Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-10-23

My good friend Gordon Pennington, a remarkable and accomplished man, has moved on in his life from several successful careers — not abandoned but “graduated” — and today is a motivational speaker, conference guest, lecturer, organizer… and evangelist. In his latter role he is not connected to a ministry, nor associated with a movement – other than the movement to witness to people who have not yet accepted Christ. He is a recruit, a volunteer, and a worker in the pursuit Jesus would have us all to fulfill, the “Great Commission.” Winning souls.

Gordon has a remarkable gift for engaging people on sidewalks or waiting rooms or over coffee; comfortably making friendships; discussing their “situations”; and sharing the Gospel. Uncountable people have accepted Jesus – and most importantly have changed their lives and “stuck” with their Christian walk – because he exercises that gift. He does as all believers should do, in our own ways of course. The opportunities are always there.

How many of us respond to that prompting of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to act on the command of the Great Commission? How many readers are yourselves in a good place because someone shared the Good News with you? How often do you feel that spiritual revolution in your soul that is as “new” today as when you first experienced it?

Have you had a “religious experience”? Experiential events are important in life, and often are vital parts of emotional, even intellectual, breakthroughs; but they also can be seductive. They can prove temporary. Life changes need to put down roots in our minds, hearts, and souls; not be mere refreshing breezes.

A challenge is the oft-stated and dispositive distinction drawn between Religion and Relationship. Christian denominations – and there are hundreds – can be caught up in divisions and disagreements, interpretations and inclusions (and exclusions!), rituals and rules. On the other hand, true Christianity (or “Mere Christianity” as the reliably brilliant C S Lewis defined it) is no more and no less than a relationship with Jesus.

That relationship – friendship, intimacy, trust – is all that is asked. A question posed not only by C S Lewis, but by Jesus Himself. No frills, no conditions, no membership requirements or quizzes! Belief that He is the Son of God, that He rose from the dead, that He loves you ineffably, beyond our ability to understand… but not beyond our ability to accept. And to embrace.

There are skeptics, or examples we know, of people whose faith wavered. Folks who have had bad experiences with religion (there’s that word again). Cynics because of religious experiences proven hollow, or religious people proven flawed. And there are hypocrites aplenty in, probably, every church we can visit.

But there’s always room for one more.

On the other hand, it is refreshing to discover new-born Christians (oh, yes: “Born-again Christians”) whose conversions and new lives, while genuine, did not change every single aspect of their old selves. It does frighten some converts – “Do I have to start wearing bow ties, mow a suburban lawn, and go to Sunday School picnics once a week?” Converts like Alice Cooper, Bob Dylan, Chuck Norris, and Robert Duvall looked the same and remained in their professions, even while the great Interior Decorator worked on the inside aspects of their lives.

Let us remember that Jesus “hung around” with some unsavory types — the people He most needed to reach. And remember that St Paul was determined to “be all things to all people” in order to interact with those who would not otherwise be in a place to hear the Gospel.

If you, or someone you know, has been curious to know Christ; or tempted to yield to cynicism about following Him – I invite you to think a little harder about the question, Have you had a religious experience?

And then I would remind you that Jesus Himself had a religious experience:

It was religious people who rejected, accused, tortured, condemned, and killed Him.

Keep in your mind the wide difference between joining a religion and becoming a follower of Jesus. Respect tradition, but always be open to questioning traditions and rules and social pressures that are empty or misleading.

We are well reminded to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. But never forget to yield to God the things that are God’s… and that includes your very soul.

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An example of a Christian’s change of heart being sui generis – important unto itself, not relying on arbitrary sets of external rules, or other peoples’ opinions – is the German punk queen Nina Hagen. After a life of drugs, rebellion, artistic experimentation, political extremes, and wild performance art… she met Jesus. She was baptized. She reads the Bible to audiences while on stage. Little changed in her outward self; she is however evidently much changed inside, where – after all – her Savior lives. Here is a clip from her Personal Jesus tour, singing an American Southern Gospel song.

NiNA HAGEN – This World Is Not My Home – Personal Jesus Tour, PARiS

6-12-23

Progress. We may conclude after the lessons of history, over uncountable generations, and every civilization that has dedicated itself to the ideal… that Progress is a false god. Perhaps a worthy goal in the abstract, but little more.

The challenge inherent in “progress” is the fact that it is an abstraction. A chimera: literally something honored in the breach, a dream whose precise realization is an illusion; something impossible to define or finally achieve.

If we judge and celebrate Progress by prosperity, we ignore the poverty, starvation, and misery around the world. If we call the triumph of diseases “Progress” we ignore cancers, plagues, epidemics, and self-initiated ways of dying. We think it Progressive that humanity is proving itself more compassionate and welcoming… yet dysfunction, abuse, addictions, suicides, failed marriages, depression, and wars touch every country, family, and household we know.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

We think we know better than all of previous humankind – “we” being contemporary, liberal, secular societies – that we have, progressively, learned lessons from previous cultures; we have built on the discoveries of wise people; that science guides us ever upward. Indeed we are aware of many lessons of history – triumphs and disasters – but that does mean we learn from them.

In infantile fashion, we pick and choose from the annals of history, not to learn and see more clearly and improve our ways, but to craft new justifications for our original, base inclinations. The pattern is called Human Nature; the inclination, theological or otherwise, is called Sin. The result is called Self-Destruction.

Of course, it masquerades as “Progress,” so we congratulate ourselves.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

The West is undergoing a radical transformation of attitudes and codes these days. Under the name of Progress, the roles (and even functions) of the sexes are being redefined. Millennia of foundational spiritual beliefs and attitudes are being denied and even outlawed. Totalitarian practices have permeated national governments and local councils, supplanting authoritarianism, which in its turn had supplanted freedom of thought and expression. Murderous Marxism, tried and failed so often, is being recommended in myriad forms… to be tried one more time. And another, and…

We can look to the French Revolution, among many spasms of Progress, for similar experiments. Discontent led to radicalism so severe that the Church was abolished and its properties confiscated. Members of the monarchy, then the aristocracy, then the middle class, were slaughtered: the revolution “ate its babies” before the factions began slaughtering each other. New governments started foreign wars to distract – and conscript – the public. Fiat currencies were invented; a new calendar was devised; women’s rights were proclaimed and quickly suppressed; and new religions were fabricated to replace Christianity – “The Cult of Reason”; “The Cult of the Supreme Being;” and so forth.

Ultimately, this eruption of Progress, like the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” and myriad others that followed, accumulated its most dispositive statistics by the numbers of people persecuted and slaughtered.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

The 20^th century saw history’s greatest advances in knowledge, discoveries, inventions, medicines… and was by far the bloodiest century of persecution, death, and wars of any century. Innovations dedicated to killing. Progress? We believe ourselves kinder to animals; we no longer kill baby seals or slaughter herds of buffalo. Yet we slaughter babies at rates unprecedented in the history of “humanity.”

As the French say, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – The more things change, the more things stay the same. Really, a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes. So perhaps the millions of aborted babies are merely the “new” version of infant sacrifice practiced by “primitive” societies. But in this Age of Progress, we sacrifice to the gods of self-indulgence, convenience, and a “wiser” form of progressive morality. We know better.

In the post-Christian West, our orgy of selfish delusion lives on borrowed time, existing more and more tenuously on the inertia of expired sanity and fleeting prosperity. Our homes were built on solid foundations, but are crumbling. A few people have vague memories, inchoate awareness, of history’s lessons. But… collectively we are different. We know better. If there is a God, He will forgive us; He always has. Right?

I believe the most serious of all sins, theologically and practically, is the Sin of Pride. It precedes all other sins, and enables all other sins. We know better than our consciences. We know better than history’s examples. We know better than God. But…

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ultimately the human race and, yes, much of the Christian world, has put itself in this dreadful situation. For individuals, where sin abounds, grace abounds much more; yet surely judgment is coming to this world. I am reminded, if you will indulge an extreme shift of reference, of a 1952 movie, Ma and Pa Kettle At the Fair. It was one of a series of movies about a family of rural nitwits, very popular at the time.

In this movie, Ma and Pa were tossed in the town jail, framed by the village harpy. Even the jailer was sympathetic to their plight, and he repeatedly left the jail cell unlocked or ostentatiously dropped his keys, so that Ma and Pa could escape. More dumb then honest, each time they called, “Oh, Sam! You dropped your keys!”

When Sam sighed in resignation and shuffled away, Pa slowly lamented, “I wish we could figure a way to escape from this old jail…”

We find ourselves in cultural and moral prisons these days. Jesus provides our way to escape; He leaves us the keys; He is the key. And we – deserving the jail cells wherein we find ourselves, often of our own making – nevertheless we wish we could figure a way to escape. The keys are in front of us. But…

There is nothing new under the sun.

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The Contemporary Christian Music singer and songwriter Rich Mullins sang this (caught on amateur video) at the end of a 1992 concert. A few short years later Rich was killed in a highway accident.

Click: Rich Mullins – This World is Not My Home

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.

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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

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).

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Follow Leah’s beautiful, powerful, and inspired thoughts at leahcmorgan.com

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Click: When He Calls, I’ll Fly Away/I’ll Fly Away

9-7-20

I have told this story before. On this Labor Day weekend, I remember a simple BBQ, but one of the most profound days of my life. A holiday far away from my home… but very close to my heart. It happened on a Summer holiday more than 20 years ago.

Is this an America that is disappearing?

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

Once settled, I took out the Yellow Pages (remember them?) to chart the location of nearby Assembly of God churches, intent on visiting as many as I could through the summer. East Texas was in every way new to me, and I wanted to experience everything I could.

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

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

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

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

As the sun set, the same food came out again — smoked brisket galore; all the side dishes; and desserts of all sorts. Better than the first time. Then the Gilberts cleared their house’s porch. People brought instruments out of their cars and trucks. Folks tuned their guitars; some microphones and amps were set up; chairs and blankets dotted the lawn. Dave Gilbert and his brothers, I learned, sang gospel music semi-professionally in the area. Pastor Wigley, during the summer, had opened for Gold City Quartet at a local concert, playing gospel music on the saxophone. But everyone else sang, too.

In some churches, in some parts of America, you are just expected to sing solo every once in a while. You’re not expected to – you want to. So into the evening, as the sun went down and the moon came up over those farms and fields, everyone at that picnic sang, together or solo or in duets or quartets. Spontaneously, mostly. Far into the night, exuberantly with smiles, or heartfelt with tears, singing unto the Lord.

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

I have grown sad for people who have not experienced the type of worship where singers and people who pray do so spontaneously. From the congregation. Moving to the front. Sharing their hearts. Crying tears of joy or conviction. Loving the Lord, freely. If you have not… then visit a church where this is commonplace. Even witnessing it is an uplifting balm to the soul, where there is freedom and joy in singing spontaneously.

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

And I think to myself, nervously shedding a tear… “THIS is the America we are losing.”

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Click: The Sweetest Song I Know

11-23-15

An ironic side-effect of the current wave of bombings and attacks against Christians by fringe-group Mohammedan jihadis is the revival of disputes between Christians. Not Moslems vs Christians; but Christians vs Christians.

On the airwaves, in churches, on street corners, over dinner tables, proponents range and rage. Put aside the ancient debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin: I would not be surprised if even those angels are arguing as they dance on the heads of pins.

What would Jesus do? Should we stop the flow of refugees? Are some of them “refujihadis”? Should persecuted Christians from the Middle East receive preference? Are we being bigots as we express wariness of Moslems? Do we invite slaughter on our doorsteps? Isn’t it about who we ARE as a people? What is wrong about wanting to preserve our inheritance and traditions? And so forth.

It seems certain that there is not one answer to each question. There might be no good answers. They might all have bad answers. Maybe the choices of the Christian West, speaking generically of our background and heritage, are Bad and Worse. Challenges that shift and morph are difficult to solve wisely. Enemies who declare their blood-lust hatred but refuse to expose themselves are complicated adversaries, surely.

Theoretical, even theological, responses, in the face of secular and Christian dissenters with whom we contend, are influenced by putting ourselves in the places of persecuted refugees (I hope none of us identifies with embedded terrorists)… or innocent potential victims.

There are many aphorisms in folk wisdom, which we all revere, that nevertheless contradict themselves. “He who hesitates is lost,” yes; but “Look before you leap.” Life lessons whose wisdom, sometimes, is difficult to discern. The Bible is no different – in fact it contains the pre-eminent life lessons.

Yet we have Jesus adjuring uncharitable listeners with the parable of the Good Samaritan… but told His disciples to tend to the Jewish “lost sheep” before the Samaritans. He tells us to “turn the other cheeks” but overturned money-changers’ tables and called people “fools, blind guides, hypocrites, murderers, brood of vipers, tombs with rotting corpses inside, hell’s offspring,” etc. Was Jesus inconsistent? No, God cannot lie, and Bible scholarship relies on scripture confirming scripture – contexts, cases, prayerfully perceiving God’s will.

So it is with “secular” issues… many of which, today, are not so secular after all.

In 1988 I took my family on a vacation to Europe, landing in Paris and proceeding through France to Germany. In 1988-89, the Eiffel Tower was painted a tan color that looked dull up-close, but at night, in floodlights, gave it a look of pure gold. It was for the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 World’s Fair.

One evening we took a boat ride around Paris on the Seine, watched a fireworks display, then went up the Eiffel Tower to view the city, and for a late snack. It is not a one elevator-ride express, ground level to top: there are platforms with shops and restaurants. But we decided to go all the way to the top, and then walk down the iron-rail steps a level or two.

My daughter Emily, who was only five, suddenly froze in fear halfway down one of the stages. It was hard to get her to move… until we suggested that we all hold hands and walk down together. Some people joined us (including an Australian couple we met again on a tour bus in Germany a week later!).

At one point, Emily smiled and looked up and said, “If we all hold hands, we can do ANYTHING!”

That is true today as well. In Paris, certainly. And all over the world. And… in our own neighborhoods.

Before we can join hands with our enemies, even potential enemies, we must learn to join hands with one another. But does it seem, these days, that this is the more difficult challenge?

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Click: Jesus, Hold My Hand

10-13-14

Sometimes when we make life-transitions, what we leave behind is ugly: think of a chrysalis and a butterfly. I am reminded of Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar: “The evil that men do oft lives beyond them; the good is interred with their bones.” But when I “process” Shakespeare’s words what comes to my mind is not only the question of evil. Because good – good works, good deeds, sacrifice and service – can survive our lives to encourage others, at least.

In fact, sometimes we confront the anomaly that what is “left behind’ (please, I am not talking of the movie) can be beautiful – maybe more memorable than what is supposed to be more important! The wisdom that can be drawn from this, and life-applications, struck today’s guest essayist, my friend Laura Pastuszek. She will state her revelations better than I just attempted to do:

Laura writes, My friend collected many colorful shells at the beach on Sanibel Island in December of 2011. And it appears she had a reason in mind for how she wanted artistically to display these dead creatures. However, she never did tell me.

If anything, she may have placed them with care, and they were purposely arranged, or maybe done in a random act? I really can’t recall. And yes, in a way, it matters because these shells helped me through some of the most difficult events that I could have never imagined.

In the three years since we spent this week at the beach together, both of us have had our share of tragedy. Mostly random. Funny how life works that way. It is inconvenient to say the least, unbelievable to sound almost cliché when describing sickness and death. Little did I know that I would experience losing eight people that I cared about, including my brother, mother, and father within one year. And I never dreamed that the “collector of the seashells” would go through radical breast and lymph surgery due to an aggressive cancer that nearly took her life.

The shells I photographed are beautiful!

But they are dead.

How can this be? The sickness and deaths I have experienced were anything but beautiful. In the months and years that I have suffered great loss, I have often asked myself where to find the beauty in the midst of my world. Quite frankly, it has been hard to see, and I have often prayed for the ability to look through such lenses.

Looking more closely at the photograph of beautiful and colorful shells, I could not help but notice the red, brown, purple and other hues of colorful shells. Vibrant, even in death. Really? Death is certainly not vibrant, it is depressing and painful, at least from my vantage point.

Some of the shells are smooth, some are rough. Death came like that for my loved ones. For some it was sudden, for others it stalled for months and it was a brutal road.

One day, just like I took the picture of the beautiful shells, I took inventory of the memories of my loved ones. Was there a big difference between the shells and my loved ones? I realized that the hardest thing to accept about death of a loved one is the absence of a physical “shell.” I only have my memories to rely on for preservation of the inner beauty of my loved ones, and this intangible act is difficult, especially when the territory is foreign.

I have always loved shells for what they looked like on the outside, never for the creatures that were alive within. I never really bothered to know or enjoy the inner being of most of these creatures. But it was that inner being that caused such beauty to last.

Revisiting the photograph caused me to think about death in a whole new perspective. That is the beautiful thing about grief. I realized that I get through it by seeing little glimpses of life, mostly in the obscure; and this revelation about dead seashells definitely is obscure… or at first seemed obscure. But I am being reminded to make the intangible remnants of my loved ones’ lives matter. Intently, I place such memories in my heart and mind, often.

I recall my mother’s words saying, “Honey, you always do a great job…” and my father taking the toothpick out of his mouth, tilting his head my way, waiting for a kiss on the cheek when I greeted him; my brother reminding me to defrag my computer; and my friend chatting with me over the phone about each of her four young children. I capture remnants of my loved ones’ characters, accomplishments, dreams, and spirituality, often. Those things are what I picture deep inside.

They have become my beautiful shells, arranged nicely, each showing their distinctive wonder.

And each morning, as the sun rises, I can walk along the water’s edge, and have trust that God is with me in my grief. It is He that helps me to rearrange the picture of my new life, and to heal. It is His spirit that enables me to live through the death of loved ones, through grief, as an act of faith and II Corinthians 5:7 reminds me of this: “For we live by faith, not by sight.”

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We should always feel the assurance of knowing that if we don’t see our friends and loved ones again, whatever the circumstance, we surely may see them on heaven’s shore. In the meantime the lives we lead, and leave some day, will be seen by others as beautiful testimonies of who we were, what we did… and who we served. Like shells on that beautiful shore.

Click: If We Never Meet Again

12-9-13

If you had a child playing at the edge of an ever-widening sinkhole – and sinkholes lately have been in the news, including ones that swallowed people as well as houses – you would call that child to move back. If your friend were eating something poisonous without realizing the dangers, you would advise that friend of the fact. We do the same, some of us, with people, even strangers, who smoke. “Intervention” today increasingly is employed on behalf of people with drinking problems.

Followers of Christ, who subscribe to the beliefs that all of us make mistakes and are sinful at heart; that therefore a wide gulf separates us from a Holy God; that this God nevertheless desires eternal fellowship with us and offers forgiveness and salvation; and that “accepting” Jesus – believing in our hearts and confessing with our words – these Christians cannot do anything else than have the same regard for other people’s souls as we do their health and comfort.

How often do contemporary Christians fit that last puzzle-piece in place?

Failing this, we condemn ourselves; and we are implicit in sending others to the cold darkness of eternity, separation from God. How often do we avoid sharing even the smallest portion of Jesus with someone because we might “offend them”? Hurt their feelings? “Hey buddy, don’t smoke in your apartment, but I don’t care if you go to hell.”

It’s not always comfortable, but neither was that splintery cross. Living in a multimedia culture makes it easy to assume everyone thinks like we do, or has access to the same facts that we process. Not so. When the Apostle Paul arrived in Ephesus, word-of-mouth about the Savior had already led to the establishment of several Christian communities. But not every word had been shared by every mouth:

“…he reached Ephesus, on the coast, where he found several believers. ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ he asked them. ‘No,’ they replied, ‘we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ ‘Then what baptism did you experience?’ he asked. And they replied, ‘The baptism of John.’ Paul said, ‘John’s baptism called for repentance from sin. But John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning Jesus.’ As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:1-6, NLT).

Paul wrote letters to local churches and church leaders, sharing the good news, and answering questions. These letters comprise the majority of the New Testament. We shared last week how papyrus letters from a generation or two after Paul are extant. Before Christ’s time, spiritual news and God’s words were shared by Torah scrolls, inscriptions, sacred texts. After him we have the successive march of letters, manuscripts, tapestries and stained-glass picture stories, parchment books, printed books, mass-production, tracts, evangelistic crusades, recordings, radio, short-wave, television, and the internet.

The SHARING of the good news is central to the good news itself. “Go into all the world…” Jesus said, commissioning His disciples. Romans 10:14-15 argues: “How can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?  And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, ‘How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!’ (NLT) Like much of the Book of Romans, this is like an advocate summarizing his case. How can they hear about Jesus unless someone tells them?

Right about in the middle of humankind’s list of ways to share the good news – not in a timeline, but in the numbers of methods and technologies – is the radio. After its invention it was available to almost every community on the earth. And much of its message, especially today on short-wave broadcasts, is Christian. I went to Sunday school as a child, but it was preachers on my AM transistor radio from whom I really heard the first hard (and sweet) truths of the Gospel; and came face-to-face with decisions to make, or avoid, regarding Jesus Christ.

Albert E. Brumley was an American gospel songwriter of the past century. He wrote more than 800 sermons-in-song, many of which are favorites today in churches, hymnbooks, and recordings. Among them are “I’ll Fly Away,” “If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven),” “I’ll Meet You In The Morning,” “Jesus, Hold My Hand,” “I’d Rather Be An Old Time Christian,” and “Rank Strangers to Me.”

He told a story about another of his classics… and the role of radio in spreading the gospel:

“I wrote ‘Turn Your Radio On’ in 1937, and it was published in 1938. At this time radio was relatively new to the rural people, especially gospel music programs. I had become alert to the necessity of creating song titles, themes, and plots, and frequently people would call me and say, ‘Turn your radio on, Albert, they’re singing one of your songs on such-and-such a station.’ It finally dawned on me to use… ‘Turn your radio on’ as a theme for a religious… song.”

Like the poor, radio we will always have with us. In the words of the song, “turn your radio on and listen to the music in the air; Turn your radio on and heaven’s glory share…”

Are you tuned in… to what God is saying to you? Don’t touch that dial! You can broadcast (as it were) a brief public-service announcement, or a personal message, every once in a while yourself.

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Many folks’ favorite version of Brumley’s classic song is by the great Ray Stevens. Fun, upbeat, infectious… meaningful. Here he sings at the piano, surrounded by friends who sing along, as you might, yourself.

Click: Turn Your Radio On

2-15-13

Can God make a rock so big that even He cannot lift it? That age-old wise-guy challenge from skeptics is supposed to stop believers in our spiritual tracks. But it is a syllogism, more correctly a syllogistic fallacy. It does not confront the Creator of the Universe in an existential contradiction, but rather exposes puny human minds, especially the smug skeptics (and more than a few of us believers, too) unable fully to comprehend the vast, all-encompassing, limitless powers of God.

It is, besides, a fallacy built on the inherent strictures of language and linguistics. And a philosophical “gotcha” whose purpose is not seeking truth but annoying the faithful. Christians, if they engage in certain debates, should rely more on the “God is God” response: if we could explain EVERYTHING (especially to hostile people), well, God would not be God, because we would be obviating the necessity of His being. No, I am grateful for mysteries.

Skeptics are not at all concerned with God, anyway; nor rocks; nor our souls, except to introduce viral doubts. The character Matthew Harrison Brady in the play “Inherit the Wind” delivered a great line that is constructive: “For my part, I am more concerned with the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks.” Or their size or weight.

Oh, rocks count. So do mountains. I heard someone say this week that if mountains were nice and smooth, they would be impossible to climb over. It’s hard enough! – but those crags and rough peaks and jagged crevices, when all is said and done, make it easier to climb over than a vertical, smooth monolith. Yes, we are talking metaphors here.

God’s metaphors and similes, Jesus’ parables and analogies, fill the Bible, for the benefit of our emotional comfort as well as our spiritual understanding. Many of them are related to rocks and mountains. And many of them address the old conundrum I quoted above – the powers of God, and our thoughts about His imputed limitations.

I was frustrated recently by the inability to sublimate certain troubling thoughts in my consciousness. Did you ever have trouble falling asleep because you can’t get something off your mind? I realized: I can do funny things with my eyebrows and tongue, even make my nostrils flare, and make children laugh. I can cross my eyes and, somehow, make the pinkie of my foot shift atop the toe next to it, without using my hands. These all involve muscles. The brain is a muscle. Why can’t I make IT stop doing something when I want?

We remember things, even when we don’t want to; and sometimes we are annoyed that we forget things, also when we don’t want to. In these things we are reflections of God – imperfect reflections, that is. Which confirms our humble status before the awesome magnificence of God. You see, I am remembering the metaphors.

We must climb mountains. But God talks to us of His faithful people moving mountains. We surely are impeded by “rocks” in our path. But we all know of one stone that was miraculously rolled away in the Bible. We talk about “fiery trials.” But we are assured that God has been there for His children to endure the fiery furnace, and be delivered. He created mountains, rocks, and fire. I am quite happy to know that God saves us from such physical and metaphorical challenges; I don’t have to know HOW, except by the lights of my limited understanding, my faith, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Speaking of our limited understanding, here is syllogism that skeptics seldom point to… because it reveals a loving God, not a confused self-contradiction. Can an all-knowing God be aware of your sins, and yet forget them?

How can that be? It can’t… unless you are God. As rocks thrown into the sea of forgetfulness, He promises to forgive – and forget – our sins when we repent. A God who knows all, can “forget” something? Yes. Is there much better news laying around?

It is useful for us to remember: Sometimes when we pray, and pray, and pray again, about some matter of guilt or sin, we can be reminding God about something He forget and promised not to hold to your account.

Finally, countless sermons and prayers and hymns have dealt with the other spectrum of a worry we have about God in our imperfect minds: not that He will forget sins, but the chance He might forget US! “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”; the Bible account of Blind Man Bartimaeus, worried that the Lord will not notice him; the doctrine of public confession, so when the roll is called up yonder… and so on.

As believers we know that God cannot forget us. It is a mystery that He can cancel His memory for the sake of His children’s salvation; and it is joy unspeakable that His memory reaches down to the humblest among us. And remembers. Not only on Judgment Day, but every day, every moment in fact, he remembers our needs, and cares for us.

Remember the rock in that skeptic’s riddle? How thankful we should be that there is NO rock that represents our burdens that He cannot lift and roll it away.

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A great song about God’s forgetting, and remembering, is “He Will Remember Me.” A standard gospel song of Black and White churches alike, it was associated with Albertina Walker, the Sensational Nightingales, and the Staples Singers, as well as the Statesmen and the Blackwood Brothers. It was written by E J Bartlett, mentor of Albert E Brumley. Bartlett also wrote “Everybody Will Be Happy Over There,” “Just a Little While,” and the greatest camp-meeting song, “Victory in Jesus.” This link to a video is priceless session of “Gospel Legends” letting loose over the profound message of the lyrics, “O yes, He heard my feeble cries, from bondage set me free; And when I reach the pearly gates He will remember me.” Featured are the great Rev Donald Vails, Jessy Dixon, and the Barrett Sisters… and a hundred other joyful souls.

Click: He Will Remember Me