.” Now it is what has become convenient, or appealing, or uncomplicated. And I am not here referring to obscure debates or fine points of, say, eschatology or, you know, “how many angels can dance on the heads of pins.”

Those challenges are serious enough… and I suppose always will be. My concern actually is more basic, and can be illustrated by two recent days in the church “calendar” that are practically ignored in much of today’s church.

The first is Ascension Day. For centuries the Transfiguration of Christ – His bodily ascension to Heaven, witnessed by Disciples and accompanied by faith-heroes of the Old Testament – was a major event, celebrated by churches in a major way, observed for its major significance.

This Transfiguration of the Christ “closed the circle,” made complete His earthly Ministry. The fulfillment of a hundred various prophesies… the details of His life and many miracles performed… His suffering and sacrificial death… all were the varieties of signs and wonders that announced who He was. Of course, His miraculous victory over death, and 40 days of being seen, and preaching anew, were further signs that He was – as His followers were now believing – much greater than the prophets of old.

But Jesus’s bodily Ascension to Heaven, lifted to the clouds, welcomed by the Father… this was the final act in His ministry on earth. The Ascension confirmed, finally, that Jesus was Divine; that He was returning to the Father.

This act, this fact, was profoundly important to the early Church. And it remained a major element of teaching and creeds and church observances for centuries. Properly so.

Today (and believe me, I know and honor the pockets of exceptions) the mainstream denominations scarcely mention the event, the Day, its implications. A needless omission; a symptom of post-Modern disrespect for God Almighty and His plan for His church.

You might ask: Would clergy who undergo training, and people who build churches, really abandon the Faith??? The answer is found, sadly, many times throughout Biblical history. At one time (see Samuel II, chapter 6) the Israelites actually let the Ark of Covenant — delivered and designed by God Himself — be abandoned for three months. There is an example. (King David wanted to return it to Jerusalem, but instead consigned it to the household of Obed-Edom, appropriately, a Levite — and this, I believe, was a sign to us: “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord!”)

Even more egregious, and more widespread, is what I call the “Duine God” who is worshiped and glorified, to the extent He is, by the contemporary church. (That is, opposed to the “Triune God” – the Trinity.)

Ten days after Jesus’s Ascension, a significant promise of His was fulfilled. As the Disciples and others “waited” as Jesus commanded, “there came a rushing sound as from a mighty wind… over the heads of the assembled crowd there appeared what seemed like tongues of flame… everyone began speaking, but in languages of others, and in unknown talk that sounded like gibberish…” (My paraphrase of the account in the Book of Acts.)

Happening on Pentecost (the “Feast of Weeks” on the Jewish calendar; subsequently known as Whit Day, sometimes Whitsunday) – the events of that day gave rise to the Pentecostal experience of believers.

That Pentecost event was the birth-day of the Church. Jesus had assured the Disciples that it was “better that He leave them, because One will come with power, so they might do all things He had done.” A miracle happened that day… and has not ceased. Nine Spiritual Gifts, as listed in I Corinthians and elsewhere, came upon those people, and are still promised to believers today. They include speaking, and understanding, strange tongues, “the language of angels.” Gifts of miraculous knowledge, and wisdom, and prophetic visions; and healing.

Not all “powers” at all times to all people: they are not magic wands. But they are gifts.

And I am astonished how few Christian churches believe in them today. Or seek them. Or accept them. Or teach them. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever… and so is the equal member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit – God in us. Yet today’s churches are afraid to see the Gifts, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, as anything but a 2000-year-old religious relic. Tragic.

Some people today claim that this experience was “emotionalism.” But things changed, forever. Peter, for instance, had been an impulsive and sometimes foolish fan of Jesus. After Pentecost he became a wise, mature, and persuasive leader. Some people today claim that the Pentecostal experience was for that moment only, to “anoint” followers. However, it did not stop. Within decades there were Christian churches as far away as England, and in short centuries, Christianity was the official faith of the Roman Empire. The power of Pentecost!

I have experienced some of the Gifts; and friends have. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of the church, and south of the Equator is overtaking Catholic and traditional Protestant denominations in numbers. Holy-Spirit Christianity is outstripping Islam in Africa (the massacres you hear about in the news are routinely of Pentecostal communities).

These “holes in the Gospel” today I see as nothing less than a religious “cancel culture” of the post-Modern age, with dead, frightened mainstream skeletons behind pulpits of social clubs and mausoleums posing as churches. Churches that deny the Trinity.

That is harsh, but I think Christians need some spiritual tables overturned in church parking lots and courtyards. Would Jesus know His church if He returned today?

+ + +

Click: Altar Call – Baptism In the Holy Spirit

6-6-22

Prayer. It is a mysterious thing, really. A gift proffered by the Creator of the Universe to every one of His children – the invitation to have a conversation.

It can be a chat, for it is not supposed to be a one-way street. We let the burdens of our hearts be known; we lift our praise and gratitude; we sometimes cry in helpless confusion.

Other “gods” and figureheads of various religious traditions do not converse. How were they portrayed? They dispensed wisdom or rules. They demand tribute. They have no counterparts of the Holy Spirit, the aspect of God who lives in our hearts and is our Advocate before the Throne.

We are assured that God covets our prayers, and hears the prayers of the righteous; that His Word never comes back void; that the Holy Spirit – when we are unable to pray or might feel inadequate – will nevertheless “groan” on our behalf.

We often list our desires… but the Lord knows our needs. Thank God.

And that is part of the mystery, beyond the miracle that God knows even the number of hairs on our heads: He knows our needs. In fact He feels our pains and joys and burdens and petitions before we organize them in prayer. He knows, already. And He knows the answers.

So why pray? Why does He need for us to approach Him? Why does He “communicate”?

In prayerful communication, He speaks to our hearts; He sometimes speaks audibly; He brings “the peace of God, which passes understanding,” as is promised about prayer; He has assured us that fervent prayer “avails much.”

Part of the mystery should be clear – we are blessed by the act of praying, even before the answers come. Further, prayer is the most palpable form of obedience we can exercise: believing, approaching, trusting – the essence of faith. Prayer is the “key to Heaven, and faith unlocks the door,” as the Gospel song says. We are encouraged to pray for one another: such is our duty, and it pleases God that we fellowship with the saints. The Gifts of the Spirit, enumerated throughout the New Testament, include praying “in the Spirit,” surrendering our tongues and hearts to the language of angels, clearing worldly impediments to conversation with God.

Yet our natural minds still have natural questions.

Frequently asked by skeptics, and sometimes in corners of our own hearts: When we pray “fervently,” when we are “righteous” according to scriptural verses on the matter, when we “pray believing” as commanded, when we seem to be in accord with His Word, when we pray selflessly as we know how…

Why does God sometimes seem to be silent? Why does He sometimes say “no”? More – why does He sometimes seem to say “NO!!!”

An answer, as hard as it often is to accept, is that “no” is an answer. Prayer is not a magic wand. God is not an errand boy. But our response must encompass a deeper understanding than this. God is sovereign; He knows best. He knows better than our want-lists, even when our requests are sincere and righteous. As we agreed, we have our desires; He knows our needs.

Further, as obedient children of a loving God, we have to know that a “no” can really be a “not yet.” Or, “not in your way, but Mine.” Thus saith the Lord.

To reassure ourselves, let’s look at some notable things God did not do… yet, still, were answers to prayer, and examples of how He works His loving will toward us.

• Moses was leading the Hebrew children from the wrath of Pharaoh’s army. The Promised Land was far ahead, but the multitude was stopped at the Red Sea. A miracle-working God could have answered prayers by drying the waters. But God’s answer was to part the waters. There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God makes a way.
• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were condemned to death, to be cast into the dreaded “Fiery Furnace.” To honor their faith, God could have struck the King dead, or scattered the guards, or extinguished the flames. Yet prayers were answered when they survived unharmed (and in the presence of that “fourth man” appearing at their side). There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God protects us.
• In the well-known Psalm of comfort, we are told to prepare for the “valley of the shadow of death.” If God chooses, He easily could set our paths on the mountaintops above such a valley. Yet we are encouraged to “fear no evil” because His rod and staff will comfort us… in the presence of our enemies. There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God will be by our side.

In these examples, I think we all might have prayed urgently, probably expectantly, surely hopefully.

Naturally. But, hard as it would be to realize, those prayers would not be conversations. God’s lessons would be lost. Yet they happened, and were recorded, for reasons. We were the reasons; to learn the ways in which we can draw closer to God.

And to pray “Thy will be done” at the end, as well as the beginning, of our chats with God.

+ + +

Click: In the Night Shadows

5-30-22

America has become so secularized that we are stripping our traditional religious observances – Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving – of spiritual distinctives, re-branding them in schools, public squares, and the media as Winter, Spring, and Fall Fests, and more innocuous labels when they can be found.

Even worse, our secular solemnities also are being neutered. The greatest of presidents whose lives are inspirations have been consigned to virtual snow-globes and shaken up as flakes in a generic “presidents day” flurry, lost among unfortunate and forgotten nonentities. Fireworks and parades on the Fourth of July are symbols that largely have yielded to barbecues and reunions. All of those former commemorative days have morphed into excuses for long weekends and cheesy TV commercials.

Suffering not the least in this rush to homogenize our cultural heritage is Memorial Day. I thank God that some people still recall and honor the origin of the patriotic day, originally “Decoration Day,” established for visits to graves and monuments of fallen heroes.

We can be thankful for small favors, but I generally curse the impulse that kidnaps Memorial Day and uses it as an excuse to “mark the beginning of summer” and inspire weekend sales at furniture outlets and used-car lots.

My dad served in World War II (he overflew D-Day in a Weather Squadron) and came home; so “his day,” as with millions of others, and from other wars, was Veterans Day. Memorial Day honors those who sacrificed their lives.

Military service always incurs sacrifice, whether men were drafted or men and women who volunteer. And no less (to the nation’s shame) spouses and children who often sacrifice greatly too. From my perspective, and what inhabits my desire to memorialize and hold these dead in awe, is what motivated those service personnel whom we honor.

In every war through history, combatants sometimes have been motivated by hate. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from summoning bravery… to action “beyond the call of duty”… to, occasionally throughout history, savagery and atrocities. The range of motives and performance is wide – but I have always believed that the essence of hatred, if it could be distilled and measured, routinely is stronger in civilian leaders than in the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

Largely this is due to the underlying causes of many wars. As a historian and as a Christian, I will unfurl the flag of my cynicism. Wars have been fought for noble reasons, including defense and rescue operations. Many also have been fought for territorial gain or commercial advantages – often brutal, yet arguable extensions, as von Clausewitz wrote, of politics and diplomacy.

Cynicism joins the battle, so to speak, when we recognize how many wars have been fought, and lives lost, over hollow objectives; futile suicide missions; changing war goals; civilian slaughter; friendly embraces of recent enemies; abandoned rationales for “why we fight”; and neglect of gold-star families and veterans’ needs.

Should I mention such things on a Memorial Day? I cannot help it; but in my mind such memories inspire a greater motivation – indeed, a necessity – to honor the dead. If not the wars, memorialize the dead.

Most fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, I believe, have not fought and died out of hatred, even against malign enemies… but more out of love.

They love their homeland. They love their families, their Main Streets, their heritage. They love their flag. They love peace, the ultimate goal. More – and here is what leaves me awestruck and deserves our “memorialization” – they love service. They love serving. They love and accept and embrace sacrifice.

How many people have that “DNA” any more? Thank God for the “few and the proud” in all military branches… and we surely can wonder whether the “few” are growing fewer in society. If America’s shores and cities and towns were invaded, would regular citizens be willing (or able, if guns are confiscated) to rise up in defense?

I truly wonder whether the ghostly echelon of the fallen – whose graves I hope we all will visit on Memorial Day, even if the cemeteries and the gravestone names are unfamiliar – would have been so dedicated if they could have looked ahead and could have seen what has America has become. I won’t start a checklist of horrible transformations in our society, but if you have read this far, you probably agree with me. If not… well, the right publicly to disagree, which is threatened, remains one of things our fallen heroes died to protect.

Salute. Shed a tear. Raise a prayer. We honor fallen heroes for wearing the uniform, embracing the flag, and sacrificing “their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor.” Let us honor them too for America’s dwindling (God forbid) spirit of service and sacrifice.

Let us pray that not one of them, after all, did not die in vain.

+ + +

Click: Memorial Day – Taking Chance

5-23-22

It is one thing that you and I occasionally ignore God’s Commandments; too frequently we break the laws of God outright and defy His will. We will sin and rebel and disobey, even in our “best” times and despite good intentions. Occasionally? Actually, countless times; but who’s counting? (Oh. God is.)

We have sin natures. Accepting Christ’s atoning work on the cross – that He accepted the punishment we deserve as sinners before a Holy God – will not completely erase our tendencies to sin, nor acts of sin.

A mighty change in the situation, however, is that we are forgiven when confessing the finished work of Jesus, the Message of the Cross.

But I wonder: It is one thing that we tend to defy His will for our lives and ignore Jesus’s teachings about duties as devoted believers in Him…

We might ignore His commands. But how often do we ignore His blessings?

This is a serious question, because it is a serious matter. As sinners, we need forgiveness, and that is why God became Incarnate. He became flesh, dwelt among humankind, knew our temptations and sorrows and pain; He suffered death but overcame it that we might live as He did, and does.

That is theology: We all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Jesus redeemed us.

Jesus did not come that we learn Gratitude. He did not die in order that we break out in Thanksgiving. It was not necessary that He go to the cross as the way for us to voice Praise.

… those attitudes will follow the saved sinner, born-again Christians. But our focus should be Jesus’s focus: the remission of sins.

However.

I believe that God is grieved when we do not experience Gratitude, or express Thanksgiving, or sing praises to Him. We do not want to grieve God. But it always amazes me when Christians do not exhibit unbridled joy when considering Who God is, and What He has done!

… perhaps it is because we simply do not think about it? Do we take His gifts, and His love, for granted? God forbid!

It is not that He has been shy on the matter! Give thanks to the Lord for He is good… He promises joy unspeakable and full of glory… The JOY of the Lord is my strength… Praise the Lord, o my soul; and all that is within me!… Praise the Lord in song!… Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!… Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His mercy endures forever… Come before His presence with thanksgiving!…

…Through Jesus, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

You know the Bible verses, and many others. If these are not commands, they are recommendations! Seriously, they are, even more then recommendations, a checklist of natural responses we should have to the Love of God.

We all have been where I have been lately. There are times when believers – who know the truth, who have accepted Jesus – just get to places where it somehow is difficult to summon that gratitude, and thanksgiving, and praise. The world closes in; circumstances oppress us; the enemy taunts.

Well, that is the time to do what that verse says: offer a sacrifice of praise.

You don’t feel like doing it? That’s why it’s called a sacrifice: it’s not supposed to be easy… and would not be worth much if it were easy. There can never be a moment, or something that you can think of, that you can not thank God for. Begin: A minor thing; a silly thing; a little thing.

Your mind will move to bigger things. Fuller blessings. Greater thanks. The devil will stop taunting and the Holy Spirit will start whispering to you; then, shouting. You will move into a place where your attitude is adjusted. You will not only be praising; you will be happy; you will be joyful, a different thing; you will be grateful. And so will God.

He is worthy of all praise. And you will sense that you have entered the Courts of Praise with thanksgiving!

+ + +

Click: Thank You

5-16-22

According to the calendars, Winter is long past. Yet around these parts I was still turning on the heat overnight, and across swaths of the continent there have been strange late-season snowstorms. Where it hasn’t been chilly or snowy, we have had rainstorms and floods and, devastatingly, postponed baseball games.

Only last week a friend and I were walking, noting the lack of flowers and leaves and even buds on trees in the neighborhood. One of the joys of Spring is to see the light-green fuzz that appears like mists on seemingly dead trees and bushes. Spring fragrances in the air are overdue, too; like half of America perhaps they, too, have moved to Florida.

Winter has its charms, of course; but when it overstays its welcome it can affect our moods.

Perhaps my own mood is really affected by a confluence of events. Occasionally in these essays I have been inspired by coincidences: several friends enduring similar crises or illnesses; odd similarities in news stories; prayer needs for health or finances or family matters addressed to me.

Neither God nor the cosmos is trying to tell me something; certainly not at the expense of others’ lives. Sometimes, I believe, we all simply happen to notice things we otherwise overlook. And of course there are coincidences. So it is not morbid, but merely clinical, to mention that I recently have been aware of people dying, including more than during a typical week.

I am writing a book about the cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley, and conducting interviews. This week Mickey, 86, died. A situation shared with me, a friend diagnosed with a brain tumor previously regarded as an eye affliction. The father of a close friend died this week, a few days after my friend and I had dinner. An old, dear friend who has devoted her life to caring for a daughter who was suddenly disabled decades ago shared that she faces her daughter’s seriously declining health. My sister called and urged that we discuss our wills, for logical reasons.

And so forth. There are other reminders. One becomes more aware of, not desensitized to, stories of homicides and suicides in the news; body-counts in foreign wars and breached borders; of statistics of aborted children.

But we have just come through a season where we contemplated death… and life. Easter, that is. Jesus’s willing sacrifice of His life, something fairly overwhelming to comprehend, was immediately assuaged two thousand years ago — and each moment we meditate upon it today: the affirmation of life.

He overcame death. He rose from the dead. He lives today.

We need to contemplate; we need to meditate. Do not “check the box” – “Yes. Son of God. Died. Rose. Miracle. OK, is Easter over?” How often do we miss the lesson of the Resurrection?

God planned this scenario not merely to prove the Divinity of Jesus Christ. The miracles suggested that, and His Ascension would confirm that.

The Resurrection of Christ occurred not only to show us that He overcame death… but to illustrate the promise that we can overcome too. Accepting Christ as your Savior promises that you, too, will “conquer sin and death.” Those who believe “will have eternal life.” More than life in Heaven’s Paradise, you will live in virtual mansions; Jesus promised, “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

Life is not the negation of death, but triumph over it.

The horrible aspects of this world will be left behind. And what awaits? Our loving Father; eternal peace; joy unspeakable. Also awaiting us will be the people we love. And have “lost.” Those loved ones, the Bible promises us, who suffered pain and disease and infirmity, will be whole again.

When we gain Heaven ourselves, we will not only see the King… but we shall see our loved ones too. In perfect bodies. Well, and whole.

People on earth, even His children, do not live forever. And, because there is sin in the world, there is disease. And corruption. And affliction. And suffering. Some of these problems brought on by ourselves; some because the physical realm which includes sickness, cruelty, and sorrow, makes war upon us. These are other reasons to look upon our great Hope and to trust His promises.

So we look to the Life ahead. We trust in God’s mercy and, as my friend I mentioned above reminded me, grace. It is a gift we cannot manufacture ourselves, but we can seek it and accept it. Grace, grace, God’s grace. What do some people call it?

Oh, yes; amazing Grace. Even the angels do not know Grace, for they have not overcome the trials of this life nor the bonds of death. But we can savor it!

Suddenly, today, I realized I heard birds chirping this morning at dawn. Nature’s alarm clock! I took another walk, and the air had that special fragrance of renewed life. There was green fuzz on trees and bushes. Welcome back! The grass will need mowing soon! Seemingly overnight, the dogwoods burst forth in their brilliant flowery branches.

Death might seem to surround us, but life always returns, life prevails, life embraces us. Like seedlings that emerge from cracks in giant rocks, life wins – examples of the promise we have, as that old Gospel song says…

“There ain’t no grave gonna keep this body down!”

+ + +

Click: Ain’t No Grave

5-9-22

Readers will know that I am not skirting with blasphemy in the essay’s title, but rather surrendering to proper reverence.

And I will not even mention the cliché, at Mother’s Day, that all days are mothers’ days. Whoops, I just did. The value of clichés, since they inherently are true, can dissipate if applied to every day of the year, so let Hallmark have its fun… but do not lose sight of what we properly should pause and cherish.

God ordained the family unit. Fathers are responsible for provision, leadership models, and authority (I Timothy 3; Ephesians 5; etc) – heavy responsibilities. Women are different, and different beyond the evident characteristics. Mothers, more so.

That there is a qualitative difference between motherhood and fatherhood is axiomatic, not original to me. Those people who have mothers and fathers (so that includes most all of humankind, by my count) instinctively know this. The bonds between mothers and children simply are different than the case with fathers, despite dads’ roles as models and teachers, examples and disciplinarians. The bonds that tie us to mothers involve strength and tenderness; instruction and forbearance; rules and forgiveness.

Fathers can seem weak when they violate rules they set down; but somehow mothers are at their best when they bend; understanding, hugging, smiling. And, somehow, mothers’ work in this regard ultimately is more effective.

Through all of animate creation, the unique aspects of motherhood have the same invisible bonds, tender but strong; gentle but formative.

No wonder they have their special day.

And how interesting it is in these times, this current Mother’s Day, that such thoughts are pertinent to controversies that bizarrely rage in public discourse. Theodore Roosevelt, whom my readers know I quote slightly fewer times than the Bible, once said in typical wisdom, about the role of women in modern life: “Equality of rights does not mean equality of function.” How prescient, although I doubt that even he could have foreseen the popular delusions and madness of crowds that has gripped an approximate half of the American population.

He held these truths to be self-evident, that there are two sexes; that there are physical differences between them; and that (as careful reading of relevant Bible verses hold) no denigration nor subjugation nor modified rights may be deduced from such facts of nature.

The absence of common sense that reigns today reflects a pathology that transcends feminism, ignores physical realities, and is, in the end, a revelation of self-destructive tendencies… even self-loathing, self-hate. American civilization has devolved into a Culture of Death. A healthy nation cannot perpetuate itself nor survive when it tolerates the destruction of the nuclear family… when divorce is a casual and common thing… when drug abuse and alcoholism are rife… when child abuse and spousal abuse are similarly common… when crimes are not prosecuted, and nihilism is excused… when homosexuality and other gender disinformation is tolerated and encouraged – the very definition of a death-culture, the impulses contrary to procreation… when aborting babies is encouraged by the sanction of law.

Some people, of course, call those babies “collections of cells” or “blobs,” yet fingers, faces, and feelings are evident by photographs and other means… as if we need such science. (Recently, for a season, people of faith were painted as enemies of science.) And abortionists sell bodies parts and tiny organs from these collections of cell and blobs: interesting. A commercial impetus, perhaps, for elected officials who advocate abortions until full term and even after birth. A step from euthanasia; “mercy killings” with scant mercy.

Because of current legal debates, this aspect of the Culture of Death rages once again. It is a political litmus-test like no other, this dogmatic commitment, almost a maniacal frenzy, to abort babies. To force people to assent, no matter their moral beliefs. To require every citizen to pay for the deaths of those babies, the decisions of those mothers. Even the underpinning is fungible: “our bodies,” except when it comes to vaccines, or schoolchildren’s minds…

By the way, regarding my terminology here, even the President of the United States — unintentionally uttering the truth, going off the abortion-lovers’ script — this week talked about “aborting children.” Not blobs of cells, not fetuses. But intellectual schizophrenia of these people should not be a surprise. At one moment they defend women; at the next they claim (as a Supreme Court nominee did) inability to define a “woman.” They work fervently to deny and destroy many aspects of being a women. They are feminists who regard femininity as shameful; they invent privileges but reject the natural (and beneficial) perquisites afforded to women.

Sixty-million children have been killed (or insert the attempts at use euphemisms like “terminated.” What a schreckliche term, if you know what I mean) since Roe v Wade was decided. At one time I was casual, even an advocate, of the procedure. I have regretted that and spent many sleepless nights and raised many pleas for forgiveness… and so have many others. Part-mothers and almost-fathers: many have seen the light and know that God “does not despise a broken and contrite heart.” He offers mercy and forgiveness.

In the meantime, we face the possible re-adjustment in this contemporary practice of infant sacrifice; the contemporary style is to sacrifice children to the gods of convenience and numb morals. We also face the prospect of another season of civil unrest. We hear the hysterical predictions – that women will lose the right to vote! that segregation will return to water fountains!! that slavery surely will return!!! Home addresses, phone numbers, and personal information about the wives and children of justices and senators are being published, to enable physical intimidation or worse.

The “end” of abortions is not threatened, however, except in the “minds” of the shock-troops of this Culture-of-Death revolution. To the surprise of some people and the dismay of others, the complete rejection of Roe will not abolish abortion in America. Each state will decide that question. So, fasten your seat belts.

The United States is one of only seven nations (out of 198) on the entire globe to permit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Good company: the enlightened gulags of North Korea and Communist China are in our club. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in a lengthy law review article that she thought Roe was wrongly decided; and she predicted the turmoil we currently endure. Almost 20 years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey (the “Roe” of the case). The tale of her early manipulation, and fear, and regret, was heart-rending. Life-long, she was a pawn in this deadly game – not game of life, as a saying goes; but of death.

To my original point – the “nub” of Mother’s Day. Speaking as a man who completely cherished the love of my mother, the joy of my wife giving birth and rearing our precious children, the unspeakable pride, seeing my own daughters becoming nurturing mothers – I am, in a way I cannot fully express, admiring of those Human Havens, moms.

Why women pretend not to be women; why they despise the precious and unique gifts they possess; why they insanely invent new genders and regard Rights as Wrongs and vice-versa; why they cannot tolerate other women who want to be women, and wives, and mothers… is inexplicable.

Except that they are committed, active soldiers in this corrosive Culture of Death cult.

+ + +

Please take a moment today and watch this tender music video. Three Kleenex for me.

Click: A Mother Like You

5-2-22

The Shroud of Turin is back in the news. New scientific tests and findings; new “expositions” – displaying of the actual cloth and exact replicas; 3-D formations; analyses of the cloth, even minerals and pollen found in the fibers.

Old mysteries, new debates; old debates, new mysteries.

A summary for those who have not heard of the Shroud or followed its occasional appearance in news stories. The lengthy piece of cloth (approximately 14.5 feet by 3.5 feet) is reputed to be the burial cloth of Jesus, or in any event a man who was laid upon the cloth which then was brought forward to cover the front of the body. That is, not wrapped like a mummy.

The Shroud was imputed to be that of Jesus because there is a faint yet detailed image of a man fitting the details of a body abused as described in Bible accounts.

Mysteries immediately present themselves:

Why have people thought the man was Jesus? First, the man’s features are that of a Palestinian Jew, with beard and hair in the style of Jesus’s time.

Further mysteries: there are apparent bloodstains and wounds and hematomas, and many of them. That the Shroud did not hold an average prisoner or random tortured criminal (besides the fact that the condemned would not have been afforded careful and honored burials in such shrouds) is another evident mystery: a great number of the evidences of the man of the Shroud correspond to Jesus’s Passion and death.

The mysteries of those bloodstains: Bloodstreams from thorns thrust on the head. A wound on the side (Jesus was pierced with a spear between the ribs). Other “stripes” – evidence of whippings and scourging as recorded in the Bible. Bruises, particularly on the face, correspond to the accounts of how Jesus was beaten.

There have been accusations and suspicions of forgery which skepticism is a reason the Shroud is frequently in the news: the wounds where spikes would have held the body on a cross are through the wrists, not hands. For centuries, Christians traditionally assumed that nails pieced Jesus’s hands – which is only the case in a general or poetic sense, but not by correct anatomy. Relatively recently, researchers nailed corpses to crosses; through the hands, the body’s weight ripped through the hands and the bodies fell. But because the wrist has many bones, the bodies were upheld. The man of the Shroud shows nail wounds through the wrists. Ancient forgers, if there were, did not depict that; innumerable artists  of ancient times depicted the crucified Jesus with nails or scars in the hands.

The biggest mystery is the image itself. It is faint; it shows a man as described in the Gospels, brutalized and naked. Through the centuries, people wondered, however, why the image appeared in sepia tones and “almost” real. But somehow “backwards” or reversed. Why? When the Shroud was first photographed in the late 1890s, its photographic negatives startled the world: HERE was a virtual photograph of a man fitting the Bible’s descriptions.

A mystery: the Shroud was a virtual photographic negative! What? Why? How?

Books have been written, and will be; but I will try to condense and summarize the facts, doubts, proofs, tests, and… mysteries. Ownership of the Shroud could be traced back only to about 1300. It was either forged then, or, as claimed, was hidden, cherished, then kept from Moslem invaders of churches in Turkey that claimed to possess such a relic.

How was the image made? It is not of paint or dyes; the image does not permeate the cloth; and (years before the atomic age) the idea was advanced that at the moment of Resurrection, a supernatural burst of some sort scorched the Shroud, transferring the image we see.

There are strange patches on it today. They were sewn when a fire occurred in a church where it was housed centuries ago, and its silver reliquary melted and burned in the folded cloth. Speaking of its being folded, the Shroud might explain the mystery of “Veronica’s Veil,” an ancient legend of a cloth that mysteriously took on the face of Jesus when a sympathetic woman wiped his sweat as the cross was carried to Golgotha. The Shroud in ancient times evidently was displayed in folded form, showing only Jesus’s face… perhaps inspiring that legend.

So the Shroud evidently was seen and venerated for decades after the Resurrection… went missing through persecution and wars… and for a thousand years has been traced in castles and churches, now residing in a basilica in Turin, Italy.

Skeptics have demanded proofs; and even the Vatican is neutral about its authenticity. Historians, doctors, experts in geography, agronomy, fabric analysis, and forensic science have debated. On both sides. Mysteries arise and are stoked: disagreements on the types of cloth weaves… the explanation for pollens on the Shroud from the area around Jerusalem (that is, not in a European forger’s studio)… measurements of the anatomy of the man of the Shroud… explanations for the absence of paints and the presence of blood serum. And so forth.

Back in the 1970s, when many discoveries were made and hotly debated, I became very interested in the Shroud, and researched all I could. I acquired rare publications from the 1890s, when the world became curious; I purchased documentary materials and even delivered lectures with a slide show. “The Mysteries of the Shroud.”

The church’s handlers allowed for a small portion of the Shroud to be cut, and undergo Carbon-14 dating analysis… whose conclusion (without explaining the manner of the image’s transfer and other mysteries) was that the Shroud was about a thousand years old, not 2000 years. Yet mysteries were compelling.

For instance, new technology has enabled the formation of 3-D models based on scans of the image on the Shroud. I was present at its display – a perfectly formed body of a man, every aspect in perfect proportions. Imagery even identified details on the coins placed on the body’s eyes… but that are disputed by others. Pollen, tiny seeds, the fabric composition, so much more, was explained… or explained away.

Meanwhile, Carbon-Dating has been found often to be unreliable, and easily contaminated. Some mysteries might have been answered this week, from a new technology that has dated the Shroud as from the time, and place, of Jesus’s life. Specifically, almost an exact match with fabrics from the siege of Masada, 74-55 B.C., in Israel.

“Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering,” or WAXS, measures the natural aging of flax cellulose. A scientist from Bari, Italy, described its superiority to carbon-14 spectrology: “Molds and bacteria, colonizing textile fibers, and dirt or carbon-containing minerals, such as limestone, adhering to them, in the empty spaces between the fibers that at a microscopic level represent about 50 per cent of the volume, can be so difficult to completely eliminate in the sample cleaning phase, which can distort the dating.”

As I said above, we have old mysteries, new debates; and old debates, new mysteries.

I invite you to think about the mysteries as much as about the Shroud, compelling as that is. Whether old or half-old, authentic or forgery, plausible or impossible… it is a matter of faith. And what is that “matter” of faith? – only something that can excite our curiosity and engage our interest.

At best – and I write as someone who is quite persuaded that this actually held the body of Jesus Christ – the Shroud is a relic. An object. As a relic, let it not persuade you (as relics have, sadly, throughout history, persuaded people) that it is holy; that it can save your soul; that it can heal you; that you should venerate or pray to it.

I have been to many sites in Europe where relics are housed and displayed: fingers of saints; locks of hair; skulls of martyrs. A favorite church near my favorite hotel in Rome, the Basilica of St-Paul-Outside-the-Wall, as it is known, has a wall of boxes and shelves with many of these “holy objects.” If all the “pieces of the True Cross” in European churches were put together, it would look like a redwood forest…

If I am dismissive, why have I pursued and maintain an interest in the Shroud? Very simply, because it is a graphic display, miraculously detailed, of what our Savior endured for us. It illustrates how He was tortured. It reveals everything He experienced. It documents, life-sized, every detail of humiliation, rejection, suffering. Eyes closed, somehow at peace – released – it visually explains what He allowed Himself to go through…

… to suffer and die as a substitute for the punishments we deserve as sinners. I cry when I think about what Jesus did for us; I cry when I look into the face of the Man of the Shroud. I rejoice that it exists – to remind me of the Cross and what He did for us.

I believe the Shroud survived to be that Holy Reminder for us. It explains what the Bible’s words tell. A Forgery? If so, why, then, didn’t forgers manufacture dozens of fake shrouds, instead of only one? Skeptics says that the image on the Shroud must have been “borrowed” from the way Byzantine artists depicted Christ – meanwhile never considering that, on the contrary, those countless painters depicted Jesus according to what they saw on the Shroud. Mysteries, yeah.

The real mystery? To me, it is that people can keep themselves from being moved by the story of His death on the Cross. And it is a mystery that people venerate relics instead of the Truth behind them.

In these days between the observances of the Resurrection and Jesus’s Ascension to Heaven, contemplate what is not a mystery – that the Creator of the Universe loved you so much that He sent His Son to live among humankind to suffer like this, and miraculously rise to life again. And all of which we can understand more powerfully through the Shroud. It is, literally, the Message of the Cross.

+ + +

Click: Rise Again

4-25-22

It is commonly asserted that religion is on the decline in the United States, in the West, and indeed around the world. The polls affirm this; Christians decry the figures; and the growing numbers of secularists in established centers of power and influence celebrate.

The trend is noted about Christianity, but is widely applied to other faiths as well. Islam’s imperialism often is as much military as militant, and of repressive, societal goals. Eastern religions often have faded into traditionalism, and the billions of people who live under Communism endure the illegality of religious practice.

Yet I maintain that the 21st century is one of the most religious eras in the history of humankind.

It is not a word game to invite you to understand the distinctions. Words and definitions are important in an essay, and vital to proceed in our daily lives. Approximately 2.5-billion people in the world are Christians. Roughly one in three souls in the earth’s population profess a belief in Christ. Islam is second in total numbers.

Many people assume that Islam is “on the march” in places like Africa, and Christianity is in retreat. But in fact Christianity is gaining adherents at a faster rate throughout the continent, and it is no coincidence that Mohammedans have turned many areas into bloody battlegrounds. Frequent attacks on Christian schools, Black girls kidnapped and raped, is part of the campaign to intimidate and stifle the spread of Christianity.

There would not be such savagery – or similar attacks in India, Southeast Asia, and China – if Christians were docile, if the faith was in retreat by itself.

… like it is in America and Europe.

Numbers of professing believers in Christ have declined annually for years. Many mainline denominations, churches, and colleges increasing deny the Divinity of Christ. The inerrancy of the Bible is widely renounced. In the view of government, courts, and schools, Biblical standards are rejected – a steady secularist evolution from the beliefs and practices of the Founders.

And so forth. Consistently, people who argue against these points do not defend our spiritual foundations and heritage – they largely and happily welcome the changes; but rather maintain that the trends should cause joy throughout the land.

They are, of course, doomed to repeat the lessons of history, as per Prof. Santayana’s dictum about those who do not learn. It is arrogant nonsense, indeed suicidal foolishness, to think that we have become the first society to successfully experiment with licentiousness, toleration of greed and dishonesty, sexual laxity, corruption of youth, imperialism, and rejection of spiritual values.

Why, then, do I claim that we live in a high-water period of religion?

The distinction I invited early concerns the difference between religion and Christianity.“Religions” are systems of human creation – systems, rules, customs, patterns, laws, inclusions and exclusions. I believe that religion possibly has sent more people to hell than any other external forces.

The difference with Christianity is that (despite the lazy terminology we all employ) it is not a religion. It sounds like a bumper strip, but Christianity is not a religion – it is a relationship. Christ had few “rules”; in fact He was quite clear that the way to find salvation, acceptance by God Almighty, was to believe that Jesus is His Son; that He paid the price, the punishment we deserve before a Holy God; and that He rose from the dead. Believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. That’s it.

Rules, robes, memberships, committees, sacrifices, tithing, memorization, candles, doctrines, all count for nothing in terms of being accepted by God – being a follower of Christ. Oh, we will be motivated to do and share many of these things… but in their proper order! “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

So – again – why do I call this era the most religious of times?

Because of what religion is. As true Christianity declines in America and Europe, religion – remember my definition: belief in human-created rules and regulations – has risen. In this sense, America and Europe live in a post-Christian Age.

But a religion of Secularism has supplanted Christianity. We have secular popes. We have worldly commands and “Thou Shalt Nots” aplenty. There is a common “salvation” according to secular views. Some people anointed – the new “saints” and others are demonized.

The new gospels are agreed upon and advances by Hollywood, Big Media, the Educational-Industrial Complex. Political Correctness provides the new Ten – or more – Commandments. Surely, more and more, people (those with traditional values and Christian standards) are excommunicated: from jobs, schools, neighborhood associations.

It is surprising, really, how the new Secular Religion is counterfeiting many aspects of Christendom. Greta Thunberg is cast as a contemporary Joan of Arc. Activists who discern sudden rights to indoctrinate children act like they have divine revelations; those who resist are cast as heretics. Books are burned by the Politically Correct – an up-to-date Inquisition. Those who impose mandates, or assert that men can declare themselves female, and who legalize abortions and euthanasia… are frankly, declaring themselves gods.

As the Bible prophesied, we live in a time when humankind practices a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof. New England, for instance, is still dotted with beautiful old churches, but many have become literal whited sepulchres – community centers of feel-good and do-good. Maybe people do feel good and do good… but how many throughout America and Europe still preach the Gospel? Accountability for sin? Personal encounters with the Risen Savior?

I am not worried about Jesus – I am not being flippant – but I am worried about His People, His church, the precious heritage we squander. I have peeked ahead to the end of the Book, and… God wins. But that does not at all mean that America wins. Or survives. At the current pace, we don’t deserve to.

We are doomed unless revival comes to the land. I have heard many Christians pray for it, but it is not in God’s nature to bless a wayward generation, the willfully sinfully, so to speak.

Rather it is our task to bring revival, “going forth into all the world,” which in these times means our very neighborhoods. Then we plead for His blessing on the revival we spark. It is useless and false otherwise, much like the charade of godliness this nation has adopted.

Who shall prevail? Is it too late? Is the coming generation too uninformed and misinformed? Is it drugged in bodies and minds? Are the powerful too powerful? Do we have the will to fight – do we know Scripture; do we seek the Lord – in order to defend and counter?

For Christ’s sake, it is all too important.

+ + +

A musical allegory of the grief we face. From the 1600s, but regard it as a dirge for Western Civilization, if we do not redeem ourselves.

Click: Dido’s Lament

4-18-22

We have just passed through the darkest days of humankind’s history.

I don’t mean the headlines and videos of the war in Ukraine, or the travails and statistics of our contemporary challenges. I don’t mean, in sweeping reference, to the bloody horrors of the last century.

As we recognize events and commemorate moments of history, whether we learn from the past or pretend things did not happen; whether we honor people or invent heroes of distant days; whether we celebrate fictional events or ignore noble events – I think the most horrible… the coldest… the loneliest… the most confusing… the most frightening days of humankind were the days between the death of Jesus and His rise from the grave.

He died.

The life was gone from Him. The Roman guards pierced his side to make sure, and blood flowed from His heart. He was taken from the cross, and His dead body was cleansed, prepared for burial, covered in a shroud and placed in a donated rich man’s tomb, secured with a heavy stone. His mother and others tended to His burial. Officials placed 24-hour guards at the tomb to make sure that zealots, or His enemies, did not steal the Body.

At the moment that Jesus breathed His last breath, there arose stormy skies and winds. The earth shook. A giant veil in the Temple spontaneously ripped, ceiling to floor. Reports of citizens and contemporary historians, not only Scripture, told of these things.

Turbulent nature was reflected in the minds and hearts of His followers. Distraught that their precious Friend was tortured and killed – taken from them – was compounded by confusion. And terror.

Would they be next?

What of their “movement”?

Not remembering the prophecies of Scripture, or Jesus’s predictions – or His comforting promises – they wondered whether the past three years were a bad dream. Or a ruse, a plot, or a fraud.

They scattered in fear.

What to do? Where to go? Hide? Pretend the Man from Nazareth was a mere teacher, a persuader only, unreliable about all the wisdom He shared?

How to explain all the miracles… the healings, the supernatural wisdom, the changed lives – their changed lives???

+ + +

Those few days – after Jesus suddenly had been ripped from their lives and hopes and dreams – must have been the emptiest, coldest hours anyone could experience. Women weeping, men crying for blood, authorities threatening, and… His friends huddled, hiding, shivering in fear.

One disciple said that He had believed Jesus was going to start a revolt against the government. Another said He was sure that Jesus was going to strike the religious leaders and the Roman authorities dead. Another must have doubted that Jesus was the Messiah after all, as they had come to believe.

Surely some – certainly His mother Mary, at least – must have remembered Scriptures, like the symbolism of Jonah in the great fish for three days; or what Jesus said, confusing at the time, about the Temple: if destroyed, it would be restored in three days.

Then the women went to the tomb.

The women intended to honor the dead Jesus, leave perfumes and oils if they could.

The women found the guards gone. The women found the tomb empty. The women saw the burial cloths that had covered the Body… but there was no Body there.

The women returned to the cowering Disciples, sharing what they had seen. All ran, entered the tomb, and saw what the women had reported.

They returned to where they had been hiding, and began to discuss, and plan, and remember things Jesus had foretold, and, and… what? Was Jesus in fact alive? Where was He? Is there hope? Was this not a catastrophe, as they had feared? Was this not — God forgive them for their suspicions — all a strange game? Or was God doing something supernatural, again, in their midst?

Mary Magdalene, however, returned to the tomb. While weeping, a man asked why, and she wondered if “they had stolen” the Savior’s body. She assumed the questioner was a gardener… but she turned and recognized the transformed, resurrected, living Jesus.

+ + +

She and the women became the church’s first evangelists. The good news was shared with the Disciples, and then the groups of followers, then the city of Jerusalem and countryside of Galilee, then the world.

Supernatural? For the next 40 days, Jesus appeared spontaneously to individuals and crowds. Walking through walls, performing more miracles, dispensing more wisdom. And now He gave His followers “marching orders,” different than advice about merely how to act. He issued “The Great Commission” – that believers in Him should “go into all the world sharing the Gospel [literally, the good news] and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Not that Jesus’s ministry was ever a game, but henceforth being a follower of Christ became a serious life-commitment.

He challenged His followers: Do you love Me?

He commanded His followers: Feed My sheep.

He promised His followers: Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

+ + +

Were they ready?

Are we ready today?

Are you ready?

The Life of Jesus is not a mere story. The ministry of Jesus was more than performances to impress crowds. The torture and death of Jesus is more than a lesson. The Resurrection of Jesus was more than proof that He overcomes death. The Ascension of Jesus will be confirmation that He was Divine. That He is one with the Father.

The world might still ignore Him, reject Him, deny Him, explain Him away, persecute Him (and us), in fact hate Him. And us.

The world can be savage against us – because of the Jesus who lives in us – or it can dismiss us; trivialize the Savior. It can call Christianity a game.

Let them do so. We can turn around and call the “game” Jesus played as something He virtually said that Easter morning:

“Here I come… ready or not!”

+ + +

Click: He’s Alive

4-11-22

By the reliable accounts, both historical and Biblical, there were few people gathered on the Jerusalem hill called Golgotha (“the Place of the Skull”) around Passover when three condemned men were put to death. Roman centurions, mostly; and scattered relatives of the criminals. Even friends generally were afraid to be present, as the condemned were outcasts sentenced to die by the most heinous manner the Romans devised – bodies nailed and hanging on wooden crosses – and guards likely were looking for associates of the criminals.

This day we now call Good Friday. Accounts differ about the name’s origin: an evolution of “God’s Friday,” or Good because it was, in fact, good that Jesus died for our sins.

As “fully man and fully God,” He could have halted the execution. He could have caused Pontius Pilate and the Jewish Elders to drop dead instead of their engineering His arrest and trial and torture. He could have summoned ten thousand angels to halt the crucifixion, and swept Him from the cross.

But instead Jesus submitted. It was, after all, the main reason for the Incarnation – why God became man and dwelt among us; why He fulfilled prophecies in uncountable ways; why He proved His divinity by wisdom, by miracles, by healings. Why He had to die.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, Jesus did not avoid, but figuratively climbed up that cross.

I have noted that experts consider crucifixion to be one of the most torture-laden forms of execution. Beyond the pain of spikes driven through the limbs, and hundreds of splinters slicing the body that hanged on the cross, the crucified victim actually died of suffocation, as the weight of their sagging bodies, and pericardial fluids, choked the heart and lungs.

Under Roman justice, the condemned usually were beaten or crucified, not both. Jesus was bound, whipped, tortured, spat upon, beaten about the face and kicked; and had a crown of thorns thrust on His head. He was flogged with the Roman whips that had sharpened bones or filed metal tips on the thongs, so with each of many scourges, the skin was shredded. Jesus was made to carry His heavy cross (the patibulum to which His wrists would be nailed) through Jerusalem’s streets.

When on the cross He suffered yet more. When He said He thirsted, a sponge with vinegar was thrust in His face. A mocking title was affixed over His head. He was goaded to save Himself, since He claimed to be the Son of God. I have written that the worst part of His suffering that Good Friday might have been the fact that His disciples, who had lived with Him for three years and seen the evidence of His divinity… deserted Him; hiding, not even around the foot of the cross.

Among the few there was His mother, Mary. “Behold your son,” He was able to say to her. Through tears, their eyes met.

If you and I could have been there, we would have seen how few people were present. Some artists, and recent movies like The Passion Of the Christ, actually have presented an accurate depiction of the ugly hill, the forsaken site, the three crosses (other condemned criminals on either side), the centurions, and scattered onlookers.

In a real sense, however, you and I were there. We, and all of humankind, were there during Holy Week, in fact. We would probably have welcomed Jesus on what we now call Palm Sunday; and we probably would have been part of the crowd several days later screaming for His crucifixion. Do you think you would have been any different than the average people in the city, driven to frenzy by lies, hate, and the leaders’ persuasion? The effects of “Cancel Culture” are not new.

Also, we probably would have denied, betrayed, and deserted Jesus just as the Disciples did. I received mail after I recently wrote that. “Not me!” some wrote… but even Peter, who had spent a thousand days at Jesus’s side, yet swore three times to officials that he didn’t know this “Jesus.”

No, you and I virtually were there, because when we sin, we offend God and justly deserve punishment. A perfect God cannot welcome us to His Heaven except that we are sinless… and that is what we become in His eyes when we accept Jesus’s substitution. A “Good” and loving plan of salvation for us… all the more exquisite when we realize the agony God designed by having His Son take upon Himself all the sins of the world. But in the meantime every sin is a nail through Jesus’s hand.

It is no stretch to picture ourselves as present during Holy Week; gathered around the foot of the cross. We were there. We can imagine, quite easily, that this miracle-man, the Son of God, looked down from the cross, and through the ages, at each one of us.

He meets our eyes. He knows us.

And we look up. We meet His eyes. Do we know Him? There are times in our lives we have avoided His gaze; we too have denied Him, even betrayed Him. He has knocked on the doors of our lives, and we have not always answered or let Him in.

But He offers forgiveness. All He has ever asked is that we believe He is God’s son and – as we see – is the sacrifice for our sins. And that He will be raised from death. His Blood, which we see in this imagining, is the payment for our guilt. This Calvary scene is, rather than awful, one of love – joy unspeakable and full of glory.

You have heard this: We ask Jesus how much He loves us; He says, “This much!” and spreads His arms wide; and then they nail those arms to the cross, and He dies.

An old Negro Spiritual recreates the scene, and the urgent message to our souls:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?

Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

+ + +

Click: Were You There When They Crucified My Lord

4-4-22

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I mean I have had several and varied careers – I was a writer of Walt Disney comics. Numerous treatments and scripts for Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the rest of the gang.

When I was hired, I was given a “story bible” – note the small-b – which instructed artists and writers how to handle the characters. My essential requirement was to “write like Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson.” These were the men most responsible for the Donald and Mickey, respectively, we knew from comic books and strips. These men were heroes; as a fan and scholar I already knew them personally; and of course it was a dream assignment. (Carl had even created the Uncle Scrooge character.)

I have copped a few awards and plaques through the years, and they are on my office wall, but they are arranged around my framed membership certificate from the Mickey Mouse Club, 1955. Dearer to me. “Ricky Marshall,” printed in red, around which those trivialities orbit.

I was, in childhood years and in grownup-childhood years, Mickey’s pal. Uncle Walt’s pal, really; of course I went to the theme parks and collected toys and went to the Disney movies. To kids in America for almost a century now, Mickey has been part of our DNA, in our blood.

Suddenly we are diagnosed with a blood infection, however.

The dissolution of the Magic Kingdom’s magic, the betrayal of Uncle Walt’s vision and ethos, have not been precipitous, but recently have accelerated with a vengeance. At the parks and in cartoons and movies, the words “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” and “Boys” and Girls” literally will be proscribed. A Princess is an endangered species because girls who might not dream of being princesses must not be offended nor have such awful visions planted in their hearts.

Mickey and Tinkerbell have been dethroned as Disney spokespeople; “Goofy” would be more appropriate; I hereby nominate him. Or Cruella.

Today, I would refuse to work for the transformed Disney, this counterfeit colossus. I knew a delightful lady, Virginia Davis, who as a little girl was a neighbor of the unknown Walter Disney in Kansas City. When the ambitious cartoonist dreamed up a concept of a live-action girl in an animated world, which became the silent cartoon series Alice in Cartoonland, Ginni played the role. And when the series became a success, Disney moved to Hollywood to produce more, and the Davis family followed. Decades later, when I invited her, out of retirement in Boise, Idaho, to comics conventions here and in Europe, she recalled uncountable stories of Walt… who, several years after Alice, created Mickey Mouse!

Ginni Davis remained friends with Walt’s widow Lillian. Even 25 years ago, I was told, Lillian was very unhappy with what the Disney “brand” had become; and she thought Walt would not have recognized, or liked, it either. And that was before the studio’s PC-pledges, this week, to sanitize its vocabulary and to make a corporate commitment (as per the Disney website) to design half of the studio’s characters to “come from underrepresented groups.”

Disney’s President of General Entertainment Content Karey Burke confirmed the policy. Despite her title, she claimed in a Zoom call to employees that she was shocked to realize that there were only a “handful” of “queer” lead characters in Disney productions. Odd, since she proudly said that she has two “queer” children herself. Technically, one “gay” and one “pansexual,” a category whose meaning eludes me (as do a couple of the letters in “LGBTQIA+”).

The spark that ignited this latest bit of lunacy was the Florida legislature’s law to prohibit the discussion of topics like transgenderism – including counseling and invitations to role-play – to students from kindergarten to second grade. The governor signed the bill; the growing “woke” elements of the nation’s “virtuous” elites erupted in protest; and Walt Disney World in Orlando – the sprawling megalopolis that enjoys tax and regulatory privileges from the state – went public with its dissent, and initiated political threats.

“Underrepresented,” for those of you who have not been following the map, navigating this new Fantasyland, does not mean creating characters with disabilities, or are Amish or Orthodox or Pentecostal, or albinos, or kids with developmental challenges, or birth defects, or cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome. No conjoined twins, sightless, nor (literal) dwarfs. No, the vast Disney “universe” will be populated 50 per cent by characters representing the minuscule portion of the population with rare sexual attributes like gender dysphagia. Pandering, that is, to a different audience in a particular demographic pool.

Disney’s declaration of war on traditional culture and America’s spiritual and social heritage is a pop-culture version of Russia’s brutal visit to Ukraine. American childhood is the innocent, unsuspecting landscape. This not only represents a serious matter; it is a serious matter.

Speaking of wars, they can be lost, or won. Any of us can go broke or lose a job, but we get a new job, we recover. Couples split up, and get back together… or don’t, but we find new loves eventually. Friends move away; we make new friends. Someone might betray us, and it hurts; but time heals the wound, or we forgive; usually we forget. In awful situations, we get sick, and recover, or cope. Wounded soldiers manage and, increasingly, are supported by those who love and appreciate them. Pets die; we get new pets. Life is a wheel.

But there is one thing that cannot be restored, or repaired, and certainly not redeemed when violated or lost. That is the innocence of a child.

“Kids grow up too fast,” we often hear, and that seems true, but I address more than that. As life has become too loud, too rude, too new, too strange, and, yes, too fast for adults… it surely has for children. Do technology and new media rob children of imagination… or maybe encourage imagination? I suspect it will take generations for that judgment.

But I am not inviting us to think about imagination. I am talking about innocence.

Aspects of sex and sexuality ought to be the domain of parents within the family setting. Similarly, matters of morality. Values. Standards. But teachers, teachers’ unions, liberal politicians and judges, the “entertainment” industry, and the talking animals and prancing fairies at Disney theme parks – they mostly agree that parents are the last people who should inculcate knowledge and wisdom to their children.

Maybe, next, they will propose that parents can be the responsible parties for reading, writing, and arithmetic, since those disciplines are no longer the priorities of schools.

Train children in the way they should grow, and when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).

+ + +

Click: Slumber My Darling

3-28-22

In these busy days, crowded about as we are with wars and rumors of wars, turmoil seemingly on all sides – the economy; trans-national health crises (or not); political and social recriminations; crime; challenges to traditional values that threaten to turn our world upside-down – a news item this week barely peeped amid the din. What it represents is in inverse proportion to its significance.

The poll revealed that for the first time, a minority of the population of the Netherlands claims adherence to a religious faith; membership in a church; belief in God. The majority claims to be atheist or agnostic.

To my suspicious point of view, this perhaps is the “first time” in the history of polling, but not in the history of our contemporary Western Civilization (what used to be called Christendom). We long have been living in a post-Christian society. I do not need to begin rants, no matter how valid, about “God being taken from our schools” or the Establishment’s war on Christian values, or the growing categorization of the Bible as “hate speech.”

I think what has been polled in Holland – the site of such fervent theological studies and activities in generations past, where English Pilgrims lived before sailing to the New World – is true throughout America and Europe these days.

The “Christian West” no longer holds Biblical truths as a priori components of society, government, law, justice, and relationships. This devolution seems to have happened during our lifetimes, but secularism, virtually a religion in itself, is a symptom, not the cause, of liberal theology, of pluralism, of modernity. The Enlightenment was not the first crack in our spiritual foundation, but actually the last gasp of the Theocentric view of life. Despite what many schools teach, the great Enlightenment thinkers were Christians who sought to reconcile, not separate (or “liberate”), the role of God in the world.

God’s place in the world has never changed, and cannot change. The role He plays can change, because it is what humankind practices and grants Him. When Nietzsche said that God Is Dead, he meant in the sense that society failed to acknowledge Him any more.

I frequently remind myself that Martin Luther, back when the Renaissance was evolving into Modernism, maintained that “Reason is the enemy of Faith.”

That is hard to accept. But it is impossible to refute. The intellectual anarchy from which we suffer is the result of 500 years of futility: the culture’s vain attempt, whether benign or hostile, to reconcile Reason and Faith. “Yes, but…” many people will be quick to say. But we must recognize that “progress,” as we routinely identify it, is difficult to define,. And it is a false god in any case.

Some truths need not be improved upon, because that reveals that… they are not truth at all. “Truth” – Biblical truth, Absolute Truth – is not conditional, relational, nor of any other qualification. The deadly temptation of humankind, and a sin of organized societies, is to think that we can without peril discard Biblical standards. Frankly, this started in the Garden: our problem is the sin of pride – our belief that we know better than God.

I write these words during the Lenten season. And part of my Lenten devotion brings these thoughts to my heart, more than usual.

Lent has become, to many Christians who even think about it, a vaguely religious version of New Year resolutions. At best, to some people, a way to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice. In fact that is not why Lent entered the Church calendar. I confess that this will seem glib, but it suggests that Jesus Himself, our model, might have avoided the cross by giving up chocolate for 40 days.

No, if Lent has real meaning and efficacy, it was commended to followers of Christ as a discipline in order to repent of sin. “Successful” denials of habits or entertainment can be, rather, celebrations of self. Even fasting can be self-centered, when we should seek to know God more than please God. Lent was meant to be a time to find Him anew, not hope that He will notice our obedience.

I am not disparaging motivations, but I do want us to focus properly. My own experiences includes a week once spent at a monastery. All comforts (like phones) were banished; silence was mandated; and I lived among monks. On the grounds were Stations of the Cross, and – as I hoped would be the case – I could do nothing day and night but pray, read, and meditate.

At the end of a week that was planned to draw me closer to God, I felt like I knew less about Him. However, I felt closer to Him than I ever had. A mystery, really — but with God many mysteries are to be cherished. The difference, perhaps – an important distinction – was that He seemed to draw closer to me, rather than vice versa. That is how I felt; the solitude and study allowed that.

Lent ought to be (and, God help us, not only confined to the Lenten season!) something like that experience. I am trying this year to meditate, contemplate, read the Word, and pray… and I realize more than ever how contemporary life robs us of quiet time and the ability to consecrate moments. “Yes, but…”

The Lord will manage, as He always has, with wars and rumors of wars, and all the challenges in the headlines. As if we can change, in major ways, the course of human events.

Christ came to earth – and Easter, which lies before us – not so we can save the planet, but so God can save us.

+ + +

These essays offer to “put songs in our hearts” to start the weeks. But not all songs are pretty tunes, much as such anointed music can bless us. During Lent, in the spirit not of duty but of humility, repentance, contemplation, spiritual sorrow, intimacy with God, re-dedication, and obedience, there are other forms of Christian music.

If there be a “song for our hearts” during Lent, we might adopt “Lachrimae,” a lute song pavane written by John Dowland around 1600. Its melancholy tune was set to words of a forlorn theme titled Flow, My Tears.

Click: Lachrimae: Flow, My Tears

3-21-22

We can think about Easter all year, and we should. But the Lenten season invites us, makes us ready. The Truth of Jesus’s incarnation… His teachings… His miracles and healings… His willingness – or determination – to be sacrificed for the sin-penalties we deserve… His arrest, imprisonment, and torture… His betrayal… His suffering and crucifixion… His death… His Resurrection… His Ascension: there are things that should be true to us on any and every day of the year.

I mean, Easter is not just for Easter; Christmas is not just for Christmas. The importance and relevance of every moment of Jesus’s life, and the Gospel, should burn to us and through us, every moment of our own lives.

So if we contemplate the details of Holy Week and Easter during Lent, it is a good thing. We can do the same thing around, say, May Day or Hallowe’en too; but here we are. I often find myself imagining what it would have been like to be one of the Disciples. The streaming series The Chosen – the fellowship of Jesus and His followers – is doing a good job of that.

It has always amused me when skeptics and agnostics say that they would find it easier to believe in Christ if only they could see Him; have some tangible proof that He lived and was the Son of God. Why am I amused? Because the Disciples themselves – never mind the multitudes who were taught, fed, and healed – lived every day with Christ. They saw Him walk on water, feed multitudes, heal the sick, raise people from the dead; more things than books could hold. For three and a half years! Day after day, week after week!

… and yet when Jesus was in jeopardy – as He even foretold, just days before – these Disciples fled. They scattered like dry leaves on a windy street. And we think that we would act differently?

I have further guessed that compared to the beatings, torture, whipping, thorns pressed down on His head and nails hammered through his wrists and feet… that the worst suffering felt by our Savior was the betrayal of His friends, their abandonment of Him.

We fool ourselves – and dare to fool God – if we believe that we would have been any different than the Disciples in those days before the Crucifixion.

“Different” is the operative word. Let us understand that Jesus chose the Disciples because they were not different. They had different talents and backgrounds, yes; but they were ordinary people – no celebrities, no dignitaries – and they were no different than you and me. So we can identify. We can learn from their experiences, admirable and cowardly and… human.

A great lesson, drawn from the actions of the Disciples that week, is presented by the different choices of two of them, Judas and Peter.

Judas, from the little we know, was sort of the treasurer of the little group, at least handling affairs as Matthew also did. As is well known, Judas betrayed Jesus by accepting a bribe from Roman authorities to reveal Christ’s whereabouts, and further to identify Him by embracing Him, on cue, before centurions. Jesus was then arrested and thus began His “trial” and execution.

He betrayed Jesus.

Soon remorseful, he scattered those 30 gold pieces and hanged himself.

Peter, during those same hours of turbulence, was asked by authorities if he were associated with the Man who called Himself the Christ. Three times Peter denied even knowing this Jesus. When he heard a rooster, he was thunderstruck and remembered that Jesus recently had predicted, “Before the cock crows three times, you will deny Me.”

He denied Jesus. He knew Him… but denied knowing Him. Was it much different than betrayal? I don’t think so.

Peter, to me the most impulsive, sometimes random, and always most human of the Disciples, was remorseful too. But he did not hang himself. It is not recorded that he was at the cross – Jesus’s mother, Mary, remained faithful – but we know that he huddled in fear after Jesus died, with the remaining Disciples. He endured, avoiding the self-abnegation of Judas and the skepticism of Thomas… and he met the Resurrected Christ.

From the accounts, he was the “same” Peter while Jesus showed Himself and ministered and preached and healed for those 40 days after the Resurrection, and before Ascending to Heaven. And he seems to have been the same Peter, huddling in confusion in the Upper Room where Jesus had told them to wait.

Wait for what?

The Holy Spirit is recorded to have come upon them, and others, “as a mighty rushing wind.” After that, people were transformed. They spoke in “strange tongues,” the languages of angels and of foreigners. They were imbued with knowledge and power… and wisdom.

After that experience Peter became a mature leader. He might have remained impulsive, but now it was to establish the Church and plant communities of believers. On that day, the Feast of Pentecost, the Church was born, and lives yet today.

Judas had betrayed more than Jesus; he betrayed the hope of Salvation and Forgiveness that easily could have been his. Peter denied knowing Jesus, but he exercised that glimmer of hope that redemption was drawing nigh.

Are you a Judas, or a Peter? I don’t mean betraying or denying Jesus… because when we sin, as we all do, we betray Him and deny Him.

It is our choice, however, how to react; to be remorseful and turn inward like Judas, or to wait upon Jesus and His promises, His Resurrected power, to come to us. To embrace the hope of Christ’s forgiveness.

Easter is about that hope.

+ + +

Click: Whispering Hope

3-14-22

A friend woke up one morning this week more annoyed than usual with a nagging cough and heavy breathing. In quick succession: a visit to the doctor; diagnosis of a “massive blood clot” in her lung; and its dissolution that afternoon.

A new friend told me of a similar story, but in her case a persistent uncomfortable feeling. After diagnosis and almost immediate surgery to remove a “gangrenous gall bladder,” she was also told that a day’s delay might have meant death.

Another friend sustained a double-whammy when she suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with cancer of the spine.

This is not a pity-party, because into all lives rain will fall – not “might,” but “will.” And the Bible reminds us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Life’s quality is regulated by how we respond to such things.

How do we respond?

There is not one way, no 12-step emotional program nor spiritual one-size-fits-all guide. The Heavenly Healer prescribes prayer, and trust, and faith, however. I have come to accept the ironic strength of an essential humility when we boldly approach God. He is sovereign; and I cannot think of sending my own list of demands to Him when I have seen Him work in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

But I have seen miracles in answer to prayer – doctors saying they simply cannot explain a healing or the disappearance of a cancer. And then there are results that we could never anticipate but are blessings nonetheless. My friend learned that we can live, albeit with annoying adjustments, without a gall bladder… but in her case a new diet of healthy, fresh, and wholesome foods has been a remarkable blessing overall.

Another prescription is an attitude adjustment, and I learned about that in a roundabout way.

When my late wife was listed for transplants for her failing heart and kidney, she began a Bible fellowship for patients like her, waiting (and waiting and waiting) at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Well, not every patient was like her, because in her life Nancy also endured diabetes, strokes, cancer, and celiac disease, among other ailments. The fellowship became a family ministry, with weekly services.

It emerged that through the years (because we continued the ministry after her transplants) of the many hymns and songs, one found special favor of the patients. The people were, of course, from all backgrounds, but the Gospel song “Leave It There” was frequently requested, and often evoked tears.

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.

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.

A sermon in song, surely. After a while I discovered an amazing “coincidence” that none of us had known. That song, maybe a hundred years old, had been written only a few blocks from Temple University Hospital!

C A Tindley, the son of a slave, educated himself, moved north to Philadelphia, secured a job as janitor of a church… and eventually became its pastor. His large mixed-race flock of 10,000 enjoyed his powerful preaching and his moving hymns for years. (One of his hymns, “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” 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.

And there we were, in his back yard, so to speak, being blessed – and in some ways, to souls and spirits as well as bodies.

Now we can fast-forward to other saints among us with physical challenges. Many people know of the husband and wife singers Joey and Rory. The Feeks seemed to come from nowhere and find great success in country and Gospel music. Simple country folks who shunned Nashville’s neon lights, lived off the land on their farm, and won the hearts of a growing number of fans.

Those fans rejoiced when Joey announced she was pregnant, and we briefly grieved when it was discovered that the daughter she carried had Down’s Syndrome. Unlike 90 per cent (these days) of mothers learning this news, Joey determined to keep, and love, her daughter named Indie (for Indiana). Then, soon after giving birth… Joey was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Rory kept a video diary of her struggles, her faith, and ultimately her death.

One of Joey and Rory’s best friends and performance partners was the amazing singer Bradley Walker. His deep, expressive voice emanates from a thin, still body in a wheelchair: Bradley has muscular dystrophy. This week’s video is of him singing Brother Tindley’s song “Leave It There” at Joey Feek’s humble gravesite.

How does a man with his lifelong challenges sing to the Lord, at the grave of a woman whose life took such unexpected turns? How did my late wife, how do the friends I have told you about, praise God in the midst of troubles?

How does a beautiful little flower sprout and grow between cracks in heavy rocks? How do “fragile” flowers thrive in harsh places? How do colorful flowers sprout and bloom in dark and ugly places?

If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out.

Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

+ + +

Click: Bradley Walker – Leave It There

3-7-22

This aphorism has been attributed to, and claimed by, by many people. Likely first written by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus (550 BC), it strikes a universal chord. Yet for its wisdom, universally acknowledged, it seldom has guided those who could learn from its application, and routinely is shunned until the ashes of wars are sifted.

“Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise at the proper time,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said.

So, in the war raging on our TV and internet screens, and in the hearts and minds of the world, no less, the first and frequent casualties are truth once again. I am not referring to the most blatant examples – phony statistics, videos of carnage from a decade ago being presented as breaking news, the pledges of invaders being violated as the words are spoken.

These “casualties” are too predictable, and might be outright propaganda or the result of well-intentioned confusion. In the “fog of war,” since these factors are common, I suggest – unless we are victims ourselves, in the midst of bombs dropping – that we ought to step back. If the issues and images are compelling (and they are), and if we can somehow influence events (as we must attempt), it is better that we exercise objectivity.

How can we be objective when we see hospitals destroyed and grandmothers – and grandchildren – crying? Choosing objectivity and seeking truth do not obviate concern, passion, sympathy, and grief. There is enough hatred playing out on our screens without choosing to filter every development through hatred of our own; to determine winners, losers, victims, aggressors, the past and the future… before the news report is over; and from 5000 miles away.

My advice hardly will change things on the ground in Ukraine. But it might change things in our midst. Wars rage elsewhere; they do not need to rage in our hearts. If we cannot, by ourselves, immediately affect a war in Ukraine, we surely can, by ourselves indeed, affect wars that might rage in our own hearts. As a beginning, that would be nine-tenths of the proper time.

Perspective.

The brilliant Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko was removed from the title role in the upcoming Turandot production at the Metropolitan Opera; general manager Peter Gelb announced that it was unlikely that she would ever perform at the Met again. Her crime was failing to sign a statement repudiating her association with Vladimir Putin, despite her public announcement, “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now, to save all of us. We need peace right now.” Nevertheless she was fired from other engagements, or withdrew from many other opera companies around the world.

I noted this situation, and a friend wrote that Anna was “less than a human being.” She did not raise a bazooka; rather raises her beautiful voice, and millions of dollars for charities, yet American haters can claim a victory.

Remaining in her artistic field, I am reminded that violinist Isaac Stern vowed never to perform in Germany – former Nazi Germany, of course – yet Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich and Vienna; and violinist Itzhak Perlman has performed in Berlin. Are they naive, insensitive, stupid? (Surely they are not secret Nazis!) What is the expiration-date, or other mitigating aspects, on hatred?

Russia seems to be employing cluster-bombs and other instruments of mass destruction: worthy of war-crime prosecution. TV’s red areas on maps of Ukraine spread every hour, like blood on the carpet from a murdered corpse. The scenes we behold make me wonder if we might see incendiary bombs (those that cause widespread fire, sucking the air from peoples’ lungs over wide sections of a city), possibly killing upwards of a hundred thousand people.

… yet that happened, at least once before in history. Two months before World War II ended, the “art city” of Dresden, without defenses because it was a city of museums and no factories or barracks (in fact having become a city of hospital beds for refugees) was ordered fire-bombed by Winston Churchill. If England had lost the war, he would have been regarded as a war criminal, and even so within two decades some his pilots defied their orders never to discuss that atrocity.

Am I playing “Devil’s Advocate”?

Precisely the opposite. What is missing these days – and many of the days when wars rage – is people who will play “God’s Advocate.” Where are those voices? I don’t mean charitable groups like Samaritan’s Purse: God bless the dangerous and heroic and loving work of Christian organizations.

I refer to the consequential players, and, yes, each of us at a distance, if we can pray and act and influence the policymakers. Can we search for perspective first?

There is right and wrong; there is good and bad. There are monsters among us. Some of them might even call themselves Christians. There are reports (I don’t know, yet reports are numerous and long-standing) that Putin, in his public adherence to the Russian Orthodox Church, shares the vision of the Moscow Patriarch that all of “Mother Russia” be restored. No matter the cost?

I (knowing something of history) have a little hope, a little fantasy. In 1905 the forces of the Czar were suppressing protests all throughout Russia. In the port city of Odessa, Ukraine, sailors finally mutinied against their officers in bloody clashes. It was a spark that eventually led to the overthrow of the Czar. There are reports (can we believe the videos?) that anti-war demonstrations are taking place in a hundred Russian cities; that prominent citizens and celebrities have criticized the invasion; that many companies have refused to do conduct any more business with Russia; that Russians overseas have sacrificed some positions and privileges in protest…

Odessa redux? Can we hope? Can we pray? Can we act?

If we see our enemies not as madmen but, perhaps, horribly delusional and even evil human beings, we can find our way to confront this awful world better. We can pray, and seek God, with clarity. We need His wisdom.

God’s wisdom, after all, is reliable ten-tenths of the time.

+ + +

if you are using a portable device (phone or pad) then click:
this link

Click: “Mass in Time of War: Agnus Dei.”

2-28-22

Jesus left the temple and was going away, when His disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.
But He answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
As He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?”
And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray.
“For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.
“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
“All these are but the beginning of the birth pangs.
“Then they will cause you to suffer tribulation, even put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.
“Many will be offended and betray one another and hate one another.
“Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
“And as lawlessness increases, the love of many will grow cold.
“But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
“This Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations…
“And then the end will come.”

— Matthew 24: 1-14

+ + +

Click: The Day of Wrath

2-21-22

I realize the invitation of this blog is to “start your week with a spiritual song in your heart.” And I further realize that it carries the implication of Uplift; a bright message to commence a positive week.

When we are inspired to be a latter-day Jeremiah – that is, reflecting on troubling signs in contemporary life, or addressing the many crises our culture faces – a realistic message is also a useful, even necessary, way to start our days and weeks, even if “dark.” We should not continuously be “Debbie Downers,” but neither should we be spiritual Pollyannas, thinking everything is rosy, or will be cheery when things soon straighten themselves out.

Jeremiah, as I said, was a prophet whose message was dark and threatening to those who needed to hear it: the whole nation that had gone morally wayward. Noah too. Moses too. Jonah too. In fact… Jesus, too, in many of His sermons.

The sweep of humankind’s history has been marked by the rebellion of individuals, for instance “those to whom much had been given” and much was expected; these notable figures, too often, squandered their gifts and blessings. No less frequently in the world’s history and Biblical accounts we learn of entire peoples – tribes, societies, nations – who strayed.

“Strayed” from what? Generally from the things that had made them great, or successful, or productive – Forgetting their foundational principles. Betraying their inheritance. Losing sight of what was unique to them. Falling out of love with the ideals they once cherished.

Ancient Rome comes to mind. And so does… contemporary America.

This critique is not novel – at least I hope most of you feel the same angst. Recent events brought these thoughts to me. No, not crime nor the drug epidemic nor the runaway economy nor the health scares nor “wars and rumors of war,” despite these news items screaming at us every day.

Sometimes a larger circumstance can be more indicative of our moral crises and spiritual challenges than are passing headlines and statistics. This clarity was apparent when I watched the recent Super Bowl. I don’t mean the game itself – well, yes, I do. Not the brutish contest with strange new rules and blown calls and gladiator-like ferocity, but the “game” behind the game. We now have the nation’s favorite sport (we can still include baseball under this umbrella) where drugs and politics play important roles, in the news and in careers of the players. Fans have come to know as much about salaries and pensions as they do about on-the-field stats.

Salaries spiral ever upward, and… that’s America, right? “Get what you can while you can.” But players increasingly receive contracts worth significant portions of a billion dollars. OK, “if the owners didn’t make it, they couldn’t pay it.” So the owners simply charge more for tickets (multiple thousands of bucks for a seat at the Super Bowl… when the fans in the stands probably watch the action on Jumbotron screens anyway) and charge more for commercial time. ($6-million per minute?) Advertisers pay so much by charging more and more for their products. All of which means the fan gets socked from every angle. Um, for guys playing football and baseball.

We think of Ancient Rome with its “bread and circuses.”

But more troubling to me was the halftime “entertainment,” this year entirely given over to hip hop and rap, which is listened to by only a sliver of the population. An array of performers rolled out their hits, and paid vague homage to Los Angeles, common home to some of the noise and to this year’s Super Bowl. Kendrick Lamar performed “Alright,” famous for its anti-police message… and by the way, that misspelling was his intention; I realize that many performers and song titles and the genre itself is one big typographical error. The one white star, Eminem, took a knee in evident homage to Kaepernick; and the one major female, Mary K Blige, strutted around the stage in the costume of L.A.’s many street-walkers.

An observer, attempting to understand the lyrics, made a list of words and phrases during the halftime show. The unofficial tally: The “N” word, 16 times. The “F-Bomb,” 13 times. The “M-F” phrase, four times. The “B” word (in these days of the Me Too movement), 24 times. Likewise there were obscene gyrations including groping and grabbing of breasts and crotches.

America’s favorite sport. Broadcast in early evening… partly so kids could enjoy the sport. (“Grandma, what’s an igger?”) Overpaid illiterates parading filth, the crowd noise cheering lustily, praised by NBC announcers, paid for by Pepsi. (And you, ultimately.)

Our culture, if such wildly endorsed events are barometers (and they are), is in a Stage Four level of decadence. Among many comparisons I could offer, and really none are necessary as proof, we have arrived at a point where parents are not supposed to have a say in children’s school curricula; where Bible passages are being censored as “hate speech”; but a spectacle like the Super Bowl halftime show is force-fed to 100-million viewers as appropriate.

We have entered a Pentecost of Calamity, and extrication by traditional families and Christian patriots seems daunting. Without God’s help… and a true grassroots revival… and a severe rejection of this Spirit of the Age…

Well… have a nice week.

+ + +

I was reminded of the great Gram Parsons song. Written in the late ‘60s by the late enigmatic musical pioneer, Sin City is widely assumed to be not about Las Vegas; not New Orleans; but (appropriately this week) Los Angeles. Or… America and the West as a whole.

Click: Sin City

2-14-22

Many regular church-goers, pious people, folks who study their Bibles and do devotions, who might belong to prayer circles and church fellowships… a lot of us do not fully understand everything in the Bible.

This is not bad, necessarily. At least regarding theology – literally, the study of God – we can study but not know everything… otherwise we would be as God. Even the angels do not know all, see all, nor can be present everywhere. God is God.

But beyond our comprehension and even spiritual and intellectual curiosity, I think we all accept some sentiments and words and traditions without fully understanding them. We find solace in some things as a result. Sort of spiritual security blankets, or comfort foods of the soul.

I am among such folks. Imagery, allegories, symbols… in some things I let the mystery be, because I trust the meanings of passages and the ways of the Lord. If there are texts whose precise meanings elude me… or prophecies that are “seen through a glass darkly…” well, God has made His will known so often and in so many ways, that I surrender to those occasional things God wants to keep wrapped in His poetry.

Yet we should not always exercise sweet surrender. Surely the Lord wants us to understand as much as possible, especially since every word has been imparted, inspired – literally, “breathed” by the Holy Spirit – for our instruction and for reproof. So… we can always try a little harder. That bread cast upon the waters never comes back void.

I was thinking about such things recently when singing the old hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, which has some verses that we sing perhaps automatically without fully understanding them: and the same for Bible passages from which the lyrics are drawn, in Revelation chapter 4.

The hymn:

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. Cherubim and seraphim are falling down before Thee, Which wert and art and evermore shalt be!

Verses from Revelation 4:

Immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne… And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold….And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne…

The four and twenty elders fell down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.

For our attention here I have left out descriptions of beasts and wings and lightning and thunder and lamps, all wondrous – and mysterious – enough. We can study and profit from signs and symbols, and especially numerology and types, in the Bible; particularly in Revelation. And we can discern lessons from these passages, more-than-allusions and symbols as they are.

First, we must realize that, no matter how mysterious they seem, they are descriptions of the Heaven that is, and the Heaven that will be as we see it.

Second, the hymnologist’s use of “Holy” three times is citing the praises of God quoted throughout Scripture: Three always represents holiness. We know that numbers like seven and 40 are repeated in God’s story, all with consistent significance. We will join the angels in singing “Holy, holy, holy…”

Then, I believe the “glassy sea” is to tell us that, contrary to many examples of troubled waters and stormy seas throughout the Bible and in life, before the Throne of God the waters shall be not roiled. Untroubled, placid. A miraculous calm, in His presence. Like a mirror.

The Elders we might correctly assume are the prophets and apostles in Scripture; and perhaps saints and martyrs of the Church. Crowns? The Elders who wear them are worthy – in our eyes, and honored of God – for their service… but are we not told that the least among believers shall be the first? That (conversely, to be sure) that the smallest sin grieves God as much as what we might deem the grossest?

Do we understand that “Elders” earn crowns? Are those the (again) mysterious “treasures” we might store up in Heaven?

I believe the answer is what happens to those crowns at the moment this scene was revealed by Christ to St John. They were thrown down at the feet of God Almighty, the Elders declaring that He is worthy to receive Glory and Honor and Power. In other words, just like our own “robes of righteousness” in which we might cover ourselves, even the treasures and crowns of the most exalted saints are to be cast at the feet of God.

A picture of Heaven? Clearer, to me.

What else will Heaven be like? We have other imagery of shining stones and beauty and mansions and singing and… praising. We will join the angels in forever singing and praising His name. We will not think it boring, even for eternity; for He is worthy. Will we see loved ones? Will our bodies be made whole? Will there be “joy unspeakable and full of glory?”

Yes… but let us remember the “unspeakable” part! Beyond our current ability to understand.

For all the good intentions of believers here, when I hear speculation about how “old” we will be, or being reunited with pets… I find myself wishing that people would be as concerned with getting to Heaven as with what it will be like “over there.”

We can be sure of one thing as we look toward joining that throng of angels – the cherubim and seraphim – before the Throne. The joy we will have cannot be known by them, for they were never graced with life on earth, never able to experience the gifts of repentance and forgiveness, redemption and salvation. Those things are ours!

Holy! Holy! Holy!

+ + +

Click: Holy, Holy, Holy

2-7-22

A guest message by my friend Christine Eves, a talented writer and poet.

All of us exercise “human nature” when at one time or other (at least) we dread the trials of life. Many of our prayers are that God might spare us from facing trials, or when they come that He might deliver us from the trials. We are pained further when those we love experience difficult trials.

Yet the trials come.

One way to view the Bible is as a long story of God’s people facing trials… enduring, surrendering, or overcoming trials… and trusting God through the trials. This is life, after all; this is faith. Christine shares God’s wisdom in her poem:

There are so many things to thank God for,
But do we ever stop and say –
Lord, thank you for the trial
That you have brought my way?

Do we ever thank God for the rain –
Or the storms that life has brought?
What about the pain and heartache,
Or the battles we have fought?

If we never knew of pain,
Of heartache or of loss;
If we never went through trials,
Or felt the weight of our own cross;

If we never felt the rain
When we prayed for the sun,
Would we ever truly understand
All that the Lord has done?

He teaches us through trials,
He shows His strength when we are weak,
He catches us when we fall,
And gives us words when we can’t speak.

It’s when we lose –
That in God, we gain;
When we learn to find His Joy –
Even in our pain.

When we are at our very lowest,
And we have no strength left to fight –
When our world is at its darkest,
That’s when we truly see God’s light.

God allows all things for a reason,
And trials can be blessings in disguise.
We must endure pain to ever truly grow,
And go through blindness, to appreciate God’s eyes.

I thank God for all he’s done in my life –
For the sunshine and the rain;
Because I know His ways are best –
Even though sometimes they bring us pain.

When there is nothing I can do,
I know the Lord will see me through;
And when I’m in my darkest place,
I praise God for His love and grace.

+ + +

Click: Through It All

1-31-22

A guest message by my dear friend Leah Morgan.

When God did his best work, which admirers still paint and photograph to this day, it was summed up in these words – God said. God saw. God separated.

Over and over, for six days, He repeated these actions. He said, He saw, He separated. The separating was part of the process necessary for success and optimum function.

He separated light from darkness.
He separated the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.
He separated dry ground and land from waters and seas.
He separated day from night.
He separated birds in the sky from beasts in the sea.
He separated work from rest.

And He built within His creation the power of reproduction. Seeds that will produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came (Genesis 1:11). A chance for the cycle of life to continue.

And finally, God created the perfect counterpoint to man, and He crafted woman. More separation, as part of the perfect union. He separated Adam from his rib. He took something away to bring him something better. Then, God spoke to the couple about more separation. This union of turning two into one, God explains, is why a man separates from his parents (Genesis 2:24).

As if God said, “If a man is going to enjoy an ideal union with his wife, he needs to mimic My pattern of creation. Say; see; then separate. Say it. Speak up! Your words have power! Take the authority I’ve placed in your tongue. Then take a moment to sit back and look at what you’ve spoken to life. Enjoy it and appreciate it. Then… get out. Leave your parents. Your mom’s patterns, your dad’s habits, your family’s hang-ups. Separate. You will never live in a Garden that thrives if you’re not willing to separate from your parents. They no longer have dominion over you. If they do, then darkness and light, day and night, sky and sea have no boundaries. There’s a reason the sea needs to stay out of your back yard, and the night needs to get out of the afternoon sky. It’s the same reason your parents’ needs were relegated to their own homes with their own opinions.”

Seeds will produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came (Genesis 1:11). Sometimes, newly married seeds decide they don’t want to produce the fighting and temper tantrums and insecurities and manipulation of the plants and trees from which they came. They want a Garden built on trust and peace and kind words. They’d rather laugh and be silly than throw cruel insults around.

To newlyweds and longtime married couples: Garden it up! Say; see; and separate.

And then get naked. And stay naked. That’s Bible-talk for good marriage. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

God gave Adam and Eve the best chance for happiness when He created them without pockets. No place to hide anything. They were naked. And not embarrassed.

Our relationships begin to disintegrate when we start sewing pockets, places to hide things. We hide our past. Our spending. Our habits. Our wounds. Our hurt feelings. Men feel they can’t acknowledge having their feelings hurt; they can’t be naked about their feelings. That would make them… what? An Eve? So they hide that pain. Stuff their pockets full and make more pockets when they run out of room for all that they need to hide. But with the hiding comes the shame. And with the shame comes wide, wide gulfs of separation.

We are meant to be naked. Hiding nothing. Marriage is the place we keep it all out in the open. We don’t stuff our feelings, we don’t keep quiet about our opinions, we don’t tiptoe around bad moods. We don’t hide purchases and credit cards. We are naked and hide nothing. That’s the Garden ideal. A safe place for being real and honest and imperfect and beautiful and fun.

The Garden withers and good fruit begins to rot when we begin to dress up God’s ideal. He keeps it simple. True. Plain. Honest. No pretense. No sneaking around. No covering up. Owning it all. The knobby knees, the wobbly gait, and the imperfections. There is freedom in coming clean.

It is how God engages in relationship with us, written in Hebrews 4: 12,13: The WORD OF GOD is alive and powerful (SAY). It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow (SEPARATE). It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes, and He is the one to whom we are accountable (SEE).

Our relationship with Jesus is healed in the Garden when we come out of hiding and stop being ashamed to be naked and seen by our Creator. I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. Remain in me and I will remain in you (John 15:1,2,4).

+ + +

Follow Leah’s beautiful, powerful, and inspired thoughts at leahcmorgan.com

+ + +

Click: When He Calls, I’ll Fly Away/I’ll Fly Away

1-24-22

I shared this message on Facebook this week, and now will here, with you. It has been nine years since my wife Nancy died. Heart and kidney transplants were supposed to give her another three to five years… but she lived 16 more years, mostly healthy till the very end.

She inspired people and devoted herself to a ministry serving transplant recipients, donors, and those on life’s edge, including families.

This week was Sanctity of Life Week also, capped by the March For Life in Washington DC. President Trump, like many of us, once was pro-abortion, or at least neutral; then became the only president personally to address the March. President Biden, like many Catholic friends, claims adherence to the church teachings but rejects them in practice.

Life – living, protecting, honoring life – ought be the concern of all. This should be axiomatic… but in this world it is not even automatic. The devil wants to destroy our lives; governments want to control our lives; but God gave us life and Jesus sacrificed His life that we might have life and life more abundant.

Some years ago I edited the magazine Rare Jewel. We published a Sanctity of Life theme issue, and I asked Nancy to write about her experience and perspective, facing death and cherishing life. Edited, I offer it here. She also endured, besides the heart and kidney transplants, diabetes, strokes, cancer, celiac disease, amputations, and other challenges. Her story in part follows:

I was diagnosed with heart disease two months after my 41st birthday. My three children were 15, 14, and 11 at the time.

I also learned that I had had a silent heart attack sometime the previous summer, and that I had coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure (CHF), meaning that the arteries supplying blood to my heart were narrowed. There was no blockage that surgery could correct by bypass.

In the first diagnoses, the doctors thought that with medicines my heart disease could be kept under control and in 10 years or so I would have to consider the prospect of a heart transplant.

But after two more heart attacks in 10 months—and not so “silent” these times—the doctors told me that I would not survive a fourth heart attack. This news came on my 42nd birthday. Within the month I was transferred from our local hospital to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and put on the transplant list for a heart and kidney.

Events moved quickly, and I really didn’t have much time to think about what was ahead. As a diabetic, I had assumed that at some time I might need a kidney transplant—I had never thought about needing a new heart! I also assumed that the whole process was like changing a battery: take out the old and put in the new.

Not quite. Because my doctors could not guarantee my survival at home for longer than two weeks, I had to stay in the hospital, with heart monitors attached to my chest, and an IV tube continuously feeding me medicines that kept my heart working at its maximum possible efficiency.

In the beginning of this process, I think most patients in my “group” of potential organ recipients were, like me, a bit naive. We didn’t know about some of the complications associated with the surgery. Strokes, blood clots causing the loss of limbs, and blindness were just some of the problems. Our group of approximately 16 patients was relatively healthy or at least stable, but every now and then reality would strike.

Without warning, people “coded” (heart stopping); sometimes they could not be revived. Other times those who had received transplanted organs would return to the hospital with rejection (the body trying to destroy the new organ).

We all know there are no guarantees in life, but no matter how young or old, we tend to take some things for granted. However, when hospitalized in a heart-failure unit, never knowing what the next minutes might bring, I developed a deeper sense of what was important to me.

I prayed for more time—time to be a mother to my children, for us to be together as a family. I cried out to God, How much longer? He answered in the words of I Peter 5:6,7: Humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you.

And I learned to trust Him. Just as He was taking care of me, He would take care of my family. And each time I asked “How much longer?” He would remind me of a promise I made to Him that I would stay for as long as He wanted me to. And God gave me His total peace.

In all ways my hospital stay—18 weeks before organs became available; then three weeks after the operation, until I could go home—was a good experience. I came to know God in a more intimate way, to learn to trust Him and His ways, and to appreciate all that He has given me. I began praying for the other patients on the floor; first for those on their way to the ER, then weekly Bible studies, then prayer support groups. We started a family ministry that lasted more than seven years.

I have seen all three of my children grow up. Heather is a youth minister in Michigan; Ted is a television news producer [now in Washington DC] and Emily moved to Ireland after doing missions work [and has started her own business of American-style foods.] And, I have four beautiful grandchildren. I am very proud of them all.

At one time I did not have real hope, leaning on my own view of life. But as Psalm 119:50 says:

My comfort in my suffering was this: “Your promise preserves my life!”

+ + +

Click: I’ll Have a New Life / Everybody Will Be Happy Over There