Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-15-24

This week I received a shocking response to a routine e-mail I sent to a friend. He told me that he had been sick and underwent surgery during which cancer in another organ was discovered. Factors have prevented chemotherapy treatment, and other palliatives evidently have failed. No number of his LOLs could mask the prognosis: perhaps mere months to live.

I pray, of course, that the diagnosis and timeline may be wildly off. But the news rocked me; and – as sometimes happens, “bad news coming in bunches” – I also learned this week of the passing of two professional associates. Sad for the quick and the dead, sad for their families. Sad for myself… as we tend immediately to internalize such news.

Thinking of mortality, I remember another friend who recently sustained two heart “episodes” that were dangerous and still threaten her. And I had a flashback to my own experience last Fall at an appearance for my new book, where I collapsed in front of some dignitaries and C-SPAN cameras (not yet rolling). I am fine, yet I still dwell on mortality, especially again this week.

Mortality is the title of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite poem. He committed William Knox’s verses to memory during one of his melancholic periods. Some of its quatrains are:

Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? / Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud / A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave / He passeth from life to his rest in the grave….

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain / Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; / And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge / Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

‘Tis the wink of an eye – ‘tis the draught of a breath / From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, / From the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud: / Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

The poem indeed reflects Lincoln’s periodic and famous melancholia. He committed many things to his memory; we all do – for instance, song lyrics. I suppose we are attracted to lines and sayings because they appeal to our natural inclinations. This basically applies even to Bible verses. We are intrigued, or sometimes by God’s providence convicted, by passages. We not only want to, but need to, “hide them in our hearts.”

To return to the concept of mortality. I think it is true that when we hear of a friend’s bad health or mortal illness, or death, if we are honest, our thoughts are in a sense “selfish.” Self-ish. We have regrets for things we might have done. Or words never spoken. We think of chances we missed. Lost opportunities for visits or trips. We think of how we will miss the person. Our perspective.

I am reminded, especially this week, of resolutions I have broken: There are conversations – such as with my friend who shared his news – I never got around to having. There are calls I didn’t make and notes I had wanted to send to my children and grandchildren, that I postponed… again and again. There are relatives, and old friends, I have wanted to connect with, even for no specific reason.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into…

It is a short step from having mere regrets to condemning ourselves, which is the devil’s greatest trick. It is easy for any of us to fall into a mindset where we think we are lazy friends or bad parents. Self-condemnation can turn into self-fulfilling identities. It is the path of least resistance to keep traveling those byways… but those paths are really two-way streets. God allows U-Turns, as my friend Allison Bottke calls her ministry.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are unworthy of family or friends, or yourself, or our Lord once we have accepted Him. Because that acceptance makes us worthy. You are issued a new ID card when you invite Christ into your life.

A new friend, Heather Renea Heaven, this week shared a truth: “God did not make a mistake when He created you.” Wow. Sit up straight!

Yes, God created you. You are His handiwork. He created your family members and friends too. It is your job – no, your glorious opportunity! – to fill in what is “in between” you and me and others. So many gaps to fill! Friendships, relationships, fellowship, concern, sympathy, support, nurture, encouragement, love.

We lose many things in life, sometimes forever… including a lot of things that we do not have to lose, yet we do. Money, we can cope with and regain. Jobs? We move on. Homes? We re-locate. Health? More serious, but we often can forestall, or manage, or battle. But…

Time – and some “relationships over time,” as the phrase goes – cannot be retrieved. When gone, forever gone. Does our priority become clear?

Cherish. While you can. Cherish what you have, who you are, and those whom you have. Hold them close, let them know. While you can.

And do not let loose the most important relationship of all. You might lose your friends, a great sadness. But remember that you will never be alone. You have a Friend who never leaves you… and that is a start toward redeeming what was lost!

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Click: Never Alone

2-3-14

I recently have re-read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan (or re-re-re-read, actually forgetting the number of times I have read it). It is the most remarkable of books, once held to be the most printed book in the English language after the Bible. Despite our culture’s sudden and virtually total disassociation from it, that record might still hold.

Bunyan’s book is an allegory: the journey through life of the everyman hero, Mr Christian. It once was required reading in schools, beside the Bible – yes, in bygone times – but also for its masterful allusions, exquisite language, and impressive construction. The hero’s name, and those of myriad characters (Valiant-for-Truth; Worldly-Wiseman), were not crudely conceived of an impoverished imagination but to be clear about metaphors and symbols. Bunyan was teaching a lesson.

He wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress” while he himself presumably was being taught a lesson. The Englishman Bunyan, who lived 1628 – 1688, had been a poor tradesman of relatively loose morals, but was converted to Christianity when he heard the voice of God. Like Martin Luther more than a century previous in Germany, he became conscious of his sinful nature, and grew to faith in fear of God. He was moved spontaneously to preach, and attracted a following. But at that time, in England, it was forbidden to preach unless ordained by the Crown’s church.

During two prison sojourns Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The texts were received, the writer said, through visions, in the manner of St John transcribing the Book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos.

Quotations from this great book strike us like lightning-bolts through the centuries. Its truths are still true. The nature of humankind – our needs and temptations and failures and hopes and triumphs? There have been no changes to our natures: we still need the message!

“What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it.”

“A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.”

“The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.”

“It is my duty to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on Him that is stronger than all.”

But the most significant allegorical aspect of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” – in any event, the metaphor on which the narrative depends – is the Road. The Path. The Way. The journey’s channel; the Highway. Mr Christian proceeds amidst detours, roadblocks, false advice… toward the Destination, the Cross. To Heaven.

“Now I saw in my dream, that the Highway, up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.”

The Highway to Heaven is an allegory easy to comprehend. But it is hard to travel! As hard as the poor, beleaguered Mr Christian found it. Bunyan likely was under no illusions that his book would turn the world upside-down. Indeed it had great impact – it is possible that millions have accepted Christ because of it through the centuries – yet it can only be expected to speak to readers one by one. One by one.

Despite books of old and mass-media today, the personal appeal of the gospel, which in fact was the mode of Jesus and the Apostles, is just that: a PERSONAL appeal. God’s plan… Christ’s Great Commission… the Holy Spirit’s ministry. “Go and make disciples.”

It is a temptation of human nature, and a specific spiritual malady of contemporary Western culture, to think that knowing ABOUT the “Highway,” being generally supportive, is enough. Or that wandering down detours at least corresponds to good intentions. Or that “other” Highways are efficacious, if the traveler, after all, means to arrive at a similar happy place to where the cross stands.

These relativistic lies and deadly heresies will result not only in others (and ourselves) walking aimlessly through life… but being “lost.” Fatally lost. Eternally lost. The Bible makes clear that all other roads lead to destruction. God is a guide; the Bible is our road map; and millions of sermons, songs, allegories, and books like “The Pilgrim’s Progress” graciously have been laid before us as spiritual MapQuests.

Even more, God allows U-Turns, as my friend Allison Bottke has called her ministry. However, He doesn’t allow short-cuts. He has not cancelled, nor even postponed, our journeys. And to use another Web-Age reference, it is Jesus’s voice we hear in the GPS, reminding us that there is no way to Heaven – no other way – but through Him.

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“Walking Up the King’s Highway” is a standard song in many hymnals. It is a favorite of the Black church, written by the great Thomas A Dorsey and Mary Gardner. Here it is performed in rousing fashion by more than a hundred “Gospel Legends,” giants of influential Spirituals of the past half-century. The late Rev Donald Vails leads the singers. Billy Preston is on the organ.

Click: Highway To Heaven