Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-28-23

Nothing in the Holy Bible is an accident. Every word of Scripture has application to our lives. That we are not nomads or shepherds is irrelevant. Truth, sin, purity, love, and God’s sovereignty are matters as pertinent to us today as to any people through past centuries and many lands. The smallest details are as important as the larger narratives.

In that perspective I invite a look at the first of Jesus’s miracles. In the second chapter of John’s Gospel we have the account of the Wedding Feast at Cana. It is where Jesus turned water into wine as the feast ran short.

This is the first of Jesus’s recorded miracles. We may marvel, as the wedding couple and the guests did. The important point is to focus on the miracle, not specifically the wine (for all its symbolism, I suppose Jesus might have made a miracle at the wedding feast of bread or fish or… wait; that’s for later). But The miracle itself was intended to impress the guests. Jesus’s actions have significance. His presence as a “mere” guest affirms His own humility, the “servant king.” And so forth.

But let us pause with those who focus on the role of wine at this event. Many people – and multiplied-more others – have lives that are scarred by alcohol abuse. It was the case in my family, and probably the same with most of you readers. It is a weakness in the human condition; and although specific to wine and liquor, I am persuaded that many people are basically addicted to being addicted; alcohol is the tendency or “flavor” or option of many self-destructive life-choices.

Virtually every addict, no matter the frequency or pleasure of the “highs,” regrets the addiction… sometimes (or repeatedly) seeks release… grieves over the consequences. Relationships, jobs, family, career, health, life.

Stick with me, please. The focus of the Water-Into-Wine miracle should not be the food or wine, nor even the miracle itself… but the Miracle-Maker.

Let us say that you have an addiction. We all do, in myriad ways, even to the common addictions to sinning, transgressing, pride, not fully serving God. Many believers – and I address well-meaning Christians – often pray that we be freed from bondage to this or that temptation. But those prayers are often in this context: “Help me be strong, Lord, that I can battle these problems. Watch me!”

As God reads our well-meaning hearts, we often mean: “Get me to that point, Lord, where I can resist these challenges on my own.” And it’s likely we really mean: “I want You to be proud of me, Lord. Give me wisdom and strength that I can overcome these temptations by myself.” And we are in effect wanting to get to the point of saying, “Thank you, Lord! I will take over from here!”

That’s spiritual maturity, right?

No, that is spiritual immaturity.

Let us never forget the Biblical reminder that “we can do nothing except through the Christ who strengthens us.” Remember that Jesus wants to run with us, not watch us hand off the baton and then cheer from the bleachers. Why did God send the Holy Spirit except to be our constant Guide and Comforter and Wisdom and Strength?

Was Christ’s work on the cross something that we should regard as “finished” when we think we know how much to receive from it?

In the case of our focus here, sometimes for addicts the greatest miracle is not to be free of the alcohol… but rather to become addicted to Jesus. “I’ll take it from here, God…” is self-swindling. A greater personal “overcoming,” a greater miracle, is to change our lives that we learn to be dependent, not independent. To be dependent on Jesus instead of the bottle, our own wills.

We are impressed by the account of that miracle at the Wedding Feast, turning water into wine. In our own lives it would not be a matter of weakness, but of strength, if we were to plead for a different miracle. Many things we simply cannot do on our own. God, please turn the wines of our lives – our tendencies to sin; our disobedience; our addictions – back into water.

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Click: Wine Into Water

11-30-20

“What a year this has been.” This has been a common theme of all our conversations with friends these days.

Turn from the pandemic to, say, the economy, which is related (some areas of rebound are remarkable), yet lost jobs, ruined businesses, and shuttered schools because of the oppressive, overhanging shadow – the long-term implications of which we only see through a glass darkly. Meaning, it will get worse before it gets better; the world has changed. Turn from that and we recall, and still face, the rank bitterness of politics, and the lies and thievery so evident. Turn from that and we find ourselves in an America where vandalism, destruction, and riots are virtually condoned and widely accepted as a way of life. Turn from that situation and we shudder to realize that unseen forces, Big Tech and Mainstream Media and Big Brother and others, are spying on us, manipulating us, and censoring us.

In sports, a team has a bad season but applies the balm, “There’s always next year.” We cannot say that in 2020 – or, as it used to be known, 1984. Next year is no guarantee of much better times; probably worse.

We have done our work this year – and by “we” I am referring here to Christian Patriots and Cultural Traditionalists – aware of these things. Except perhaps for the insidious infection of Social Media’s villains, they suddenly have loomed up, and we have tested their spirits.

For us the challenge is not so much to see what is right and wrong… but what to do about it, how to fight, and (frankly) to choose what risks we need take to redeem our culture and save our families.

I invite you to recall the words of John Donne from his Meditation XVII:

Every human’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind. And therefore never look far to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for you.

I have brought 1633’s language into the 21st century, but we all know these observations.
Do any of us disagree, that the death of someone, especially when it is heinous, when we could have intervened, has an impact on the world in general, the human family, and the future? And how we then shall live? Or, at the other end of that scale that thinks of the entire world… that we, individuals, our souls, are diminished too?

John Donne’s “involvement in humankind” did not suggest membership in some club. He says in a unique way that we are all one; no person is an island; we are bound together, interconnected – and should be, and should want to be.

Now more than ever. And if our inescapable fellowship in humanity compels us to react to “every human’s death” when and where and how we can… then we come face to face today with the genocidal impulse behind abortion.

And the terrifying numbers. Not that I run to numbers, in fact usually the opposite, like polls. But this is a question of reality, not charts and graphs; of blood, not ink. The numbers are so cold and so many that they deaden our minds. In recent years:
• One in five American pregnancies ended in abortion;
• Approximately 862,000 abortions performed in 2017 (the most recent stat I found);
• Now, more than 22,000 abortions performed each day in America;
• Since 1973, almost 65-million babies killed by abortion – are we “diminished” as a people 65-millions times? Yes.

I will not crusade here beyond this, attempting to be calm, wondering where in hell this is leading us. Excuse me, but I choose my words deliberately. I know the debates; I know the history; I know the horror stories that “justify” abortion; I myself once was comfortable with the whole idea. Of that, I repent daily; and I can empathize with women who seek it, to an extent. (Not, now, the monsters who perform it.)

My objections are moral; my reasons are spiritual; my reactions are many. Mechanistic – how can we operate and thrive and continue as a civilization when life is worse than cheap but very often contemptible? Why is this the litmus-test issue for half of society, where people who love the unborn are shunned, condemned, and threatened? How do pro-abortion crusaders ignore the fact that many churches, many ministries, many parents desire to adopt “unwanted” babies?

If we have objections, reasons, and reactions, as I just shared, there is another agenda item: we must have responses. If this moral, culture-of-death challenge is spiritual (and it is)… then we need spiritual responses. It is political (and it is)… then we need to get political. If this private angst is, one by one across this country, personal (and it is)… then we need to get personal.

I am tempted not to qualify one moral outrage, or one festering problem, over another, but at the root of the abortion issue – beyond America’s obvious drift from God and the secularization of society – is what I called here “Lazy Virtue.”

Not “easy virtue,” or really even “lack of virtue.” Dr Bill Bennett notwithstanding, “virtue” is a malleable term. Our problems are not because people figuratively smash the 10 Commandment tablets, or burn down churches. Yet.

No: lazy virtue is the worst, because people fool themselves, and are persuaded to fool others, that good is evil and evil is good. For instance, that:
• concern for baby animals is more sacred than saving human babies;
• Lazy Virtue forces those who oppose abortions to participate and even fund them;
• “convenience,” defined so many ways, is more important than others’ morality;
• “What’s right for me is OK, as long as nobody is harmed.”

… whoops, but it is OK to harm a baby close to birth. Even kill it. During the pandemic we hear people yammering about “trusting science.” Well, “science” is now discovering that those blobs and fetuses are (of course) humans; unborn babies can feel pain much earlier than previously thought; and they can survive outside the womb at ever younger ages.

The “tumult and the shouting” of the recent campaign has stopped… No. It hasn’t. But we are supposed to say that every four years. Candidates and presidents come and go. Parties change their appeals and profiles.

But our problems will not go away in America; not automatically. And not easily. As horrible as the sin of abortion is, it is a symptom, not our real disease.

Christian Patriots, Cultural Traditionalists: you might be looking ahead two years or four, and that is good. But start looking to tomorrow. Those bells toll for us, otherwise.

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We toil and look toward that City. Beulah Land, as sweet as it will be, is not Heaven but the border before we cross to the Promised Land which is our home eternal. But what does God require but that we, as believers in Christ, are good and faithful as His servants; do justice and walk humbly.

Music Vid: “Sweet Beulah Land” (For readers with hand-held devices, click or copy and paste: )
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=avntXsW6WhU

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Click: Sweet Beulah Land