Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-25-13

There has been increasing controversy in America about stores that stay open, or lengthen their hours of operation, on Thanksgiving Day. For my part, I am opposed to ever more obeisance to commercialism; and it is not an matter of families, employees in particular, being together around the turkey and such, important enough to be sure. But by focusing on families, who should cherish their times together all the time, and turkeys, then we are on the slippery slope of Hallmarking America (I’d be afraid that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day would be next to be enshrined) (that is, instead of giving thanks to the Lord.)

It is altogether fitting and proper that we recall the words of Abraham Lincoln, who responded to a tradition, informal, of Days of Thanks, and officially proclaimed the first Thanksgiving Day as a national day of observance. His words had meaning – and, significantly, give lie to the canard that he was not a man of faith. Year by year, through his presidency, Lincoln infused conversations, letters, and official documents with references to the God of the Bible, His mercies and His judgments.

Read from his second proclamation (His secretary, John Hay, reported that William Seward was author of the first):

“I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.”

If this is formal, or seems obligatory for him to have proclaimed – which it was not – consider his Proclamation earlier in 1863, appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer:

“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. …

“But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

“It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.”

Yes, a president of the United States wrote such words. More has changed than clichés and phrases we exchange in chats. In fact, does our understanding of the need to thank God need a reassessment too? Maybe a hit of the Reset button?

Let’s see it this way: Of course we should thank God, in many ways and all the time, for the uncountable blessings He bestows. But are THANKS all that we can raise? In a real sense, God’s gift of salvation, sacrificing His Son so that we might be free of sin’s guilt, is God’s Thank You to us.

“God’s Thank You to us?” Can that make sense? Yes, the Bible tells us that God so loved the world… and that, significantly, Christ died for us WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS (Romans 5:8). To me, that sounds like God saying “You’re Welcome” before we even say “Thank You”… but it is what He has done.  

The mysterious ways of God are always like this. He challenges us, yet He knows us. We have free will, yet He holds the future. We seek Him, yet we can know Him. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. We are in the world, but not of the world. St Augustine was not the first nor the last, but maybe history’s most contemplative believer, to gather these apparent contradictions and see them as evidence, not of a capricious and confusing God, but a God who loves us in myriad ways and always meets us where we are, and where we need Him.

All important, as I say, but they are not the meanings of Abraham Lincoln’s words… or our hearts’ duties. We should remember Lincoln: people should set themselves apart; pray; give thanks, give thanks, give thanks. Let the stores close for a day… for the proper reasons.

Three things should be open in America on Thanksgiving Day: open hearts. open Bibles, and open soup kitchens. No one could complain of having nothing to do, or no communications, or no one to be with.

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Yet another aspect, but all part of the mystical whole, is expressed in the classic Ray Boltz song, “Thank you.” Spend a moment with it sometime this week, and see its impactful images.

Click: Thank You

7-16-12

Madison Square Park. An almost magical piece of Manhattan, an oasis of greenery, specialized flower gardens, benches, fountains, statues, and winding little pathways. On sunny but cool, clean-air, New York City Spring days, as it was when I visited recently, it seems Heaven-like, miles and maybe ages away from urban bustle.

The original city planners of grid-like Manhattan streets mercifully retained old Broadway, which cuts diagonally through the island, creating numerous triangles of arterial anomalies. They can be small, like Herald Square to the north, one-fifth of an acre; or spacious, like Madison Square Park. Bordered by Broadway, Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street, and Madison Avenue’s terminus, the Park is larger than six acres. In its neighborhood were the first two Madison Square Gardens; P. T. Barnum’s Museum; the pioneering Fifth Avenue Hotel and A. T. Stewart Department Store; the iconic Metropolitan Life Building; and, at its southern end, the Flatiron Building. During the 1880s the Park hosted the tallest structure in New York City: the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, placed there for visitors to climb, in a plan to raise funds for the statue’s base and erection in New York Harbor.

It sounds idyllic and is indeed full of history, but when I grew up in New York City, Madison Square Park suffered from neglect. And when I taught at the nearby School of Visual Arts in the 1990s, it had become an ugly, smelly, unsafe place to be. So on my recent visit to New York, I was happily surprised to see the results of a decade-long project and conservancy by the city and neighborhood groups.

Fortified with an appropriate park-bench repast – pushcart hot dogs – I sat back and enjoyed the place and time, not quite sure that place and time did not elude me, albeit engagingly. Was it a remnant of the old days that an evident homeless couple sat on a nearby bench, chattering and sharing an old piece of bread? But a mom or nanny passed by with a high-tech baby carriage, and I thought, That child is entering a nicer world than if she were here 20 years ago. And a young woman sat down on another nearby bench and started playing the guitar and singing songs I could not quite hear. All seemed beautiful. The way a city should be?

I was briefly blinded by the reflection of the sun on the gold facing of the old MetLife Building. I was aware, suddenly, of a man sitting next to me. It seemed he knew what I was thinking; but after all, I had been looking around earnestly, taking note of all I could. He shared my appreciation of nature’s glory that afternoon, and then commented on the same things I had paused to notice.

The old man and woman I had dismissed as forlorn homeless drifters? He said that they were, indeed, homeless; and neither had found much happiness over their long lives. But they met in the Bowery Mission downtown and became the best of friends, even falling in love. What made the world look away, they somehow found attractive in each other; and there was not a happier couple in all of Madison Square Park.

The baby in the bionic carriage? Her parents had split in an ugly scene, the father never to return and the mother addicted to an assortment of drugs. The relatives caring for the baby girl would not be able to continue for long. The young woman singing with her guitar, hoping for coins to be dropped into the shoebox? The words to her song – all of a sudden I could discern them – were about a hopeless life, lost love, and what she called her death-sentence of AIDs.

“So you are saying,” I asked the man, “that nothing here is as pleasant as it seems? Is there darkness behind every image?” No, he answered – just look at the joy in the homeless couple I showed you. And you do well, he told me, to have your spirits lifted by a beautiful day, and signs of happiness. But life’s problems, unlike a city park, cannot be solved by paving the pathways and planting some flowers – anyway, we cannot stop there. Accept the improvements, take heart from the joy… but remember that people still hurt, people still hurt each other, people still need Words that will transform their souls, not merely adjust their daily routines.

He swept his hands across the landscape of the park, and then, upwards, to the thousands of apartment windows that overlooked Madison Square Park, behind each a separate story. I could hear, and I quickly saw, that the man was crying, tears glistening on his cheeks. I looked up at the windows, knowing that his wise words were meant to remind me to appreciate the “good,” to see the “special” that was seldom readily apparent; but never to lose sight of hurt and pain and heartache: the needs of our neighbors.

I looked back, and of course the stranger was gone. I didn’t bother to look around or behind me. I believe angels visit us; and even Jesus can bring messages – “as you do it to the least of these, you do unto Me” applies to the love that lies behind the compassion shown through, say, bandages or meals. My visitor’s words lifted me up, not let me down, that afternoon.

Jesus wept (it is recorded in John 11:35) when He approached the dead Lazarus. We cannot believe Christ was affected by death, because He was about to raise the man back to life. And He knew that after a short time He too would die… and overcome death. We may wonder whether Jesus wept because sin had claimed another life; “the wages of sin is death,” and that He had come that people might have life and have it more abundantly – weeping over peoples’ wasted opportunities. Or He might have wept over the grieving friends and relatives of Lazarus, who scarcely realized that Jesus was in their midst. The Lord and Giver of life.

They became victims of their own superficial perceptions.

Jesus wept, and I believe He still does. People are still lost in sin, hurting, hurting each other, and needing the Word. Will they find it through sunny afternoons and fragrant flower gardens, or will they hear it from us? We should weep, too.

I have cried many more times in my life since becoming a Christian. Tears of joy, yes, but also of burning conviction. And seeing hurting souls I never saw – that way – before. Sometimes the most eloquent prayers we can pray are wordless. “He Understands My Tears,” a songwriter wrote. Another song states it well: God sometimes washes our eyes with tears, that we might better see.

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Yet another gospel song carries this theme – and illustrates the eloquence of Jesus’ weeping. Have you ever noticed how teardrops, just like raindrops, when you look closely, can reflect whole new visions of the world, a different reality, multiple images, brighter colors?

Click: Tears Are a Language God Understands