Journal-worthy

First, let me say how much I enjoy all your comments on the blog.  I read every one and learn from them.  They also inspire and encourage me to keep sharing the insights God and life are teaching me.  I love it when you comment, share the blog with others, and click “Like”!

A few blogs ago (Friend in a Café) someone posted this comment: “I often thought about writing in a journal, then realized I don’t have a lifestyle that merits a journal.”

I’ve been pondering that comment ever since and decided to address you who might feel that your life isn’t journal-worthy.  I would also like to hear from you who don’t feel that way.

First, never buy a “diary”.  Journaling should never be a tyrant that forces you to keep account of every day or makes you feel guilty if you don’t.  Just find an empty, well-bound journal, one that pleases you to hold and of a size that you can take with you.

Second, if a moment means something to you, write it down.  Don’t wait for an important or consequential event.  Just a regular moment will do.  Did you love smelling the bacon frying and the aroma of morning coffee?  Write how it made you feel or a memory it evoked.  Did the sunrise on the new-fallen snow or the golden wheat field behind your house make you clap your hands inside? Describe it.  Notice the fairies dancing in the dew drops outside the kitchen window?  Say so!  Catch the moment!  Did your child say something surprisingly insightful?  Write it down.  You think you’ll remember, but you won’t unless you write it down. 

Don’t be pressured to write a lot.  Put a date at the top of the page and then scribble a few sentences. Think of it as if you are texting yourself.  Sharpen your focus; pay attention.  Then, tell the pages what you are seeing and feeling.  No flowery language is needed.  Journaling is like a prayer.  You don’t have to impress God...or the paper.

Third, if you spend the day sad or depressed or discouraged, tell your journal before you go to bed.  Puke it all out on the pages.  Are you frustrated or angry?  Vent to your journal.  Then let it go and go to bed.  Don’t re-read it the next day or maybe the next week or next month. I have a feeling that when you do re-read your entry later on, you will have gained some perspective.

Fourth, take your journal with you to lunch in a small café.  Keep it in the car while you’re waiting for the kids to come out of school or while waiting for road construction.  Sip a latté in an airport coffee shop and read the stories around you in the faces, the body language, the interactions (or lack thereof). Write what you see and listen with your heart to the messages. When you get up in the morning, write down your dreams.  Don’t try to interpret their meaning; that may come later. The main thing is to learn to pay attention to life around you and inside you, and record it for this moment.

When you have your devotional/meditation time, keep your journal close.  If you are reading the Bible verse for the day, read the whole chapter.  Pay attention to the story, the context of that verse.  I guarantee you will have a new revelation or fresh insight that will speak to your day. You’ll want to write it down.

Over my years of mostly sporadic journaling, I have discovered a few things.
1. What I thought was important at the time, turned out not to be, and the things so common I almost didn’t write them down, turned out to be very important.  Someone has said “big doors swing on very small hinges”.  Yes, journaling has let me know what is important—and what is not.
2. Journaling has taught me there is a difference between
     --acquaintances and relationships
    --calling and career
--setbacks and failure
     --success and accomplishment          
     --power and authority.
3. God is always up to something in my life.
4.  I have learned
--everyone needs to belong
--I need silence and solitude        
--meditation and centering are needs as innate and ancient as Adam and Eve
--silence needs to be coupled with reflection if it is to be restorative.
5. Eternity starts here. There is eternity to be found in each moment. My job is to recognize it and give myself away for things that last forever, for forever starts here.

I hope you will start journaling if you haven’t.  And I hope whether you are a life-long journaler or a brave new starter, you will share your experiences with us.

This song is the journal entry of my life.

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My Right Hand

I am intrigued by the passages of the Bible that say that when we are in relationship with God, He holds us by our right hand.  There are also many references to Jesus after his ascension being seated at the Father’s right hand (some sources list 100!). 

Biblical scholars say the use of this “right hand” metaphor symbolizes authority, strength, and a place of honor and protection. Most commentaries say that the references to God holding us by our right hand mean that we have the assurance that God is close and doesn’t leave us, even in the most difficult circumstances of life. That God is holding our right hand implies that HIS right hand is free. This should bring us peace and eliminate the fear and anxiety of feeling that we are all alone in this journey, no matter the challenges to our faith and trust.

I love, too, the metaphor from Matthew 11 of a yoke.  Although few young people of the last century remember seeing two strong animals, like oxen or horses, being joined using a wooden piece of equipment that combined their strengths to pull heavy loads, we can imagine this from movies and pictures. 

Not just the weight of the load, but the yoke itself becomes an issue.  The strain of moving with a strong wooden yoke, were it not expertly carved, shaped, and smoothed, could cause irritation to the neck and shoulders of the wearer.

Now, imagine this image in the context of Jesus offering to each of us who are overwhelmed by the load life has laid on our shoulders to be “yoked” to Him.  Come to me, he offers, and I will give you rest.  Yoke up with me.  Okay, let’s just stop there.  Don’t yoke-sharers have to be evenly matched, equally strong, equally sized?

But Jesus invites us wimpy and weary to join up in a team where our side of the yoke is just a figure of speech, because the God of the galaxies is in the other side of the yoke.  And our side of the yoke is not irritating or poorly shaped but perfectly fitted to our particular (scrawny) neck and shoulders.  It is perfect, and what’s left of our load is light.  How stupid of us, then, to claim credit for the outcome of this “shared” load bearing!

Now, back to God holding us by our right hand.  Yes, this means we are not alone.  And it means God is walking with us every step of the way.  But maybe, just maybe, He is holding our right hand tightly, so we won’t use it to take charge or take credit.  Our more awkward hand is free to carry through, but our right hand is held, while God’s right hand is free to overcome the circumstance, lift the encumbrances, fight the battles, or move galaxies, if need be, for His beloved children.

He has been given by his Father all authority in heaven and earth (Matthew 28), and it is He who holds our right hand.  That gives a whole new meaning to “fear not!”  And it also keeps us from taking over.  We must relinquish.  We must surrender to win. We must not use our right hand of self-sufficiency to wrench back control, for if we do, we will not know the sweet confidence that “He who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us.” – Romans 8:34

It is He who holds our right hand, so “who can separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us!” – Romans 8:35,37

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A Birthday Prayer

I lately found a prayer I wrote in my journal on my 60th birthday.  It was the time of life when my days were filled with singing and traveling on weekends, helping our daughters with their four children (ages 3-10) with their schedules, writing song lyrics, publicity pieces, and articles, and keeping up with home, meals, guests, and the laundry. At that time I had also opened a place we called Gaither Family Resources, a welcoming place filled with books, music, décor, and coffee shop.
My life was varied and busy—too busy.  I was always fighting for solitude to think and read, and longing to expand my academic research.  There were books I needed to write. I was jugging all these things like a circus performer, loving it all but seemingly never able to focus on my “calling”.  Here is the prayer: 

Dear God,
It seems as if my plans for myself have always been written in Jello.  Maybe it’s because my best gift has turned out to be adapting.  I never could narrow down what I wanted to do or what I should prepare for because I was interested in it all.
I still feel that way, but now I am coming to believe that this smattering of jobs you’ve given me is my calling.  In fact, I’ve come to recognize after sixty years of living – how dense can I be? – that maybe even the things other people perceive are my callings, the things you’ve given me to do, weren’t my calling either – or at least, not all of it.
I am finally coming to believe that you simply call me to show up for work.  (I’ve always been everybody’s workhorse and sometimes resented that.) But you give me a job to go to so that you can interrupt my days.  It’s been the interruptions – as I look back – that really counted for eternity.

I’m so sorry that I have missed some of these.  I repent that I’ve sometimes turned people away you sent into my life – put them off, cut short my times with them, scheduled them for a more convenient time – when you intended them to be my life.      
I used to pine over books that didn’t sell as much as I hoped they would, degrees I couldn’t finish, and opportunities I couldn’t take advantage of.  I still do sometimes.
     Today help me to see what you really give me to do: help the person in the ditch; take the child on my knee who’s interrupting my conversation and talk to him or her; fix soup to lift someone’s work load; talk to the person in the store who’s keeping me from finishing the display… Whatever you put in my path – let me assume it’s my calling and do it with verve and joy. Amen.

  Now, more than two decades later, I have come to believe what our daughter Suzanne always says:  God’s will for your life is to do the next thing. 
Yes! God’s will is and always has been to embrace and do what is on my plate for today with all the energy and passion I have, and not ask God for any more information until I have done that.  I have discovered that when we “walk in the light”, the light moves.  If we stay in the light of “God’s will” for today, we must move, too.  Perhaps we see God’s will only in hindsight.   As “regular” as it seems at the time, it doesn’t get any more glamorous than that. But I have also learned that when we bring our preparations to God, give up our pre-made plans, and give all our struggling to the Holy Spirit, we have grabbed a whirlwind by the tail. When we ask God for an adventure, we better mean it!  

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Planting Instructions

We are building a pergola outside our kitchen window seat. I thought climbing roses would be perfect growing up the lattice attached to the support pillars. 

I was searching through the David Austin catalog of roses (my favorite breeder of English roses) and came across a video on how to plant bare root roses.  I wanted to be sure I didn’t mess this up, so I went to the video site and found these instructions:

1.   Soak the bare roots in a bucket of water for a few days to be sure the roots are well-hydrated.
2.   Dig the hole where roses are to be planted wider and deeper than the fully spread-out roots.
3.    Mix the soil from the hole with humus and, if soil is dense, a bit of sand.
4.   Fill the hole with water, then add enough of the soil mixture in the hole to give the roots a rich place to start.
5.   Place the rose in the hole, spread roots out, and gently fill in around the roots with the soil mix, so that the top of the roots is just below ground level. Gently press the soil in place.

I couldn’t help wishing that new and raw-root believers were planted in the soil of God’s love so gently and carefully.

What if the spirit of our worship was like the water people so need to hydrate their vulnerable roots?  And what if the space where hearts are planted were wider and deeper than the tender roots, so that no tight and harsh confines would bruise their thirsty exploration?

And what if any hard clay of legalism were mixed with the soil of compassion to enrich, without bruising or breaking, their fragile tendrils of joy and enthusiasm?

And what if our greatest reward for serving the Lord was to see in new believers the greening leaves begin to unfold, and new shoots begin to bud and blossom?

And what if all of us could find our roots going “deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love” so that we could “be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience that love for ourselves, though it is so great we will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it.  And so at last, we will be filled up with God himself.”  (Eph. 3:17-19 NLT)

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Mountains and Sea -- A Valentine

It is never easy to find a valentine that says what I want to say. So over the years I have ended up, more often than not, writing my own messages to the lover of my life.  If I laid these valentines end-to-end, I would find a progression of seasons of the heart. This last December we celebrated 62 years of seasons.  There has been (and still is) a lot of learning how to read the road signs and subtleties of loving.  One only trusts the inner sanctum of the soul to another bit by bit as trust is built, and even then, only God knows the deeper hidden places that each of us harbors.  Bill and I are alike in some ways; we are very different in others.  But strong marriages are not built on unison, but on two-part harmony and the willingness to let, and help, the other grow toward what God made us to be.  So, my tender love, here is my valentine.

MOUNTAINS AND SEA

You were all mountains;
I was sea.
You craved elevation;
I longed for vastness.
You needed to view things from above;
I wanted to survey the far horizons.
You preferred to get your perspective from looking down;
I got mine from gazing outward.
You were inspired by heights;
My muse was breadths and depths.
You needed to feel the altitude;
I needed to be dwarfed by expanses.
Together we have brought our perceptions
From separate frames of reference.
Yet together we have come to know—
Though we will never fully understand—
How wide, how long, how high and how deep
Love really is.
And so we are filled up,
Yes, filled up.

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Friend in a Café

I was in a small café in Sweden having coffee one morning. The waitress was not Swedish, but Spanish, and spoke both Swedish and English. As she wiped off the table with a sponge, then stopped to take my order, there was no barrier between us. She was a woman, doing what I had done a thousand times. She made coffee in the mornings, got her children off to school, and tried to make ends meet at the market.  She was very bright; her snappy eyes told me that.

Yet she served. She managed things there in the café. She was capable of more. What we exchanged across a cultural barrier was instant friendship because we shared a kinship with women everywhere. 

Women have always been able to make do out of what life hands them, to create an ordered universe in the midst of chaos and stress.  Women have always been able to make something from nothing, stretching the stew, making the worn-out clothes or opportunities into something new, smiling and caressing in spite of their own inclinations to give in to tears and fatigue, mothering the world. Yet, like the new friend I made in the café, while their hands were performing the task at hand, their minds were racing on. Assimilating. Analyzing. Philosophizing.

Someone has said that men are effective while women are reflective. That may be true. So much of men's thinking is applied directly to their work. The result of their thinking is output, income, product. But much of what women think about does not create tangible product. Historically, their assigned roles in society have prevented this. Instead, they ponder the meaning and quality of life. Such pondering may not result in consumable products, but it can produce great souls—souls who ask why instead of merely what and how.  Women, after all, are about the industry of the heart.

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Sisters--Ever the Best of Friends

She was ten years old when I was born, and I never knew life without her. I don't remember any sibling rivalry, perhaps because she was more my protector than my peer at first. She helped with my bath, fed me when Mother was busy, and showed me off to her friends. When I was bigger, she took me places and made sure nobody picked on me.

I remember that she took me with her to visit high school when I was four or five years old. I sat in study hall and drew pictures with her colored pencils and circles with her protractor. I thought it was great to move from class to class, and I remember that her teachers made a fuss over me. I got the feeling Evelyn was proud.

I knew I was proud of her! She was the highest scoring forward on the girls' basketball team, and I couldn't wait to grow up to be like her. I liked her brown hair, her saddle shoes, and her boyfriends. I'm not sure they were all that crazy about me, especially when she took me with her on her dates. "Those guys won't want your little sister tagging along," my mother would tell her. "If they don't want her around," I'd hear her answer, "they don't want me either." And that was that. I knew I could grab my roller skates and go to the skating rink one more time.

I got quite good at roller skating. But I didn't get good at any other sport. The first day of school was always great for me. My sister's reputation as a crack athlete would always precede me, so when recess came and the kids chose up teams for softball and basketball, I'd always be the first chosen. That was the first day.

The second was another story: "We'll take Sam; you can have Gloria." "No, that's okay; you can take her. We had her yesterday." After that I was always the last to be chosen. I resigned myself to the fact that I was uncoordinated and too nearsighted for good depth perception. But I began to show promise in other areas, and it was my sister who always cheered me on.

 When I won my first speech contest, she was the first to brag on me. When I was elected president of the student council and tied for valedictorian of my class, she cut the article out of the paper and had it preserved in plastic. When I failed or came home broken-hearted, she was the sympathetic shoulder to cry on; when I succeeded she beamed from ear to ear.



When the calling of my life took me into more public arenas, there was never a shade of jealousy or distance from her. She loved my husband and my children as her own family and helped me through pressured times in ways I could never explain.

 Her husband Dave was like a brother to me and made sacrifices few men would make to keep my sister and me together.  When my mother was no longer able to keep up with the schedules of our teenage children while the Gaither Trio traveled on weekends, Evelyn and Dave made a complete career change. At a stage when few couples would take such a risk, they moved from Michigan to Indiana to be the stability we could count on.

 Evelyn was a Junior High School science teacher.  Most of the time if someone was looking for her at school, they would not find her and her students in the classroom, but outside under a tree picking up leaves or acorns for leaf collections or turning over stones in a nearby creek looking for tiny crabs or observing tadpoles and frogs. Two of our grandsons (her nephews) who went into fields of science say they credit their interest in science to their aunt Evelyn.

 Our mother's illness and ultimate death from cancer was a bittersweet process we shared together. It made me love Evelyn all the more to share the experience no one can put into words, the experience that left us orphans. After Mother’s death we were all that was left of our family of origin. We held to each other more tightly than ever, treasuring every stolen moment together--each opportunity to share insights from what life was teaching us, each exchange of cute or brilliant antics of our grandchildren.

 She was a Virgo, and was somehow connected to the soil. Anything she planted grew just to please her. We traded plants from our gardens in the spring and gave each other seeds in the fall. We took trips to the nurseries to buy new breeds of geraniums or to find unusual perennials. But deep in my heart I always knew that the rarest thing we'd ever grow was the deep friendship that would never die with any season. Someone has said, "You can't take it with you," but I was convinced that what my sister and I had grown together was already being transplanted in the perfected Garden of Eden on the sunny banks of Jordan.

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Tasting, Seeing, Touching Christmas

Taste Christmas!

This is the season to throw diet to the winds and to eat our way through this happy season.  Because America truly is the “great melting pot,” the foods of all our various national heritages have marched right onto the Christmas table, bringing our roots together while at the same time, making each family’s celebration unique.     

Italian families may add pastas and fabulous sauces to the Christmas menu, while Swedish families insist on including gubböra (an egg and anchovy mixture), vörtbröd (a rye bread), and lutfisk to the traditional ham and potatoes.  For the Irish descendents, potatoes are not an option and soda bread will be a staple, as well.  A breakfast favorite of the South, having made its way to us via France, is “chocolate gravy” over homemade biscuits.

Whatever our family histories might be, food is a vital part of Christmas and kitchens are bound to be the place to be, while fruit cakes, Christmas cookies, cream pies with meringue, mince tarts, turkeys, hams, roasts, winter vegetables, and special breads are pulled from the ovens or simmer on the stove.     

Some of the best gifts of the season are those from the kitchen.  Baked goods wrapped in colorful boxes, homemade and canned jellies, jams and chutneys, delicious breads and pies are sure to get grateful responses from neighbors, mail carriers, teachers, and business associates.    

Some of my favorite tastes of Christmas are those sipped steaming hot from a mug or cup: hot chocolate, wassail, rich coffees, chai or Christmas teas, and warmed fruit juices and punches.  At our house, we have a special golden yellow earthen-ware pitcher and a set of gigantic matching cups and saucers lettered on the sides with the word “chocolat.”  This special set is saved for one special purpose: hot chocolate with a melting marshmallow for children that come in half-frozen from sledding on the hillside.        

I guess when I think of it, Christmas is, for one thing, a giant season-long tasting party.  From home to home, family to family, we find ways to say: “Christmas is love.  Taste and see!”

See Christmas!

Ever since the shepherds were overwhelmed by a sky full of singing angels and said to themselves: “Let’s go see this thing that has come to pass”, Christmas has been a wonder we just have to see with our own eyes!    

The sight of a baby, born in a stable, resting on a nest of hay made these same shepherds race out into the surrounding villages “glorifying and praising…God for all that they had heard and seen”.      

The wonder of Christmas is something we still want those around us to see.  “Come over and see the tree,” we say to our friends.     

“Would you like to drive around with us to see the lights?” we invite our kids and grandkids.      

“Hey, how about going with us to see the celebration in the city square?” we phone our neighbors.

 “Have you seen the great display of Gingerbread Houses the county kids have built at the Minnestrista Center?” we mention to someone at church.      

“Would you like to go with our family to the Live Nativity Pageant at the country church near Noblesville?” we ask another mom after rehearsal for the Christmas program.  “We could stop afterward and see the Christmas tree on the Circle and get some hot chocolate.”

Lights, wreaths, pageants, angel choirs, stars, garlands, sparkling centerpieces, beautiful packages, colorful displays, street decorations, light shows… so much to see at Christmas that the whole world is eye-candy. 

What child hasn’t stood in awe to see the lights catching the crystals of freshly fallen snow and in them see “fairies dancing on the night”?  Or watched in wonder as the skaters glide like angels over the ice at Rockefeller Center, while magical snowflakes land on his tongue or catch in her eyelashes?    

So much to see.  Christmas is a carnival for the eyes.  Come, look through the Kaleidoscope of Christmas!

Touch Christmas!

What a wild circus of textures Christmas is!  Come, let’s “feel our way” around the glories of this tactile celebration!

First feel the soft skin of a baby, who is God-made-most-touchable, most-vulnerable for us who “were afar off.”

Touch a baby; tenderly embrace a child to honor Him who was Love in a baby blanket…. in our arms.

Touch the rough texture of a well-worn wooden manger and the prickly straw that fills it.

Touch the moist noses of the cows and horses that stand, curious, around.  Feel the night air.

Then touch the celebration that has gradually come to surround this “most touchable” happening.  Feel the needles of the evergreen tree and boughs that announce that because of Jesus we shall always live!

Touch the snow that covers the ground and remember the “covering” – the atonement – that makes us “whiter than snow” in the eyes of God.

Touch the red berries on the branches we gather and put in all sorts of containers, remembering that this child would one day shed his blood, that its life-giving qualities could fill us all no matter the shape, size, or condition of our containers.

Touch the lights as they burn warm, string them everywhere.  Light the streets and the houses, the cathedrals, and the back streets with them, for the chill of death has been replaced by warmth and light.

Touch your children, your neighbors, the community with reconciliation.  Take someone a warm cake; extend a warm handshake; offer the thawing warmth of forgiveness.

Hold and ring the gold and silver bells.  Ring out the news that the Creator of the galaxies has touched us.  Yes, ring the bells and pass them on!  Touch someone else.  We are not alone!

The Incarnation is the most immense mystery we will ever try to wrap our hearts and minds around! Let’s use every avenue we have to say to the children, and to each other, something that transcends our comprehension. Our lives depend on it!

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Sensing the Mystery of Christmas

I like to think of the mind as the city center into which flow five major highways: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. It is by way of these thoroughfares that we experience life in all its complexity. It is by the senses that we learn, gain insights, and internalize all that is true and helpful for life. 

If ever there was a truth that needed to be internalized in every way, it is the amazing story of a God who spoke all things into existence and continues to sustain creation with His breath, yet who loved His creation so much that He Himself came as a helpless baby to touch us at our point of need. When we weren't understanding the immensity of His love for His creation, He spoke His love in terms we could comprehend: the sound of a baby's cry on a cold night, the smell of a lowly, animal-filled stable, the rough texture of a feeding trough filled with coarse straw, the brightness of a new star in the dark night sky, and the taste of the Bread of Life to feed the souls of us all. 

Since that night more than two millennia ago that divided time itself into B.C. (before) and A.D. (after), those whose lives have been changed by this baby boy have created dozens of symbols and traditions in their efforts to express an event both human and divine. All the senses have been called into play by the deep longing to share the very personal experiences of a cosmic and eternal change-point.

Light, warmth, belonging, satisfaction of deep un-nameable hungers, fresh and eternal life, spiritual pilgrimage, the divine gifts, the return of the Song of Life...all these need the ladder of symbolism to even begin to approach and express the depths of Redeeming Love!

Each of us has been the recipient of a rich heritage of traditions and symbols given by others so that we can experience and communicate to our children the unfathomable love of God—the God who came to walk with us, to touch us where we are broken, to feed us the true water and food of the Spirit, and to be His love made visible.

As we celebrate Christmas, let's use all the senses—every avenue we have—to embrace this amazing Story. And as we do, let's remember to always tell and retell the reason for every tradition, giving thanks for the reality we celebrate! Let's promise each other that every highway to the soul will never become a bypass.

Smell Christmas!

 If all I could remember of Christmas were just the smells of the season, I would still be rich with memories.

  • The real cedar tree my grandfather cut in the Michigan woods and brought with fragrance into the old farmhouse.

  • The smells of cranberries simmering on the stove, Grandma’s bread baking in the oven, popcorn popping to string for the tree, spicy pumpkin pies cooling on the kitchen counter.

  • The fragrance of clean sheets and blankets from the cedar closets pulled tight up around my neck as I was tucked into bed to wait for far-away Christmas morning.

  • My daddy’s Old Spice and mother’s Max Factor powder as they held me on their laps to read the sweet story from Luke 2.

  • The warming smell of hickory logs burning in the pot-bellied stove that heated the seldom used “front room” through these special days of celebration.

The Sounds of Christmas

         Music defines Christmas–not just the music of Christmas carols filling the house and the age-old story set to a hundred different tunes, but the music and rhythms of life:

  • The giggles and whispers of children keeping secrets.

  • The sound of bells coming from the Salvation Army bell ringers in front of the grocery store.

  • The crinkling sound of paper being folded around surprise packages.

  • The sound of carolers outside in the crisp winter night.

  • The music of the traffic in the streets rushing home with gifts.

  • The sound of the logs crackling in our kitchen fireplace and the hot bubbling of chili simmering on the stove.

         Who can keep from humming along to this harmonious song of Life?  This is one time when everything stops down for a magical moment to sing and retell the “Greatest Story Ever Told.”  The Giver of the Music, after all, started the whole world singing this song at first with an angel chorus, and the Song will never be satisfied until all creation sings it at the greatest Homecoming this world—and the whole Cosmos—has ever known.

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Source: https://youtu.be/j5vE1rKAXGk

Thanksgiving - National and Personal

There is something about harvest time in Indiana that makes me feel that I should finish something. Perhaps it is the threshing machines cleaning up the rows of wheat and spitting the swollen ripe kernels of grain into the waiting grain trucks to be taken off to storage bins in preparation for winter.  Maybe it is the wide plows that turn the traces of corn stalks and dry soybean plants under, leaving the fresh, black earth like a velvet carpet laid in neat squares against the Kelly green sections of newly sprouted fields of winter wheat. Or could it be the squirrels skittering around the yard stuffing acorns and walnuts into their cheeks, then racing off to bury their treasure before the snow falls. Or maybe it’s the last of the apple crop being pressed into fragrant cider or baked with cinnamon and brown sugar before the frost comes.

 Whatever the reason, this is the season to finish things, to tie up loose ends, to save and store, to harvest and be sure there is enough of everything that matters to last us through the hard times.

 And how does one finish a season of the heart? How may we harvest and store the bounty of the spirit and save against the elements the fruits we cannot see?

 The Pilgrims knew the answer.  They said, “Thanks.” They knew there must be a taking of account, a time to stop and be aware of the beauty that fills our lives—a time to realize and verbalize and celebrate the things that have been growing all along. Yes, gratitude is the instrument of harvest. It ties the golden sheaves in bundles. It plucks the swollen kernels from the chaff and cuts the fragrant grasses to be bound in great round bales.  It picks the crimson fruit and digs the rounded roots that sometimes have made the difference between life and death.

 And I am thankful!  Thankful for plenty—plenty and more—of things to eat and wear, of beauty like art and colors and textures, of means of transportation like cars, bikes, vans, buses, planes…and feet.  I am thankful for things we cannot buy like tenderness and inspiration and revelation and insight; I am thankful for ideas, words, songs, discussions, and silent messages of the heart.

 I am thankful for health, health that we take so for granted that we schedule our lives, assuming that things will be normal, that legs will walk, that eyes will see—to read, to experience, to learn. That ears will hear-- the music, the instruments, the warnings, the blessings, the sounds of nature.  That bodies will function—that food will digest, energy will be generated to perform daily tasks. That minds will comprehend—the beauty, the concepts and ideas, the dangers, the failures.  That hands will work—to reach, to hug, to write, to drive, to rake leaves, to sweep floors, to fold clothes, to play instruments like pianos, flutes, violins, drums, and oboes.

 I am thankful for family, family with individual personalities, gifts, needs, and dreams—for family immediate and family extended, all feeding into what I am and what I will become--even family departed who have lived out their part and left their heritage of hard work, integrity, grit, love, tenderness, faith, and humor.

 I am thankful for friends, for stimulating, vivacious, provoking, disturbing, encouraging, agitating, blessing, loving, forgiving friends.

 I am thankful for hope and love and a deep assurance that God is in control of our lives, an assurance that is not threatened by fear of nuclear annihilation or national economic failure.

 I am thankful for children who give us new eyes to see, new ears to hear, new hands to touch, new minds to understand all the old things.

I am thankful for courage to go on trusting people, risking love, daring to believe in what could be, all because of the confirming experience of daily trusting God and finding him utterly trustworthy.

And because the seasons are built into the very fiber of our being, I am thankful for harvest time, a time for finishing what’s been started, a time to be aware, to pay attention, and to realize the life we’ve been given. Because I know that if we harvest well, there will be seeds for planting in the spring.                             

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Knowledge and Wisdom

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
JAMES 1:5

Do you know how some people can make you feel really stupid when you ask for information or seek advice? Well, God doesn't play those kinds of games. And He knows everything. He wants us to ask, and He wants us to know what we long to know. He doesn't enjoy putting us down.

But it would be really stupid to act cocky with God. Like I said, He knows everything, so for us to act like we're hot stuff makes Him sick. He not only knows the truth, He is truth--pure, like a diamond or a piece of pure gold. When His truth--when His Word--penetrates us, we are infused with illumination. We understand what is true. His truth in us keeps us from sinning because sins are lies, lies against our bodies, our minds, our souls, and our spirits. Truth won't allow them.

When we need wisdom or any other specific thing, it is fine for us to ask God for that.  He will not play games or belittle us for the asking.  But I am learning from years of praying for things, from my own insufficiencies to needs of those I love, to seek above all else more of Christ himself, more sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

 If I can widen my capacity to listen, to see, to sense the provision that comes with His presence, the specifics of today’s needs will be made clear.  Wisdom will come when it is demanded.  Peace and contentment will be given in the middle of the crisis because the solution doesn’t depend on my little powerhouse.  The bonus result is JOY! And joy and peace are always the product of secure relationship and the earmark of the believer.

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Fully Alive

One morning, on my way to get my hair trimmed, I stopped for breakfast and a cup of hot coffee at the local pancake house. I intended to steal a moment to be alone before the day began and its many demands crowded my time and took their bite of my energies.

"Just an egg and a homemade biscuit," I told the waitress, “And a coffee, please." I handed back the menu and turned to the book I'd brought to jumpstart my mind.

I had barely finished the second page before she returned with my breakfast. Fast, I thought. She poured the coffee and asked if there'd be anything else. "No, I'm fine, thank you," I answered, my eyes really looking into hers for the first time. She smiled. "Enjoy!" she said, then hurried back to deliver someone else's order.

"Enjoy!" Her final word hung in the air above my corner booth like a blessing--and more. It was a sermon of sorts. The taste of a fresh egg and a warm biscuit. The warmth of a cup of hot coffee in my hands on this Winnie-the-Pooh blustery day. The colors, the textures, the aromas, the voices.

It was a choice she had offered me. I could go through this day oblivious to the miracles all around me or I could tune in and "enjoy!" Her invitation returned again and again to bless my day. As I lay back at the shampoo bowl, I noticed the fresh green apple smell of the conditioner; I "enjoyed" the scalp massage and the warm water-right from the tap— that was "blessing" my head, a luxury unknown in much of the world. 

"Mamaw!" Grandson Jesse's happy voice greeted me as I got out of the car. His strong little arms were already around my neck, and he was covering my face with the kisses he'd recently learned to aim at a chosen target. I could hear, I could feel, I could see this precious, sturdy child who blessed my days with the joy of being adored as only an innocent child can adore. I was his "Mamaw"!

I looked out the window above the sink at the spring rain bathing the lilac bushes and just-planted pink geraniums around the lamppost. Two pairs of cardinals darted through the grape arbor and landed on the birdbath, where they tossed water drops up to blend with the drops still falling from the sky. "Enjoy!"

Bill came in the back door and dumped a pile of mail on the counter.  "Got any soup left?" he asked, lifting the lid on the pot that simmered on the stove. He barely took a breath before he shared his excitement about the way the new video he was editing was coming together. Tears welled up in his eyes as he described how powerful the spontaneous testimonies were at our last Homecoming filming. "God is doing something bigger than all of us," he said with awe in his voice. "We're just privileged to be at the right place at the right time to see it."

Enjoy! I thought.

Jesus intended for us to be overwhelmed by the blessings of regular days. He said it was the reason He had come: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

Each day, each moment is so pregnant with eternity that if we tune in to it, we can hardly contain the joy. I have a feeling this is what happened to Moses when he saw the burning bush. Maybe Yahweh performed laser surgery on his eyes so he could see what was always there, and Moses was just so overwhelmed with the glory of God that the very ground he stood on became infused with holiness, and the bushes along the mountain path burned with splendor.  Whatever happened, the burning bush experience also sharpened Moses' awareness of the pain of his people in the light of God's presence.

Bill's dad was always reminding us that, "This ain't the rehearsal, kids. It's the real thing. Don't miss it while it's happening." Pain and pleasure, laughter and tears are all around us, too, if we can see them and respond to them.

Several years before, we had written a song that went through my mind again that day as I sipped my coffee and watched the rain streaming down the window: Fully alive in Your Spirit; Lord, make me fully alive!  I'd heard a lot of sermons in my day, but the best sermon I'd heard in a long time was preached in one word by a busy waitress as she poured a cup of coffee. God has given us this day. I don't want to miss it. Enjoy!

Don't let me miss all the glory around me
Waiting for heaven someday to come;
Open my eyes to miraculous Mondays,
And make my feet march to eternity's drum.

Fully alive in Your Spirit;
Lord, make me fully alive!
Fully aware of Your presence, Lord,
Totally, fully alive!

Don't let me wait for some far-off forever
To say what I feel to the ones I hold dear,
Risking the pain and the joys of loving,
Keep me awake and alive while I’m here!

Help me to see in this moment my calling;
Don't let me wait for some "field far away."
Cries in my street, lives that are broken—
Lord, let me see them and touch them... today!

Fully alive in Your Spirit;
Lord, make me fully alive!
Fully aware of Your presence, Lord,
Totally, fully alive!

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Hindsight and Foresight

Gospel songwriters have been accused of writing songs mainly about two topics: getting saved and going to heaven. To that I would have to plead guilty. The reason for that is that once a person finds a valid answer to the big questions, "Why am I here?" “Where have I been?” and "Where am I going?" the rest of life can be lived with meaning and direction. The daily stuff that tends to be in our faces can gain some perspective. The great songs encourage that.  Take for instance Wm. B. Stevens’s song:

Farther along, we'll know all about it
Farther along, well understand why.
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We'll understand it all by and by.*

Or Stuart Hamblem’s “Until Then”:

But, until then, my heart will go on singing;
Until then with joy I'll carry on!
Until the day my eyes behold the city,
Until the day God calls me home.**                                                         

I love the book of James because it is so practical.  James’s letter reminds us how fragile and precious life is, how much we don’t know, and how we need to depend on the light of the Lord for each step.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. (James 4:13-14)

History informs the present and helps us make wise decisions for the future.  Someone has said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.”  We all want to live the best life we can while we have this wisp of time.  We need to study the past so we can make wiser decisions for the future and not make the same mistakes.

When the big issues of life are settled, we can live the rest of life. We can live like we’ve got “nothin’ to lose”. 

But what would that look like today, if we knew this was close to our last day?  Where would I wish I had taken my family if I knew I “was leavin’ today”?  What letter would I write? What would I do with my bank account or my time schedule or the energy I have today?

Whom would I invite to dinner; to whom would I offer the guest room or a ride to church or a trip to the grocery store?  Whom would I take on a fishing trip or a shopping trip or a cruise? Where would I volunteer my skills, my expertise, my hours, my knowledge, if I knew time was running out.

The beauty of the Christ-centered life is that we do know that time on this earth is limited and that nothing else except the relationships we treasure and nurture will survive this life or time itself. We also know that beyond time there is more--much more—and the quality of that “more” depends on the soul investment we make today.

The greatest decision we can make in the present is to follow the One who invented time and gave us a piece of it.  Only He can whisper wisdom for each day we have, and He will teach us to see the “eternity” in the moment, and to give ourselves away for things that last forever.

* P.D. usually credited to Wm. B. Stevens
** Copyright ©1958 by Hamblen Music Co. used by permission

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Unstoppable Praise

There is nothing new about praise and worship. David experienced it on the hills of Judea or wherever he was overwhelmed with God speaking. And we’re commanded to encourage each other with songs and praise to God. But it’s very important that we know what it is we are praising him for—that we get a running start at praise.

Praise is always a result, not a cause. Praise is not a way to coax God into bringing the results we want or manipulate Him into giving us things we ask for.  It is, instead, a result, not a cause--a result of our lives interfacing with something that God is—an encounter with one of the life-changing experiences of raw faith. When the theological truths we talk about become personal for us, the result will be praise! Praise happens as a result of being forgiven, or finding an incredible insight, being filled with the Holy Spirit, or just experiencing the joy of our salvation. We can’t just conger up praise up and make it happen. But when we experience God’s faithfulness, we can’t stop praise from pouring forth. It is not a posture or a position. It is the result of God’s reality breaking through to our dull awareness and making us new again and again. It is removing the obstacles in our own communications with God so that He can be the loving Father he always is. It is gratitude for what God is in our lives this day.

Probably no greater praise and worship song has ever been written than “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” We keep singing it and keep singing it, and somehow, we don’t ever get tired of it, because it is so immensely true.

I think of the Sunday at our church when we were singing a bunch of new songs.  There were young kids standing with their hands in the air and the worship team was swaying to the rhythm. This big farmer was sitting in front of us in church.  He had his arms crossed and his body language said he was not getting it.  Whatever we were singing was not penetrating his worrisome expression. The back of his neck was all sunburned from being out in the field, and I happened to know that he had a daughter at Anderson University. He was worried about the crop, and he was worried about her tuition, and whether or not they were going to have enough corn to pay her college bill.  I don’t know if that’s what he was thinking about, but he was certainly not thinking about what we were singing.

About that time our music director started this song we’ve sung a million times: “Summer, and winter, and springtime, and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.”  I saw his shoulders kind of loosening up, and he uncrossed his arms, and you could see in his body language him processing, “You know God’s always been faithful before.  We’ve always paid the rent.  We’ve got her this far in school...” Then we got to the chorus: “Great is thy faithfulness.  Great is thy faithfulness.  Morning by morning new mercies I see.  All I have needed Thy hand has provided.  Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord, unto me.”

I don’t know; maybe it’s because we live in the Midwest, and we are in the middle of corn fields and soybeans; but, that praise song connected, yet again, all these years after it was written with a farmer and a college student in the middle of Indiana.

I only hope to write a song that one day will connect like that, that will sometime down the road, intersect with real life issues of some farmer, or some worn-out mom, or some confused teen-ager, or some little child right at the reality of their moment and fill them with an awareness of God’s all-sufficient provision and turn turbulence into gratitude and unstoppable praise!

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Why Harmony?

Music is so much a part of all that brings us joy, like gathering around a piano somewhere to sing in harmony the songs that renew the commitments made to God, to each other, and to our great country or sitting around the campfire with a guitar or autoharp and teaching parts to the children the favorites you first sang as a kid.

We believe there is an important reason —even a theological one— we must sing in harmony, whether in families or in the family of God: we are not one because of our consensus, but because of our commitment. Indeed, we are so different and have so many viewpoints, it's hard to get a consensus at the dinner table let alone in the church or in the broader community of believers. No, we are not one because of our consensus, but because of our commitment to something bigger than our individual opinions. It is our commitment to God and thus to each other as necessary parts of His body that makes us one. We each bring our unique identities in Him and join our voices in expressing our allegiance to Him. Amazingly, what results is beautiful harmony but one song. Oh, sometimes for a line or two we may sing in unison to emphasize some major statement, but mostly it is our very diversity that God uses to make His music.

Let's gather the children, the young people, the patriarchs and the matriarchs, the newcomers and veterans and sing our hearts out the messages that define our identities in Him, in harmony.

And there's nothing better for singing our roots than the hymns and gospel songs that have outlived us all, surviving trends and fads, good times and hard times. Great songs have been tried in the fires of human experience and have emerged true. Let's pass these pure gold gifts on to our children so that when life drops them into water over their heads, these bits of portable theology, these truths wrapped in music will be a lifeline when they're needing one in the worst way.

What we embrace in the inner sanctuary places of our hearts, what we protect in the secret places of our minds, will determine our victory or defeat. When what is unclean is exposed to the light, it will shrivel and die, for it will not grow in the light. Like fungus or mold (no roots, no nutrition for the spirit), evil needs the moist, dark places to live and multiply. But goodness and right thrive in the light. When we let God's Word enter our inner sanctuary, the beauty grows and blooms. When we sing out what we've embraced in the inner sanctuary that is good, it takes root in others as well and brings life and hope.

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A Colony of Believers

I am fascinated by two metaphors the apostle Paul used to help us understand the Kingdom of God and our relationship to Christ and to each other.  One was used to tell the story to “insiders”, the Hebrews, and it followed the amazing list in Hebrews 11, recalling their history with God.  These were people whose faith looked forward and for whom this risk of belief got them flogged, tortured, beheaded, and imprisoned.  They died for a faith that was promised, unfinished, and unconfirmed.  Their questions were addressed by phenomena of nature—floods where floods had never been, seas that parted leaving dry land, mountains that belched fire and ash, walls that fell because of sonic vibrations God told them to cause, pregnancies of an old woman and her old husband that resulted in a nation, and a man that walked off into eternity without dying. These God used to tell them in disturbing ways to let them know that He up to something that could not be explained by their human understanding.

For these “insiders” with this history, Paul used the symbol of a mountain, not a mountain of fire and ash, but a living mountain, the fulfillment of all their history had hoped for, believed in, and embraced in faith.  This mountain, Paul says, is not one “that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to the blackness and darkness and tempest....But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God...to God the Judge of all, to the spirit of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.”(Hebrews 12:8,22-24)

So what about us who consider ourselves insiders? What is this mountain we are to consider our destination--this Mount Zion?  It is a mound, a heap, a tall, formidable thing that makes the smoking volcanic mountain of superstitious religion pale in its presence. Mount Zion is not a mound of decayed and acidified matter; it is a living thing--the towering and irresistible magnetic field of God Himself and the presence of His awesome reality; and it is the essential reality of all the saints who have ever made it through this life by faith in His power to make them perfect in Him. Now, in Him and perfect, they are the awesome draw of Mount Zion. We, too, are invited, not just to visit and stand in awe, but to become, to move in, to be a part of this living Mountain.

The second metaphor, Paul uses when speaking to those who do not have an “insiders” history with God, those who are new to this community of believers.  For new believers he uses the metaphor of a building with Christ as the sure foundation and cornerstone, and the stones, of which the building is constructed, being alive!  They function as individuals doing the individual tasks of a stone in a strong building, but they also interact as part of a great structure dependent on each other and remaining viable because of the certain foundation on which they are built. Are individuals important?  Remove one of the stones about half-way up the building and see how important the individuals are to the strength of the building!

I like to think of a colony of living organisms in a tide pool, each living on its own, but not viable unless they live connected to each other in this fresh water, replenished each day by the ocean tides. Each separate cell is a pulsating, ingesting, eliminating individual, and the cells are connected to form a community that is also alive because of its living cells operating as one. When a predator attacks one of the individuals, the body corporate releases its defense mechanisms protecting the assailed member, too weak and simple in its makeup to defend itself. I think of children and abuse victims and the elderly when I read this—so defenseless and vulnerable. But God knows we are all weak and vulnerable in some way, and the truth is, we really do need each other. As a living community, we protect, nurture, and grow because as a whole, with Christ as the head, we are one body, one living colony,  one building.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

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There is a Stirring in My Soul

Father, there is a stirring in my soul
that began years ago about who You really are
and how that reality can be shown
to the people in our town,
in our world.

Even in America
most of our children's friends
have no experiences with belief in You
that affects choices
and how life is lived on a daily basis.

My generation had parents who loved us,
or grandparents who could bring us home to faith
when we were buffeted by life.

For my children's generation
there isn't even a grandparent.
They, too, are often divorced
and fragmented with no stability.

This generation of kids
creates their own pseudo-family relationships
because they are so starved for belonging.
This may be living with a boyfriend,
hanging out with groups of other damaged kids,
or following some strange spirituality
in order to belong somewhere, anywhere.

I go to church,
and though I am so familiar
and comfortable with the form
because I've grown up with it,
I am not comfortable
that all the houses we pass to get there--
even if we go the back roads through the country--
are full of people who are working in their yards,
yelling at their kids,
or sleeping in 'til noon.

Church shouldn't just be a place we go.
It should be something we are to those
who are detached from our Sunday morning,
the ones across the street,
at our workplace,
the university,
the office,
the parent-teacher conferences.

What should being church look like?
Maybe like a backyard cookout?
A coffee house on Tuesday midmorning
after the kids are delivered to school?
A hunting trip?
A girls' night out at the cabin in the woods?
A bonfire after soccer?

When the Body of Christ is there, isn't church
anywhere discussions are taking place about Jesus in our lives
and what the Bible says about our source of joy?

Isn't it breaking bread together-
even if that bread is a hot dog bun-
if His Body is present?

I have a feeling church isn't just something we "go to";
it should be the folks themselves
who go from our gathering times
refreshed and inspired
to give themselves away
for something that lasts forever.

Are You troubling me, Lord?
Is there something You're crowding me into?

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