Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-22-23

If you live in a city, you can see the moon and a few stars in the night sky. In suburbs on clear nights you can find Venus and Mars and maybe the famous constellations. In the Great Plains or on ocean cruises, look up at the night sky and you will never lose your wonderment at the blanket of planets and stars, twinkling like sparkles on a pretty date’s dress and shoes. If you are fortunate to have beheld the Milky Way, you know it more resembles a magical, glowing ribbon than a band of individual stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope is treating us to pictures of billions of stars; galaxies previously unknown; “events” in space calculated to have happened billions of light-years ago (or away, take your pick of terminology) – that actually might have “burned out” by now, despite their images traveling 187,000 miles per second and only coming close to our view now.

Whether you believe the universe is 6000 years old or sixty-skillion years old, your hair may start hurting now over such thoughts.

Speaking of stars. And hair. I got a chuckle this week from a review of a book called Observer by a “scientist,” Robert Lanza, co-written with a science-fiction writer. Not really a review; rather, a collection of quotations and self-congratulations on Lanza’s own website.

Breathless endorsements suggest that the authors have kissed the Face of Truth in their construction of themes – like the serious-sounding quantum-physics hoodoo – basically, that our thoughts can influence the physical universe. An MSNBC “Science Editor” claims that “special relativity and quantum mechanics have provided solid grounding for the idea that the act of observation has an effect on external phenomena.” (Why doesn’t he “visualize” better ratings? …but I digress.)

A few years ago Dr Jim Garlow and I co-authored The Secret Revealed in which book we took the New Age best-seller The Secret to task. Besides peeling back its absurd claims and century-old rostrums, we applied logic on one hand, and a little detective work on the other. For instance, the author’s blatant misquoting of supposed experts in “thinking and realization” like Winston Churchill. She quoted Martin Luther King, and we reached out to his niece Alveda who denied that Dr King ever meant, or said, the things attributed to him in that book.

Yet The Secret “spoke” to a million itching ears, promoted on Oprah and elsewhere. And today its author is working on a sequel, and, surprise, endorses Observer as a book of substantial import. She is cited as a “#1 New York Times bestselling author,” not a fabulist, but she says that Lanza “has taken the gigantic step of incorporating his ideas into a science fiction novel…. Often-complex concepts are illuminated through a riveting and moving story.” She claims that Lanza’s previous work has “backed up everything I knew to be true on a spiritual level…. It is the leading-edge scientists such as Dr. Robert Lanza who will help take humanity out of the dark ages and into a new world.”

The authors say about themselves that “if life and consciousness are really central to everything else, then countless puzzling anomalies in science enjoy immediate clarification…. The simplest [?] explanation is that the laws and conditions of the universe allow for the observer because the observer generates them.”

Obviously this book and its proponents and its promotion do precisely what the contemporary world does – blurring lines between science and fiction; intelligence and “Artificial Intelligence”; and truth and lies. The phrase I used above, “itching ears,” is from the Bible, about people who crave unreality. A country-music song title captured the impulse well: “Lie To Me.”

The extensive review and promotion, just as with The Secret and myriad other manifestations of today’s culture, addresses the most serious matters and questions about reality – existence; the physical universe; our roles in life – but never utters one word about God.

How we got here… why we are here… who created the billions of stars… who created, well, us? Forget science fiction or this book specifically: those questions, and their answer, are seldom addressed seriously any more in media, in schoolrooms, in education… sadly, less and less in churches. Hint: The answer is God.

Authors and movie-makers and Oprah can speculate – and even believe – all their nonsense all they want, but I am still thrilled by quotations from another Book:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have ordained, what are mortals, that You should be mindful of them; mere human beings, that You should seek them out?

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father seeing. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than sparrows!

I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesmen to the world.

No two snowflakes are alike. We cannot survey the uncountable stars. We contemplate the numbers of grains of sand on the earth’s shores. And yet the Creator of all this, of the universe seen and unseen, has created us too… and knows everything about us.

More than that: He cares more about you and me than about everything else in His creation. That’s what He tells us. Is someone like Him going to lie? He cannot.

No fiction in His Book.

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Click: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

11-23-20

We have just been through a presidential campaign like no other. In other breaking news, the sky is blue – that is to say, it is evident to almost everybody that this election was far from ordinary.

But I am speaking as a trained and published historian when I point out that there have been contested elections almost as bitter. The elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, for instance, had delayed results, “rotten bargains,” and probably fraudulent outcomes. In 1960, John F Kennedy’s father called his vassal, Mayor Daley of Chicago, to “discover” Democrat votes in Illinois to take that state’s electoral votes away from Republicans. On that razor’s edge, Richard Nixon lost the presidency. In 2000, the national results seemed to come down to hundreds of votes in teeter-totter Florida. After Al Gore ran to courts here and there, in 37 days he lost the presidency to George W Bush.

Those elections are only anomalies regarding the contested results. There also were campaigns of dirt, sleaze, scandal, bribery, lies, and slander… much rougher, actually, than in 2020. Washington, our sainted Founder, was treated horribly in the press, and his rival Jefferson (and his rival Hamilton) even worse – moral turpitude and such. Andrew Jackson was libeled for having killed a man and married his wife illegally (she died, partly in shame, about the time he took office). Abraham Lincoln was called a baboon, frankly throughout his presidency.

U. S. Grant’s problems with alcohol were joyously portrayed by opposing cartoonists. Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, in the Victorian days of 1884; he admitted to the fact but was elected anyway. During that campaign, correspondence soliciting bribes written by his rival, James G Blaine, when Speaker of the House, were exposed. In 1896 Democrat candidate William Jennings Bryan was regularly depicted as a demented anarchist. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt called President William Howard Taft a “fathead” with brains “less than those of a guinea pig,” and Taft called former President Roosevelt a “dangerous egotist.”

In contrast, one might think that 2020 was beanbags.

But there has been a difference, and a serious difference. It is a difference that exposes a possibly fatal malady in our Republic; a challenge to all citizens but to Christian patriots especially.

It is not the nature of discourse that should trouble us or, as I have pointed, is that different than disgraceful, quadrennial mud-fights of the past. It is a barely redeeming aspect of American democracy that in the past, the partisan enemies have dusted themselves off and civilly conducted their business. Government by Hypocrisy.

In our times, however, peoples’ basic humanity is questioned and slandered. Platforms, motives, standards, beliefs, sincerity, honesty, and actions are not merely questioned but disbelieved and ridiculed. For what Donald Trump promised in 2016 – and mostly delivered, in itself a departure in presidential politics – his enemies considered him worthy of being destroyed. Not defeated, but destroyed.

A further departure from historical tradition is that these vicious schemes were more personal than partisan; and they began, not in the post-convention season of 2020, but the moment President Trump completed his oath of office four years ago.

It is very important – and very difficult in our contemporary news-cycle and sound-bite culture – for citizens to realize how different this situation is from any time in the American past. How profoundly poisonous. How deep-seated in origin. And how difficult it is to return from. God forbid that we have not passed the point of no return in these civic cancers.

I address Christian patriots above because we are not the only segment of society to be concerned about moral drift. Some on the other side, in fact, think they have a monopoly on morality, and that becomes an excuse for rebellion, subversion, and violence.

As Christians we are aware of Higher Morality, and the necessity of calibrating that to all of our convictions, decisions, and acts. I am outlining a political essay that would in effect ask liberals and radicals, “For four years you have tried to teach us how to treat a president with whom we disagree. Shall I now adopt your methods?” Of course that would seem to be a child’s game of tit-for-tat…

Wouldn’t it? But how should we then act? This question addresses near-term questions about ballot fraud, and long-term attitudes toward government policies on abortion, education, free speech. And more.

“Rules are made to be broken.” That is a sarcasm thrown about informally. There is more determinism than morality in the proposition, as in “mangers are hired to be fired.” But for Christians, rules – adopted or broken – are the types of formulations that are meant to be in flux; adaptable; open to comment, challenges, and change; understood to meet the exigencies of the moment.

Mature discernment, when exercised with responsible citizenship, persuades me that situations allow for rules to be broken.

“Obey the law.” Yes, render unto Caesar. …the things that are Caesar’s. Submit to authorities. Even Jesus went to jail. Disciples went to prison. If the laws, “right” or wrong, sent them there, they complied. But they opposed certain laws, and when the Holy Spirit sent an earthquake the Apostles walked out. There was no democracy in the first-century Roman Empire. There is, today, or supposed to be, in America. In a democracy you obey the law… or submit to the consequences.

Mature discernment, when exercised with responsible citizenship, persuades me, like Martin Luther and Martin Luther King alike, that unjust laws must be challenged.

“Keep the Faith.” Friends, let this become our watchword… but only the first half. An annoying aspect of Obama’s 2008 campaign was the vagueness of his slogans. “Hope.” “Change we can believe in” – changing what, exactly? And “Yes we can!” – can what? The meanings were deliberately elusive, as he gambled on a pliant, gullible electorate.

The same is a danger of “Keep the faith.” Never share that with a complete, intentional meaning. Demand of yourself: Faith in Jesus? Faith that God answers prayer? Faith to pray without ceasing? Faith that our opponents may change their hearts (as we change the laws)? Faith that God is in control?

Faith that if we are forced to go the route of civil disobedience in the next years, God, who protected those in the fiery furnace?

Faith that as we walk through the shadow of death – because we might – God will be with us?

Faith enough to pray, not only that God be on our side, but, as Lincoln maturely discerned, that we be on God’s side?

The Holy Spirit brings gifts of discernment. We can not proceed without it. Especially in these next four years.

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Music Vid: “Help Me” (For readers with hand-held devices, click or paste: )

7-8-19

Many well-meaning agnostics, and ill-intentioned atheists, and clueless friends who think they are being “welcoming,” showing they can meet Christians half-way, will intone that they regard Jesus as a “great man,” surely a “great teacher.”

Close on the heels of such specious arguments often come the “open-minded” assertions that every religious tradition has great teachers… that all of these teachers must lead to god (whatever they think god is)… that all the teachers all preached peace. And taught how to get along. Didn’t they?

Regarding the chief attributes of Jesus as being a good man and a great teacher: these are worse insults than outright denial that He was God incarnate. Blasphemy. (Blasphemy, by the way, is the one “unforgivable” sin spoken of in the Bible.)

An incomplete God is not God at all.

A “shadow God” is one or the other, not both. Jesus casts shadows. He is the Light Of the World. He is “the image of the One True God; the first-born of all Creation.”

Other “teachers” of other religions did not claim to be more than teachers or prophets; does everyone know that? Jesus, however, claimed to be the Messiah – “I and the Father are One” – literally, God-with-us.

Other religious leaders died. Alone of them all, Jesus rose from the dead, and physically ascended to Heaven.

“Oh, I respect Him as a great man, a wise teacher.” Your friends who say that to you are in effect calling Him a liar – funny thing for a Holy Man to be! – because Jesus was the Son of God who taught; yes. But He also healed. He read minds and convicted people of their sins. He raised others from the dead. He performed a multitude of miracles, recorded not only in the Bible but in contemporary accounts. Miracles.

He taught love, yes. But, more, He was love.

Can mere teachers transform lives; heal families and their pain; redeem the desperate among us? Can a mere teacher have turned my own heart from inclinations toward sin to seeking forgiveness, redemption, and holiness? Teachers can try – religious and secular teachers both – but only Jesus, come to earth for these missions, can do these things, be these things.

You say Jesus was a good man, a great teacher? Let me say in love: shut up – I have got some life-changing details to share with you. Good man, great teacher… are the first two of uncountable check-boxes in the list that describes my Savior and Friend, Jesus.

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Click: Yes, I Know

3-12-18

I’m going to revisit a couple places I have been to recently; and shared here. One is a place of memories, and imprints my soul. The other is physical, also soul-stirring.

I have written about Billy Graham’s effect on the world during the near-century of his ministry. People in my family were transformed from nominal Christianity to an on-fire commitment to be new creatures in Christ; and those changes spread to other family members, to friends and neighbors, to children, nieces, nephews, and godchildren. Billy Graham touched millions.

I was part of a planned PBS documentary, ultimately never finished, about American religious music. At one point, however, the crew traveled to Billy Graham’s Conference center, the Cove in North Carolina (where his funeral was held and seen on TV). Dr Graham’s Parkinson’s Disease kept him from granting an interview, but we did meet Joni Earecksen, who was there on a retreat with her mother; and Crusade leader Cliff Barrows; and “America’s Gospel Singer,” George Beverly Shea, who had been with Dr Graham since the mid-1940s.

Switch to another re-visit. Last week I wrote about visiting Colorado and taking a few days to luxuriate in God’s majesty. The excitement of a writer’s conference and historic Denver was followed by trips to the thin air and magnificent vistas of Breckenridge and Vail.

Snow-capped mountains (not quite enough snow for the skiiers) and deep valleys; profound silences and distant, circling eagles; deep blue skies and blinding white snow; the mysteries of Creation.

On other trips to this high “corner” of the world, every May in Estes Park – and will be, this year, too – I am on the faculty of another Christian Writers Conference, conducted by Write His Answer Ministries. Many years, some of us spend the “day after” decompressing and enjoying fellowship, up, up, up, even higher than the grand YMCA Conference Camp.

Above the tree line, past where pine trees alone grow, to mountaintops where the only “vegetation” is the green covering on rocks, lichens – not a moss, but nature’s strange hybrid of algae and fungus, no two tiny of which are alike. Signs warn against stepping on lichens, because they take two centuries to regenerate. Those mountaintops, when we reach them, are as other-worldly as the lichens. Frigid air but definitely shirt-sleeve conditions; snow that other signs claim might be 100 years old; and views of seemingly bottomless gorges and… even high peaks above.

One year several of us stood on a cliff, taking it all in, occasionally whispering that a fly-speck below might have been a mountain sheep or a giant hawk….

And someone of us started humming the old hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” Then the words. We all joined in, singing softly. I can tell you that when the air is cold but the sun is bright, tears do not freeze quickly as they run down your cheeks.

These two memories gently collided this week in my mind… because that hymn was one of George Beverly Shea’s signature hymns, such to millions around the world. This week it came to mind again, appreciating that song and that God whose world it is.

But another thought collided, too. Prompted by missions newsletters from a friend in Africa… letters from friends, several, with family deaths and news of cancer diagnoses… flying into Detroit and driving home past Flint, Michigan… I was reminded that life’s mountains only rise in magnificence when contrasted with the valleys below. Life’s valleys are often dark, frequently dangerous, and always reminders of “the pictures from life’s other side.”

The uncountable souls who suffer from disease and despair; persecution and oppression; violence and assault… the countries where people are herded from their homes and where starvation is their lot… where they suffer for their consciences and cannot be free… where the shuttered homes of Detroit and the slums of Flint would be palaces to many desperate people…

these people? these conditions? these places?

THEY are parts of our Father’s world, too.

God would have us praise Him, and be forever grateful for the beauty of His creation, surely. But we cannot believe that He would forgive us – we cannot allow ourselves to forget the fact – that there are other parts of God’s world, too.

And a funny thing occurred to me on that mountaintop: we cannot move mountains or create such scenes as in the Rockies or Alps. But we CAN change slums and build neighborhoods. We can watch for eagles and sheep as they hunt for food, but we can actually feed our own neighbors.

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Click: This Is My Father’s World

10-3-16

Ever since as I was a young boy, I heard adults talking about elections, and resignedly saying that they would, sigh, be voting for the lesser of two evils.

I picked up the mantra when I achieved majority, not as a matter of patrimony, but because the choices invariably were and are crummy. There were exceptions – I enthusiastically supported Ronald Reagan – but I frequently have voted for third-party candidates or skipped presidential ballots.

For a while I would not vote at all, local or national elections, on the premise that doing so would just encourage the scoundrels.

Eventually I realized that a wisecrack is an inadequate substitute for civic responsibility. Slightly more sophisticated was my objection that illiterate welfare scammers had the same “say” that I did… but abdication in the game we call democracy only enhances the self-defeating aspects of my inchoate protest.

Now I am fully engaged, voting and debating and writing columns and drawing political cartoons and glued to C-SPAN like a dog in heat. But, the more engaged I am, the more enraged I am.

That a nation of approximately one-third of a billion people cannot produce better presidential candidates then the two (or four) major candidates we are stuck with… is demoralizing. With troubling implications for the future – heck, the present state – of our republic. We have a flawed system, surely; but we also are in a tailspin in almost every sphere of national life. Politics is merely the mostly visible symptom. In this season, the nearest whipping-boy.

As I have evolved to a Christian Patriot, and as an essayist in this realm, the choices would seem to be clearer, the decisions easier to make. We all have checklists and litmus tests, whether clearly biblical or informed by our faith. Even secular voters have criteria, perhaps more so.

So why do so many Christian patriots – “value voters” – feel seriously conflicted this year? Being on the horns of a dilemma has never been so uncomfortable!

This week the author of books in Christian field Philip Yancey said in an interview that he was “baffled” that “Evangelicals” (a term of deliberate ambiguity, but that is another topic) could support a Donald Trump. He defined Trump as a “bully” who has taken positions contrary to the Bible and has been thrice-married and has built casinos.

Yancey is correct on the resume of Trump. I do not disagree. Personally, I don’t think I would like Trump as a neighbor, much less as a president.

There was a relative firestorm of response on social media, and Yancey quickly stated that he was not implicitly endorsing Hillary Clinton. In fact, without the clarification, of course the “implicit” endorsement was inferred by his many followers. To me, his greater offense was pretending to be “baffled” by “Evangelical” support for Trump. Our angst, our debates, our essays, our, yes, social-media posts are legion. Everywhere. For many people – many Christians, even many Yancey acolytes – support for Trump has been discussed endlessly.

For some, support is reluctant. For some, it might be automatic. For some, it is painful and anguished. Two prominent names in Christianity (neither of them ministers, by the way) have reached different positions: Falwell Junior, Yay; Yancey, Nay.

Christians in a democracy must realize the implications of supporting Hillary Clinton. She has also lied, is corrupt, doesn’t act like Jesus in myriad ways. Her hands arguably are dirtier, or bloodier, from her militant support of abortions. Lying to Benghazi parents. Spinning new absurdities about her e-mails, servers, and Foundation shenanigans. Start there.

Any (and every) candidate is going to be flawed. Does Yancey think “Evangelicals” should not vote for anyone? Of course not. He now says he will not vote for any presidential candidate this year. For my part, “been there, done that.” I think the only thing that Christian voters can be sure of about this election, about the choices facing us, is that there is no easy choice. You will not wake up tomorrow morning, slap your forehead in a V-8 moment, and realize that you have missed the obvious answer.

Another thing I did when I was a kid was to go to Union Square Park in lower Manhattan and listen to the speakers, most of them crackpot and most of them Communist, spout off to ersatz audiences of transients and passersby. A dying phenomenon, really – maybe the young Obama, on ghetto street corners of Chicago, was among the last – but I considered them to redolent of earlier days, and London’s Hyde Park. (I honed my debate skills, such as they are, in Union Square. Also my talent for heckling.) Like so many other things, this phenomenon has not so much disappeared as it has morphed into electronic social media. Now, gasbags (save yourself the Comments) float on electrons instead of standing on soap boxes.

… which is either democracy at work, or a pressure-valve from more serious dissatisfaction and dissent. I think violent days of protest and civil disobedience are coming soon, from sides of the political spectrum. But that, too, is for another time here.

In the meantime, we still are face-to-face with a seething, ugly, menacing dilemma. And we cannot escape it. We are in a horrible place — we Christians in this “democracy” — and nothing will save us but One thing. We know that Person. But other things can guide us, good, bad, and “Mister In Between.” Am I going to vote, once again in my life, while holding my nose?

Yes. I am going to hold my nose and vote. Any well-intentioned Christian patriot wanting to stay home, or abide a Clinton presidency, explicitly endorses an extremist Supreme Court, further erosion of Constitutional rights, more regulations favoring abortion and the homosexual agenda, uncountable immigration numbers from Mexico and from terrorist lands. Et cetera. That can sound like my opinion, but Hillary would thank me for stating her positions succinctly.

If Christians stay home, they should be consistent, and withdraw from all government activities and programs; all schools and institutions; all media… because everything is corrupted. “Let the Supreme Court [a response might say] go wacko. God is in control; He will see us through; His eye is on the sparrow and He watches over us.”

I agree. But He is watching us kill ourselves, too.

Under a sovereign God, Christianity is not a democracy. Conversely, once the Founders accepted pluralism, this is not a theocracy. I hate the thought of voting for “the lesser of two evils”… because that implies that both choices are evil. Neither Christianity nor a republic are roulette-tables, either. But I will take my chances.

One candidate is certain to continue the secular agenda, the war on believers, and a Frightening New World. The other has, among other things, promised to maintain Constitutional guarantees, restore traditional values, reverse governmental overreach, respect Christian expressions in school, courtrooms, public squares… If Trump keeps only a quarter of such promises, we will be better off.

One is the Lesser of two evils.
The other is the Evil of two Lessers.

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God DOES watch over us. That should bring us comfort! Here is the wonderful Ethel Waters, near the end of her life, singing the great song about God’s Eye on the Sparrow, at a Billy Graham crusade. BUT, as we take comfort from these lyrics, let us remember that He feeds the sparrows… but as He watches, we are accountable for how we respond to His care.

Click: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

Andrae Crouch has died. For the few who don’t know his name, that gap is filled by the fact that all of America and much of the world knows his music. His pop credentials included movie scores (“The Lion King,” “The Color Purple”), producing and working with Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, and many others. But he was a gospel singer, composer, preacher, first. And foremost. His father pastored the New Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ, a Holiness / Pentecostal church in Los Angeles; and he and his sister Sandra succeeded in the pulpit.

His many hymns and gospel songs became hits on gospel radio and especially, at first, in churches of the Jesus Movement and the Charismatic Renewals decades ago. Then they spread, ironically (for Andrae was Black) more and more into the Black church, and into the hymnals of mainstream denominations. The songs God gave him are eternal: if the Lord tarries, people will be moved to tears, and to repentance, by Andrae’s songs for generations to come.

They will hear in his lyrics the same problems they have; the same doubts and overcoming; the same humility and gratitude; the same victories; the same joy.

Andrae did have many problems and challenges. The Holy Spirit gave him spiritual persistence. Because he prayed for that. This man who performed at humble urban missions and at vast Billy Graham crusades, winning seven Grammys along the way, fought throat cancer for a decade, and died at 72 from a heart attack.

His very first composition was “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,” now a standard Communion hymn in many churches. Other familiar gospels songs are “My Tribute,” whose familiar incipit line is “To God Be the Glory”; “Take Me Back”; “Soon and Very Soon”; “Jesus Is the Answer”; “Let the Church Say Amen”; and “Through It All.”

My old friend Craig Yoe, who knew Andrae before either of them was a household name, is our Guest Essayist today:

What a week! First my cartoonist comrades, their co-workers and others – and freedoms – were murdered by horrible, horrible masked terrorists. And on January 8, I learned that the great Andrae Crouch has passed from this coil that is so mortal. 

I feel for and pray for the musical artist’s family. 

They might find some very small comfort in their great loss to know that in reviewing Andrae’s signature song “Through It All,” after hearing of his demise, that I have found some healing for my own heart troubled by the world’s agony.

Andrae Crouch was such a great human being. I had him sing at the hippie-church in Akron, Ohio in the early 1970s that I pastored. And I engaged him to perform with his musical associates, including his gifted sister Sandra, for a special concert I produced back in the day.

I’ll always remember when he came to my little home. After dinner the smiling Andrae jumped up to scrub the dishes. Jesus set the example of leadership by washing feet; Andrae, in that spirit, washed and dried my rummage sale-bought chipped-up dishes. 

After the concerts of Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, Andrae would jump up from the piano to talk to folks who came forward to shake his hand and offer thanks. And he’d seek out the often forlorn ones of that group suffering from drugs and other abuses of life, and share with them into the wee hours of the night. You know, the people who were the “least of these.” 

Andrae and I disagreed on things, like his belief that faith should bring people wealth, but he certainly was no respecter of persons and generous with his time – and wealth. 

Andrae would always look people straight in the eye with love, leaning in close and call the folks he was conversing with “brother” and “sister.” That wasn’t just some off-hand catch-phrase with the singer/minister. He deeply believed it, and so did the people he talked to as a result. 

Everybody was family. I even remember Andrae generously inviting me and my ex to come stay with him. He told me there were plenty of people there. I got the idea that his home was always open.  

He just couldn’t turn off the love. 

Oh, and, of course, Andrae Crouch was a brilliant, moving, singer filled with the Holy Spirit – that goes without saying.

And he was recognized by the non-brethren and sisters. Andre was the go-to guy when people like Michael Jackson and Madonna wanted a gospel sound for a song they were recording. The dude won seven Grammys – not too shabby! 

I’m sure Andrae wasn’t perfect. But he lived a life that was exemplary. Lord knows we need the likes of more of him in this world. He has left the world and we all now must step up. 

We’ll miss this brother’s example. But, wow, the heavenly choir just got better!

I remember Andrae closing his concerts with “Through It All” and asking the audience at the end to sing along. And this part is still in my head decades later… 

I’ve had many tears and sorrows,
I’ve had questions for tomorrow,
There’s been times I didn’t know right from wrong.
But in every situation,
God gave me blessed consolation,
That my trials come, to only make me strong.

Through it all,
Through it all,
I’ve learned to trust in Jesus,
I’ve learned to trust in God.

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Craig Yoe has been a worker with the blind, a sewer worker, a nightclub owner, a church pastor, a banana salesman, a toy inventor, a creative director for The Muppets, Disney, and Nickelodeon, an author, a book designer, and a cartoonist of sorts. 

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Many Christians have memorized the words, even if not the tune, to an internal verse of “Through It All,” explaining brilliant mysteries of life’s challenges: “I thank God for the mountains, and I thank Him for the valleys; I thank Him for the storms He brought me through. For if I’d never had a problem, I wouldn’t know that God could solve them; I’d never know what faith in God could do.” A sermon in song. I dont’t know if ever made a song of this, but in last painful years, Andrae said he was given a message, and prayed to God: “Lord, heal the wounds, but leave the scars.” A humble, gifted servant. Performing here: CeCe Winans and a room of gospel legends at the Billy Graham Retreat Center, the Cove.

Click: Through It All

11-10-14

Families of certain traditional observances pray before every meal. This is probably less common than in the past; I do not know. I migrated from a faith tradition where rote prayers were recited, to an exercise of spontaneous thanks; from leading or corporate prayers, to an individual thanking God. Usually the latter prayer has a correlative effect of letting the meal cool, but God will see that many are cold but few are frozen.

My sisters and I, in unison, recited the sing-song verse (that did not, actually, rhyme perfectly): “God is great, God is good; and we thank Him for this food. Amen.”

As I grew up I understood quite clearly that such thanks were due God even when we had boiled beef tongue, or liver and onions, waiting. It is the principle of the thing; another meaning of “good taste.” In that spirit I never failed to pray, sometimes to myself, when dining at my mother-in-law’s table, years later. If you ever had one of her meals you would understand why most of my silent prayers were lifted AFTER I ate what I could.

Back to topic, which is not so much an early Thanksgiving meditation as to offer some thoughts about “God is great,” as per the childhood prayer.

God, being God, and as much as He reveals of Himself, surely is great. Our understanding is imperfect, partly because He reveals Himself through scripture and in the Person of His Son… and yet we have but the smallest, most fleeting, impression of who He is. We see as through a glass darkly, as with many things. Yet, though we might someday understand Him more – let us say as the angels in Heaven see and understand – that will still fall short. If we were to know Him fully, we would be as God, and that will never be.

His mysteries are to be wondered at, not jealously coveted. I like it that way (which is just as well, because that is cosmic reality). SEEKING to know Him better, wanting new ways to please Him, desiring His will so that I might obey more and more – these are the sweet assignments of the believer.

Can we see these mysteries and sometimes-hidden attributes of God, the continuous revelation of His character, as a definition of Great in the context of that childhood prayer? – “God is great, God is good”?

Indeed we can. And that goes beyond the reminder of very different meanings of “great” and “good.”

That childhood prayer, despite its innocent simplicity, addresses the crux of the contemporary debate about the existence of God. That debate is, I believe, the defining proposition of Western Civilization’s crisis. We are, without doubt, in a post-Christian society. Nietzsche first posited the question, “Is God dead?” not as theological argument, but to observe that when God is no longer the motive force behind a civilization’s standards and judgments; when mankind ceases to acknowledge Him in the arts, in law, in morality, in education, in science… He is, very much in effect, dead to that culture.

Christians must resuscitate God in our culture: not that He needs our assistance, being God; but so that we assert His rightful place in our affairs, so that we properly honor Him again, because it is, as the old liturgies used to say, “truly meet and right so to do.” After all, when we let our foundation-stones crumble… well, you don’t have to be an architect to know how houses can fall.

So, believers, it is our duty to fight back against the creeping (galloping?) secularization of our society.

I ask you notice something, however, that is inherent in that childhood prayer. Remember this as you assay the issues (and, believe me, this issue underlies EVERY worldview topic you can think of) or discuss matters with skeptics and agnostics and atheists and secularists and relativists. Many of those folks begin their arguments with “How can there be a God who…” or “Why would a loving God permit” this or that.

When people begin their arguments about God in those ways, notice that they are not denying the existence of God: they are complaining about His ways, or His attributes, or how He doesn’t follow the scripts that skeptics would lay out. They are not demanding that you admit there is no God, even as they might think that such is their belief (or non-belief)… they are just annoyed that He is not fitting their own job descriptions.

Truly, if people did not believe in God, or a god, at all, they would simply go home to their knitting. What difference would it make? So even if they do not realize it, they basically – deep down in their hearts – acknowledge a God. We should talk to them, and pray for them, with the attitude that these people are already on the road, and just need guiding hands.

A case in point that we should think about is the late skeptic Christopher Hitchens, who made a career in his last years, before cancer claimed him, doing roadshows with Dinesh D’Sousa debating the existence of God. Hitchens’ best-seller at the time was a book titled “God Is Not Good.” Blasphemous? Just short, maybe, but my point is that the title automatically supposes – rather than denies – the existence of God. Skeptics like Hitchens are only lingering at the Suggestion Box, perhaps, we pray, on their way to the sinner’s rail.

A hymn that I think could be the theme-music of this message is reportedly America’s second-favorite hymn after “Amazing Grace.” As such, “How Great Thou Art” often is assumed to be an ancient hymn, but it is barely 125 years old. A poem written by the Swede Carl-Gustav Boberg was translated into English by Stuart K. Hine. Its origin is the account of Boberg walking home and beset by a sudden violent storm. When it cleared he was not only grateful for his safety but impressed by the suffused sunlight, birdsongs, and distant church bells. At home he wrote the familiar words so loved by many.

Its tune was from a Swedish folk tune that is so elemental that it has similarities to later songs like the gospel “Until Then,” and, ironically, the march “Horst Wessel Lied.” But “How Great Thou Art” wended its way from Sweden to Germany to the Baltic states (Estonia, principally), to Russia, England, and America. It was still largely unknown to the church community in the US when it was sung by George Beverly Shea at a Billy Graham crusade in Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1957. Cliff Barrows has reported that it was sung more than a hundred times during that crusade, and possibly was the reason the crusade services were extended and held over.

It has been a standard ever since, not only of the Billy Graham services, but of church meetings, funerals, camp meetings, and concerts.

Attractive tune, certainly. The song’s structure “builds,” and makes an emotional impression. But surely the impact derives from the message – the song says what we cannot otherwise easily put into words. When our hearts burst, when our minds are excited, when our lips fail us… then sing our souls, How Great Thou Art!

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Here is one of the impactful renditions of “How Great Thou Art” you will ever hear (and that would rival Bev Shea and Elvis and Carrie Underwood and hundreds of others). RoseAngela Merritt singing the hymn a cappella in St. Anne’s church that was built next to the Pools of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed the crippled man. The site, and acoustics, the emotional rendering, are outstanding.

Click: How Great Thou Art

4-22-13

George Beverly Shea, who provided the theme music, in a real way, to the faith of several generations of Christians, died on Tuesday, April 16, 2013.

He lived to the age 104. One hundred and four was the a number that had many people talking when they heard of Bev Shea’s passing. Yet other numbers are more significant. Two hundred million is the approximate number of people before whom he performed his hymns, live, through the years. Sixty-five is how many years ago he joined Billy Graham’s ministry. Seventy is the number of albums he recorded. Ten is the number of Grammy nominations he received.

And “countless” is the number of people who profoundly were touched by Bev Shea’s sincere renditions; and countless the number of souls he ushered into Heaven through his music ministry.

So 104, by itself, is not a significant number. A form of an old joke addresses the chronological milepost: “Just reach 103, and be very careful!” But the 16th-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote: “The value of life is not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet very little.”

Bev Shea’s career is a testament to a life of value, lived yielded to the Holy Spirit. His part in the story of the three men who were the core of hundreds of crusades – more than 60 years of friendship with each other, and friendship with Jesus – is remarkable. Those men were Bev Shea, singer; Cliff Barrows, musical director and host; and Billy Graham.

Many great preachers and evangelists have surrounded themselves with music and musicians, knowing that between heartfelt hymns and catchy gospel songs, there was “bait” enough to attract people not yet secure in their faith. Martin Luther had Johannes Walther… and J. S. Bach, 200 years later. Dwight L Moody had Ira Sankey, and Fanny Crosby’s hymns. Billy Sunday had Homer Rodeheaver. Billy Graham himself admitted he never would have had a successful ministry without Bev Shea’s singing. Graham’s own singing talents were charitably described by Bev as sustaining the “malady of no melody.”

Many advertisements and handbills for early crusades read, “BEV SHEA SINGS… Billy Graham will preach.” Indeed, it seemed the cart approached the horse when the unknown fledgling preacher Billy Graham knocked on the door of Bev Shea’s office at WMBI, Moody Bible Radio in Chicago, and asked the famous singer to join him. Bev accepted, reminding more than a few people of Jesus calling a diverse group of Disciples.

For all of Billy Graham’s powerful sermons and tremendous influence, one cannot envision one of his crusades without music, without Bev Shea. The associations are many: the altar-call hymn, “Just As I Am”; the inspiring “This Is My Father’s World”; the sermon-in-song “The Ninety and Nine.” Bev himself was responsible for the tune to “I’d Rather Have Jesus’; and he wrote words and music to “The Wonder of It All.” The music at an early crusade in Los Angeles was responsible for the conversion of cowboy star Stuart Hamblin… whose own gospel songs “Until Then” and “It Is No Secret (What God Can Do)” subsequently became crusade favorites.

One of Bev Shea’s signature songs is regarded as the world’s favorite hymn, after “Amazing Grace” — “How Great Thou Art.” Today, many people think it is a centuries-old standard, but it was only in the 1950s, at a Billy Graham Crusade in New York’s Madison Square Garden, that Bev Shea first sang it in the form we know today. Audience reaction demanded multiple encores on successive days, and an extended booking for the nightly crusades. The hymn had originated as a poem and an unrelated folk tune in Sweden and had traveled to Christian communities in Germany, Russia, the Ukraine, England, Canada, and the United States… until, with Bev Shea’s variations and powerful performance, it caught fire.

The astonishing appeal of Bev Shea is due only in part to his velvet-toned bass-baritone. It is more than his straightforward presentation of classic hymns, which, sung by any other voice in the 21st century, might have seemed anachronistic. It is not even fully explained by his courtly presence, so manifest on platform and in private, whether with a few personal friends or multitudes of fans.

I believe Bev Shea’s appeal, ultimately, was his lack of guile, using a word the Bible warns against. “No shadow of turning.” He simply introduced Christ. Technically speaking, Cliff Barrows introduced Bev Shea, Bev Shea introduced Billy Graham, and Billy Graham introduced Jesus Christ, all yielded to the Holy Spirit’s direction, according to their respective God-given talents.

That explains his life. To explain his death, I cite my friend Jim Watkins, who recalled the gospel song written by Bev Shea, and referred to that lifetime of friendly partnership with the crusade team: “George Beverly Shea, Billy Graham’s featured soloist for 60 years, is now realizing the full extent of his famous song, ‘I’d Rather Have Jesus.’” It was time, and Heaven is sounding sweeter right about now.

Well sung, thou good and faithful servant.

Cliff Barrows, Rick Marschall, Joni Eareckson Tada, George Beverly Shea, Joni’s mom Lindy

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I got to know Bev Shea when working on a proposed PBS documentary on gospel music, for producer Don Stillman. Days spent at the Cove with him and Cliff Barrows, Billy Graham staff, even Joni Eareckson Tada, were precious. At the crusades, Bev Shea sang and seldom spoke. When he did introduce a song, however, he spoke from his heart, as this vid from a performance, probably early 1960s, attests. A portion of his testimony. And his classic song…

Click: I’d Rather Have Jesus