Monday Morning Music Ministry

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

3-5-18

I recently returned from the wonderful Writers On the Rock conference in Colorado. I was one of several speakers, conducting a couple of classes, and meeting a lot of great new friends. I also was reacquainted with some old friends.

I managed to squeeze in some private time. My friend and I visited Breckenridge and Vail and thanked God frequently for His amazing handiwork. We visited historic sites in Denver with our hosts Penny and Norm Carlevato – you can thank Norm for the faithful appearance of this blog; he has been the web-master for years.

The Christian writers’ conference was attended by almost 200 people, a majority of whom were aspiring writers, and many who had published one book or some blogs, still looking for tips to advance further.

There were many writers, even the aspirants, who had something or other in print. When you want to write, you write. And write. And read and write. It’s what you do because you are wired that way. Which is a good thing! God has inspired us; planted seeds of creativity; and God bless (He will) anyone who exercises those gifts.

I told the organizer, Dave Rupert, how often I heard people before and after classes, in the auditorium and lunch room, in hallways: “Did you read what I wrote since last year?” or “Have you read my book?”

Never boasting, these questions were asked by people from justifiable pride, and every writer’s sub-textual intention – hoping that people notice and understand your message; affected by what you have to say.

It struck me afterwards, especially since this was a Christian-focus conference, that the frequent question – “Have you read my book?” – might indeed have been the de facto theme. “Up above our heads”; all around us; and a part of everything we did, everything to which we dedicated our careers… in a very real sense, God Himself also asked “Have you read My Book?”

Of course He asks that every day.

He asks us, not to read the Bible every moment of every day, but sometime during every day, as many of us do. A passage, a chapter, a book. It is not an unreasonable request – but a request is inherent in the question – as God’s admonitions never are unreasonable.

The Bible is what we know of God. Yes, there is nature – I know well enough from our mountaintop experiences in Colorado. Agnostics who pose, and Christians who are lazy, can say that they can know God from communing with nature.

Wrong. That is one of the ways we can see God, even feel Him. But to know Him, we must read His book.

He meant it to be so. We have the Ten Commandments… written. We have Jesus’s teachings… recorded and written and published. I recommend visiting the new Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. I saw its substantial portions when it was on tour (in Colorado a few years ago!), and a lesson for believers and skeptics alike is that, for the hundreds and hundreds of texts from different countries, different scribes, different languages, different centuries, the texts of the Holy Scriptures vary hardly at all. The Holy Spirit “dictated” to the hearts of many writers, and oversaw the consistency of God’s Words.

Words.

Jesus communicated God’s love for us. And words, books, scripture, communicate Jesus to us.

The Bible says we are to “hide His word in our hearts.” How better than through study of those words? They are precious. I shared with an attendee at the conference that, even when I read a Bible passage for maybe the hundredth time, some new revelation dawns on my heart.

How much Bible reading is proper? Are some passages obsolete? II Timothy 3:16 tells us, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

Have you read His book lately?

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Stephen Hill (1956-2012) Was a Baptist preacher and session singer before he launched his own gospel-music career. This is a song he sang when he and Woody Wright were invited to perform in the Netherlands. A moving song; you will be impacted in spite of the overlapping Dutch and Norwegian (he was very popular in Europe) subtitles. Words!

Click: Will He Look At Me and Say ‘Well Done’?

7-31-17

I recently returned from two weeks in Ireland, a fact that might be wearying “news” to my readers and correspondents, but I am one of those people who experience new things, or visit a place for the first time, and come away with delight, enthusiasms, and a desire to share. (For instance, I invariably return from overseas and try to replicate dishes or cuisine methods in my own kitchen. This week I made fish and chips – with major variations – having been not tired of them but challenged.)

All of which is a justification for one more Irish reference.

There were many coincidences and random discoveries while traversing the Emerald Isle. To digress again, briefly, the joy – and hallmark – of a seasoned traveler is to program your itinerary, and your mind, in such ways that “coincidences” and “discoveries” will meet you at almost every turn.

Near the end of the trip, having circumtraversed the island’s two countries, we spent a night in the delightful Old Inn at Crawfordsburn in Bangor, County Down, outside Belfast. It was a random booking suggested by friends because there was no room in the other inn, so to speak – the nearby Hotel Culloden Estate and Spa of Holywood, a magnificent ancient five-star wonderland so exclusive that Room Service has an unlisted number. (That is a travel joke.)

The sprawling, creeky, artifacts-crowded ancient in Crawfordsburn had numerous charms of its own, not the least of which was a plaque modestly stating that C S Lewis and his bride Joy had spent their honeymoon (“a perfect fortnight”) there, before an eventual trip to Greece; and through the years he and his literary circle would convene there. Not Shadowlands but Crawfordsburn.

For generations of children, the association with “Chronicles of Narnia” and “Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe” is compelling. For generations of Christians, and surely generations to come, his simple classics of Apologetics and lay theology will continue to touch uncountable souls. “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Problem of Pain,” “Miracles,” “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” and other books by Lewis explained the tenets of faith to believers (and non-believers, as he once was) second only to the parables of Jesus, in some people’s opinion.

Lewis had been an atheist and had traveled the same path to faith, or back to faith, that his literary fellows (some of them the fraternal members of the “Inklings”) like J R R Tolkien, G K Chesterton, and Malcolm Muggeridge. Fallen-away, agnostic, skeptical, Socialist, atheist… all became not merely orthodox Christians but fervent believers, uniquely sharing the gospel in ways that we categorize as “apologetics.” The young Lewis even met the brilliant Irish poet William Butler Yeats – whose modest gravesite, again “coincidentally,” we stumbled across when stopping for a photo-op at a picturesque old church ruin on a country road! – and whose own relationship to Christianity was complicated but thought-provoking.

Lewis’ marriage was to an American Jewess who also converted to Christianity. After a short marriage (there IS a touchstone: Crawfordsburn; I have not forgotten!) she died of cancer. Lewis wrote a tender and thoughtful book on spiritual confrontations with death – but published it under a pen name, not to traffic in his loss.

It was such a meaningful and profound book that on its publication, many of Lewis’ friends sent him the book as perfect reading to assuage his grief, not knowing he was the author.

It is more than these coincidences – except the coincident result of my contemplating the great man since the trip – that inspires this essay. One of C S Lewis’ great books about faith is the modest yet intense “The Weight of Glory.”

Literary-minded people always are  impressed by phrases or titles that immediately capture an argument, or augur compelling thoughts. I suggest that “the weight of glory,” as a proposition, is pregnant with implications and challenges. I will briefly (you’re welcome) and feebly recommend its contemplation in a few rehashed words.

Glory. God’s glory. Salvation. When someone comes to “saving knowledge of God” – a personal relationship with Jesus – they have joy unspeakable, the greatest experience of this life. Or, naturally, eternity.

Christianity. The Bible, and C S Lewis among other exegetes, tell us how simply “mere” Christianity can be achieved in our lives. But the Bible, and relatively few evangelists through the centuries, remind of of how difficult it is – even weighty and sometimes burdensome – to be a Christian, to receive the glory of the Lord.

When you are a Christian, you must share Christ. If you knew the cure for someone’s fatal illness, you would share that information. Well… you do.

When you are a Christian, you cannot get enough of Him; you will have insatiable thirst. Your passion does not end when you swear an oath.

When you are a Christian, you pray without ceasing – praise and requests; desires and confessions.

When you are a Christian, it is because you are a Christ-follower in all ways; not merely Not a Jew, Not a Muslim, when people ask.

When you are a Christian, you will not only “put away childish things” of belief; you will BE renewed in mind and spirit – and feel it, and show it, and live it.

When you are a Christian, you will have charitable impulses you never felt. You will sacrifice. You will tend to the sick and hurting; you will ache to have your family join you in Glory.

These impulses are not simple membership rules. They will be the “fruit” you bear. And you will be “convicted” in your spirit if they do not become part of your conscious DNA.

Are they worth it? Oh, yes. But salvation will involve more than a refreshing moment and a spiritual “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It is what C S Lewis called “The Unspeakable Burden of Salvation.”

I do not believe in ghosts, but the lobbies and halls of the Old Inn at Crawfordsburn reminded me of C S Lewis’s life and career and writings: his clarity and his impact. Worthwhile remembrance! Christianity is “merely” simple, and profoundly transformative.

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Mo Pitney sings:

Click: Give Me Jesus