Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-28-21

Whoo, what a week. Surely it was not this way with every visitor or reader here, but it seems like everyone I know was coping with problems, challenges, and crises that are somewhere between bad and worse. Friends, myself, acquaintances.

I didn’t make a list, because I don’t have enough pencils, but… relationships; health; financial; a child in peril; employment; betrayal; bitter gossip; a neighbor child’s drowning accident; breakup of a family; addiction; clinical depression. Friends shared so many things with me, helpless but not hopeless; and I cried on a couple shoulders too.

Amazing. Maybe Satan is getting out of the lockdown too. I want to be careful not to wallow in self-pity, and, certainly, I despise “negative confession.” There were blessings this week, too – for all of us – and I, for one was refreshed and encouraged on the faculty of a (Zoom-virtual) Christian Writers Conference. Fantastic reports, the glow of fatherhood, about my son and daughter doing well in their callings.

We must always have clear eyes and remember the right priorities.

If there are times we don’t feel like praising God… let me state the truth, not if but when the times come when we don’t feel like praising God, THEN is when we must do it. Praising Him for, maybe, little and mundane things will lead us to remember greater blessings; and then we will humbly thank Him for the uncountable and unspeakable glories He has gifted us with; and – every time – we will soon enter into His courts with praise.

I have always thought that’s what that phrase means in the Bible – the “sacrifice of praise.” It does work. When you don’t feel like it, DO IT, and you will feel like it, very soon.

God’s arithmetic can be funny – naw; not funny, inscrutable. God’s ways are His own, and unknowable. And, frankly, having to seek the Everlasting Help in Times of Trouble; or trust Him when we cannot know what awaits us… keeps us on our knees, so to speak. Reaching out. Trusting. Exercising faith. Crying “Daddy!”

Here’s what I mean about His arithmetic. As I write this, called away from the closing session of the Writers Conference by the pinging-alarm on my cell phone, I learned there was a tornado warning in my town. I realized, then, I had been hearing unusual sirens. Subconsciously I must have thought that some oaf at town hall had flipped a wrong switch, but it was real. A friend a little south of me called and said there were car parts and a TV set strewn about his area; and a new warning (not watch) has been issued.

At such times we pray, “Keep me safe till the storm passes by,” literally and figuratively, right? And, as the challenges of my friends and me will pass – altogether, or slowly, or barely – it made we wonder how often do we thank God for the problems that never present themselves in the first place? Tornados that don’t touch down? Accidents that don’t happen? Relationships that don’t rupture? Hurts that don’t hurt? Hurtful gossip that is never spoken? Storms that pass by?

Well, it is next to impossible to thank God for things we don’t see in the first place.

… except when we praise Him for all things, seen and unseen; joy unspeakable, as we are promised, and full of glory.

+ + +

Click: Till the Storm Passes By

I’m not sure I’ve ever known a time when so many people — so many Christian friends — are distressed, hurting, facing challenges, as right now.

Of course it’s the economy. Of course there are political crises. Of course when a culture loses its moorings, the ship is going to be tossed around. And the people in it will be buffeted.

The Bible not only warns about such travail… it assures us its part of the package: raining on the just and unjust; but also that the faithful will experience persecution.

Yet we are not without a Friend, and surely not without hope. A new precious friend, Becky Spencer, has a CD out with a wonderful song of hers, “The Coldest Winter (Always Turns to Spring),” and it got me thinking… spring always follows winter; life replaces death, the sun always shines after the storm. And isn’t the most beautiful Spring the one that follows the hardest Winter? and the most amazing sunny day the kind right after an awful storm has swept through?

There is hope, and even in hard times (not SPARED from hard times, but THROUGH hard times) God’s promises are true. This song sung by Cynthia Clawson reminds us, even further, that even when the storm is at its worst, behind the clouds the Sun is still shining!

Click:  It Won’t Rain Always