Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-8-24

Some cultural critics and many traditional Christians lament the state of things today. “Things”? Maybe almost everything… everywhere we look… even the future is despaired of. Believers “know the end of the story,” the glorious promises of God, yet among those promises are trials and tribulations, we know. “What kind of world are we leaving for our children?” is often asked.

This angst and pessimism – or realism? – is not exclusive to the traditionalists and religious people, however. This is an age of discontent: radicals, revolutionaries, the “Woke” armies likewise are weary, or rebellious, against the current System and what brought societies to this point.

It is the Age of Discontent, which term is the title of a book of observations by Sigmund Freud. More pertinent is the earlier essay by Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay.

Of all the isms that plague us these days, and no matter your place on the philosophical and political spectrums, the strongest is Incrementalism. Surely it is the most insidious. Most of the things that upset most of us were not advocated by us, not designed, not forecast. Yet often we act surprised that certain identifiable decisions were wrong, horribly wrong.

Our temples gradually have crumbled; our swamps quietly have risen and spread. Surely, we – all of us – have been blind and careless, we have grown sloppy about commitments, and dismissive of standards. Like fallen civilizations of the past, we have a subliminal sense of security that we somehow are immune from decline and self-destruction.

In this we are, of course, fools.

If analysis might be useful and lead to course-correction, we should reject the idea that we (let us focus on “Christendom,” so-called Western Civilization) have “lost faith.” It is a point of view automatic among the religious; and it is mistaken. Oh, church attendance is down, and we are confronted by statistics that are alarms to those of who work to resist the drift. But a recent book The Secular Age cited polls claiming that more than half the population does not belong to an organized religion, only a third believe in life after death, 16 per cent in reincarnation, and only half believe in a higher power. (And of course “higher power” these days can mean gods invented on the spot. Or as my daughter says about the current pathology of those who switch genders every week, “choosing to be, or believe in, a hairbrush.”) And so forth, as we all know.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Our problems do not stem from our peoples’ lack of faith, but the situation that people hold to faith in many, many, many things. Indiscriminately. Irresponsibly. Incrementally.

Of course my critique is that Christendom has abandoned Christianity. The “Faith of our fathers” has largely become as attractive to broad swaths of contemporary society as the ties and dresses, dance steps and home décor of previous generations. Christian dogma is seldom asserted in many of our churches. Worship conforms to the latest (and changeable) tastes and demands of audiences. The Biblical “givens” that underlay government, schools, courts, even the entertainment media… are no longer a priori assumptions.

Indeed, Biblical standards routinely are rejected, mocked, and suppressed. So what should we expect? People who believe in everything… effectively believe in nothing. When a society has no standards, we must expect that even “right” and “wrong” are obsolete concepts.

We have a natural tendency to feel overwhelmed by the forces of evil. We are tempted, despite our faith in Jesus and the promises of God, to fear that all is hopeless, at least outside our own spheres. I am reminded that when the Communist Whittaker Chambers found Christ and became a patriot, he wrote that he believed in God, but that – as a citizen in a decaying American society – he was joining the “losing side.” His soul would live in Heaven but his country was doomed. Do you have those feelings?

What I cling to, among many truths and revelations, are the verses about God adorning the lilies of the field, and caring even for small sparrows. Yes, we must know the Truth. Yes, we must fight for our faith and families and future. Yes, the enemies of Christ are many, and are wily and vicious.

It is worthwhile, and daunting I know, to resist. But how often do we stop and remember that it is His fight? God will equip us; the Holy Spirit was sent to strengthen our… faith. Faith. We cannot cast about to find new faith in new remedies. God’s answers are in front of us. If your simple faith in God and His promises sometime go weak, remember that the Gift of Faith is one of the Spiritual Gifts that He has promised, and we can access at any time.

Asking God for more faith, purer faith, mighty faith in Him, is not a sign of weakness. His provision of the Holy Spirit must not be treated as a futile act unless you respond feebly.

Our world might be drifting, and in directions we hate. As we do battle – for we must! – how typical of God that He can encourage us with the simplest, gentlest assurance that His eye is on the sparrow, and we know He watches us too. Let us be happy warriors. The battle is the Lord’s!

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Click: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

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.

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Click: Till the Storm Passes By

11-16-20

Today’s message is a guest essay by Bridgette Ehly, a journalist and author of the science-fiction thriller, Smiling Ghosts.

How has the Body of Christ – the church, representing God on this side of Heaven – in our day come to lose the moral high ground in so many realms? To relativists,
secularists, and liberals who talk about kindness, but routinely have supported the violent murder of babies in the womb, erosion of God-given rights, and destructive social policies? It was, after all, righteous Christians who normalized the concept of universal human dignity, the idea that all lives, all people, are precious.

How did we drop the ball? I think it has to do with action vs complacency, and the
spread of what we may call Communist Christianity. Communist in the context of
enforced uniformity, a godless suppression of individual initiative, a denial of the need to obey and please God.

I once read that in His three-year ministry, Jesus Christ traveled over 3000 miles. He was constantly on the move on foot or by sea, and went from town to town revealing God’s loving nature. He healed the sick and showed humankind how to love our neighbors as God commands us.

Jesus was a man of action. And the Holy Spirit literally flows through the Father and the Son and through us as Christ-followers. God is a God of action – as we see from the opening of a rose, the change of the seasons, cycles of birth and death, and the stories of a hundred billion lives.

When Jesus talks about faith, it always is associated with action.

Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me. (Mark 4:35)

Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not put into practice what I teach you? (Luke 6:46)

Are we failing to answer Christ’s call to action? We are the Body of Christ in this world… but sitting idle as our culture and traditions die; are we a body whose legs no longer work? Instead of walking upright, do we now drag our useless limbs behind us? What is the verdict to those charges?

Lack of action on the part of the Church is rooted in what I call Communist Christianity, the descriptive notion that all believers are literally the same.

But if this were true, why does God refer to some people as righteous? If we are all equal, why even have the word righteous? There would be only “saved” and “condemned.” Salvation is instantaneous, but sanctification is a process. Really, what would be the point of living if we do not strive to improve ourselves and become more perfect children of God? St. Paul tells us to “walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists of all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.”

By faith alone through grace we are saved, but what is faith? Is it a thing, a magical trinket in a box that guarantees a Christian entrance to heaven regardless of whether he loves his fellow man or strives to do what Jesus tells us to do? Or do works follow from faith – is faith a manifestation of God in the physical world, a series of actions that turn a belief into a living force for good; that is, God’s will be done on Earth?

Jesus ties faith and action so closely and consistently that we must act, cherishing them as one impulse.

In the Seventh chapter of Luke we read, Then turning towards the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has bathed My feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she has anointed My feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The woman’s actions and her faith are interchangeable. Jesus says her sins are forgiven because she showed great love, and then says that her faith saved her. We are forgiven in proportion to our love, and love is expressed in a million different ways, the hands and feet of God alive on this earth!

I believe evil people have taught us to think of faith as a “thing” for two reasons. One is to cause fights about theology among Christians and thereby weaken the Church by fracturing our unity. The other motive is to destroy the powerful force of “love in action.” Communist Christianity tells us that a simple prayer, a 10-second pledge to the Will of God, is all that is required from us in this life.

Communist Christianity corrodes the Church just as Communism destroys economies
and societies by crushing a people’s desire to achieve excellence. People who are saved and believe they need to do nothing more, or can do nothing more, to improve their standing before God lack the motivation to please the Father. Jesus told us to visit the sick and spread His Word, but Communist Christianity says it isn’t mandatory, so why do it? (Besides, the government “releases” us from that moral impulse.)

The moment in time that we commit our lives to Christ is the beginning, not the
completion, of our spiritual journey. Certainly, many Christians do answer Jesus’ call to visit the sick and those in prison, but many, many people drop a 20 into the collection plate and call it a week. God forbid!

Faith is God’s love in action. Now more than ever, we need to live our faith by speaking up for Christian beliefs at city council meetings; by volunteering with kids so that they have a Christian influence in their lives; by showing the poor that the helping hand in their neighborhoods is a Christian hand.

We all need to get involved, even a couple of hours a week, not to earn salvation but to exercise faith! We can’t improve the world together, or preserve what is precious about our society, if we don’t act.

Jesus’ life was a series of actions that led to the greatest act of love, His death on the cross. Our Savior said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Jesus’ giving His life freely remains the ultimate expression of faith in God, a standard for us and His revealed plan for our salvation.

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(For readers with hand-held devices, click or copy & paste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=itgTjU5toz0

Click: Hands and Feet

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Click here for information about Bridgette’s new novel

3-30-20

Three events this week seemed connected in a way I think God would have us see. The unifying factors are these: that God has plans for us that occasionally look anything but good at first glance; we seldom can predict these life-adjustments, or even recognize them at first; and, number 3, God wants to use us. Yes, you and me. He gives us assignments for His work.

* In no particular order. I first will address the Coronavirus pandemic. Of course we have enormous sympathy for the deaths and dislocations – businesses closed and savings gone – that are resulting. But last week I listed some of the new priorities and redundant traditions that are good to be cleared away in a single season, instead of over a generation.

This social (not medical) craziness is bringing out the best in people, and I pray it lasts through and beyond the lockdowns. Acts of charity; innovative ways to care; new initiatives. My daughter Emily, in Ireland, was close to opening a restaurant and making other arrangements for her new food business, just a few weeks ago. She could have been locked into a horrible arrangement, as shops are hard-hit there as in the US. Instead of stewing (ha), she came up the idea of operating a “food pantry” to deliver food to doctors’ offices and hospitals, for those weary workers on extra shifts and unable to enjoy home-cooked food. The community is responding, in her city and elsewhere. Pallets of packaged foods; restaurant surpluses; volunteers; contributions.

Her inspiration was Jesus feeding the 5000. It’s not about her; she calls the initiative the National Health Service Pantry. For “Front Line” workers – what we would call medical first-responders and staffers.

Good will come from this plague. In myriad ways. That’s what Christians should make happen. God does not want people to catch and die from a virus. But in the midst, He has plans for us all while it is here. There’s at least one plan for you – just find it!

* Then I was reminded that the Feast of the Annunciation was this week. Forty weeks before Jesus’ birth. Mary woke up one day a lowly handmaiden; was visited by an angel; and went to sleep knowing she would give birth to the Savior of the human race. Quite a day!

Which means we cannot, usually, predict or expect or recognize events. We think such things are rare, but plagues and storms and wars often surprise us; and things are “never the same”… yet life goes on, doesn’t it? And for the good things too – blessings, gifts, visits from angels. Like Mary, as recorded in her prayer called the Magnificat, our souls magnify the Lord. We are humbled. We need to understand His lovingkindness. Those are acts to undertake. Just find one!

* Finally, did you notice in the news this week that Roger Stone, the perennial political dirty-trickster who was swept up in the “Russian Collusion” hoax, and sentenced to prison, attended a Franklin Graham crusade and gave his heart to Jesus? A little like Chuck Colson, the Nixon operative who was born again and founded the Prison Fellowship ministry.

Is it a legitimate conversion? I have a view of the matter. Many years ago I worked with two partners of his, just before the three founded a Washington lobbying group. More to share in a future column, but this born-again story – and a viral 25-minute video interview on CBN – caught my attention. And it ties in to my third “coincidental” inspiration for this week. Just think —

God has plans for us that are not always clear to us at first. His messages and callings usually are things we could never have expected. But… God wants to use us.

Use us. He doesn’t have to. He could use your neighbor. Or a stranger. Or nobody, and wave His hand over situations; He is God. But He issued a challenge to Emily’s faith… He blessed Mary with an unspeakable privilege… He broke Roger’s heart of Stone. He challenges, we respond. That’s how God works.

These things came together this week, amid good and bad health and financial news. The same message is delivered to us all – be open to God; welcome His surprises; and be willing to be used.

Just listen. Just see. Just act.

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Click: The Unseen Hand

3-23-20

To write of perfect days when every day lately – no, every hour – seems filled with dread. To ask us to stop and savor, or even search hard for, good news, good times, and a good tomorrow… seems naive or crazy these days.

Well, let us be crazy for a moment. It might keep us from going insane.

Someone threw the word psithurism at me recently. I will tell you, it is the precise and compact term for one of nature’s supernal gifts – the sound of a breeze rustling through trees. In Estes Park, CO, after the Christian Writers Conference, up the “hill,” every year I visit a grove of aspen trees whose wind-kissed sounds are like the tones of a distant organ. When winds sometime meet mountain snowbanks and desert sand dunes they produce eerie but beautiful sounds; music, almost. Where there are rock formations and in caves, breezes can bring forth heavenly chords.

Wondrous coincidences explained by science, or God’s messages – like rainbows – of His presence, His hand in creation, His reminders of lovingkindness? It makes no difference, which, to believers, because with God there are no coincidences anyway; but He ordered the moon and the stars and enabled such blessings.

Everyday blessing they are. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in “A Day of Sunshine”:

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.

God is in all. Creation proclaims His glory. That means sunshine and shadow; rain and drought; good times and – sometimes – hard times. I do not believe God sends sickness or disease. He is not a child abuser. Yet we struggle to comprehend the “bad”…

We wonder why God “permits” viruses, plagues, epidemics. People ponder and pray these very days about this. It has always seemed clear to me that there is sin the world – nurtured further by humankind’s rebelliousness, evil acts, and, yes, our sin natures. Nature can be beautiful: the way God created. But we waste our gifts, pollute and corrupt, and wonder why nature, sometimes – creatures, weather, resources – “turns on us.” Do we deserve things like pandemics? We say no, especially about innocent victims.

But this is our world. Is it God’s will, any more than cancers or tornadoes? The Lord can chastise in many ways, but we should not look for lessons or punishment in every act like the Coronavirus. It might be so but rather we should look to the God who loves us and shows His love and mercy in so many other ways.

The clouds are stormy? Blue skies and bright sunshine still are above those clouds.

The agonies of birth pangs yet bring forth beautiful babies, miracles of life, souls to love.

The suffering and death of Jesus Christ had to be endured, as per prophecy, in order to bring Salvation to the human race.

We cannot see or understand fully, not all the time; in fact very seldom. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. His acts do not depend on our understanding of them. His ways are not subject to our approval. His plans will not come up for our votes.

A sickness in our household, or a pandemic sweeping the globe ought to be no different in terms of our responses. God help us, let us curse the little virus less and trust in our mighty God more. And praise Him. Is not God bigger than a microscopic virus?

His sun still shines brightly behind those dark clouds.

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Click: The End Of a Perfect Day

3-16-20

The title here is from a story about London during the “blitz,” the bombing by enemy planes in World War II. Supposedly, Winston Churchill and an aide viewed the city on fire from some vantage point, and the aide supposedly said, “Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.” Churchill supposedly harrumphed, “Some blessing. Some disguise.”

The Bible says, Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20), but that wise warning addresses those who intentionally bend the truth to their own purposes. In a time of confusion and near-panic – may I characterize the Coronavirus situation that way? – there surely are forces who might be manipulating events, if not having conspired somehow to initiate them; as well as people who might profit. My suspicions and plausible scenarios aside, confusion and panic are the predominant emotions around the world right now.

And I invite us to take the long, long view of things. And woe unto those who think that my speculation about a silver lining to the Coronavirus pandemic means that I am indifferent to the suffering and deaths. Of course not, not any of us. But there is a future: let us wonder what it will be.

Do we know what is ahead, after “this too” shall pass? No, we don’t know, but we can ask; and we can guess. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know… (I Corinthians 13:12). Being a “Futurist” does not mean having flawless predictions but – perhaps rarer – knowing the right questions to ask. Let us see if that hat fits us.

First of all, in human history, disasters like plagues and wars often are followed, roaring, by comebacks and revivals. When I researched my biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, I learned that a monstrous plague and the Thirty Years’ War left one-third of Germany dead and displaced. Yet the middle-class resurgence, and literacy, and a culture that could produce Bach and Handel sprouted and blossomed in its aftermath.

It is not only culture and commerce and stock markets that rebound after calamities, but, somehow also the human spirit. If under-girded by a firm faith, human nature when fed by democracy and capitalism, gets up, finds the path, and races to the goal. And the next goal, and the next.

For several generations we have been advancing to a major re-calibration of societal interaction. This virus “dislocation” will actually cause an acceleration: a good thing. And a major thing; new and better ways of doing things.

If we are indeed headed for paradigm shifts, we should recognize that when such things seem “major” in our human existence, the most profound changes are, rather, the many minor things that weave themselves together as the basic fabric of our lives.

We already are at the advent of tele-medicine. I have interviewed hospital staffs who tele-diagnose from a great distance. Tele-procedures, operations conducted from other states, are here. Auto mechanics already diagnose, too, with computers in their garages. We are a step away from plugging under our own hoods and having mechanics diagnose from across town. Except for package delivery, most mail will be obsolete; we can sense that already.

Uber and Lyft. Transporting people, then restaurant orders; then groceries. Easy, socially distant… ultimately economical. Ford should transition to be a mobility and vehicle-sharing company. Someday cars will be like time-shares: Only when we need them.

Teaching at almost all secondary and advanced levels, maybe elementary too, will be by screens. Excerpt for labs and hands-on training, this is overdue.

Is anything counter-intuitive? Sermons, fellowship? In the 1950s California churches experimented with drive-in worship, like drive-in movies. It didn’t work – neither did drive-in movies survive – so corporate worship, fellowship, conventions, will not die.
“What about old folks? Those without web?” Neither will the “marginal” be marginalized. In the future, every house will be built, or equipped, with, basic computer terminals. As common as phones.

Drones were mere foretastes. They will be not only be for mischief or spying or wedding photographers but for crop analysis, mineral exploration, climate warnings.

Is there a danger of social isolation? Will personal interaction die? This already is a situation, if not a challenge, in contemporary life… but reunions, meetings, rallies, sports, all will be more special, when they happen, if they are less common. People will find ways. And maybe feel more motivated to find ways.

Sports without crowds? I have two visions: (a) – when the virus is history, stadiums will be packed again. (b) We will have adjusted, however, to crowd-less stadiums. I currently pay $129 a year to watch every baseball game played by every team for a whole season, at home. If tele-fandom becomes the norm and not the luxurious exception, I might complain as prices go up… but this will be the future for tele-fans, plain and simply. It is inevitable. Sing: “Take me out to the home-screen…”

Skype will become less “ghostly” and eliminate audio echoes. In the past, when I was a guest on, say, CNN, I was “happy” to drive two hours to Manhattan, tolls and parking, to be interviewed and on air for less than three minutes. Not in the future; we already see a lot of Skype interviews. Split screens will bring Q-and- As to virtual classrooms. In the same way, there will be no way to avoid virtual town halls with our politicians – not face-to-face, but screen-to-screen. A good thing.

Maybe those awkward and obligatory hugs will disappear from the bundle of social habits. Many readers of this essay – of this I am sure – will someday be explaining to their grandchildren what mailmen were, and school buses, and bank tellers; and driving to libraries or lectures.

Will baseball games, or concerts, or rallies, be outlawed? No… but they will seem more special, because they will be more special.

We already have to explain to our kids what polio was; black-and-white TV; and and having to ask telephone operators to “dial” numbers for us. My grandparents, as kids, did not know cars or planes or walking on the moon. Those changes came, and – hardly believable – they happened slower than the changes will come to us about things just on the horizon.

– a horizon, possibly, with a silver lining? Nothing to sneeze at.

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A classic Ira Stamphill song, written just after his wife was killed — for those who wonder about moving forward when a virus seems like a big problem. Sung by the amazingly talented and sensitive pianist / singer Sangah Noona.

Click: I Know Who Holds the Future

3-9-20

A recent poll of American citizens revealed surprising percentages of correct answers about basic American civics, as high schools used to call courses in the essentials of government when they taught such things. The results might surprise you:

70 per cent did not know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land;

44 per cent were unable to define the Bill of Rights;

8 per cent could enumerate the Bill of Rights;

36 per cent did not know how many Supreme Court justices there are;

41 per cent did not know the countries the US fought in World War II;

38 per cent knew how many Representatives and Senators sat in the houses of Congress;

34 per cent knew the lengths of terms of Congressmen and Senators;

… and so forth. I had a high school history teacher who once said, “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.” That might have been the only things really remembered from the year in his class, but he was, mostly, a nitwit. Anyway, this survey might be “off”… but surely not by much. Civics courses on the schedule do not guarantee students being educated in civics.

In a democracy we are supposed to school ourselves, embrace our heritage, protect our freedoms, and advance our liberties. On our own. Even in a constitutional republic – which the United States is; not a democracy, although it leeches into our system – citizens should want to be informed about our “basics,” and not only for final exams, grumble grumble. By the way, citizenship tests for legal immigrants ask the questions above; and applicants, new citizens, know the answers. Hmmm, maybe we should be required to re-apply for citizenship every five or 10 years…

Ask yourself the following questions. And – no snap quiz here – how many basic questions about the Bible, basic questions about the bedrock of Christian doctrine, can you, or friends, answer?

The books of the Bible? The 10 Commandments, in order? The (basic) lineage of Jesus, through Mary and Joseph? The prophesies of the Redeemer? Typology of Salvation and the Savior? The Beatitudes? The nine spiritual gifts? The acts of the Apostles and early-church martyrs? The seven churches of Revelation?

… And what, exactly, we need to do in order to be saved?

When I was young – even now, and I am not young – I could recite the American Dental Association’s endorsement of Crest toothpaste. It is, pun intended, a mouthful, yet I know every word of it. Had I intended to memorize it? No, but as I watched uncountable commercials that once quoted it… it hid itself in my heart. Recently, over dinner, I found that I could repeat the My Pillow pitches of Mike Lindell. And the old guy needing a hearing aid and his son’s love. And those poor little kids in special-needs hospitals. I know all their scripts, and can imitate their voices.

What is wrong in a society where citizens, and “Christians,” do not know the tenets of their citizenship and their faith, yet know by heart things like commercials and pop music lyrics? That is a question we can answer – a lot is wrong.

Contemporary church services are too often entertainment concerts. Church youth programs are too often desperate alternatives for potentially wayward teens. Sunday Schools are too often play dates. Not all – of course – but these are tendencies of the contemporary church. People more in love with the music than with (as Joe Biden recently said), “you know, that Thing.”

God knows I am not a fan of intolerance and the old religious wars, yet I do know why disputes arose – the desire to understand Scripture – and knowledge informs our own views. Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and Presbyterianism and Methodism and Pentecostalism emerged from cherished views of theologians and followers. Today (again: not all, but many) members of denominations do not know the differences between them, or if they have strayed from the Bible. And worshipers’ ignorance can be partly forgiven because their pulpits do not preach the great truths nor the practical distinctions any more. Political correctness, “acceptance” of sinful differences among us, a relativist view of god, whoever he or she really is.

A lot of our church-going neighbors (whose numbers shrink every year) wind up repeating the things they hear, too, by osmosis – learning those heresies by heart. Creeds? The Lord’s Prayer? Endangered species in a lot of churches.

These abominations are rife these days… but are not new. Throughout history, people have gone astray and become lovers of selves, and with “itching ears,” not merely willing but hungry for lies by which to live. In the past, when humankind sinned, God dealt severely. And when His own people turn their backs, He chastises them – with the justice they deserve.

Jesus Himself prophesied, Peoples’ foes shall be those of their own households (Matt 10:36). Don’t blame others; we must blame ourselves.

God chastises those whom He loves. He loves us. Like the old guy in the hearing-aid commercial, pray to God: “I heard you the first time. I just wanted to hear it again!”

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Click: Don’t Forget To Thank the Lord

1-5-15

Life has been likened to a game through the ages by saints and sages, by poets and even pastors. We are warned on one side against a game of “eat, drink, and be merry,” because one day we die. Or sometimes we properly are reminded that like some sports, life can be a very grim game indeed. Me? Sometimes I see life as a grand chessboard. Unfortunately I see myself a checker, not a chess piece. Gulp.

Today we think of our lives as vast jigsaw puzzles, not at all illogical.

See how the pieces fit: babyhood, youth, adolescence, nonage, adulthood, dotage. They usually fit together well, although some of us, putting this puzzle together, really have to search for the piece that depicts maturity. But into each life also come pieces that represent curiosity, hope, disappointment, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, greed, ambition, pride, modesty, temptation, sin, desires, charity, unforgiveness and forgiveness, envy, intellectuality, faith…

Have I left any pieces out? Surely. But I have not only described life’s jigsaw puzzles of me and you, but everyone who has, or has had, a pulse, on this earth. Those pieces, in my analogy, will be of different shapes, some of mine larger than yours; some of yours smaller than his or hers. We all, when complete, form different pictures.

And we know, don’t we, that even the kindly old lady down the street has had bouts with envy or pride. “There is not one amongst us in whom a devil does not dwell,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and we note he metaphorically used a lower-case “d” in “devil.” He continued, “It is not being in the “dark house,” but having left it, that matters.”

In the same way as the kindly old lady we all know, or TR’s Everyman, there are awful folks and hardened criminals who have tender spots, and are capable of conversions. Think of Ebeneezer Scrooge; of St Paul who, as Saul, persecuted Christians; of John Newton, slave-trader who saw the light and write the words to “Amazing Grace”…

But I want to suggest that no life, no matter how long, or how many pieces make up the picture, is or complete without a piece I did not list above. Did you catch that? Can I give you a hint? – it is shaped like an “L.” Ah! There are a couple holes in the jigsaw puzzle of completed lives.

See the missing piece, shaped like an “L,” for Love.

We have all experienced love, even the most miserable amongst us. We have expressed it and shared it – given it away – some of us more than others. But it is a common and irresistible force. To humans it is mysterious because, as serene as it should be, it can also bring heartache and disappointment. It can be the basis of charity but also frustration of broken dreams.

There is a reason that 95 per cent of songs have love lyrics. Even “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” is a love song, about dashed dreams. So are the melancholy lieder of Franz Schubert, and the many grief-toned piano sonatas of the perpetually lovelorn and frustrated Beethoven.

OK… that “L” piece fits there. One more hole in life’s jigsaw puzzle. It looks like an L-shape could fit there, but a little differently. Maybe, turned around a little bit, it looks like a “J.” Yes, J for Jesus. Now our life’s jigsaw puzzle is a complete picture.

Those similar-looking pieces, L and J, in fact make any life complete – especially puzzled lives, to reinforce my metaphor! They are the most important of our lives’ components. Indeed, we are not complete without them. We occasionally might flatter ourselves that we are pretty good puzzle-masters; and perhaps so, occasionally. But we are not puzzle-makers, and cannot be. God plays that role.

I sometimes wonder if Love did not exist, could we imagine it? Like a color that might exist but we’ve seen; or a seventh sense: hard to imagine what we cannot imagine. God’s Love, expressed in the Person of Jesus. He loved us so much as to create us and place us on this beautiful earth; loved us so much as to be forbearing as we humans have sinned and rebelled generation after generation; loved us so much as to share the Truth, offer forgiveness, to open Heaven’s gates…

… loved us so much as to lower Himself to the form of a human, His Son, to share our sorrows, show us the Way, and to offer healing and salvation to those who believe on Him; loved us so much as to remain amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit, to guide, comfort, and empower us. To have His Son take our sins, our deserved punishment, upon Himself – could we imagine such love? And all this, while we were yet sinners?

Surely this love – our puzzle-piece “L” and the similar-shaped “J,” signifying Love and Jesus – can make the puzzles of our lives complete, whole… making sense.

Look at either one, and if you really can’t understand them fully, just accept them and fit them into your life’s picture. Each one is a piece that passes understanding.

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“The Love of God” is a traditional hymn performed here by the three brothers Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen Nasby, The “NCrew,” their band called Eli Eli. It is a hymn that comes as close as any to defining the indefinable, indescribable unspeakable mystery that is God’s love. There is a legend that a madman in an asylum once heard the song through his barred window and wrote the words of the third verse on his wall. Somehow the plausibility of that story reflects the love, the peace, that passes understanding.

Click: The Love of God

1-21-13

On January 20, 2013, less than a month shy of the day we met 40 years ago, Nancy Marschall was taken off life support. My wife was a strong Christian, an amazing mother, and possessor of a modest personality that everyone loved. Her shyness masked a robust faith that touched and inspired uncountable people. Many of us would have defined ourselves by the ailments she endured: a diabetic since 13, she sustained several heart attacks, a heart and kidney transplant, thyroid cancer, legal blindness, toe amputation, broken bones, celiac disease, several strokes, dialysis, and, last week, a ruptured stomach ulcer that saw her lose 14 units of blood, outpacing transfusions. She experienced miraculous healings, and some healings by doctors’ hands. Other healings, she is experiencing right now.

For a long time she was unable to exercise, as you might imagine. But she exercised her faith. While waiting 18 weeks for a heart and kidney transplant, she overcame her shyness to pray with patients waiting with her at Temple University Hospital. Then she held services. I assisted, and she recruited our children Heather, Ted, and Emily, to participate in the services and room visitations, and pray with our counterparts in recipients’ families. Our faith was strengthened too as we dealt with heartache, unanswerable questions, grief, and shared joy. We witnessed healings, and helped lead people to conversions, in a ministry that lasted more than six years.

I could write many tributes to Nancy… or share how her life was a tribute to her Savior. Rather, recalling the “great cloud of witnesses” in Heaven who watch us, according to Hebrews chapter 11, I will quote from one of the many articles and media stories about Nancy, additional witnesses so to speak, and her affect on people on behalf of Christ.

“Giving Heart To Those Awaiting A New Life At Temple University Hospital, Nancy Marschall Leads Weekly Prayers For Patients On The Heart-Transplant List. Not Long Ago, She Was In Their Place,” was the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 28, 1999. By Ellen O’Brien:

Nancy Marschall got a new heart and a new kidney on Valentine’s Day, 1996. Naturally, this is not something she would forget.

But Marschall does more than remember, when she wakes up every morning, that she’s still around at 45, and that – yes, again – she has a whole new day to live. Once a week for the last three years… she goes back to the seventh floor of Temple University Hospital, where she spent what may have been the longest 18 weeks of her life – the floor known officially as the Heart-Failure Care Unit….

“We’re just trying to open ourselves up to what God would have us do,” Marschall said, by way of explanation. “He’s just leading us.” Last Sunday, 14 patients and family members piled in to the prayer service, filling the little room to bursting – white, African American, West African and Asian, all of them speaking of life in very, very simple terms. “Our health is out of our hands. There’s nothing we can do any more,” Marschall said.

But still, she said, there is God to rely on: “He’s here. He’s with us, and nobody can separate us.” She was sitting in a wheelchair near the door, with one foot propped up in a plaster cast. She’s had diabetes for 30 years, which can numb the extremities, so when she broke a bone in her foot, she continued to limp around on it for an extra week, unaware of the injury.

The room where the Marschalls lead their service is small and modern, high off Broad Street, with a line of windows that curve into a bay. Three philodendron plants hang like leafy green globes in the sunlight…. When Marschall was waiting for her heart, patients couldn’t leave their rooms without an intravenous pole – and a hospital nurse to roll a heart-monitor along beside them. But not all the change is good: Now the wait is growing longer because the number of heart-failure cases is increasing every year while the number of heart donors has stayed the same.

“When people would go down for transplant, we’d say we’d pray for them. But did it really happen? . . . I just felt God speaking to me. And Rick had the same call,” Marschall said. “We’re talking about Christ, and the love of God, and the change He can have in our lives,” Marschall said. She added that she prays for guidance in this new missionary role: “I don’t want to mislead people.”

“We try to point everything to a better relationship with Christ,” Rick Marschall added. “We’re Christians, we’re not deists [or mere feel-good cheerleaders].”

In fact, until the transplant, the Marschalls attended services at the Pentecostal Christian Life Center in Bensalem every Sunday, and they still consider themselves part of that congregation, although they’re otherwise engaged now on Sunday mornings. … “I think we’re just like everybody,” Marschall said. “When there are things or burdens upon you, you tend to pray more. When things are going well, you tend to do it less.” Personally, she thinks this is a human trait that God understands.

At Sunday’s prayer service, the last hymn was “Amazing Grace,” but the tape that the Marschalls had brought along – to guide the impromptu choir – failed to include the second verse. This was a verse that Rick Marschall found particularly meaningful. As the tape rolled to the end, he urged everybody on: “Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. . . .”

The sound of singing rose, strong and healthy and enthusiastic. You could hear it out in the hall…

Out in the halls, indeed. And far beyond. For the first time in decades, Nancy is now healed and whole and pain-free. I imagine she will look around Heaven for her granddaughter and our own stillborn baby, and the many people she inspired through the years, unless, of course, they see her first. In my picture of Heaven, all those wonderful reunions will have to wait a moment until Jesus stops hugging her as He whispers, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

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Christians often refer to death in a biblical way. It is not a euphemism like “passing away,” but the literal situation – “home-going.” Those of us who remain cannot fail to be a little jealous of sick people who become well, the lonely who embrace their Savior, the troubled who find peace. It is the home prepared for us, a place with many mansions, joy unspeakable and full of glory. This picture finds musical expression in the Negro spiritual based on the tune of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Performed here, with beautiful images, by the London churchboy’s choir Libera.

Click: Going Home

11-26-12

I have become aware of the condition of a friend who has experienced some trials lately. None of the experiences are, perhaps, unusual in themselves, but their almost simultaneous visitations might test anyone’s spirit. He is trying, not to make sense of these sorts of life-happenings – because everything makes sense or nothing makes sense; and “time and chance happen to all men,” as Proverbs says – but to cope, simply to cope. Have you ever been there?

In less than a calendar year his special-needs niece died; his nine-day-old granddaughter died; his wife, after multiple long-term illnesses, is to choose between dialysis and hospice; and his sister, who lost her home in Hurricane Sandy, is losing a battle with HIV that was long held at bay. My friend says he keeps fighting the seduction to moan about his own condition, his own emotions and reactions to these matters.

But he knows – that is, he too infrequently remembers – that it is not about him. It is about these loved ones. And about God. Usually, when nothing makes sense to us, and God seems to be somewhere in the story, it means that God is EVERYWHERE in the story. The man’s wife, for instance, has been cited by many, many people through the decades as an inspiration: encouraging people to faith and endurance as her faith helped her to endure. And his sister, after years of rebellion, has come to know Jesus, drawing closer to God.

Why do we find it so hard to see the silver linings to the dark clouds? Why are we always surprised at the grace that infuses every “crisis”? Why do we forget that the sun shines, not only after the storm clouds pass – but all the time, even when the storm clouds temporarily are overhead and blot the sun from view?

Just like the natural tendency to be sad when a loved one dies, such emotions are a brand of selfishness. Not the nasty schoolyard selfishness, but self-ish focus on one’s own condition. Rather, or I should say in addition to the unavoidable, we should direct all the emotions we can toward the loved ones in their difficulties, and to God on their behalf.

We should not believe that God is in control only when the course of events magically follows our own scripts. God wants us, more than anything else, to trust in Him. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is not summoning patience until God does what we want. Faith is, sometimes, stopping our obsession to understand everything.

And faith is humility. Obey His commands, trust in His love, accept His plan. My sister, newly a friend of God, is blessed not just by the power and balm of the act of praying, but of praying on her knees, specifically. There is a language of prayer, in some gifted circumstances; and, surely, there is also an attitude of prayer.

And sometimes, my friend has discovered anew, there is the biblical concept of the “sacrifice of praise” – when you don’t feel like praying, and even less feel like praising, is when to do it. Loudly and confidently, or softly and tenderly, do it.

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If you never have clicked on a music video after one of these messages, please do watch this one, the completion of this message. The classic hymn “Softly and Tenderly” was written a century and a quarter ago by Will L. Thompson on similar reflections, and among its verses, “Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me; Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming, Coming for you and for me.” But followed by: “Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised, Promised for you and for me! Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon, Pardon for you and for me.” And the promise in the chorus: “Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, come home; Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home!” Sung by RoseAngela Merritt of NewSpring Church, Anderson, S.C.

Click: Softly and Tenderly

8-15-11

By Cheryl Hults Meakins

Recently it was reported that an online pedophile pornography community was shut down by the federal government, which also confiscated 123 terabytes of video, roughly equivalent to 16,000 DVDs of atrocities against children. The cancer of pornography has grown for decades and this giant seems much more powerful than Goliath ever was.

1 Samuel 17:4 “A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall.”

I have a hard time watching the news every day. There are so many choices we have made in America that grieve my heart, even overwhelm me and paralyze me with fear.

It seems while I was growing up, so was sin on the increase in our culture. I stopped at 5’5” but our sins have grown like a cancer and loom before us like Goliath, mocking us, until we tend to live in fear. Will our children be swiped from our streets? Will a picture snapped on a passing cell phone be plastered on the internet? Must I help my children lose their innocence when warning them of the real “stranger danger?” Is this living in freedom?

Hollywood used to condemn movies with bare bottoms and curse words with R ratings. Now those are rewarded with PG-13 ratings. I remember in the ‘80s being disgusted at the mainline magazines that were boys’ rites of passage to manhood. Even worse is the rise of human trafficking in our own nation that is swiftly becoming more lucrative than drug sales for organized crime.

The giants that seemed so big in the ‘80s are dwarfs compared to the monsters confronting us today. The battles we once had to fight we now see were just the opening skirmishes in wars much bigger, and more deadly.

I look in the face of the giants that believers must fight… and I struggle to keep standing. I am overwhelmed with thoughts, even of children who survive sexual assaults, who grow up with pain their souls have recorded and their minds can barely contain.

I confess: often I become paralyzed; by the size of this giant but even more at the depth of healing needed for those who were forced to become victims.

You see, as long as I look at the face of the giant, I will fear, I will give up fighting, I will lay aside my weapons so my hands can cover my ears and dampen the noise of the helpless souls being ravaged by sin. I grieve that the sin we tolerated in the ‘60s, enjoyed in the ‘70s, humored in the ‘80s, and applauded in the ‘90s, has taken up residence in our midst; and now we know its full dangers.

The Church in America needs to know that there are giants in our land! And facing these giants builds a conflict in our focus. We need to attend to our personal godliness and obedience, but we must also tend to those who cannot fight for themselves.

Lift up your eyes, Church! Look to the hills! Where does our help and hope come from? He is our hope and our help (Psalm 121). His arms outreach the growth of any cancer in our nation. His blood will heal any wound and cover any sin.

Louie Giglio found himself afraid to go to sleep. Night after night he suffered as a cloud of panic or anxiety moved in to his mind. He spent months undergoing medical testing to diagnose his struggle but the turning point towards healing began with a decision he made in the face of his attacking giant. One night, as he was awakened again by this cloud he decided to praise the Lord.

Then he remembered Psalm 63:4 NIV – “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” And in verse 8 “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”

Out of this desperate meditation came these words:

“Be still, there is a healer
His love is deeper than the sea
His mercy, it is unfailing
His arms a fortress for the weak”

Louie later shared these words with Chris Tomlin and a song of healing was born out of desperate obedience. Meditate on “I lift my hands.” And after you have found your peace, let your faith arise, pick up your swords and find a battleground to fight.

I have found mine!

Today’s Guest Writer:
Cheryl Meakins is an author and speaker who is passionate about women stepping into their callings as healers and warriors. More of her thoughts can be found at: www.MeakinsSpeak.wordpress.com.

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Click: I Lift My Hands