Monday Morning Music Ministry

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?

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Video Click: The Missing People Choir

Some things that occurred to me during Thanksgiving week, and things that happened to happen, as things do, that had me thinking about ordinary things in a new way.

I called the local homeless shelter in nearby Flint – as close to a soup kitchen as we can have these days; run by a ministry, like an old-fashioned revival mission – to ask if they needed a volunteer to serve, prep meals, or clean up on Thanksgiving. “No thanks,” a man said with a chuckle. “If you want to come by and help… it would be to help eat all the food we’re going to have.”

He explained that volunteers often are needed at many times during the year (duly noted) but on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, they have more offers of volunteer help than they can accommodate. “I’m sorry.”

He said he was sorry. A turn of phrase, but I know what was behind that. “There is a season, turn, turn,” goes the famous passage from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3.

In King Solomon’s words, or the folk song based on them, it does not say that there is a time to pity… although we know that we should have charitable impulses. It does not say that there is a time to “ignore,” of course: when things come our way but do not “go” our way, that is when it is our time to address them. That is what’s called Life. In Biblical perspective, lives well lived.

If we serve the poor, we should do so not out of pity, but out of love.

If (like my friend Becky Spencer and her Grand Staff Swaziland outreaches) (I will call friends I admire to my mind here) we work in overseas missions, it is not because it is easy or glamorous, but because it is right.

If spouses, children, or parents care for sick family members, the world might remark about burdens, but we know – only as we can know – that somehow such service is a blessing, not a burden.

My sister had a daughter with severe cerebral palsy, cared for her, and went through very hard times before losing Liza… but says she never could know the depth or precious quality of love except for the “crisis.”

My wife endured diabetes, heart attacks, kidney failure, strokes, cancer, amputations, and heart and kidney transplants… but never felt sorry for herself. She said till the end that she would not choose to go through it all again, but would not change it for the world. From the increased faith and reliance on God, she asked how she could be sorry for that?

Jesus, on the cross, was not sorry for Himself, but for the thieves on the crosses to the left and right. And He even forgave those who persecuted Him and hung Him out to die – for “they knew not what they did.”

The singer Bradley Walker, whose muscular dystrophy has consigned him to a wheelchair all his life, does not complain but asks sympathy rather for the family of his songwriting partner Tim Johnson who died at a young age. And the singer Rory Feek who lost his wife Joey, after she gave birth to their Down Syndrome daughter Indie – neither Joey nor Rory nor anyone who knows them feels sorry for them.

“Sorry.” It is a strange concept, stranger the more we contemplate. When we say we feel sorry for someone, it is really a form of sanitary self-pity? We will miss them, for instance?

It has been said – and it is a good lesson in perspective – that we are more fortunate than the angels. How? We can almost feel sorry for them, because as sinners seeking forgiveness, accepting Christ, and knowing the glory of salvation – we can sing, and angels simply cannot sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me!” In a way, I feel sorry for them. “I once was lost, but now I’m found!”

So let us go forth – yes, on days that are not Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter – and serve others and serve God, not out of obligation or pity or sorrow (the root-word of “sorry”) but out of a willing heart, love, and joy.

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Click: I Feel Sorry For Them

8-5-19

I am writing this in the first week of August, a time that once, and elsewhere, carries more significance than a new calendar page. In the 19th century, a lot of magazines published “Mid-Summer Numbers,” observing some sort of moment in the earth’s cycle, like taking a breath. In Europe – France especially – the entire month of August is devoted to vacations; trips far away from home. Some streets in Paris are virtually empty except for unlucky waiters and gendarmes.

For me, August reminds me of summers growing up outside New York City, in New Jersey. The Jersey Shore? Palisades Park? No, as an eternal foodie, my memories are of the best corn and the best tomatoes on earth. It is futile to seek such quality elsewhere, but these weeks beat Spring flowers and Fall harvests in many ways. De gustibus and all that…

It requires no stretch to see a spiritual aspect to the unique time between planting and harvest. We make plans, we live in hope, we anticipate; we pray. Planting seeds is a metaphor for being intentional about life, and commitments, our directions. Harvest? We anticipate the results of our work and plans. And prayers.

This week my son Ted, my daughter Emily, and I coincidentally went through separate but similar experiences, all related to the work we do. We praise God (always) for His leading, and His hand, the calling on our lives. But sometimes – without stopping to acknowledge God as the Master Farmer – it seems like we plant soybeans and we harvest alfalfa (or whatever those two plants look like; have mercy on this City boy; this is still a metaphor).

That growth period is just as important as Planting and Harvesting.

When Emily was very young, missionaries from Central America visited our little church and made a presentation about their work. Somehow their stories, their passion, affected her. As young as she was, she was overtaken with emotion and tears and… a conviction that she would serve in the missions field when she grew up. She eventually went to Bible College, joined missions trips to Mexico, Russia, and Ireland. And Ireland again. Her heart was joined there – in two ways; as she fell in love with Norman, attending a Bible college in Dublin, marrying, and being fruitful and multiplying. Still serving the Lod, of course.

Would all this have happened without that impactful visit of a missionary family decades ago? Maybe, or maybe not in the same way… but as a father I am awestruck at the growth (and nurture) of certain seeds that are planted in lives.

My friend Becky Spencer (writer, missionary, singer, songwriter) and her husband Tracy run a B+B and a Thrift Boutique in Kansas, to help finance their longtime work in Swaziland, now eSwatini in Africa. (I’m sorry, but the country’s new name sounds more like a video game to me…) It is a land with many challenges of health, poverty, disease, and education. And more. These past weeks has seen her crew from GrandStaffMinistries (.com, you know) experienced some family crises among relatives before they left America; financial challenges of course; a stolen passport at a stopover airport; stolen credit cards and money at another airport, followed by crazy rules and balky “facilitators” when help was needed; a ton-of-bricks debilitating infection to Becky herself… and so forth.

[And just as I write this, I received an emergency message from Becky in eSwatini that their facilities have caught fire that is spreading. Please pray, friends!]

Hard truth: when the devil attacks, it often means that you are doing something right. But when missions work – schools, clinics, worship centers, food sharing, teaching – is savagely attacked… is this God’s harvest for work well planned?

Well, yes, it is. For the overall accomplishments and victories of Grand Staff Ministries; for the work Emily has done and the blessings she receives; for the results of yieldedness that unfolds for Ted and me (and multiplied other testimonies), God does not bless our agendas. It’s about His plan, not our ideas of what His plan should be. He knows where we are headed. (Pssst – I can share a secret about how to know it: It is where He wants us.) And, almost always, He does not ordain where, and in what form, that harvest will be manifested.

Excuse me: He does ordain it. He just seldom shares it with us. And if we do work as unto the Lord, there are no “good” results or “bad” results; only God-results.

In fact I believe there is an aspect to spiritual planting-and-harvesting that we seldom think about. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices to serve Him, by serving others; we understand that, and we obey (not often enough, most us, but that’s another message). But our Sovereign God can use other people and other methods. But… the fact that He chooses us is a reminder that He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

It is truly the case that God wants to do a good work in us, not only in third-world kids or starving villages or abused women. By sharing Christ, sharing resources, and sharing ourselves we do not only do favors for the “lost”… but for ourselves.

And that is good theology. God will not take our lives, or our souls, for granted, as we do good. He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

Mary did not merely honor and bless Jesus by anointing His feet. She was blessed, and received honor and blessing from the Savior, for the choice she made. “The poor ye shall always have with you.” St Augustine saw that not as an admission of futility. He recognized that God wants to encourage in us, not only our loving targets, the reality of His love.

Not something only to deliver, but something to live, ourselves. Harvest time approacheth.

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Click: Thank You For Giving To the Lord

1-7-19

The last words Theodore Roosevelt spoke, before going to sleep on January 6, 1919, a century ago, were to his valet: “James, put out the light.” The next day, Vice President Thomas Marshall said, “Death had to take Theodore Roosevelt in his sleep. If he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

Famous, as suggested there, for boundless energy, but also for boundless enthusiasm, interests, and accomplishments, TR was an author of dozens of books, a legislator, cowboy and rancher, police commissioner, cabinet officer, soldier, governor, vice president, hunter and explorer, conservationist and naturalist. Loving husband and father of six children, he earned the Medal of Honor on the battlefield, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, yes, and President of the United States. For all of his success in that position, he might be the only president for whom the presidency is not the greatest item on his resume. The most interesting American.

An important aspect of TR that curiously has been neglected by history is his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious, at least the most observant, of all the presidents.

A list evaluating presidents by this rubric would be subjective at best, and a difficult one to compute and compile. Putting TR’s name at the top might surprise some people, yet that surprise itself might bear witness to the nature of his faith. It was privately held, but it permeated countless speeches, writings, and acts. His favorite Bible verse was Micah 6:8, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work around New York City with his father, whether the charity was church-related or “personal,” public or private—it was all God’s work. TR taught weekly Sunday school classes during his four years at Harvard. Throughout his life he wrote for Christian publications. During the White House years, Edith, a strong Episcopalian, invariably attended her denomination’s church across Lafayette Park, the “Church of Presidents.” The president himself usually walked a little farther to worship at a humble German Reformed church, the closest he could find to the faith of his fathers.

Roosevelt called his 1912 bare-the-soul campaign speech announcing his political principles “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination, with the words: “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical songs and closed with the hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become contributing Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a small Christian weekly news magazine—tantamount to an extremely popular ex-president today (if we had one) choosing to edit WORLD Magazine. He accepted a salary approximately one-eighth of salaries offered by magazines like Collier’s that hoped to snag TR’s services. His first essay for the magazine, telling the public why he chose to associate himself with the journal cited The Outlook’s “paying heed to the dictates of a stern morality,” and its “inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.” No fake news permitted in his space,

Roosevelt was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing, however, that he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the custom. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening—from the heart and without notes—on the Christian’s role in modern society.

TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said also that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was a thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer. In a hundred years we have not seen his like again.

Thoughts of Rick Marschall, Roosevelt scholar, author of 74 books; member, Advisory Board, Theodore Roosevelt Association.

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Click: Rick Marschall at Truman Library Institute, Kansas City Public Library

Millions of servicemen in World War I were sent abroad with New Testaments with a spiritual message from Theodore Roosevelt

Can a Christian serve in politics?

6-1-15

Many of us have come to assume that “commencement,” as in every June’s spate of Commencement exercises, means the end: ceremonies that mark the end of high-school or college or grad school stints; the end of studying; for some people, the end of emergency calls from your kids needing money in their accounts at college. (Um, it doesn’t end with diplomas.)

But of course “commencement” means beginning. It is not a mere word-exercise to keep the meaning straight. It is well that we always have the attitude that almost everything we do is preparation for the next stage. This is true about one’s first job, and it is true about one’s last job, so to speak, in Glory, for which we always should prepare.

A personal note as I commence this little essay. I will write about endings and commencements and seasons of life. I usually do in June, for graduations are useful reminders of the larger cycles wherein we spin. I have just returned from a month overseas with my daughter and son-in-law Emily and Norman; my grandchildren Elsie and Lewis; my hosts Kenny Morrison and Ann Campbell and so many other new friends. It was not easy to arrange the trip there… but less easy to leave. Circles and cycles.

Parenthetically, this week is the exact fifth anniversary of this blog. And coincidentally, we just passed precisely 100,000 subscribers, hits, visitors, and, perhaps, even eavesdroppers. And respondents, from all over the world. It is truly humbling. I thank God and Google; the web and YouTube; my amazing Web Master (and I do mean Master) Norm Carlevato; and sites that pick us and share to places unknown – RealClearReligion, AssistNews, CBN.com, etc.

Ironically the germ of these messages was, five years ago, sharing a music video with a precious friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer… and I shared the link below, on the theme of kids’ graduations (and my enthusiasm for the singer Suzy Bogguss).

So here we are, back again. Circles and cycles. And thinking about the seasons of life. For me, enjoying my grandchildren after two years. For many, children graduating, and preparing for college or some other schooling or the military. You don’t have to be a parent or a grandparent to savor the unfathomable mixed but sweet emotions at the commencements of new chapters in life. You can be a child or grandchild. The pathos might take longer to be evident, but you eventually will feel it.

When Emily’s pastor Keith McCrory drove me to the Dublin Airport last week I wept for several minutes after waving to the family. Keith finally sympathized, “It must be hard to say good-bye.” I don’t think he believed me when I protested that I had merely jammed my fingers in the car door.

But these feelings of pathos, these tears we cry, are not sad, or not 100 per cent sad. There is an elemental part of us that appreciates when a significant transition of life takes place. It is natural, it is proper, it is what comprises life, as much as breathing and sleeping and eating. But because these moments come at fewer times, and with concentrated emotions, they seem more poignant. They ARE more poignant… but not unwelcome.

When kids go off to college, or the military, or professions, they are just doing what you reared them to do. When they marry, they fulfill your dreams, not only theirs. When they leave home, sometimes to live in other states or countries… you will miss them, but you feel the pride a mother bird must feel when a young one spreads its wings and flies. Elemental.

The tears we shed when we welcome our babies to the world have the same real and virtual ingredients as the tears we shed when the world, in turn, welcomes them years later, and we say Farewell. What different emotions! But parents holding on at first, after all, is the same sort of act as parents letting go later on.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1,2, New Living Translation)

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Music vid: Singer Suzy Bogguss was barely a newlywed when her husband Doug Crider wrote this song, an early hit record of hers, about circles and cycles of life, the mysterious poignant joys of parenthood. Two decades later she drove her own daughter to college before singing it on the Grand Ole Opry. Not an easy task. To every parent this June. Happy Commencement!

Click: Letting Go

11-19-12

I had planned to write today a version of my annual Thanksgiving message – subsection B, the rant about how “Thank You” and “You’re Welcome” have become abused, misused, and confused terms these days. So, you will have a year to notice how people might still utter “thank yous” but how the responses are, these days, almost always “Thank YOU,” or “You bet,” “Sure thing,” or “No prob.” All of which invite us to think about the value of sincere thanks and heartfelt responses, social habits, and the meaning of it all. If there is a meaning.

There is a meaning, but it is worthwhile to think about social graces that expire, and why.

Instead, today, I was knocked off course by an e-mail I received from a friend; in fact, several recent e-mails. They have touched me, especially as I make the obvious link to the essence of Thanksgiving: giving thanks.

I have been rocked recently by professional and personal events, the personal matters mostly due to (and not to be mentioned in the same breath as) health crises of my wife. She has been in the hospital for almost three weeks, and this is, I think, her seventh hospitalization this year. We have had blessings and travels during the “good” periods lately, but this year has been visited by several mini-strokes, pneumonia, kidney failure, and grim diagnoses about her 17-year-out transplanted heart.

Nancy’s faith is strong, but I think she is getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. Through it all, the support of family and friends has been a comfort. And a hundred little things that are not little: the concern and indulgence of my agent and publisher; prayers from unknown and surprising places; and so forth. People who do not just say, “I’ll keep you in prayer,” but, having the face-to-face opportunity, pray right in the moment. Friends who, when they say they are willing to drop everything and help, mean it; and we know they mean it.

And the e-mail I received this morning, from a friend who did not even know of Nancy’s recent crises:

Dear Rick, I’ve been praying every day for you and for your family. I know I didn’t write to you after your grandbaby died, and I feel bad about that, but I don’t want you to think that means I don’t love you, because I do. It’s easy to pray for you. I would find it hard to forget!

But something about the season of Advent changes all that. Words start to flow like milk and honey! … If you have some time, I’d love it if I could call you and have a good talk. If not, don’t worry, I get that! But consider this message a hug and an expression of genuine friendship and great regard. My brother in Christ! It’s just so great that God loves us, and love is just such a cool thing!

Well. Is there better medicine that that? And I don’t mean to disparage the precious notes and calls from other friends, from brief “I’m thinking about you,” to long letters, all precious. A friend in Arizona with whom (I regret) I don’t speak to as often as we used to, reminds me that Thursday of every week he prays for me and my family. Another friend is bursting with news she knows I want to hear, but gives me space and a prayer that the space is occupied with blessing. Reaching out in such ways is what friends, especially Christian friends, DO.

In the family of God, NOTHING is more precious than the fact of family: we are brothers and sisters in Christ, children of a loving God who has graced us with salvation and a promise of eternal life, with Him in glory.

And part of that blessed truth is that we have a promise… but we don’t have to wait for the promise to fulfill itself in Heaven. We can know it now, and in the midst of trials, share the love of Christ in a way that the world can hear about but never FEEL, Hallelujah.

This is something we don’t often enough gives thanks for in and of itself; at least I don’t. It is a wonderful gift of God, and truly a gracious thing, because we hardly deserve it. While we were yet sinners, God visited humankind and sent His Son to assume the guilt for our sins. On this Thanksgiving week, I picture it like this: our natural selves rebel and insult God in many ways, uncountable times, and God’s response is almost like “Thank you.” Huh? “I am sending my only-begotten Son as a sacrifice for your transgressions. Believe on Him.”

That is not exactly a “Thank you,” of course, But as His “You’re welcome,” before we even repent, it is a form of advance-“Thank you”… and it merits from us a lifetime of continual “Thank YOUs” and “You’re welcomes,” and praises and gratitudes. And thanks. Of the most profound sort.

What my friend this morning showed is the proof that Christ lives in us. That is to say, such expressions as she made is evidence of the Spirit-filled heart, for we are told that in such things it is not us, but the Christ who lives within us who enables us to do such things.

I am reminded of the mirror-image, an insight Nancy had during our hospital ministry after her transplants. When Satan attacks us, it is not us whom he hates – for, clearly, he has little regard for us – but he hates the Christ within us. The more Jesus in our hearts, the more he attacks.

Abraham Lincoln set aside the third Thursday of November for the nation to gives thanks to God. He summed up sentiments of previous leaders, and anticipated powerful proclamations from some of his successors in the office. Indeed we should give thanks to God for our bounties and harvests, our material blessings. But Lincoln also admonished, and people like my dear friends remind me, that we must remember, and cannot help be thankful for, the Author of those blessings. How He works in our lives; how He lives in fellow believers; how He can, and should, inhabit our works.

Thank God.

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The moving hymn “Now Thank We All Our God,” appropriate this week and every week of our lives, has an interesting story behind it. The best hymns do. It was written by Pastor Martin Rinckart during the Thirty Years’ War. In the Saxon town of Eilenburg, the site of battles and pillage and plagues, he was the only clergyman who survived to minister to the ravaged populace. At one point he performed 50 funerals a day, and the year he wrote this hymn, 1637, he performed more than 4000 funerals. Nevertheless, in the midst of it all, he wrote “Now Thank We All Our God” for his family. Was there any way to summon peace and praise in such circumstances, except by the Holy Spirit? “Nun Danke alle Gott” was used as a theme several times by Bach, and was – and should be – a vital component of church worship ever since. It was translated into English by Catherine Winkworth in 1856.

Click: Now Thank We All Our God

3-7-11

The assassination this week of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister of Minorities in Pakistan, is a story that garnered some attention in the news, but for the most part was subsumed by other reports on related issues from the Islamic world.

Shahbaz was the only Christian in the national cabinet, a brave advocate of religious freedom before world forums and in his own land. The news that crowded his murder from the headlines included other assassinations; street protests; Christians being arrested; Muslim factional hatred; Christians fleeing their homelands; government crackdowns; Christian churches being invaded; piracy, kidnappings and murder; and Christian martyrdom, from lowly believers and pastors to prominent officials in several countries.

According to the BBC, “Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had just left his mother’s home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, say witnesses.” He routinely had been receiving death threats for urging reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. “Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan’s most populous province, were found at the scene.” Tehrik-i-Taliban told BBC Urdu they carried out the attack.

Four months ago, Shahbaz said in a video, “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross. And I am following… the cross.” He continued, “I am ready to die for the cross,” speaking these words calmly and with confidence. He knew he was reciting his own epitaph. Shahbaz was not a supernatural prophet – he surely knew the dangers to his life – rather he was a humble servant, an obedient follower.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross (Matthew 16:24).

Shahbaz correctly pinpointed the center of our world’s coming crisis – not economies nor resources nor pollution; not even religion – but the cross of Jesus Christ. And the persecuted church, in so many of the world’s fiery corners, understands this. Despite the horrible treatment of uncountable Christian martyrs, now approaching one a minute, every day, around the world, that persecuted church is being purified, like gold in a fire.

Some Christians in the West concern themselves with the “Prosperity Gospel,” and debate universalist theories that everyone is going to Heaven, “if there is a Heaven.” But Christ-followers and missionaries and martyrs elsewhere in the world work to “know Christ and make Him known.”

The “crown” is the exclusive focus of too many Christians. Christ promised an abundant life, certainly; but He offered, and warned, and promised, the burden (mysteriously, a glorious burden!) of the “cross.” Plausible Christianity is that the Crown awaits us in Heaven; and the Cross is our lot here.

“It is one thing to kneel at the foot of the cross for forgiveness; it is quite another thing to get on that cross to follow Jesus in His death. But it is the only way to live the resurrected life. This is what it means to be His disciple. When we live the crucified life, nothing can truly harm us. You can’t hurt a dead person.” So wrote a friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer, this week. “Our churches are filled with bored, dissatisfied Christians. Not because our God isn’t enough, but because most of them have only visited the cross once for salvation. It is meant to be embraced every day.”

I did not know Shahbaz Bhatti. Three of my close friends did, but I cannot say that I would speak his mind here. However, his murder this week has me thinking more than ever about the persecution of Christians, and our proper response as believers ourselves – response not alone to the situation of martyrs, but response to Christ’s commission. And it all has to do with the Cross, the Cross.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, but not necessarily from the effects of our sins; nor the world’s persecution; nor evil, punishment, or sickness; all because there is sin in the world. And as He offers forgiveness from sin, it might be said that He did not come to grab us from hell or push us into Heaven. His ministry was to keep hell out of people, and put Heaven into us, so to speak. We are to do His work while we are here.

Christians often think we have to “close the deal” and assure that people have eternal life. But all we can do is quote the Promise. To presume that we can do any more might be to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, whose work this really is. Believers, by responding to the invitation to believe on Jesus, have a say in that; and God, of course, is the Judge.

So what is left? To servants like Shabaz Bhatti, and to missionaries in heathen areas (including – think about it – you and me, right in our neighborhoods), our work is to do Christ’s work. Here. And now. Working to keep hell out of people and planting a little Heaven – by sharing belief in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us, as Shahbaz testified; that He is not just one way, but the way to God – this must be our mission. And our privilege. And our Cross.

Jesus frankly said that the world will hate that message. It hated that message when He spoke it, and He was crucified on the cross. It hates that message when we speak it, and the world will likewise and therefore hate us. To take up the Cross and follow Him is not an option. It is as much of being a Christian as confessing Jesus as Savior.

The Book of Revelation tells us that to add or subtract a word from scripture is anathema, yet I would venture to say that in Heaven another verse has been added this week to Hebrews, Chapter 11. That book is “the Hall of Fame of Faith,” listing great heroes and martyrs of the faith – many of whom did not live to see the fruits of their service and sacrifice. “By faith, Shahbaz…”

God bless you, brother. None of your countrymen will come closer to the Truth through the motives of a dozen cowardly murderers. But I pray that millions will see the Truth through your martyrdom, your purity of faith, your service to the cross of Christ. And He will be glorified. Amen.

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In honor of Shabaz Bhatti and persecuted Christians worldwide:

Click: Anthem of the Persecuted

I want to acknowledge the words and wisdom of three friends who were privileged to know Shahbaz — Hope Flinchbaugh, Marlene Bagnull, and Dan Wooding, for whom this week has been trying; Becky Spencer (“sure you can quote me – the Holy Spirit doesn’t copyright inspiration!”); and insights I gained this week while researching a book, from messages by Lyman Abbott.