Then Came the Morning

At first, after a death, there are things to do: arrangements to make, friends bringing condolences to receive, stories to tell. But after the funeral and burial, reality sets in. The sympathizers go back to their work and lives. The flowers lie wilting on the grave. The leftover casseroles are scraped into the garbage disposal. The house is empty.

Bits and fragments associated with the one so recently present begin the long caravan of reminders: a pair of gardening shoes by the back steps, an old wool plaid coat in the hall closet with a wadded-up tissue and a pack of Clove gum in the pocket, a scribbled note in the margins of a favorite book, a roll of half-exposed film still in a camera, a layaway slip with only half of the payments recorded in the pocket of a worn leather wallet. As the days go by, the other reminders lie in ambush: a fragment of a song on a passing car’s radio, an old joke overheard in the grocery store, the smell of a certain kind of fragrance. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, “the sweeping up the heart and putting love away” is the “saddest of all industries enacted upon earth.”

Grieving is the private thing after the public ceremonies surrounding a death are over, and no two ­people do grief alike. Some drop out of sight, avoid human contact. Some are terrified of being alone and surround themselves with ­people. Some treasure a loved one’s possessions; others clean them out and move to a new setting not so laden with memories. Some need to talk again and again through the memories and the emotions that go with them. Others clam up and act as if nothing has happened.

We ­don’t know exactly how those who walked with Jesus processed the public execution of their gentle friend. We do know that one of his friends, a wealthy man named Joseph from a nearby town called Arimathea, went to Pilate and asked to have Jesus’ body released to him after it was taken down from the cross. Joseph was an official of the Jewish Council and had enough status to make the request. We know, too, that Joseph had already purchased the linen shroud and that he wrapped Jesus’ body himself and placed it in his own tomb carved into a rock.

We know that everything had to be finished before sundown that strange surreal night because nothing remotely like work or preparations could be done on the Sabbath. But after sundown, how did these very different personalities deal with the reality of Jesus’ death: There was John, the gentle lover; Peter, the impetuous; Thomas, the cynic; Mary Magdalene, the much forgiven; Luke, the scientific processor; Salome, the doer; young Mark, the observer of detail; and Mary, the over-protective mother of James. Each must have had a unique reaction.

The Sabbath was a day of required rest, but did they wait in silence? Did they meet at each other’s homes and talk it all through? Who first felt rage at the wasteful loss of this man? Who sifted through events for some clue that would make sense of it all, give some logic to this spiral of circumstances? Who of them was in denial, wondering if it had all been a horrible nightmare from which they might awaken any moment?

For the doers, the sunset on that Saturday night released them to get busy. Three of these were Mary Magdalene; Mary, James’ mother; and Salome. Preparing spices gave them a practical way to work out their grief, and preparing Jesus’ body would let them do something to show their deep love for this friend who was now gone. Had any one of them caught His line to the Pharisees about restoring “this temple in three days”? Were any of them secretly wondering if, by some act of the Divine, He would return to them? Which of them felt despair?

One thing is certain: nothing halts the grieving process like a resurrection!

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I Don't Belong

Life on the road is hard work. Contrary to what most ­people think, those who make their living in a portable profession do not have a life of all glamour and glory. Travel is full of inconveniences and frustrations. One needs to learn to accept disappointing cancellations and long waits in airports or in truck stops for repairs as par for the course. Sleeping in crook-necked positions while leaning against a building pillar or, if one is fortunate, a friendly shoulder; eating food you ­don’t quite recognize; adjusting to performing the “routine of toilet” in less than convenient or sanitary surroundings—these are all part of the traveler’s life.

Add to these realities the assorted artistic temperaments of a troupe grouped together because they love to sing, but not necessarily because they are compatiible in other ways,  and you could have the makings of a civil war. At the very least, let me say from experience, traveling together gives ­people ample opportunity to get to know and test the validity of each other’s Christian graces. It also develops some amazing friendships and calls forth some qualities in human character that are tantamount to sainthood.

Bill and I have been traveling as a part of our work for more than fifty years. We have had dozens—maybe, by now, hundreds—of other artists and writers, sound engineers and technicians share with us station wagons, vans, motor homes, buses, and planes for extended periods of time. We have, in that time, known a few divas, but mostly we have become well acquainted with some beautiful human beings whose confessions and professions of faith were most articulately made by the quality of their servant attitudes in the pressured and unguarded moments of life, on and off the road.

When I think of validity, perhaps no name comes so quickly to mind as that of Buddy Greene, with whom this song was written. Buddy is a man of God in the most practical and unpious sense. One of Bill’s and my all-time favorite ways to spend the hours on the road is to engage in a deep, honest discussion of a great life issue or theological concept. The truth of the adage “iron sharpens iron” is most evident when two or more ­people will allow each other to agree and disagree—sometimes heatedly—on the safe soil of common respect and mutual acceptance.

Buddy Greene is one of the travelers who most loves to plumb the depths of the things of God. One road discussion with him was precipitated by an article in a newspaper about the murder and sexual abuse of a child. Buddy and I were talking about how sick the world had become and how depraved human beings can act without Jesus. That turned to a discussion of how even Christian groups seem to twist and distort the simple message of love, grace, and forgiveness Jesus came to live out for us. The “politicizing” and “culturalizing” of the Gospel as a way to polarize believers seemed to us such a contradiction of Jesus’ words: “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

“I feel sometimes like an alien,” I eventually said to Buddy. “And I’m not so sure I even want to ‘belong’ in a world where babies are abused and the powerful are rewarded for misusing the weak. When we start to ‘fit in’ in such a world, some caution light should start to blink in our souls.”

“Well, you are an alien,” Buddy said. “We all are. We’re strangers and pilgrims. But remember, an alien is not a person without a country. Aliens are citizens, but not of the country they are in for a while. We, too, are citizens. It’s just that our citizenship ­isn’t here.”

A few miles after our discussion, I gave Buddy a lyric I had finished. He took it home and called me later. “I think ­I’ve got some music to your song,” he said. “Want to hear it?” Writers often play music or read lyrics over the phone. To the tune he’d just created, Buddy sang me the lyric I’d given him. I knew it was right. “Like a glove, Buddy!” I said when he was finished.

Buddy himself recorded the song on a project he appropriately named “Sojourner’s Song,” the original title of the song. I still like that title best, though the song is now known as “I ­Don’t Belong.” I like “Sojourner’s Song” because the truth is, we do belong. We are citizens. It’s just that our citizenship is in another country to which we are ­traveling. And since this world is not our home anyway, we may as well love and give and live while we’re here as if ­we’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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I've Just Seen Jesus

Many epic films have been made of biblical stories and the life of Christ—The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Jesus of Nazareth, and Quo Vadis, and now The Chosen, to name a few. Hollywood effects have made the Red Sea part and the waves form a giant wall of water for the cast of thousands to march to freedom from Pharaoh’s army. Technology has caused a river to turn to blood and leprosy to disappear.

But for me no film device has been as powerful as that used in the old black and white Cecil B. DeMille film King of Kings. Instead of casting an actor to portray Christ, the director chose to show only Jesus’ feet walking along the way. The cameras focused not on Jesus but on the faces of those who were affected by Him. Made before the days of “talking films,” the movie forced its audience to read on the screen what Jesus said, and then see the result of His words in the lives changed or the bodies healed.

I was a small child when I saw this film, yet I can remember scenes in detail: the face of the woman taken in adultery when her eyes met the Master; the way the crippled child looked when he felt strength flowing into his withered leg; the joy the ten lepers expressed when they peeled off the bandages that had held their rotting skin on their bones.

But movie depictions would pale in the reality of walking with the living Christ. What an experience it would have been to see Jesus as He walked the dusty streets of Nazareth, to sit near Him on the grassy slopes of Galilee and with our own ears hear Him say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.... Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” To have Him take me by the hand and raise me to my feet as He spoke the words, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” To have Him touch our dead child and say, “She is only sleeping. Child, get up.” What an experience it would have been to say at the dinner table after such a day, ­“We’ve just seen this Jesus!”

But of all the encounters with the living, walking Christ of history, none would have been as amazing as those the disciples who loved Him best experienced the third day after the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Peter, John, Thomas ... on Friday they had stood at the foot of the cross. Every unbearable moment of that afternoon had been etched in their memory: the nails, the thud of the cross as it dropped into the hole the executioners had dug for it, the seven times Jesus had groaned out His last words. How could they ever forget the ugly, taunting remarks of the Romans? The contrast between the curses of one thief who died beside Him and the plea of another whose eyes met Jesus’s as He promised that that very day they would be together in paradise—these memories played back over and over again as these witnesses tried to sleep that Saturday night.

They had waited around—through the storm, through the eerie blackness of midday until evening when the soldiers came to confirm that the bodies were lifeless. It ­hadn’t been hard to take Jesus’ body down from the cross; the nails—from the rough treatment and the weight of His body—had torn large holes through His hands.

Joseph of Arimathea spoke to the soldiers and asked for permission to take Jesus’ body for burial in an unused grave on his property. By the time the body had been released and they’d carried it to the tomb, they had little time left before sundown, the beginning of Sabbath, to wash and wrap the body. There was no doubt that Jesus was dead. The gaping wounds, especially from the spear the soldiers had jabbed in His side, had released so much blood and body fluids that He looked shrunken and dehydrated.  

How tenderly they must have washed His body, His words still echoing through their minds: “Take, eat; this is my body that is broken for you.” The night before they had thought that the bread and the wine and His words were only symbols as ancient as Moses.

Now they realized this was a new thing—this breaking of bread He had asked them to “do in remembrance” of Him. For His part, it was no symbol. His real body here in their hands was torn to pieces. For them, too, it would become more than a symbol; it would become a call to follow His example, even if it meant losing their lives.

That Sabbath eve they had gone their separate ways in silence. There was nothing to say. It seemed to be all over. They had walked an amazing journey with Him toward a promised kingdom that now seemed to lie shattered at their feet. Yet something unexplainable in their bones felt not like an end but a beginning. Perhaps they were in denial, yet there was a sense of hope in all the black hopelessness that no one could articulate—not to each other, not to themselves.

They would each tell a very personal account of those hours, for knowing Him was a personal experience, shared, yet uniquely their own. One thing for certain: No one could really see Him, or be seen by those eyes that seemed to look into one’s very soul, and ever be the same again.

Then, on that Easter morning, they found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene had actually spoken to the living Christ, and they—Peter and John—ran to check out her story. Could it be true? They felt the gamut of emotions as they entered the garden of the tomb. They could see at once the open grave, the stone leaning to one side as if it had been shoved like a child’s toy out of someone’s way. And then they saw the figure clothed in white, sitting on the huge stone to the side of where they had laid their Lord’s body.

“Why do you look for life in the place of the dead? He is not here! He is risen! Look, this is where you laid Him!”

Their faces. What was in their faces? And how did they return to the other disciples? Whatever happened to them there and later when He appeared to them, charged them with a passion that still, two thousand years later, makes us believe their story.

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The Old Rugged Cross Made the Difference

Fanny Crosby once wrote:
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.

We are all storytellers. The regular days of our lives gradually weave themselves into a drama; most writers are simply observers and tellers of the stories that are all around them.

When we are young, we are given a lot of advice and instruction. Parents, teachers, preachers, and friends fill us with information about life. But those lessons are illustrated or refuted by the story told as we watch ­people make choices and observe the unfolding consequences of those choices.  

I think of the stories of four men. The first was a young father named Bob, who was an explosion waiting to happen. He was gifted with his hands and had a bright mind, but he felt as if his life were an endless cycle of meaningless activity. Eat, sleep, go to work, come home, and start again. He had a well-paying job, a wife who loved him, and three beautiful children, but his days were full of frustration which he vented at home to those he loved best. Weekend parties only served to increase his sense of dissatisfaction, for once the alcohol haze wore off, the emptiness still gnawed at his soul. His wife and children tried to stay out of his way; they learned to not make waves when he was in a bad mood. During those rare moments when he was happy, they absorbed his affections like a sponge, but eventually they learned to be wary even then. His personality could change as quickly as the weather during tornado season on the plains. Several ­people invited Bob to church, but he ­didn’t want anything to do with it. He’d attended as a kid, and he’d long ago walked away from the restrictions of that!

But at this loving church the ­people kept praying for Bob. His wife took the children to church in spite of Bob’s opposition, and one day she convinced him to go with her to a concert of a singer named Doug Oldham. A concert ­wouldn’t be too religious, Bob thought, so he went. Besides, he was feeling guilty about his ugly disposition at home and wanted to make it up to his wife. 

The music was upbeat, and the crowd seemed to really be into it. Bob loved music and found himself clapping along. About halfway through the concert, the singer told his story—how he used to be so hard to live with and so selfish that his wife finally took their children and left him, how he had contemplated suicide when faced with the reality of what he had done to a family that had loved him.

Bob could hardly believe what he was hearing. It could have been his story. It was as if the singer knew what was going on inside him—the way he did things he down deep ­didn’t really mean (though he seemed powerless to stop himself), the way he was hurting the family he loved, the way he felt empty and helpless to change his life.

Bob knew he had to change direction, and he knew he was powerless to do it, as if he were all bound up inside. As Doug had sung, he was
Shackled by a heavy burden,
’Neath a load of guilt and shame...

But the song continued:
Then the hand of Jesus touched me
And now I am no longer the same!
He touched me; Oh He touched me!
And oh, the joy that floods my soul....

Joy! That was it. His life had no joy.

Bob talked to the pastor after the concert about his soul, but he ­wasn’t ready to surrender his life. He’d had too much pain in his childhood—some related to church—and he wanted to make sure that if he started something, it would be “the real thing.”

Some months later his wife convinced him to go with her to a revival that was sweeping a nearby college campus. Doug Oldham, the singer he’d heard at the concert, was to sing. Bob never got to hear the singer that night. The power of prayer was so strong at the beginning of the service that he knew he had to respond. He made his way to the altar. Doug saw him coming and met him there. Together they prayed that God would change Bob from the inside out. He did! And what a change!

Bob was a new man. He never took another drink. His anger began to subside. His lifelong habit of smoking stopped that night. His family could hardly believe the change in him at home. One day his little daughter said to her mother, “Something’s happened to Daddy! He’s not mad anymore.” She was right. He was becoming a walking example of Paul’s words, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17 kjv).

Not long after Bob told his story at our local church, Bill and I attended two funerals in our small town. The first was that of a man who had lived a selfish, reckless life. He had destroyed most of his relationships and had damaged ­people who got close to him. He died cursing those who tried to help him and refused all efforts at reconciliation. The visitors to the funeral home were few, and those who came were uncomfortable. What does one say? For those who had to live with him, there seemed more relief and guilt than genuine grief. There were no words of hope. The tone of the room was depressing, indeed.  

The other funeral was after the death of Bill’s grandfather, Grover Gaither, a simple man who lived what we thought was an ordinary life. A man of quiet integrity, his word was his contract. He had farmed a small Indiana farm and, when younger, worked in a factory. On weekends he traveled with Bill, Danny, and me, when the Gaither Trio sang in churches. He and Blanche never missed a service in their church; they supported their pastors; they housed evangelists and missionaries in their farmhouse. I’m sure Grover would have told you he had had a good life, though he had never done anything very spectacular.

How surprised we all were to see the funeral home packed with ­people of all ages. They filed by Grover’s casket to tell stories. “He put me through electrical school,” said one middle-aged man. “I stayed at their house when I had no place to go,” said another. “He always cut my hair on Saturdays,” said a young boy from the neighborhood. Each person went on to say something about Grover being “a good man” and how he had quietly impacted that person’s life in practical ways.

There was much laughter and storytelling, too, reminiscent of Grover’s great sense of humor. And great rejoicing! The tears of sadness were shed through smiles, remembering a man who had “died with his boots on” and his fields ready for planting, come spring.

Bob’s story. Doug’s story. The story of a sad, wasted life. Grover’s story. My story. Your story. How it is told in the end and what the story says depends on what each of us does with Jesus.

For us, it has been the stories told—and lived—by real ­people that convinced us to stay with the way of the Cross. These stories made their way into a song we called “The Old Rugged Cross Made the Difference.” For us, it truly has.

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I Believe in a Hill Called Mt. Calvary

How do you explain an omnipotent God letting bad things happen to good ­people?”

“Is God sovereign? If so, are we robots? Do we have any choices or are we predestined to choose what we choose? So why witness, send missionaries, minister?”

“If God knows what we need more than we do, if He knows our thoughts and desires, if He sees the future and charts our path, why pray? Why not just wait for Him to do whatever He’s going to do ­anyway?”

The questions seem to fly as soon as we confess a faith in Jesus Christ, as if finding a question not yet fully answered gives the questioner some ground to stand on for not believing.

And perhaps for all of us there is a time in our young lives when we feel we have the luxury of always questioning and never resolving the great issues of life. But sooner or later inquisitors and critics choose to resolve some major questions, or they become cynics.

For many, the time for deciding comes as we birth a new generation. It’s one thing to sit around in college dormitories discussing the unsolvable problems of the universe. It’s another to hold your own newborn baby in your arms and realize that what this child thinks and feels and believes will be largely your responsibility. You realize you will never have all the answers to all the questions, but you also know there are at least a few things you’d better get nailed down. Turbulent spirits must lay a few things to rest, and although we ­can’t know everything, we begin to realize we must know a few things for sure. Jesus taught that the evidence that confirms our leaps of faith comes after we risk believing, not before.

Bill and I wrote “I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary” at a fork in the road for our lives. We ­hadn’t then, nor have we now, resolved all the questions. But we chose to risk everything we were or ever hoped to be on a few things that began for us a growing relationship with Christ.

We, like most human beings, would have preferred that God prove Himself before we risked believing. None of us wants to make a fool of himself. “If You prove You’re real, ­I’ll believe” is the way most of us approach the omniscient Jehovah. But God is not an axiom of science. He is the great I Am, and it is not He but each of us who is on trial. Judas (not Iscariot) tried the “play it safe” avenue of reasoning with Jesus. Reveal Yourself to the world at large. It would be so much easier, then, to make ­people believe in You. These miracles are great! Could you take this show on the road? But Jesus’ answer was quick. “I will only reveal myself to those who love me.” (See John 14:22–24 lb.)

Bill and I had to learn that God required that we first risk, believe, love. The “knowing” only results from relationship. And relationship—not evidence or knowledge or miracles or gifts—had to be our passion. We were beginning to learn that what we considered the process, God considers the goal. Once we dared to risk believing, all the tough circumstances of life would then crowd us to Christ, shove us closer to Him, nudge us into dependency on Him. That—relationship—is His goal. “I will only reveal myself to those who love me and obey me,” Jesus said.

Some years ago a slogan made its way to bumper stickers and lapel pins. I’m sure it was well intended, but I never really liked the phrase—“TRY JESUS.” It reminded me of a tray of hors d’oeuvres at a party. If you ­don’t like the shrimp canapés, try the bacon-wrapped ­mini-hotdogs or the tiny cheese tarts.

But we have found that serving Jesus is not a taste sampling. It’s not a risk-free bet. It’s not a for-profit investment, an “if you want to get, then you have to give” deal. It’s a leap into the unknown, risking everything you have and are on the Way beyond proof, not for financial gain, not for good feelings, not to get “gifts,” even gifts of the Spirit, though all of those things may result from this choice somewhere down the road.

If they do, chances are we will be the last to know. Most likely we will feel very inadequate and ordinary when we hear someone else say, “She is one of the most forgiving ­people I know,” or “He is a kind and gentle man of integrity.” Who me? may be our quick response.

That is how we come to know that in pursuit of a relationship with Jesus, we are being changed into His likeness. At that point, all the bewildering questions may remain unanswered. But, as the old-timers used to say, we are finding we ­don’t have such a gnawing need to know the answers when we know the Answer. We are coming, as the poet Rilke said, to love the question and to get more comfortable with the paradox of God. When we trust the author, we ­don’t have to know the end of the story. We just know it will be true.

We Americans have lived primarily in a country friendly to the Gospel. Oh, we may have what we consider “persecution” in some of our homes or we may work in an “unfriendly” environment. But we have not known persecution as Paul knew it or a world in which Christians are beheaded, burned at the stake, or thrown to the lions.

But history has shown that the winds of public opinion are fickle. Our freedom to worship openly, form Bible study groups in our homes, hold Christian concerts in public arenas, praise God with sixty thousand Promise Keepers, declare we are “women of faith” with thousands of other believers, could be replaced by regulations, repression, or even imprisonment.

Only “relationship” would stand through such a change. If we serve God because we think “serving Jesus really pays” in a material sense, we would likely be blown away like chaff on a threshing floor. If we’re hanging around the church because we like fellowships and enjoy the warm feelings of “the womb,” we would most certainly be torn away like helpless children in wartime.

Only a growing relationship with the living God, bought by the blood of His Son Jesus, sustained by the nurturing of His Holy Spirit internally, will long endure.

When Corrie ten Boom spoke at a Praise Gathering in her later years, she recounted a conversation she had as an adolescent with her father about the martyrs killed for the cause of Christ. She told her father she ­didn’t think she’d be capable of standing firm if she were tortured for her faith or her family were killed before her eyes. In short, she ­didn’t think she could be a martyr.

Her father gave an insightful answer, asking her a question: “When our family took that train trip, when did I give you children your tickets?”

“Why, just when it was time to get on the train,” she answered.

“If God asks you to give your life for His sake, He’ll give you the grace to do it when the time comes.”

Little did she know then that she’d be the only one of her family to survive the atrocities of Nazi prison camps, where they’d been sent for their compassionate role in harboring Jews and helping them to escape.

Even as an octogenarian Corrie would quickly have said she ­hadn’t answered all the theological questions ­people often use as an obstacle to faith, but she loved to sing a song based on the apostle Paul’s testimony:

But I know whom I have believed
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which ­I’ve committed
Unto Him against that day!

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Joy Comes in the Morning

Hard times come to every person. Until the grip of this old world is forever broken by that final blast from Michael’s trumpet, we will go on having what one hymn writer called “the night seasons” here on earth. No one is exempt from heartache. But the night cannot last forever, and the darkest hour is just before the dawn. God has promised that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps. 30:5 kjv).

One night while driving, Bill and I were listening to an African-American pastor on the radio encouraging his congregation—as well as his radio audience. With a heartfelt genuine compassion for his ­people, he kept repeating this promise from Psalm 30: “Weeping endures for the night!” he would say, asking them to repeat the words after him. 

“But joy comes in the morning! Let me hear you, now. Weeping endures for the night…” The ­people would sing that phrase back to him. “But joy comes in the morning!” With one great voice they returned the affirmation. “Joy comes in the morning!”

Eventually the organ punctuated the truth. Its great music swelled like waves cresting on the beach. “Joy, joy comes in the morning!”

As we listened, the problems in our own lives seemed to settle into perspective in the immense power of God and His great faithfulness since the psalmist first wrote the words: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”!

The song that resulted from that experience has spoken to us for over 45 years and has been used by God to give perspective and encouragement to many who have written to us or spoken to us at concerts. Over the years we have come to understand that pain is, as C. S. Lewis once called it, “God’s megaphone.” It is a useful tool in the hand of the Master Craftsman of our souls to hollow out spaces in us for holding the joy in the morning!

When the hard times of life come, we know that no matter how tragic the circumstances seem, no matter how long the spiritual drought, no matter how dark the days, the sun is sure to break through; the dawn will come. The warmth of His assurance will hold us in an embrace once again, and we will know that our God has been there all along. We will hear Him say, through it all, “Hold on, my child, joy comes in the morning!”

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Praise You

It was the year we wrote the musical Kids Under Construction. We decided to travel to Puerto Rico to combine a vacation with some work time with Ron Huff: conceive the musical, create the staging, and lay out the plot. Ron and Donna, our whole family, and my mother spent a week on a lovely beach lined by palm trees and tropical flowers.

Our eight-year-old, Amy, thought Donna Huff was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. To imitate her, Amy picked fresh hibiscus blossoms to pin in her hair each evening. Benjy, a year younger, caught lizards by the tail and collected sand crabs in his plastic pail. Suzanne, at twelve, teetered between childhood and womanhood. One minute she was chasing lizards or building sand castles with Benjy; the next she was writing postcards to a boy back home.

We all knew how priceless these moments were. We memorized the sunsets, absorbed the music of the birds, and pressed exotic flowers between the pages of the books we’d brought to read.  As for our work, we all wrote and talked about ideas, great and small, and used the welcome break to refresh our spirits.

One day while the children played at the water’s edge with my mother (who was always the biggest kid of all), Bill and I took a walk down the beach. It was easy to walk a long way and not think about how far you’d gone. When we realized how long we’d been away, we turned back toward the hotel. We were still quite a distance away when we saw a child running toward us, waving his arms. Soon we realized it was Benjy, urgently trying to tell us something. We ran to meet him.

“Suzanne lost her glasses in the ocean!” he yelled over the thunder of the surf. “She was picking up shells and a big wave came in and knocked off her glasses. The tide washed them out to sea!”

“How long ago?” I asked, thinking about how quickly these strong currents had been carrying things—even children—down the beach.

“About fifteen minutes ago. ­We’ve been looking for them ever since.”

My mind raced. A coral reef ran parallel to the shoreline about a hundred feet out. There were urgent warnings of an undertow—“Strong Currents.” Objects like sand toys or rafts caught by a wave had been carried down the beach as fast as the children could run to catch them.

By now we were shouting back and forth to Suzanne. “Where did you lose them?” I yelled.

“Right here. I was standing right here!”

She was knee-deep in water as the tide was coming in. “I ­can’t see a thing, Mother! What are we going to do?”

“Let’s pray,” I said and I took her two hands in mine.

Then I thought to myself, What are you doing? You’re going to ruin this kid’s faith. Those glasses have long since been pulled out to sea by the undertow, most likely smashed to bits against the coral reef. If we even find any pieces, they will have washed ashore far down the beach!

But I was too far into this to turn back. Holding Suzanne’s hands and standing knee-deep in water, I prayed: “Jesus, You know how much Suzanne needs her glasses, and that we are far from home and know no doctors here to have them replaced. We are Your children and this is Your ocean. You know where the glasses are, so we’re asking You to send them back.”

Just then Suzanne squeezed my hand and interrupted my prayer. “Mother! Something just hit my leg!” She let go of my hand, reached down into the water, and pulled out her glasses. They were in one piece and not even scratched!

We danced a jig of praise and she ran off to tell the others who were searching farther down the beach.

Much later that evening, after we’d had our dinner and the kids were ready for bed, I took out the Bible and opened it to Psalms to read something that might fit the sounds of the surf pounding the shore outside our room’s open patio doors. I chose a psalm we’d read many times, but never had we heard it as we did that night.

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit or stand. When far away you know my every thought. You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment, you know where I am. You know what I am going to say before I even say it. You both precede and follow me, and place your hand of blessing on my head. This is too glorious, too wonderful to believe! I can never be lost to your Spirit! I can never get away from my God! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, your strength will support me. (Psalm 139:1–10 tlb)

When we had finished all of Psalm 139, we could hardly believe that God’s Word had been so specific for us… so familiar yet as new and fresh as this day’s miracle. Together we thanked God that He is a God who chose to be involved in our lives, that truly He had scheduled our days; we marveled at the truth that we ­couldn’t even “count how many times a day [His] thoughts turn toward [us]” (Ps. 139:18 tlb).

Psalm 139 has returned many times to visit our family. Over the years our children read it to their children. Soon after that trip Bill and I wrote the psalm into a song we called “Praise You.” It has been arranged for choirs and recorded by various artists. But it will always be for us a reminder of the day a little girl prayed with her mother on an island beach for a pair of glasses lost at sea.

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The Family of God

It was Good Friday 1970.  Suzanne had come home early from school, and we had just put the Easter eggs we had colored on Thursday night in a big yellow basket filled with shredded paper grass when the phone rang. A voice on the other end of the line said, “There’s been an explosion at the Faust garage. Ronnie Garner was badly burned. He got out of the building just before it blew apart. But he ­isn’t expected to make it through the night. Some of us are gathering at the church to pray. Call someone else, ask them to pray, and to keep the prayer chain going.”

I hung up the phone and called Bill at the office. Suzanne and I prayed together for this young father from our church. Then I called a few others I knew would join us in prayer.

Only later did we get the rest of the story. Ron was working overtime because he and Darlene needed extra money to pay for heart surgery for their daughter Diane. He was alone at the car dealership and repair shop, cleaning engines with a highly flammable substance without thinking to open a window for ventilation. He was working below a ceiling furnace with an open-flame pilot light. When the fumes from the solvent reached the flame, the whole garage blew apart. When he heard the first roar of the furnace, Ron tried to open the garage door, but it was jammed. By some miracle, with his clothing on fire, he managed to squeeze through a tiny space before the big explosion.

From Methodist Burn Center in Indianapolis we heard that the doctors had decided not to treat Ron; it was no use. There was little chance of success, and the trauma of treatment itself could push him over the edge. But friends who gathered at the church prayed all the more fervently for Ron, for Darlene, and for their two little girls. All through Friday and Saturday night, the church prayed. With part of our hearts we believed, but, to be honest, with the other part we braced ourselves for the predicted news.

A weary and somewhat tattered group gathered for church on Sunday morning. We lacked the optimism typical of an Easter celebration. The pastor ­wasn’t even there at first; we knew he was with Darlene and the family. No one felt like singing songs of victory. Resurrection seemed a million light-years away. But as the music began, a few weak voices sang less-than-harmonious chords of well-worn Easter songs.

As we were making an effort at worship, our pastor entered from the back and made his way up the center aisle to the platform. His shoulders were slumped, his suit was wrinkled, but there was a glow on his stubbled face as he motioned for us to stop the hymn. 

“Ron is alive,” he said. “They said he ­wouldn’t make it through Friday night, so they’re amazed he’s alive today. The doctors ­don’t understand how he’s hanging on, but we do, ­don’t we? And because he’s still alive, ­they’ve decided to start treatment.”

A chorus of “Amen!” and “Praise the Lord!” rose from the congregation. We all straightened in our seats like wilted plants that had been watered.

“We’re going to thank the Lord,” Pastor McCurdy said, “and then we’re going to see this thing through. This is just the beginning. There will be many needs. The family will need food brought in. Darlene may need help with the kids. They may need transportation back and forth to Indianapolis. Ron will need gallons of blood for transfusions. And they all—the doctors too—need prayer. Let’s think of how each of us can help. We are, after all, the family of God. Now let’s pray.”

We stood and as one voice thanked God for answered prayer and for the reality of the Resurrection. Sunshine streamed in through the windows to warm more than our faces and the room. It seemed that the light of the dawn of the very first Easter morning had come to our weary souls.

What a service of rejoicing we had! No sermon could have spoken as articulately as the news that Ron was alive and our feeble prayers had been answered. We sang the old hymn: 

Low in the grave He lay—Jesus, my Savior.
He tore the bars away—Jesus, my Lord! 
Up from the grave He arose, 
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes! (Robert Lowry)

My, how we sang! And then,

You ask me how I know He lives? 
He lives within my heart! (A. H. Ackley)

We were full of joy and victory as we left the church that noon, loading up our families into cars for the trip home.

In the car Bill and I said to each other, “You know, the amazing thing is, they’d do that for us, too.” We ­weren’t model church members, Bill and I. We were gone virtually every weekend, barely getting in from a concert in time to make it to church Sunday morning. We were never there to bake pies for the bake sales or to attend the couples’ retreats or to teach in Bible school. If you had to pull your share of the load to get the family of God to take care of you, we would surely have been left out. “But they’d do that for us,” we marveled.

When we got home, I checked the roast in the oven, changed the baby, and sent Suzanne off to put on her play clothes. Bill went to the piano, and I heard him toying with a simple, lovely tune. “Honey, come here a minute,” he called from the family room.

He sang a phrase, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God. Dah, dah, dah, la la la-la, la la la-la.”

I grabbed a yellow legal pad and a pencil. The roast was forgotten as we were both consumed by the beauty of “the family,” and I tried to write our gratitude to the music Bill was playing.

We finally did have Sunday dinner, though the roast was a little overdone. On Monday I deviled our Easter eggs, and our life went on, but we were never quite the same. 

Pastor McCurdy was right: that Sunday news was only the beginning. But, then, the Resurrection was only a beginning too! There were months of trips to Indianapolis. Many gave blood and  made casseroles and babysat and cleaned Darlene’s house. Most sent cards of encouragement and notes assuring the Garners of continued prayer.

During the next nine months in the hospital Ron had many skin grafts and experienced much pain, but finally he came home to their house on John Street. Eventually, he went back to Anderson College and finished his degree in athletics. He became assistant coach at Alexandria High School and fathered two more children. Diane got her heart fixed and became a high-school teacher. And one of the children, not yet born at the time of the fire, was one of the top female athletes in the state of Indiana.

And we were filled with joy that the same family that stood by the Garners in a thousand ways has stood by us, too. We ­don’t deserve it; we ­haven’t earned it. We were just born into it. They treat us like royalty, because we are! We’re children of the King!

 You will notice we say “brother” and “sister” ’round here;
It’s because we’re a family and these folks are so near.
When one has a heartache we all share the tears,
And rejoice in each vict’ry in this fam’ly so dear.

I’m so glad I’m a part of the fam’ly of God!
I’ve been washed in the fountain,
Cleansed by His blood.
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I’m part of the fam’ly,
The fam’ly of God.

 From the door of an orph’nage to the house of the King,
No longer an outcast; a new song I sing.
From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong,
I’m not worthy to be here, but praise God, I belong!

Lyric: Gloria Gaither and William J. Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither
Copyright © 1970 Hanna Street Music (BMI)

Last week our friend Hugh Phipps invited Bill to go with him to a morning meeting of a group of praying guys who get together each week here in our town. Ron Garner was there to tell for the first time the whole story of his experience. Ron is now 78, and not only did he live, but went on to teach science, coach, and become Athletic Director in our local high school.

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Technology—Friend or Foe

When new inventions and innovations first invade our world of experience, they are usually vilified, or, at least, viewed with suspicion.  When cars were invented, sermons were preached against them, predicting what damaging effect they would have on peaceful community life.  The telephone was viewed as the purveyor of gossip, and television was condemned as the corruptor of civilization or, at least, the eroder of the next generation’s character.

When Alvin Toffler wrote his revolutionary book THE THIRD WAVE, we could not imagine an economy in which information would be the main product.  “How could an intangible thing “information” be a product?” our elders asked, shaking their heads and insisting that products were things manufactured, things one could touch or drive or put on a shelf at a store.

The outrageous idea that people the world over would carry computers and phones in the palm of their hands with no wires or plug-in cords was beyond comprehension.  And who could conceive of a “friend” or several hundred “friends” we have never met to whom we would reveal the secret details of every day life, show pictures of our children, share intimate thoughts and fantasies, and then have no control over the “friends” to whom they would in turn pass on our secrets without our consent.

We are coming to realize that digital technology is both the best and worst thing that has been invented so far.  Like cars, telephones, televisions, and airplanes, technology can be used for either great purposes or intensely destructive ones.

The naysayers of the past were partially right.  Cars can kill, and television can corrupt and damage the minds of children, youth, and adults.  Airplanes can be piloted into skyscrapers and kill nearly 3,000 people.  But planes can also get students home from college, bring orphans from China to loving families waiting to adopt them, bring Johnny home from war, or get grandma back in time for a kid’s graduation. Technology can make Jesus’s command to take the good news of God-with-us into the whole world a literal possibility.

Computers, I-Phones, and I-Pads can call 911 or deliver pornography to minors.  They can let me in Indiana keep in touch with seven grandchildren in Colorado, New York, Chicago, Nashville, and Vermont.  Or they can be used to bully a high school freshman all the way to suicide.  The devices we have in our pockets and purses and cars can save lives or destroy them.  They can free us or make us prisoners of media addiction.

We can be mindlessly swept along with the digital tides, surrendering our God-given minds to gamers and the peddlers of false information, or we can harness technology for good, give it strong boundaries in our lives and homes, and guard from it our sacred spaces and our abilities to actually converse, meditate, and reason.  May the God of all wisdom help us to recognize every day the blessings and dangers of the devices the ingenuity of man has brought into existence and to have the courage to make them serve us and mankind, instead of the other way around.

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Intervals

We are all thinking about our fathers this Father’s Day week. I found this remembrance our daughter Amy wrote a few years ago about Bill teaching her musical intervals, She has given permission to share it with you.

"This is one."

We’re in the car, he drives.  I sit in the back seat, repeating the tone back to him.

     "One."

     "Now, give me 'three'," he says.

My mind scrambles to make the musical steps.  My pitch is not perfect, but "relative," they call it.  I find the note with mental reasoning, unwilling to let him hear me do the figuring.

     "Three," I sing.

I know he knows how I find it.  It doesn't matter.  The game has started, and we both enjoy it.

     "Give me 'two'."

     Back to one, I think, then mentally, "One"-- aloud--"two."

We play like this: he tests; I challenge myself to do my mental gymnastics more quickly.

He falls silent, and I know he is thinking about-- what?  The days when he was a boy at the Stamps School, first learning intervals and harmonies? Or is he hearing the harmonies themselves? He fades further away, and I think I can hear the echo of a scratchy 78 playing in his brain...sounds drifting down from upstairs at my grandma and grandpa's farmhouse.

I often fell asleep to those sounds, harmonies fading and blaring on what sounded to my ear like very primitive technology, songs with titles like "The Bible Tells Me So," "Happy Rhythm,” singers with names like Denver Crumpler, Hovie Lister, and Jake Hess.

I know he is hearing them now, here, in the car.  I watch him in the rearview mirror.  His mind is always a mystery.  What harmonies, what memories, what beginnings fill him now?

Nights when we had dinner guests, and I would hear my father say, as the candles burned low, "Hey..hey, can I play you something?  Come in here."  And long after I was supposed to be in bed, I would sit at the top of the stairs in my nightgown, peering around the banister watching as my father's face danced with admiration, joy, astonishment, laughter, tears.  And our guests, smiling and nodding and catching his fever.  Then, black gospel choirs, Andree Crouch, and the singers with the Caravans. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin brothers: "I've Done Enough Dyin' Today" and harmonies that made your heart ache.

     "Daddy."  I have to say it two, three times.  "Daddy.  Daddy."

     "What?"  He is still absent.

     "Earth to Bill," my mother says.

     He blinks, focuses.  "What?"

     "This is one," I say.  Back to one.

     He grins, returning.  "Okay, give me seven."  His favorite interval.

I wonder what memories my children will have of me, what late night reveries and what music will bring them back in their minds to our living room.  I wonder what memories they will imagine I am returning to when I disappear before them like my father does, has always done.  I wonder what will anchor them, like my father returning to harmony, his home base, his roots, his "one."  

I feel him grounding me there: "This is one.  Now give me--"

I wait breathlessly, wondering what I can give him, hoping it will please him, grateful for this reference point.  Back to the one.

--Amy Gaither Hayes 

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Go Ask

There is no such thing as a “risk-free faith”.  We mortals want one, of course.  So did those who walked with Jesus when He was literally walking the physical places He frequented with His friends.  We, as they, want to have the advantages of faith without having to make a fool of ourselves by buying into something we can’t actually prove. 

Those who walked with Jesus were privy to some amazing happenings.  They saw the 5,000 fed with a kid’s lunch.  They saw the man so crazed by demon spirits that he had to be chained in the cemetery to keep him from destroying himself or attacking others, freed at Jesus’s command to become a peaceful citizen, clothed and in his right mind.  They saw lepers healed, the deaf made to hear, the blind given sight, and the lame healed to walk.

Yet, after three years of walking by His side, these followers bombarded Him with questions that were basically asking for Jesus to reduce the risk factor of belief.  One of them asked why He didn’t reveal Himself to the world at large so that proving He was the Son of God would be easier, less risky.  Jesus’s answer was simple, yet anything but fool-proof.  He said that they had to risk loving Him first before His certain identity would be revealed to them.  “I will only reveal myself to those who love and obey me.  The Father will love them too, and we will come to them and live with them.” (John 14:22 LB)

In other words: love and obey first; only then will confirming certainty begin to settle into your souls.  Still today are we asking for a faith we can turn on and off like a faucet when we are in trouble or when we’re in a situation that “faith” is an asset?  But risk-free faith is no faith at all.

I love the story of the man who was blind from birth.  Everybody knew he was blind and had seen him grow up without sight.  Instead of showing compassion, we see the disciples wanting explanations.  They asked Jesus whether this blindness was caused by the sin of his parents or his own. Jesus said the darkness was to show the light. Obviously, Jesus was implying more than the physical darkness a blind man sees, but the darkness of missing the message that Jesus is the light for all kinds of darkness.  Jesus put spit-and-dirt mud on the man’s eyes, then told him to go wash it off in the pool of Siloam.

Instead of rejoicing with the now sighted man, the religious circle around him continued the interrogation about the validity of the method, the timing, the history, and the motivation for Jesus’s miracle.  Finally, in exasperation, the once-blind man said “I don’t know!  I don’t know whether he’s good or bad.  All I know is, I was blind but now I see!”

The only test tube for proving what faith is or does is to risk loving and see the result in the lives of those who “were blind but now can see.”  Risk-free faith is an oxymoron.  In real life there is no such thing.  If we want a proof for faith, go ask the blind man.  Fall in love with the Master and questions will be superfluous.

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The Best Graduation Gift

I’ve been wrapping graduation gifts and finding cards that can hold a gift certificate or a little cash.  This year graduating seniors are excited to be anticipating an actual in-person graduation ceremony instead of last year’s online or zoom virtual ceremony necessitated by the pandemic.  

Our grandson just finished his first year of college in New York state, but is coming back to Indiana for the great pageantry of Culver Military Academy and a year-delayed ceremony.  It will be a treat to have our daughter Amy’s family gathering in to see Simon “graduate”, even with a year of college under his belt.

We already had his party last year.  I spent the month before we met for a small masked celebration going through tubs of pictures and shuffling through memories of him collected since his birth to make a huge scrapbook of this sweet child.  Maybe this year we can just get it out again and look at it together.

All this “double graduation” makes me remember what my mother gave me for my graduation from high school.  It was a full Webster’s Dictionary that I have used in the years since until the pages started to fall out.  It is now in one of the glass cases in the “museum” section of our recording studio.  It is a treasure, not only because of my life-long love of words, but for a poem she wrote in her own handwriting inside the front cover.

The sheep may know the pasture,
But the Shepherd knows the sheep;
The sheep lie down in comfort
But the Shepherd does not sleep.

He protects the young and foolish
From their unprecocious way
And gently prods the aged
Lest they give in to the clay.

When the young have learned some wisdom,
It is much too late to act;
When the old man knows the method,
He is less sure of the fact.

Ah, the Shepherd knows the answer—
The beginning and the end.
So the wisest choice, my daughter,
Is to take him as your friend.
--Mother

This and many other writings confirm for me, now decades later, that my mother was one of the wisest persons I ever knew.  At 17 I knew she was, but not like I know it now.

Perhaps the line I’ve most thought about over the years is “...Lest they give in to the clay.” 

From the time I was a child, my parents wanted me to be able to recognize and choose the things that last forever.  We had as a family many discussions about what is eternal and what is not, not just when we die, but every day we live.  I remember my mother saying to me as a high school girl, “Gloria, don’t ever forfeit anything eternal for someone whose name you won’t remember ten years from now.”

When we began to have children of our own, Bill and I wrote a song that Suzanne later asked Bill to sing at her wedding.  It was titled “The Things That Last Forever.” Of course, he had a hard time getting through the song that day.

But of all the things my parents made sure I understood, to recognize what is eternal in every moment and to give myself for things that will never die was perhaps the most important— “lest I give in to the clay.”

Now I am in the autumn of my life.  What do I want to have gotten said to our children, to our great-grandchildren, to people who have heard the song of our lives?  It is this: “Think ‘forever’!” because now is forever.  Forever starts here.  Heaven starts here—and so does hell. We’re building forever with the choices we make today.

To all graduates—whether graduating from high school, college, the transition chapter of your life, or from this life itself, think “forever.”  Will what I choose today last forever?  Can I recognize the eternal in this moment, and am I giving myself away for things that will never die?

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Thinking About Vines and Fruit

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about vines and tree trunks and vineyards and orchards. I’ve been taking pictures of our old grape vine that is more than 45 years old now, and the sturdy trellis we built when it was planted to hold the branches that would tendril up to the sunshine.  The vines are now putting out leaves and sprouting new branches.  Come July and August these branches will hold their heavy clusters of purple grapes for making jellies and jams.

I’m watching our old orchard blossom, too.  Pink cherry blossoms, white apple buds, and clusters of pear blossoms make the orchard a fantasy of color.  Some of these trees are decades old; a few are just on their second season.  Some of the trunks and branches can be climbed by our agile grandchildren; some are still spindly but firmly rooted.  Even the newest fruit trees will be full of fruit, come late summer. 

And I’m thinking that the branches and tendrils aren’t much concerned about the fruit that’s coming.  The pruning of dead branches was done last fall, so opening leaves and clusters of blossoms are driven by the strong flow of sap coursing through them to do what strong branches do:  produce fruit.  All they need to do is stay connected.

And I’m thinking about us, about me.  And about the scriptures about fruit-bearing.   These verses don’t seem to imply that we can produce more and better fruit by grunting hard to get more faith or to be sure we are looking more “Christian”.  I don’t think the fruit is our problem.  I am coming to think that the branches are clueless about the fruit that falls off the other end of the twig—that just maybe their only concern is staying firmly attached to the source of the sweet sap that makes them so alive and sends them skyward to soak up the sun.

I am coming to realize that the only way we branches know anything about the fruit we’re producing is when someone surprisingly comes up to us, maybe seasons later, and says,
“Your patience kept me from giving up on myself when I was so discouraged.”  “Who me? Patient?” we are likely to reply.  Who knew?

Or maybe someone has said, “You are the kindest friend I’ve ever had.  When I was so frustrated with life, you were so gentle and kind.”

Or perhaps you received a note that said: “If meekness is gentle strength, you were the epitome of meekness when I so needed someone gentle to lean on.”  Or maybe when the day was gray, and you were longing for the sun, someone called to say “You bring me such joy. You can make a party out of most anything!  I love that!  You bring me such joy!”

So today I just want to stay connected to the trunk, plugged into the vine. Today I just think it’s enough to be in love with Jesus and the life He brings, to be totally aware of His sweet presence and bask in the knowing that I am His child. What drops off into the yard of my life is really not my problem. The fruit will take care of itself. If the fruit nourishes someone hungry, I will just be glad. Surprised, maybe, but thankful.

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A Daughter Remembers

It isn’t often that I get to hear the stories of our lives told from our children’s point of view, but after I posted the last blog, my daughter Suzanne texted me this 2006 excerpt from her journal.  As a mother this week before Mother’s Day, I share her memory with you with her permission.

Dad drives the cheerleaders in Homecoming parade.

Journal Entry--2006
Out on a back road in Orestes, there is an artesian well—you hear it before you see it. My dad used to pile all of us into the old Chevy convertible, and after we got our ice cream cones at Dor-tees, we would go for a drive out around the winding roads, past the landfill and Martin Paving, past fields oof cattle and corn until Dad would turn down the music of Willie Nelson long enough to say, “Listen.”  He would pull up along the side of the road and turn off the engine. 

Photo by Angela Kellogg

Over the sounds of birds and cicadas you could hear the gurgling of the well spring coming up from somewhere deep in the ground.  It was magical for me as a kid, straining to hear the sound of the water, knowing that even while I slept or ate dinner or worked math problems, the spring was always bubbling up and out of the ground, day in and day out.  Once my dad stopped the car, got out, and took me by the hand to see it, even though it stood on someone’s private property.  It was amazing, truly.  I had never seen water so clear or felt anything so cold.  My dad bent me over to take a drink so I wouldn’t get my clothes wet.  The water was as chilled and sweet and untainted as an April rain.

In February of this past year, our family made the difficult decision to move out of Madison County to Nashville, Tennessee, where my husband could be a more “hands on” manager in a music company with which he had been involved for some time.  Our children who are both serious musicians had expressed intertest in getting more involved in a music community and began to desire the move as well.  Toward the end of May, the week before we packed the moving truck and headed south, my dad pulled around our driveway in the old Chevy convertible and told the boys and me to get in.  We drove down the familiar streets of Alexandria—the bakery, the Lighthouse Café, Broyles Furniture—curved around Washington Street, drove out past Martin Paving and what used to be the Madison County Landfill (“the only mountain in the county”, we used to joke), past the cornfields just beginning to emerge into decent-sized plants, until dad came to the road where the artesian well gurgled up out of the ground.  He turned off the car engine and said, “Listen.” We could hear it, the joyful sound of clear, cool water.  

We got out of the car.  It had been years since I’d been to the artesian well, so I was surprised to see that the owners of the property had laid a little stone path which curved around to a podium with a guest book people could sign.  There was beautiful landscaping—hostas, zinnias, daffodils—blooming around the well.  Statues of angels and wildlife stood in their cement stillness as if to pay homage to the flowing water.  Beyond the spring down another winding path stood a miniature chapel with a tiny steeple set up for those who wished to meditate and reflect.  The boys, sensing the sacredness of the place, remained silent.  

Photo by Angela Kellogg

They made their way to the spring which had been connected in recent years to a galvanized pipe so that people could drink from it.   They bent down one and a time to drink from the well.  I watched their faces as each one smiled, tasting for the first time the cold sweetness which I had come to know so well.  “This is good,” whispered Jesse to me as he took another sip.

As we got into the car to leave, an old rusty Oldsmobile pulled up behind us.  A heavy-set woman with her hair pulled back in a bandana was driving the car.  The back seat was full of children with dirty faces and faded tee-shirts.  The littlest boy had on only a diaper.  A girl about fourteen got out of the passenger seat.  She wore tattered cut-off shorts and a halter top that said “Baby”.  Her eyes were lined heavily with eyeliner and mascara, and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke.  She only glanced our way briefly, then headed toward the well, an empty gallon milk jug in her hand.  We got into our car and drove away.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

A week later we left Madison County for our new home in Tennessee.  We packed the back of both of our SUVs full of suitcases, dogs, and movies for the trip.  As I was getting ready to close the trunk, I spotted a gallon milk jug.  “What’s this?” I asked.

Jesse glanced behind him and replied rather matter-of-factly, “It’s water...from the well.”  He began fidgeting with his seat belt, then added, “I thought it would be good to take some with us.”

I shut the hatch, “Yeah, it would be.  It would be good,” I said as I got in the car.  We drove the back way out of Madison County, country roads lined with corn plants and soy beans, Frankton Elementary School, Rickers, Hutchinson’s Orchard, Florida Station Church of God, the granary....

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Flowing Well of Hope

Bill has a bright red 1973 Chevrolet Impala convertible that he bought in, you guessed it, in 1973. We put about a thousand miles a year on by driving it around the Indiana country sides on summer evenings. Our fifty-year-old son was three when we got that car.  His sister Amy was four and Suzanne was eight. Back then we would buckle them in and cover their legs with the blue and green quilt we kept from the motor home, and sing our way through the fields of winter wheat, corn, and soy beans to the accompaniment of crickets and cicadas until the sunset faded. Then we would make our way back into town and stop for chocolate and vanilla twist ice cream cones at Dortee’s. This ritual has been celebrated now for over 47 years in the same red convertible. 

Photo by Angela Kellogg

Now we take the youngest grandkids on the same adventure. The magic moment of the trip is when Bill slows down somewhere along County Road 400 and pulls into a well worn path. He turns off the engine and says, “Shh, do you hear it?” 

Like they’ve never done it before, the kids, grown or small, get quiet, quiet enough to hear the sound of fresh cold water gurgling up from some deep place through a pipe someone stuck into the Indiana clay out and down into the pebbles below. We listen. “Where does it come from?” Mia or Liam is sure to ask again. “Who knows,” Bill always answers, “Deep in the ground. It’s been flowing from that source for as long as my grandpa could remember. Want to get a drink?” 

There’s a place, a place in the human spirit, when we can always go to be surprised by hope in the most unlikely of circumstances at the times when hope seems impossible to find.  There’s always a spring coming from the deep places, a well of living water bursting to the surface of our days. No matter how unwise the choices that may have led us to our places of despair, there is always a road back home. Friends may dessert us, promises may be broken, lost can become a way of life, but the Father has provided a spring along our journey if we will just stop there, get still enough to hear, and honest enough to admit our thirst.  There is always, there is always a place called hope.

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Overcoming

When we say, we must “overcome,” the images that most often come to mind are military ones of battlefields, armor, weapons, and strategies.  We think of “spiritual warfare” as being against outside attack forces and of conquering as confronting and eliminating the “enemy” with swords and spears, armor and chain mail.

 While it is true that we “wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world,” we also war against an enemy even subtler.  As Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” 

The enemy can be our impatience, our propensity to quit before the job is finished, because we expect immediate results.  Often the enemy is our trust in what is evident instead of what is unseen.  Many times the enemy is our expecting to accomplish Kingdom work with the earth’s systems, or to interpret God’s blessing in material terms. Most things of true value require what we least like to do—to wait, and most eternal lessons are learned by waiting with persistence, patience, and, yes, pain.

Ann Smith, a dear friend and mentor of ours who is half through her tenth decade, told us this week that she has chosen her guiding objective for this part of her journey; it is this:  To nurture a “passionate sense of potential” in all situations and with all people.  She says this means that she will try to see clearly what is, then beyond what is to the potential, and finally, to relate to each person or situation based on the potential, nourishing what could be.

Her eyes danced as she said she had discovered a hymn she hadn’t known and had taken its text as her living joy or her life’s last statement, whichever this decade might hold.  When I found it, I loved this hymn, too, and leave it for fuel for thought for all who would overcome!

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree,
In cocoons, a hidden promise:  butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that wants to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

--Natalie Sleeth © Hope Pub. 1986

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Hope Rising

Thank God for morning!  There is nothing like a sunrise to sing hope to the heart.  No matter how big and insurmountable problems seem in the night, hope rises with the sun!

Thank God for spring!  After the long, cold winter, the days begin to be longer, the creek begins to thaw, and the clouds begin to thin enough to let the rays of the sun shine through.  And even in the rainy season of April, there are more rainbows come spring.

Maybe that is why we love to fly in the winter, too.  As the plane gains altitude through the thick, gray overcastting that has been hovering over the even grayer landscape, the hint of blue begins to show through the last wisps of clouds, and the sun that we had almost forgotten was there bursts through!

Easter is resurrection and hope and awareness of a Life force that has been there all along.  As the old Spiritual says, “Ain’t no grave gonna hold this body down!”  Our awareness may be in “dead mode”, but insistent Life keeps pulling at the seed of the divine that was planted in us from the beginning.  And something—a revelation, a tragedy, an accident, an undeserved kindness—will pierce a passage through the clouds or the night or the frozen shell, and a light, a quickening warmth, will burst through.

Despite the darkness, despite the tomb, despite the obscurity of doubt and pessimism, Life will win!  It always does!  It always does!

As the sun rises, so shall your hope;
As the rain waters, so shall His grace 
Coax from the heart so brittle and closed 
A living green sprout in a once-barren place.

As the sun rises, so shall your hope;
Deep snows of winter cannot chill your faith.
Under the freeze-line the root tendrils grope,
Reaching the strength-giving nourishing place.

From the dry branches blossoms will burst.
Grasses will green the fields and the slopes--
Goodness will come from the darkest and worst;
As the sun rises, so will your hope!

--- “As the Sun Rises” by Gloria Gaither ©
2012 Willowmere Pub.

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Then He Bowed His Head and Died

While the “glory hallelujahs” still ring in the ears of the disciples, while the songs of “Hosanna! Blessed is He!” still echo through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus goes on walking in the shadow of what restoring broken lives will cost, a toll only He can pay.

From habit His footsteps take Him to the garden of gnarled olive trees and rugged rocks where He has so often gone in the night to pray away the burdens of His heart.

But tonight in Gethsemane the heaviness will not go away.  “Drink ye all of it,” He had said just hours before to His friends as they shared the Messiah’s cup, the cup of the new covenant.  How could they know what now brimmed from the cup He has to drink?  It doesn’t hold the sweet wine of companionship, this cup that now stands like a yawning chasm before Him.  He sees the past in the cup, and the future.

He sees the sick perversions of every Sodom and Gomorrah, the bloody wars of violence of brother against brother, the betrayals of trust against the innocent.  He hears the cries of children violated and abused, the sobs of the wounded battered in body and broken in the spirit, the angry shouts of men in streets where violence tears relationships apart, the bitter voices of young men who have no one to trust.

In this cup He sees teen-agers writhing in the muddy battlefields of some insane war, crying for the mercy of dearth.  He sees long lines of naked Jewish men, women, and children marching, marching toward long grey buildings whose smokestacks belch the sickening stench of burning flesh.  In this cup He sees unborn children and their child-mothers who weep at night for the lost childhoods of them all.

And there is silence in the cup – the long, empty silence that widows know when there is no one to talk to.  The uncomfortable silence as thick as a cement wall between fathers and sons who have never found a way to love or be loved, the panicked silence of mothers who wait for word from lost daughters, the desperate silence of children who wait for an alcoholic parent to burst into the room where they cower terrified in the darkness.

He sees all the violations, and the pain, all the brokenness from Eden to Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to the end of time.  Since Bethlehem He has walked this earth as a man with all the human limitations…except one:  He has the terrible awareness of God.  And this awareness eats at His soul, confirming that he must not only see all of this pain in the cup, but He will have to experience all of it – become both victim and violator – yes, become sin itself, if the lost children of the Father are to ever be restored to wholeness.  This terrible awareness is more than a human body was ever meant to bear.  Drops of blood begin to rupture from the pores of His forehead as if they were drops of sweat.  He turns for the support of a friend, for someone to just be there for Him in this hour.  

But his friends are asleep.  Human companionship is no match for the commitment this relationship demands.  He will drink alone – as He has walked alone from Eden to Gethsemane and now from Gethsemane to Golgotha.  The road He must take will be called “Sorrow”.  The “Man of Sorrows” must walk “Sorrow Street”, and He must go alone.

From the Musical "Then Came The Morning"

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Gospel Songs--Why We Need Them

In the last blog we talked about hymns and why we so need them to remind ourselves and each other just who is this God that we serve and what are His unchanging attributes that we can depend on in a undependable world.  Hymns are also songs addressed to God in worship and gratitude for our history with Him.

The other kind of song that we need to sing is the gospel song.  Many great gospel songs have also survived the test of many generations of experience and often we even hear these called “hymns” because they have proven to be so true to our shared experience.  While hymns are “vertical” or God directed, gospel songs are “horizontal” or relational. By that I mean that they are “the word of our testimony”-– each of us telling someone else what God has done in our lives.  These songs are our personal story.

I guess I am cynical enough that when I sit in church and hear both hymns and praise and worship songs telling how awesome God is, I am asking in my mind, “How do you know that?  I have my real and complicated life coming up tomorrow morning, and I have to know how you know that God is awesome, powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent and all the things you are singing about Him.”  

There is nothing so powerful to my fainting heart as a real person saying to me, “This is what happened to me, and this is how I know.”  Like the blind man who was questioned by the sanctimonious doubters, he simply said, “I don’t know whether he’s good or bad.  I only know, once I was blind, but now I see.”

We also need these relational songs because love demands action to be valid.  We don’t read the words of Jesus very long before we hear Him telling us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter to the homeless and “thus fulfill the law of love.”

It is my deep belief that in our worship, both personal and corporate, we need a good balance of hymns and personal testimony songs.  We do overcome by the “blood of the Lamb” and by “the word of our testimony.”  Nothing is as powerful when some cynic shoves us into a corner of “theological nit-picking” than taking two steps away from the belligerent finger-pointing to simply say, “I only know, this happened to me.”

We need both hymns and gospel songs because every vertical commitment will eventually demand a horizontal living out in relationship with those around us.  It is imperative that we know what God says in His living Word and when we gather to worship express our gratitude for all He is, rising above our smallness to embrace His Glory.  We also need to live out what He says in this word, drawing from the great storehouse of His freely offered resources to embrace a hurting world by being what He has called us to be.  The vertical.  The horizontal.  The hymns of praise and great scriptural truths that have withstood the test of experience must be combined with the word of our personal testimony sharing our stories of God at work through us and in us to conform us to the likeness of His Son.  We need to teach both to our children.  Don’t worry that they might not totally understand all the words.  Did you?  Did I? But hymns and spiritual songs that are worth their salt are pieces of portable theology, and they will throw our children a lifeline when experience is pulling them under for the third time.  As with scripture, the meaning of profoundly true songs will become clear when life gets their attention.

The “praise and worship” vs. “gospel songs” argument should never come up!  We need to sing the songs that have outlived us.  We need to sing the songs as new and fresh as this morning’s experience with our neighbor or our children.  We need the songs that remind us that we have a history with God.  We need the songs that sing our testimony as personal as the text of encouragement we just received from a fellow believer.

All must be biblical, beautiful, true, powerful and, yes, personal.  Let’s encourage each other daily, singing hymns and spiritual songs.  Let us never lose our joy and in the chaos of the world, live at rest in Him who is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

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What Are Hymns and Why Do We Need them?

In times of chaos and uncertainty, there always seems to be a return to hymns, so it is not surprising that so many artists, both gospel and secular, have recently released recording projects of hymns.

A hymn is not just an “old song” we used to sing.  In fact, there are many new hymns being written and whole hymn movements of new writers rising up, not only in the U.S. but in the U.K. and Scandinavia.   Then what is a hymn, and why do we need them?

First of all, a hymn is meant to be sung corporately.  When we gather with other Believers, we sing together praise to God or remind each other just who this God is that we serve. In general, we could think of hymns as those songs of praise and worship we send up to God identifying for all to hear His attributes and thanking Him for His amazing intervention in our world and in our lives.  We sing of the incarnation: God who was before anything existed, the Cause and Source of all things, God of grandeur, power and infinite glory chose to become one of us and to walk with us – Immanuel!  Hymns are God-centered and call our attention upward.  They are lofty in message and lift us above the earthy.  They remind us of our original glory that preceded any “original sin” and remind us of God’s intention to see that glory restored in us.  The exchange in hymns, then, is vertical – connecting us to God and seeking to hear His voice speaking to our hearts in return.

Hymns are firmly rooted in God’s Word and, since they are intended to be sung corporately by the fellowship of believers, pull us above our petty differences by reminding us of God’s dream for us – that we would be one.  

Because hymns are intended to reflect the qualities of God, they must have poetry that is beautiful, reverent, simple, accurate, and pure.  The theme of a hymn should be focused and at the same time universal and not sectarian in its truth, drawing together and then upward all the divergent believers to oneness in Him.

There is no more distilled form of writing than the song lyric, and there is no more condensed form of lyric writing that hymn writing.  The thought must be scripturally sound, purely true and without embellishment.  This requires that every word count – every verb, every noun, every conjunction, every adverb or adjective accurate – the perfect choice to convey true meaning so that there is no misunderstanding.  Every skill of the poet’s art must be called into play in hymn writing so that the clarity and beauty, creativity and purity reflect the Maker Himself in its expression. The music, too, must be harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically singable so that congregations can sing it together.

It is equally imperative that the singer or recording artist not take liberties with the words of a hymn. It is not acceptable to embellish or be careless by changing an “at” to “in” or “Father” to fathers or an “and” to a “but”.  Such changes can totally change the meaning and the theology and violate the integrity of the scripture from which the hymn was taken.

Yes, many of the great hymns have been sung literally for centuries, but we do not sing hymns because they are old; we sing them because they are so true that they have survived all the fads of language, rhythm feels, and musical trends.  If new hymns live, it will be for the same reason.

No wonder, then, that when times are confusing or the world is in upheaval, we find ourselves needing songs that nail to the wall the deep cardinal truths of our faith and the always available and ever dependable qualities of God.  When we cannot sing them as a congregation, we sing them to ourselves to help us remember that the Body of Christ is always at the table and the great cloud of witnesses are always present to encourage, love and support.  When we sing hymns alone, we refocus on the ways this great God has delivered us before; this focus turns our anxieties to praise and our questions to certainties.  

I love the promise found in Revelation (12:11) that we would overcome the obstacles of any age “by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony.”  This explains the power we find in hymns—those songs that extol and express praise for the qualities of God and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.  Let’s sing our hearts out in great hymn confirmations of truths that transcend the shifting winds of public opinion and trends of the times. 

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