Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-24-23

This weekend marks an anniversary in my family. Usually that word “anniversary” connotes a happy date but in this case it was associated with much sadness. My niece Liza died on an April 22^nd, after a difficult birth, a severe case of cerebral palsy, an eventual three-month mental maturity level, a prognosis of perhaps three years of life but ultimately well more than two decades of these conditions. Her sweet smiles masked the tragedy of her daily life.

My sister Barbara was a single mom who battled this situation bravely and lovingly. After some years, at a certain point she stumbled and sustained her own individual health problems and myriad other challenges, some virtually nightmarish. Many people might have thought her situation could not possibly have been worse. And then Liza died.

Recalling all this on the phone this week, Barbara, still facing challenges, spoke with perfect peace. So many past memories have been replaced, she said, by the joy and hope – no: the knowledge – that one day she will be with Liza in Glory. And they both will be whole. And that now, she knows, Liza is in the arms of my late wife Nancy, also the victim of many ailments in her own painful journey on earth. What a reunion that will be!

It can be an empty phrase, or a cruel joke, to say that we can choose joy despite life’s pitfalls. On the other hand, many people who know the truths of God’s promises nevertheless choose despair and depression and sorrow. Excuse me, but those choices are empty, cruel, and joyless.

Among the choices that my sister Barbara made along the way, and that made all the difference, was to accept Jesus. I quickly say that “accepting Jesus” is another phrase that we frequently hear, or say, but it has many deeper shades of meaning. Something so profound cannot be reduced to a phrase, and if you are a Christian who deals honestly with your faith walk (or even if you are not) you know how many steps there have been, and will be, on that “walk.”

Even a lightning-bolt conversion, the “road to Damascus” experience, is never the whole story. We all have progressive revelation… we see through glasses darkly, then with increasing clarity… we experience doubts… we learn lessons… we rebel and return… we hunger for the Word… we grow bold… we receive spiritual chastisement… we feel the peace that passes understanding… we “know that we know that we know”…

Sometimes these experiences are stretched out over years. Sometimes they can all seem to come in one day of spiritual yearning! And everything in between. Faith is a living thing, growing; almost breathing. In fact, the Holy Spirit does breathe into us the profound truths of God – literally in-spiration.

So Barbara cannot really be described as suddenly “accepting Jesus.” As her brother who prayed for her and with her, it has seemed to me more like she gradually realized Jesus had been there with her all the time. And then the realization that Jesus had accepted her, not just the other way around.

Then that “walk” didn’t seem so lonely anymore.

In all these ways a miracle can take place – for it is miraculous that amid horrible conditions and seemingly hopeless situations such as this mother and daughter experienced… joy and peace can come out of it. The world cannot give that, and the world cannot take it away.

And the devil cannot take away an anniversary that, somehow, is a Happy Anniversary after all.

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Click: What a Meeting In the Air

9-10-18

She was sitting on the curb outside her apartment, the little apartment in the row of several small units on one of the rivers that feed into the Atlantic Ocean in central New Jersey. A hot summer afternoon, yes, and the little apartment has no air conditioning.

But mainly she was out there, alone – alone with her thoughts. It was the end of the month; benefits had run out, as had most of the food.

Actually, as I learned of this story afterward, it was not an unfrequent circumstance. But lately, in scenes like this, Barbara was not really alone; not only with her thoughts. She was praying. And her relatively recent and closer relationship with Jesus led her to pray. Jesus, her new best friend. When the New Life happens, you don’t only pray to God. The Holy Spirit inhabits and inspires your prayers. You pray with Jesus, not only to or through Him.

The Lord wants to know the burdens of our hearts, so we no longer feel selfish in asking for basics, big or small. The Word has promised – the Peace That Passes All Understanding bathes our troubled souls.

As she sat there lifting up those burdens, a neighbor from five doors down walked up. An old Black man named Victor, with a very young son or grandson whose puppy was on a leash, greeted her and said he thought she might like some crabs. Now, Victor lays crab traps outside his place on the river, and all along the coastline, selling Blueclaws to shops and restaurants. Blue crabs, common up and down the Atlantic coast and mostly identified with Chesapeake Bay, are interesting creatures with bright azure claws, back fins that act as paddles – they actually swim – and the sweetest, most tender meat you can imagine.

Many of my summer afternoons, on Jersey Shore childhood vacations, were spent in rowboats with my dad, my uncle Gus, and cousin Tommy, in Barnegat Bay. Fastening clunky wire traps with bait, usually mossbunker heads, we would lower the traps and pull them up almost immediately, with one or two crabs in each, all afternoon. On good days we would have several bushel baskets of those clacking crabs. In the evening our grandmothers, moms, and sisters would boil up innumerable crabs – no longer blue but scarlet red – to be turned out onto “tablecloths” of cut brown paper bags; cracking, poking, picking that sweet meat from every small corner and tip.

This history would explain why Barbara responded to Victor’s offer with a shout that could be heard across the Atlantic, maybe as far as to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn: “CRABS??? Wow! Yes! THANK YOU!!!”

At that moment, the offer of a pack of saltines would have been gratefully met. But an abundance of fresh crabs – especially in these latter days when they are more delicacies in seafood markets and menus than results of lazy, sunburned afternoons in rowboats – seemed like a miracle.

When I heard the story, I knew it was a miracle on several levels. For Barbara – for anyone – to immediately thank God and give Him the glory, is often a miracle in itself, particularly when that spiritual attitude had not been traditional. But, more, she felt that prayer was answered. She acknowledged that God’s blessings often reflect his holy timing; being still and waiting, as the Bible says.

Further, the attitude of thanksgiving is essential. Was Victor an angel, sent with his kid and basket of crabs? Maybe, but she did know him from the neighborhood. The important thing is, as Christians, that when Christ visits His brothers and sisters, it is as He lives in the hearts of the mercy-givers.

Satan knows this. He hates us according to the amount of Jesus we open to Him in our hearts.

So when someone says, “that wasn’t Jesus – that was only a neighbor being nice,” the truth is, for instance in this story, that’s Jesus acting through our neighbors and us, to each other.

It’s what Christians do.

Questions about timing… about further prayers’ further effects… about the temptation to see prayers as magic wands… to wonder why God sometimes seems to say No…

These are still… questions. God did not promise that we would avoid the Valley of the Shadow; only that He would be with us. So there are, and continue to be, questions, challenges, and problems in life. But God answers prayer in His time and in His way. And He honors faith, and faithfulness (two different things) – and He will bless the grateful heart.

How many people, sitting on the curb like Barbara was that afternoon, would have “thanked her lucky stars,” shaken Victor’s hand, and told her friends about an amazing “coincidence” that just happened? I can tell you: a lot of people.

But the New Life brings something sweeter – well, let me say, some great complements and spiritual condiments – to steamed crabs, drawn butter, and Jesus at your table.

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Click: Lead Me To the Rock

5-14-18

I never have had the privilege of being a mother. As closely bound as I was to fathering, being present at the births of our children, then nurturing and rearing them; fatherhood in all senses… I am aware it all is a far-distant second. The special relationship of mother and child – among all species – is a unique and precious blessing.

A birthright, in fact.

For all the good feelings engendered by Mother’s Day, I reserve a portion of contempt for those creatures who denigrate the institution of Motherhood. Not loutish men alone, but women themselves who, ultimately, are self-loathing. Those who deny the privilege – to others, not only for themselves – of sanctifying the foundation of the family; for hating what we love; for hating what is love.

I reserve a portion of pity, too. I must. What I often call in this space the Culture of Death extends beyond the trashing of motherhood and women’s traditional roles. Biologically, homosexuals cannot naturally procreate (pro-create). Abortion fanatics crusade for death – disguising their “advocacy” as concern for “convenience” for the mothers; as birth-control-after-the-fact. And so on. They are to be pitied, and prayed for.

In the meantime, my Mother’s Day is filled with memories of the Mom I knew. I loved her, and love her. She was an example whose nurture appears stronger through the years: seeds, planted, and growing in my life. A servant’s heart, making silent and willing sacrifices. Was she perfect? Smoking and drinking were regrettable but did not affect her salvation. Big deal. My sisters and I prayed for Jesus to turn the wine back into water.

Of vital importance is that she knew Jesus, was active in churches, and related almost every question I ever had to the gospel.

A preacher in aprons. A saint in curlers. An invariable forgiver.

And that example was no less special because it is the frequent role of mothers – not stereotyped, not clichéd, not pressed upon her as a dirty, leftover job – the role of imparting life lessons, of teaching values; sharing love.

Fathers can do such things before mothers do, with their children. Life’s circumstances dictate such things, and some fathers might be the more tender of a set of parents – but we all know that in the vast majority of cases in the Human Family, it is the mother who holds, hugs, shares tears, teaches, and smiles, a little more than the father, or at least a little earlier. And we children remember.

Fathers discipline; mothers forgive. Fathers prod the way forward; mothers welcome us home. Fathers mold us; mothers know us.

I believe God created Woman not only as a helpmeet to Adam, but as an Assistant to Himself. As Mothers, to show unconditional love; to bond in unique ways with their children; to bear the essence of comfort, understanding, acceptance.

Think back to the first song you learned, maybe a lullaby. The first prayers you heard, or memorized. The first gentle nursery rhyme or fairy tale. Chances are that was your mother’s voice, mother’s smiles, mother’s tears. And if not… probably Grandmother’s. This is our DNA, emotions as strong as genetics.

I admired my Dad, oh yes; I still finish every project wondering if he would approve; to be a good professional. But Mom? If I can be as good a man as she was a mother, I will die grateful and content.

There are some women who, by circumstance or infirmity, sadly cannot become mothers. Most women whom I have met from those groups have hearts even more tender for families and for children.

However, sorry to tell all of you radical harridans who hate, you have disinvited yourselves from family reunions – not at ballparks on summer afternoons, or Grandma’s house on Winter evenings – but from that mystical, privileged, and sacred Family that truly is a gift of God.

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Does this essay seem to dwell on old-fashioned things? I plead guilty! There are too many old fashions that we are losing. Here is one: a tender lullaby, a mother’s song, written by Stephen Foster 150 years ago. Recently we shared another tender song by this great American poet and composer. This, sung by Alison Kraus, is equally impressive. And some crazed radicals are tearing down his statue in the town of his birth…

Click: Slumber, My Darling

10-7-13

Many popular sayings that are regarded as embodying folk wisdom are, in fact, as crumbly as the fortune cookies where they should stay. I have always been struck by how almost every handy, traditional capsule of folk wisdom is cancelled by another such time-honored saying. “Look before you leap”? But… “He who hesitates is lost.” You can “roll with the punches” OR “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” And so forth.

I recently thought the oft-quoted Thomas Wolfe aphorism “You can’t go home again” when I did in fact visit the home in New York City where I was born, and the address in the New Jersey suburbs where I was reared. I drove from the Philadelphia Christian Writer’s Conference with my friend Shawn Kuhn, who was born in a different neighborhood of Queens. We were each a little surprised that our neighborhoods were clean, appeared safe, and had not fallen prey to real or clichéd urban blight: just the opposite.

Later in the week, with my sister Barbara, we visited the address of our adolescent years – I call it such because it was recently razed and replaced with what regretful “natives” like me are calling “McMansions,” ridiculous mini-estates on half acres. Most of the new owners likely suffer from the affliction common to parvenus, the Edifice Complex.

It was sad to see my home no longer there; our Village School boarded up; the town’s Swim Club closed and overgrown; and the church of our youth condemned, doors chained closed, neglected.

However. Paging Thomas Wolfe: “You CAN go home again.” I understand that I am supposed to understand that the past is past, a rose is a rose, and all those other syllogisms. The more important facts relate not to whether our parents have died, or our homes have been demolished, but what value they had in our development. The important corners of our memories. Then, the question is not whether we can “go home,” but whether those “homes,” our foundational values, can, or should, ever leave us.

I will call someone else, George Santayana, into the discussion, and mangle his own famous aphorism: “Those who forget the past are not only in danger of repeating it, but of having no past at all.”

I recently quoted Theodore Roosevelt in this space: “Both life and death are parts of the same great adventure.” And we should be reminded that Wolfe’s adage refers to the emotions and our intellectual growth, as much as nostalgic real-estate tours. My childhood is not a house; it was spent in a home that stood there. What I am, or have achieved, as a man is no less real because my parents died after my formative years. The chapel of my affectionate memories is gone, all the more bitter because it stands as a skeleton; but my faith was not diminished because the doors are chained shut.

Indeed, the pasts we miss and the futures we distrust are seldom pieces of real estate or schoolrooms or, say, battlefields. They are of the mind, the intellect, of life-choices, emotions… in fact, the spiritual realm.

Even when we know this fact, whether we are filled with joy or anxiety, it is easy to forget: a most human part of our humanity. My heart currently grieves for the director of the writer’s conference Shawn and I attended, because she is beset by personal problems, health trials facing herself and family members, business challenges galore… (Please look for the website of Write His Answer Ministries and see the wonderful things Marlene Bagnull has done and is doing)

Christians know the Author all good things, and know who is the enemy of our souls, who comes to seek, and kill, and destroy. Words are cheap (if I can cite another old cliché) but, being a frequent victim of discouragement myself, I feel qualified to remind anyone who will listen that there is a Larger Story. We cannot always see it. But we need to remember it.

“I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,” Joshua 1: 5.

We call to our memories: we should summon the best of them. They call to us. And, whether our children live near or far, we should always be in the mode of calling them home too. Just as our Heavenly Father does to us.

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We can visit our old houses, or not. But we remember our homes. When parts of our past remember us, so to speak – “call to us” – it doesn’t mean we look backward, either to change course or to summon regrets. We are reminded, properly, that life is a continuity of traditions and values. Memories of homes, schools and churches are represented by parents, calling; just as we will be calling our children “home.” The classic song by Doyle Lawson, sung by Emmylou Harris.

Click: Calling Our Children Home