Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-27-21

“The only things in life we can be sure of are death and taxes.” Well, those are not the only things. One more is that stupid, lying saying itself. We hear it a lot, which doesn’t make it truer.

We can be sure of many things. King Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun, and he was famously wise for such clarity. We can be sure of death, yes; and sickness, disease, sin. Broken promises, lost love. Not so quick – we can also be sure of life, birth, new life, and re-birth. Love. Happiness, joy, innocence, forgiveness, redemption. Salvation.

The good side of the ledger is longer, and more profound, than the dark side.

We can read those good items off the list, and we can write them. We can live them, and share them. But none of it is automatic. Sometimes the gloomy list of things in life seems written boldly, in large letters. And sometimes – too often – the cheery words and promises seem hard to read… the letters small… the words smudged.

But they are there. Move your eyes closer; turn up the light; focus.

Focus. Things like death and taxes, hard times and false friends can seem indeed like the stark, sure things in life. And sometimes the blessings and good can seem distant and obscure. Well, God promised us many things, but not always a silver platter – we are better off when we focus, concentrate, pray, seek, and find.

I recently “discovered” a place called Pictured Rocks on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The UP is a strange and large place that once welcomed workers who felled all its trees (it is dense forestland again) and copper (mostly removed) and iron ore (largely mined). Now it is a remote and, despite its spurts of past exploitation, a sparsely populated forestland.

Its soil is not pure dirt, if there be such a thing. It still has traces and veins of copper, iron, and other minerals. But just as fermentation can be a curse or a blessing in foods, so do these random minerals in the soil – not enough to mine successfully any more, and perhaps annoying to farmers – “redeem” themselves. Along Lake Superior are sandstone cliffs, beaches, sand dunes, waterfalls, inland lakes, a deep forest, and a wild shoreline of cliffs. The minerals, exposed to the sun and air and moisture, present rainbows of copper-oranges and oxidized greens and all varieties of colors. Rust actually can be beautiful.

Dig a little and discover the good that lives in surprising places.

Yeast, wine, cheeses, black tea, penicillin, and a thousand things that “turn”… are transformed to good. As people, we can “turn” too; and even circumstances can turn to good. You know the song: tadpoles to bullfrogs; caterpillars to beautiful butterflies. Rusty rocks to unlikely rainbows.

Turn the pages of life if you have to. There is beauty everywhere in God’s world, and treasures in His plans. Focus; you will see them.

You can be them.

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Click: This Is My Father’s World

11-27-17

If you have been visiting with this Junior Jeremiah of late, you know that I am persuaded that our problems in America, in the West, in the church, are well nigh intractable. I am afraid that we have slipped down the slippery slope, and probably are close to swirling down the tubes.

God is sovereign, of course; and many of us pray for revival. Fervently. But logic, not to mention Biblical history, argues against spontaneous moral regeneration. Does God impose rectitude on a people who are not so inclined? Is it likely that our culture, en masse, will awake some Monday morning, saying, “OK, enough of several generals of decline! Let’s all return to being moral, polite, just, considerate, chaste, responsible, and religious”?

The Law of Civilization and Decay (posited in the brilliant but largely forgotten book of that title by Brooks Adams, 1895) is unfolding in history’s latest crumbling culture, our post-Christian West. The statistics about our condition are dispositive… and daunting.

Yet as a Christian, if not otherwise an optimist, I do not prescribe resignation. As Christ’s representatives in the world, we will go down, if we do go down, fighting. Christians have already won in the sense that we are joint heirs with Christ to the Eternal Home that is ours. But to fulfill His Great Commission, for the sake of our children, and for the lost souls of the world who need to hear the Truth… we fight on.

The signs of “progress” around us can be mirages. Communism largely has been defeated, but repressive governments have not. We have become a people who brag about liberating people’s minds and bodies, yet millions willingly enslave themselves to drugs and destructive ideologies. Including folks in our very midst.

At home, we have built a society where “sex sells” — libido-drenched imagery in movies, TV, ads, commercials, music, entertainment. And then we should be surprised when people conform their behavior to sexual impulses?

Overseas, our government cuddles up to China, which this week raided yet more Christian churches, jailing worshipers and ordering the installation of portraits of Xi Jingpin. “Acting on American values” — which are…?

The “progress” we applaud is an opiate, calming our sense to the Pentecost of Calamity that is coming in this world.

So. How do we fight these trends?

There is a crisis of the Old Order. We, as citizens – albeit pilgrims and strangers in this world – are stuck with Democracy. Can I mean that? Yes, I choose my words. Democracy in many ways has come to mean a corrupt web of favoritism, corruption, and deceit. Broken promises, cynical use of the System. Secret alliances between Big Money, Big Media, and Big Politics. Running up IOUs to fall upon our children. Consensus-building by pandering.

In the same manner I have also realized that Capitalism has become our enemy, having been transformed into Finance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism. We instead should embrace Free Enterprise, a nice-sounding brand name for our economics, but which scarcely ever has been practiced.

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that Democracy is the worst form of government… unless you consider the alternatives.

A clever aphorism, but it has the practicality of a sieve when we need to bail the sinking lifeboat. If we recognize that we are in a spiritual crisis, it is a spiritual solution that we need. Political action? God bless activists… but we must look beyond. There are three traditional areas we turn to these days, each more difficult than the next.

The first: CHANGE LAWS. Especially in this system of pandering, of government by propaganda, of Big Lies and False Promises… the cry to “make things right” by new laws is the biggest lie of all. Laws are not magic wands. Prohibition did not work; drug laws are a farce; and gun regulations are chimeras. However, people look to Washington for salvation… in futility.

The second: CHANGE MINDS. Here is where Big Media plays its game. Background players and manipulators control the debate… and, we see increasingly, they monitor, manipulate, and censor internet communication and cell-phone activity. We think we may persuade (and, theoretically, we still can, in small ways) but appeals to reason are merely tolerated, and do not thrive, these days.

The third: CHANGE HEARTS. Aha. The simplest route? Sit down; talk and share; appeal to morality and self-interest; cite ethics and God’s Word. The “hot button” issues – guns, abortion, heresy, homosexuality, war, abuse, divorce, greed, immigration, workplace discrimination, drugs – can’t we all “get along”?

All you have to do in each of these topics is cite a “higher authority”; for Christians it would be the Bible. Secularists would fall back on philosophers. Changing hearts of opponents in such arenas should be the easiest way to begin changing hearts, no? Laws get rusty, and peoples’ minds change. And such remedies are seductive: easy to try, relatively easy to apply, and… very easy to forget. We can wipe our hands, and brush the dust from our sandals, and move on.

No, the hardest of all methods to bring change to our world is to change hearts.

It is the surest way, too. But to change hearts we must be committed, be earnest, be persistent, and be sincere. We must, if necessary, leave some our OWN hearts with those with whom we contend.

Take the current sexual-predator scandals. We can appeal to the Law: “We will make it (more) illegal to do such things.” We can appeal to the Mind: “Wise up! You might get caught!” Or we can appeal to the Heart: “It is wrong. You are harming someone. You disgrace your family. You are displaying a lack of self-respect. You are better than that! It is a sin. Repent, seek forgiveness.”

“Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

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Click: The Wide Gate