That's Worth Everything

I have heard a statement credited to a great theologian that went something like this:

"The longer I live, I find I am believing fewer and fewer things but believing them with greater and greater intensity." Bill and I have quoted that statement often because it has become so true in our own lives.

As new believers, it seems we have rigid ideas about everything. We are often very quick to make rules for others, to have ready prescriptions for what "they" ought to do. Sometimes we're very hard on ourselves, too, and feel as if every failure is fatal. How beautiful it is to learn that grace isn't fragile, and that in the family of God we can fail yet not be failures. We begin to learn that the particular paths God leads us along are tailored for our personal growth in Him and that He can lead others, too. What a freeing relief it is to discover that we are not responsible for someone else's growth but are called only to love, encourage, and be fellow pilgrims along this journey! We learn that there are fewer absolutes than we once thought, but that those absolutes are more absolutely worth dying for than we ever could have imagined.

Bill and I have never been very attracted to playing it safe with life. A life worth living should be one of reckless abandonment to something worth abandoning oneself to. Bill says it this way: "I'm more than halfway through this life, so I should be more than half used up. And if I'm not, then what in the world am I saving myself for?" Perhaps the most important and all-encompassing words Jesus said are these: "Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 16:25 RSV)

Not long ago we sat down to make a list of those things that were, at this stage of our lives, worth everything. Our list was very short.

This list became a song we called simply "That's Worth Everything.” We have discussed this list in our family and applied it in many ways. Our daughter wanted Bill to sing this song at her wedding as she started a new home with the man with whom she had chosen to spend her life. I don't know how Bill got through the song, but somehow he did.

When trying to prioritize our time and energies, it has been helpful for all of us to ask ourselves and each other, “Will it last forever? Does it have any eternity in it?" Or the way I phrase it for myself is: "Think 'forever!'" People are forever. Relationships are forever. God's Word will endure forever. But the "forever" list is short indeed.

When Bill and I breathe our last breath and leave behind whatever we have done with our days, I hope this epitaph will ring true: "They gave themselves away for things that last forever." If that could be the case, then the "eternity" we've recognized and embraced here will simply open into the eternity we will embrace there, and we will be at home in the familiar presence of Him who is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, the First and the Last. And that will be worth everything.

 
THAT’S WORTH EVERYTHING

Some men will trade the warmth of home and friends
For just a taste of fame;
Some men will risk their reputations
That men may know their name;
But just to know that all is clear between
My soul and God's dear Son,
And hear Him say, “Well done,”
Oh, that's worth ev'rything.

To know when tiny feet walk in the path
That I have left behind,
That they will make their way to Jesus,
Contentment there to find;
And just to know down deep within my heart
That I have wronged no man,
To fit my Master's plan,
Oh, that's worth ev'rything

  Just to know the future's His forever,
Just to feel the freedom of a child;
Just to know the past is gone and sunshine's here to stay,
And He is Lord of all,
Oh, that's worth everything

Lyric: William J. and Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither
Copyright © 1974 by William J. Gaither. All rights reserved.

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Broken and Spilled Out

The pressure to produce is a constant companion of writers and artists. The consuming public is fickle. A novelist is only as valuable as his or her latest book; a singer is measured by the success of the latest release and how many songs '"charted." Painters and sculptors are always pulled between creating pieces that express their souls and compromising their creative skills to comply with the current trend that "sells" or conforms to the most influential new school of criticism.

Many young recording artists have started out with hearts full of inspiration and passion to communicate a message in a style unique to them, only to be told by some record company or agent that they must dilute their message, revamp their style, and reshape their image. Few are mature or financially confident enough to withstand the implied threats not to re-sign them to the label if they refuse the "expertise" of those who "know the market."

One day on the bus, traveling to a concert, Steve Green and I were talking about the pressure to produce. While feeling frustrated by his busy schedule and the expectations to create a new solo project that could get "radio play," he was also exhilarated by the part-time jobs he and Marijean had, working with the youth of a local church. He wanted to record and sing songs that would relate to the lives and problems of these teenagers and their parents, whether or not the songs worked for hit-driven radio.

As for my frustration: I was feeling a need to write without the pressure of a deadline. I wanted to create what was in my heart without regard to its sales potential in the current Christian market. I had recently gone off to our cabin in the woods where I write, and, at the end of two days, I had written only some personal poetry and entries in my journal. I had read, walked in the woods, talked to God and, in general, restored my soul. What a rich time! But when I returned home, I couldn't help feeling guilty for having to tell Bill I hadn't moved ahead on projects to which we had committed or finished songs we had started!

Steve listened to me and then told about the Wednesday night prayer meeting the week before at their local church. "Marijean stood up, so moved by the presence of the Lord, and talked about her deep hunger and thirst to really know Christ in His fullness;" Steve said. "She confessed some faults and asked the people to pray for her that nothing would stand in the way of a pure and intimate relationship with Jesus. It broke our church apart. In her sweet honesty, she was able to minister in a way I seldom can.”

We talked about what amazing things God does when we can totally get out of the way and love Him with the innocence and abandonment of a child.

“What would happen,” I wondered, “if I wrote my very best poetry for no one but Jesus? I long to give Him the very best knowing it will never be published, to lift my gift like a burning incense to Him alone.”

"And how I long," Steve said, "to be able to give God my best performance as if no one could hear but Him."

We talked about Marijean's brokenness and how, like Mary who broke the perfume vessel to bathe Jesus' feet in its precious contents, Marijean had, through her vulnerability, bathed the church in the sweet fragrance of her pure hunger to serve God alone.

"Write me a song about that," Steve said. "I'd like to record a song that would always remind me what my ministry should be: an irresistible fragrance that can come only from a vessel broken."

He went back to talk with the others on the bus. I found a yellow tablet and began to write. The lyric that resulted was "Broken and Spilled Out." It moved me. I wanted the music for it to capture the deep longing to give Jesus the best part, the most perfect offering of the heart. Bill George, an outstanding keyboard artist, set the lyrics to music and Steve recorded the song.

It has been a very special song for me. It constantly reminds me that only a love that has no regard for vessels and jars, appearances or images—only a love that will lavish its most treasured essence on the feet of Jesus can produce the kind of fragrance that draws cynics and believers alike into His presence.

Broken and Spilled Out

One day a plain village woman,
Driven by love for her Lord,
Recklessly poured out a valuable essence
Disregarding the scorn.
And once it was broken and spilled out,
A fragrance filled all the room,
Like a pris'ner released from his shackles,
Like a spirit set free from the tomb.

            Broken and spilled out just for love of You, Jesus.
My most precious treasure, lavished on Thee;
Broken and spilled out and poured at Your feet.
In sweet abandon, let me be spilled out and used up for Thee.

Whatever it takes to be Yours, Lord;
Whatever it takes to be clean-
I just can't live without Your sweet approval,
No matter what it may mean!
I throw myself at Your feet, Lord,
Broken by Your love for me;
May the fragrance of total commitment
Be the only defense that I need.

Lord, You were God's precious treasure,
His loved and His own perfect Son,
Sent here to show me the love of the Father;
Yes, just for love it was done!
And though You were perfect and holy,
You gave up Yourself willingly;
And You spared no expense for my pardon-
You were spilled out and wasted for me!

Broken and spilled out- just for love of me, Jesus.
God's most precious treasure, lavished on me;
You were broken and spilled out and poured at my feet.
In sweet abandon, Lord, You were spilled out and used up for me.

Lyric: Gloria Gaither
Music: Bill George
Copyright ©1984 Gaither Music Company and New Spring Publishing/ Yellow House
Music (admin. by BMG Music Publishing, Inc.). All rights reserved.

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What Others Hold Sacred

My parents were pastors of a small church in a tiny Michigan village surrounded by farms.  There was little age discrimination in the church made up of families that often spanned at least three generations, so the younger generation that made up the “youth group” was kids from ages 10 to 18. Those over 18 and the young parents made up the team of youth sponsors, leaders, and activities organizers.  My mother was the youth minister and most youth activities took place at our house and yard and the bank of the St. Joe River that ran behind the church.

There were many fishing expeditions with fish fries afterward. There were nights we all met my mother in the city park equipped with our flashlights to catch night crawlers to fill our coffee cans with bait for catching catfish on our next night of fishing the cold river.

Three or four times a summer we loaded our trunks with fixins for a cook-out up on Dixin Hill where we would roast hot dogs to go with the baked beans and potato salad mother and the other parents had prepared.

But most of the time the campfires were in the empty lot beside Daddy’s big garden, where we unfolded camp chairs or threw down old quilts to sit on after we ate to have our singing and devotions and prayer.

Across the street from our garden and orchard lived a Seventh Day Adventist family with a daughter about my age and a younger toddler about two years old.  Linda and I often played in our yard and sometimes in hers, swinging on the big swing that hung from the huge oak tree in their yard, catching fireflies or playing croquet in ours.  Sometimes her mother would offer us peanut butter cookies fresh from the oven.

In fact, their house smelled of peanut butter because their diet was mostly vegetarian and used peanut butter as a protein source.  They gave a lot to “missions”, Linda told me, so ate only chicken and fish if it was given to them.  No beef, pork, or game.  They, too, had a big garden, as big as Daddy’s, and her parents picked and canned vegetables and fruit for the winter.

One Saturday night we had a big youth party at our place.  There was a big bonfire and a table set with food for a hot dog roast—green beans from the garden, baked beans, chips, and a huge bowl of mixed fruit and berries to have with the s’mores that were a youth night dessert staple. 

While everyone was roasting hot dogs, Linda came across the street with her little brother in their red wagon.  Their sabbath had ended at sunset, so now that it was dark, she was free to come over. I was about seven years old by then and remember feeling sorry that we were having hot dogs that their religion wouldn’t allow them to share.  I snuck around behind the circle gathered around the fire and broke off a chunk of hot dog and gave it to little David.  Oh, my!  He loved it!  His little eyes lit up as he savored every forbidden bite!

But what I didn’t know was that my mother had missed me and had circled around to find me. She had seen the whole thing and suddenly took hold of my arm and said, “Come with me.”

She led me inside our house where she sat me down in a kitchen chair.  “Sit!” she said.  “Now you listen to me. Don’t you ever let me catch you violating someone’s conscience by encouraging them to do something against their convictions.  You knew Linda was old enough to reject meat, but innocent little David wasn’t old enough to understand.  If his parents don’t eat meat, you must respect that!  They are doing what they think is right.  You have totally overstepped their boundaries.  Now, you sit here by yourself for a while and think about that!”

Well, sit I did—missing the fun, missing my friend, and sorry I had caused her little brother to do something against her and her family’s principles.  I also learned later that night around our own family prayer circle something that Jesus said that I’ve never forgotten: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to sin, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” 

Mother knew, she said, that I didn’t mean to cause a child to sin, but there was another verse I needed to know while I was young.  “A person who knows to do right and doesn’t do it, to him/her it is sin.”

“Now,” mother said, “Now that you know, always respect another person’s understanding of what is right and sacred.  Never be guilty of causing them to betray what they believe God wants them to do.”

We prayed as a family, and now that I understand the sacredness of our promises to God, I asked God to forgive me, and later confessed what I had done to Linda and asked for her forgiveness, too.

What I learned that night is that Jesus really does love the children, whether the children are literally young in age or babies in the Faith.  And that that included me, too.  The innocent of the world must be protected and never violated.  Yes, Jesus really does love the children!  They are a priority to Him.

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Crisis Management

For ten years of my childhood, my family lived in the parsonage my parents rescued from the mice and disrepair.  It was situated on a curve of Michigan Highway 60 (M-60) in the tiny village of Burlington where my parents hallowed out a congregation in that farm area of southern Michigan.

Gloria in front of the house on M-60

M-60 was the main truck route between the automobile plants in Detroit and the car markets of Chicago and beyond.  This was before the Interstate Highway system, so M-60 was still a two lane road.  In front of our house there was a line of mature, well-established hard maple trees that most of the time kept semis, loaded with cars, from crashing into our front porch when their drivers went to sleep at the wheel in the middle of the night.

Gloria and her sister

I say “mostly” because a few trucks managed to go between the maples, in which case our front porch became the barrier that protected our living room.  Accidents on that curve were common enough that we had a family protocol for such emergencies.  I was the youngest, so my job was to run to the linen closets for towels, blankets, and sheets.  My sister Evelyn was a teen-ager who was assigned calling the ambulance and police, while mother and daddy ran to assess the injuries and do what they could to save lives until help could arrive. Sometimes this meant their trying to stop bleeding and cover the injured truckers with sheets and blanket for shock and for warming them against the cold of Michigan winters.

Sometimes the drivers were ejected on impact.  Other times the drivers were brought out of the rain or snow to our living room floor if the truck was in danger of bursting into flames. Whatever it took, saving a life was the objective. 

I remember one accident that happened during a torrential rain storm.  The driver’s lip was split from his nose through his upper lip, causing such a loss of blood that my mother had to hold his lip together while Evelyn brought towels and blankets and Daddy covered them both with a tarp to keep the man from drowning in the rain and his own blood

One time a girlfriend of Evelyn’s was spending the night, when sometime around 2 am we heard the familiar crash into our stalwart maple trees.  While we each ran to carry out our assignments, this girl began to scream and ring her hands and (as mother would say) run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Mother stopped long enough to grab the hysterical girl by the shoulders, shake her to attention, and say, “Stop!  How dare you?  This is NOT about you.  This is life and death.  This is no time for you to demand attention!  You can fall apart when this is over, but for now, we have lives to save!”

Gloria in Burlington

I was about six years old by then, but I never forgot that a crisis is no time to be hysterical.  It was the time for self-control and unselfish behavior.

In the last few years, Bill and I have made the trip back to this tiny village and the church on M-60 my parents and that sweet congregation built there.  The parsonage that my parents turned from a rat’s nest to a beautiful, welcoming home is still there. The porches that stretched across the front and side of the house are gone; just a small entry stoop remains. And I know why the wrap-around porches disappeared.  They were lost in battle, sacrificed to a higher life-saving cause.

So many life lessons I learned in that house, in that little community, and in that church!  Our family moved from there when I was fourteen, but it is the church we chose to go back to for our wedding when Bill and I were married.  So much of what shaped me into the person he married and still am to this day happened in that place.  But that is at least another book.

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I Will Go On

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Touch and See

There is a line in one of my otherwise favorite hymns that I am not able to honestly sing exactly as the hymn writer wrote it. It goes, “If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out…”

Thankfully (and mercifully), I have been rescued by another line.  This one was spoken by our Lord himself, and it was spoken to the most famous doubter in the New Testament whose very name has come to be a synonym for doubters —Thomas.  This line turned out to be the last beatitude, and it was not spoken in the “sermon on the mount”, but to Thomas himself where the disciples had barricaded themselves after the crucifixion. 

Jesus has appeared alive to several of the men and women disciples, but Thomas wasn’t buying their story and had said so in no uncertain terms!  “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

Then in spite of the locked doors, Jesus showed up.  Not only Thomas, but also the others were there as well, but after greeting them with “Peace!”, Jesus turned his focus to Thomas. Thomas must have hoped that what he had said hadn’t gotten back to Jesus.  He probably expected condemnation.  But Jesus instead held out his hands to Thomas, reaching all the way to the core of Thomas’s doubts: “Put your finger here; see my hands,” he said.  “Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting, and believe.”

Thomas did believe.  “My Lord and my God!” he said as he embraced the evidence with his heart.  But that wasn’t the end of this episode.  Jesus then threw a lifeline to me and to all of us who can’t stop our minds from asking questions.

“Because you have seen me, you have believed,” Jesus said to Thomas and the others in the room.” (Now comes the last beatitude.) “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Those outstretched hands tell me that whatever it takes, Jesus will lead us to the place where we can honestly trade in our questions and doubts for faith — even if we never see until He comes again when we can trade all doubt for certainty.

Meanwhile, we are not condemned for our questions; neither is God intimidated by them. I’m convinced we can’t come up with any questions He hasn’t heard before. After all, He made the mind with which we question.

I have a feeling that those who never have big questions may not have very deep faith, and sometimes the bigger the price we pay for our faith, the stronger that faith is to withstand the hard times that inevitably will come to test our faith into the next rung of spiritual maturity.

I still love the old hymn, but I sing the more honest words these days: “If I trust Him through my doubts, He will surely bring me out.” Now I’m working on the next phrase: “Take your burdens to the Lord, (I can do that) “and leave them there.” (Now, that is not so easy!)

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I Can See

       Easter week has passed and I am living in the glory of the resurrection.  This is the week of glimpses of the risen Lord – the confirmation that he is alive in the daily of our lives. 

       We are walking home from work and he catches up with us – just some guy who wants someone to walk with.  We are intent on our own conversation but we pause just long enough to acknowledge Him, then go on talking.

       “We’re discussing the assassination,” we say. “We’re sure you’ve heard about it, how strange it all was.  This man called himself the Son of God, the King of the Jews, and the government ruled he was a blasphemous heretic.  But he quoted the prophets while he was dying and told the criminal beside him he’d see him later that same day – in paradise.  He forgave his executioners because of their naivety and made sure some man was given the responsibility of taking care of his mother.”

       Then our walking partner begins to point out things about him we hadn’t noticed ourselves, drawing parallels to what the prophets had said about the Messiah.  We were drawn to this fellow pilgrim like one is drawn to a child telling the truth.  We invited the guy home for dinner. 

       Then, at the table, our table, he stands up and takes the loaf of bread we’ve baked the night before, breaks it into pieces and serves it to us.  We both have this wave of déjà vu, like we’d been here before, and then he is gone.

       A bunch of our friends are hiding in a room because the inner city street vibe is very unsettling.  We are discussing again all we have heard him say and seen him do in the last few years.  The door is bolt-locked.  Someone even shoves a bench against it.  Then, all at once, he is there – with us.  Tom has no more than gotten the words out of his mouth, “Not me!  I’m not a sucker for rumors and tricks. I won’t believe he’s alive unless I can jam my fingers into the gashes in his hands and side…”  And there he is with us. 

       “Go ahead,” he says.  “If touching helps you believe, then touch.”

       Upset by the grief and exhaustion of the whole execution thing, a bunch of us decide to go fishing.  Fishing always seems to get things into perspective.  We leave in the evening when the fish are usually starting to bite, and we stay out in the boat all night, talking and being still by turns.  When the light of dawn starts to break over the horizon, we start in with our catch.  There on the beach we can see a fire and someone hovering over it, cooking breakfast.  As we get closer to shore, the figure stands up, and we recognize the Lord. 

       “Come, have some breakfast,” he hollers when we get close enough.  It’s just like old times, like nothing ever happened on Golgotha.  He is grinning and laid back. 

       Then he has a very interesting conversation with Peter, asking him if he loves him.  Because of Peter’s behavior the night of the crucifixion, Peter is taken back at first with the questions and eager to let Jesus know he’ll do anything to make it up to him.  But Jesus just gives him responsibility for leadership and then hands him some hot fish and fresh bread, as if he wants to erase all the bad memories from Peter’s mind and make him know that he is still in.

       There are other times, too.  All of them involve doing regular things:  walking, talking, grilling, eating, fishing.  I think it is important that we all know that the risen Jesus is a part of our regular lives, so we won’t make some fantasy or legend of him, some religion or fable. No, this is the week of the real Jesus in real places.

       For me, I see him walking across the yard laughing, helping the little ones find Easter eggs.  I see him in a long conversation about choices and options over coffee with our college graduate grandson.

       I sense him with me when I am trying to prioritize our schedule, choosing what to say yes to and what to eliminate.  I feel his wisdom when I am trying to wrestle into words ideas that can’t be said in words.

       I sense he is speaking when I am listening to two friends whose faith has been damaged by charlatans and feel him assuring me that all I have to do is to love them and be real.

       He shows up alive and in person when I feel too afraid to trust him with my fears.  I give him our children – now grown – once again.  I give him Benjy’s anxieties about his film project and his excitement about recent auditions; I give him Suzanne and her many faceted writing.  I give him Amy’s acting and her trying to hold in tension all her loves—her husband, her professional choices, her almost-grown children, her heart.

       And Bill.  I trust this Christ to walk with him, too, and to lean on him when there’s no way to talk, to love him better than I can when he hurts.

       “Do you love me more than these?” I hear him ask.  “I do, Lord, even more than these.”

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Stopping to Say Thank You

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The Bakery

The original bakery in the 50’s

The Alexandria Bakery was an institution.  Owned and operated by two generations of the McClung/DiRuzza family from 1951 to 2001, it was the gathering place of our small town in central Indiana.  The Bakery was a microcosm of the American melting pot, where the high school janitor and the mayor, the piano teacher and her grown-up ex-students, the Methodist preacher and the dentist, the banker and the can-collector all shared tables and booths to start their day with coffee and a caramel roll.

Oh, those caramel rolls!  The taste was legendary.  High schoolers on the way to classes, farmers headed to the fields, women who had just dropped their elementary children all stopped by the Bakery—some to taste and talk, some to pick up and go.

The Bakery was also where one could order butter cookies with colorful icing for graduation receptions or baby showers.  Secretaries popped in to get a box of fresh glazed or chocolate frosted donuts for the office coffee breaks, PTA meetings, or 4-H Fair planning commission.  Churches made sure to have bakery donuts and pecan rolls on hand for the “gathering’ between Sunday School and church. 

When Bill and I married in 1962, The Bakery was an assumption in Alexandria.  Our kids grew up knowing breakfast at the Bakery; their grandmother took them there when they were little, and when they were in high school that was where they met their friends on Saturdays.

When in 2001 the DiRuzzas closed the Bakery and retired, the town was sad.  The old brick building with the tin ceiling was more than a location; it was a symbol of community that held us all together.  When the crumbling building was demolished in 2010, more than a few tears were shed.  I think many feared that small towns of America were somehow crumbling, too.

It was gone. The Bakery was gone.

The city made a “green space” where it once stood and tried to use that space for Christmas decorations, Santa’s Shanty, or booth space for Fall Festival.  But in spite of our best efforts, the hole on Harrison Street stood like a missing front tooth in the smile of our “friendly small town”.

Twenty years had passed when the grandson of the original owners came to Gina Brisco, our manager of Gaither Music, and the conversation began about maybe using the space that had been Gaither Family Resources to house a revival of The Alexandria Bakery.  Andy DiRuzza began work on repurposing the place, creating a kitchen for dough mixers, long wooden kneading tables, ovens, and all that a bakery would demand.

Rumors began to giggle their way around town, and excitement was high.  At last, in December the bakery was ready for a trial run—a two-day opening to see if this idea would fly.  At 6:00 am that day in December the line of those waiting stretched across the front of the building and down the parking lot. The DiRuzzas ran out of product by 9:30.   Yes!  The town of Alexandria was ready!

When the DiRuzzas opened for real in February, it was obvious that the Alexandria Bakery hadn’t been gone after all.  It had always been there in the solid institution of our memories.  At the first taste of the famous caramel rolls, eyes closed and a groan of ecstasy would come from deep inside.  “Ummm, just like I remembered....”

Because Bill and I both have March birthdays, all three of our grown children came home during March.  I’d like to say they were most excited about being back on the hillside where they grew up, but in reality, I think they were more excited about the Bakery. We watched as one by one they took their first bite of their favorite pastry, then we heard that groan.  “Ummm, just like I remembered.  The taste of my childhood!”

I am coming to believe that the Bakery was more than a disintegrating building and some makeshift booths and tables.  It was more than buttery cookies and warm pecan or caramel rolls.  It was something parents wanted to pass on to their children.  It was grass roots belonging to a community that had your back, a knowing you were somewhere safe and accepted.  It was tastes and smells and sounds that come from shared warmth and laughter and experiences.

When our youngest grandchildren were here for Spring Break, Benjy talked Andy DiRuzza into taking Liam and Mia on a “tour” of the bakery process.  They got baker’s aprons to take home and the chance for a photo op in front of the chalk board wall and the observation window.  They even got to put on sanitary gloves and add sprinkles to the freshly frosted donuts.  The tables out front were full that morning of people (and their children) who remembered this gathering place and the tastes that warmed their spirits and bodies so long ago.

And I am thinking that Leonard Sweet might be right when he predicts what just might save the Church and our country.  “Bring back the table!” he shouts.  Have more meals and fewer committee meetings, more pitch-ins and fellowship around a banquet table and fewer marketing strategy planning sessions.

In all those years of the Jewish dispersia—the scattering by persecution of the Jews to foreign countries when they had no country of their own--they carried their nation on their backs.  Their sacred traditions, their language, their shared history, their certainty of chooseness—all these turned out to be portable.  After carrying these all those years, what they needed was just a plot of land, and, voila! They were a nation!

Maybe, just maybe, all the divisive vitriol and efforts of extreme factions to tear our nation and our communities apart have not been so successful after all.  Maybe, just maybe, a bakery here and a church pitch-in there and a family reunion in a field somewhere else might reveal that our beloved community, our homeland, and our citizenship in an eternal Kingdom were always there in our hearts.  Maybe a sweet taste or bit of music or the sound of laughter or a child’s prayer at night might just give us the hope that the Nation on a Hill and the Church Triumphant are alive and well.  Maybe what we most need is a big table, some dough filled with yeast, and candle or two to light our way back home.

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Easter Everywhere

It is still soggy in Indiana.  The ground has thawed and the creeks are swollen.  The bottom land is too muddy for a walk, and in some places, there is so much water standing in the fields that the mallards are confused about where to build their nests.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

But the smell of earth tells me that I can start clearing the thick layer of last fall’s leaves from my raised garden frames and maybe prepare to stir some additional fertilizer into the black dirt underneath. 

Photo by Angela Kellogg

The daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips are in full bloom; the forsythia bushes are an outrageous shade of yellow, and the tips of the redbuds are bright pink along the edges of the Indiana woods.  If I tightly hold the branches of the lilacs in my hand, I can feel life, almost a pulse of sap pumping up the stem to the swollen tips of each twig.

I use my small hand rake to carefully move the leaves away from the soil in my vegetable frames.  I work my way from one corner to the other, putting the leaves into a basket for mulching until I reach the opposite corner.  What is this? A wad of hair tangled in the decaying leaves makes me stop.  I carefully lift the tangle. A nest of tiny pink bunnies, tightly intertwined, move.  The mother rabbit has covered them carefully against the chill that is still in the air.  I quickly replace the leaves and the fur she has pulled from her own body to keep them warm and hidden. The moment is almost a prayer.

Life is throbbing everywhere.  No wonder there have been ancient rites of spring: dancing and music and the weaving of blossomed branches into halos and crowns to make princesses and princes of all who spin to the glory of new life!  No wonder we, too, who celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord, hold chicks and bunnies, cherry blossoms and lilies-of-the-valley just to experience the pulse of the living!  No wonder we hold eggs in our hands like they are sacred and paint them with flowers and crosses and empty tombs!

Photo by Angela Kellogg

How can anyone frown and call “pagan” the joy of all nature, singing to the eternal victory of life over death?  I hear the voice of the risen Christ, speaking Mary’s name, calling her back to her true self again, she who once was split into seven personalities. Can you feel her fear that without her Lord she may splinter again?  But He speaks her name.  Mary.  She is whole again and forever.  Then He speaks again, this time with the gentle command, “Now, go and tell the disciples—and Peter.  I am risen from the dead.”

Don’t we all in the dark days of despair, in the winter of our discontent, feel ourselves sliding into the pit of doubt, questioning everything we were so sure we believed?  But then comes the morning. Night turns into day!  Our stone is rolled away!  Hope comes with the dawn.  Yes!

Winter cannot win.  Death is doomed. Every lime-green blade of grass, every thawing stream, every insistent sprout declares the power of Life!  So, yes, dance!  Weave crowns of daisies and dandelions.  Cuddle the furry bursts of pussywillow catkins and smell the fertile warmth of a fistful of earth.  Cheer every unfolding sprout that bursts through the brown skin of a seed!

Jesus has risen to rename us, empower us, and to dispel pessimism with hope and joy and the strongest, deepest peace.  HE IS RISEN!  Our Lord is alive, and, thank God, so are we!

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As Perceptive as a Jackass

Donkeys seem to be famous for being dense, stubborn, and quick to balk at the slightest provocation.  On a good day they can carry heavy loads and shoulder more than their share of responsibility.  But perceptive? They are certainly not famous for that! Yet donkeys seem to have shown up at pivotal moments in the story of redemption. 

When the children of Israel were making their way into the Promised Land, they camped along the Jordan River across from Jericho on the edge of Moab.  The Moabite leader Balaak (son of the king) was petrified when he saw this huge encampment. He had heard how God had given Israel the victory over the neighboring Amorites.

So Balaak called a soothsayer (a prophet misusing his gift) named Balaam to put a curse on Israel so Moab would be able to easily overtake them.  God told Balaam not to go with the Moab team, but (follow the money!) they offered him a delicious reward.  The “prophet” said he wouldn’t put a curse on Israel “because Israel was blessed”, but agreed to go with the messengers just to check it out in case he heard something different from God.  God was angered by this compromise.

On Balaam’s way to meet Balaak, the donkey he was riding stopped in her tracks because she saw a fierce angel of the Lord with a drawn sword in his hand blocking the road.  She went off the road into a field, so Balaam (oblivious to the angel) got off the donkey and beat her back onto the road. Back on the road which ran between two walled vineyards, the donkey was again confronted with the armed angel. She pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it.  Balaam beat her again.  This time she lay down in the road with Balaam on her back and refused to move. Still oblivious to the angel, he beat her again.

This time the “dumb” animal spoke. “What did I ever do to you to make you beat me?”
“You humiliated me,” said Balaam. “If I had had a sword, I would have killed you.”

“Remember me? I’m your faithful beast of burden who has carried all your loads my whole life to this very day!” the donkey retorted.

Then God gave Balaam a wake-up-call, and he saw the armed angel blocking the road to keep him from playing games with the enemy of God’s intensions.

Now, fast forward to the next time a donkey shows up.  It is again to carry out God’s intensions to get His people to a new place—to bring His own Son to earth to become the promised Messiah who would “save His people from their sin.”  A young woman is riding on a donkey with her husband-of-promise to register for taxation.  She is nine months pregnant and ready to deliver.  We don’t have an actual account of this donkey, but since the couple is poor and the distance is long, we are pretty sure they got to their destination by means of the transportation available to them.

Evidently, their donkey is willing and obedient, carrying its load to a stable where both the couple and the donkey will find a place to rest.  The young woman will give birth to the promised Messiah in that stable on that quiet night.

The third time a donkey plays a vital role Jesus and his disciples have come to Jerusalem.  They get as far as Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, when Jesus tells two of his friends to go into a nearby settlement, and there they will find a donkey and her colt tied up.  “Loose them and bring them to me,” Jesus tells them, “and if anyone questions this, just say, ‘The Lord needs them.’”

Did this ring any bells with any of the disciples?  Did anyone remember their schooling in the prophets?  On their way did the two disciples recall the text they had had to discuss in class: “Tell the daughters of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”?

It would have been donkey-like for these “dumb” animals to balk at a couple of strangers trying to lead her and her colt away.  But evidently, they both came willingly and did not freak out when Jesus rode through the crowded streets full of cheering throngs waving palm branches.

So.  This holy season of Easter, this is my prayer:  

Lord, as a follower of this Messiah make me at least as sensitive to eternal things and as perceptive to your plan as a jackass.  When I look up synonyms for jackass, I find “dunce, blockhead, nitwit, dummy, numbskull.” Yet, in the story of the rescue and redemption of God’s people, you spoke to a donkey, and it heard, it saw, it was obedient, it did not balk. If a donkey can see an angel in its path, help me to be at least that perceptive. If a donkey can be untied and led by a stranger who walks with Jesus, please let me be as willing and obedient as that. 

This Easter, make me alive with resurrection power so I will be as responsive as a dumb donkey when my Lord has need of me.  Let me see the invisible Kingdom you came to establish in the hearts of those least likely to be the perfect container, and let me be willing to carry whatever load that that vision might require.

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Free at Last!

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held slavery by their fear of death. (Heb. 2:14)

The law had punishments.  And the laws were so comprehensive no one could keep them all, so most of the time people lived in fear.  

But Jesus—oh, Jesus! Without breaking or banishing the law, He circumvented it, and at the same time satisfied justice by drawing a bigger circle—the circle of a dying love-gift, so that all those in the long line of punishment could go free.  He cut in line, died and paid the ultimate price, served the ultimate sentence.  Love swallowed vengeance. Love ate the sin and swallowed it whole.

Just when justice had the whole human race climbing the steps to the guillotine blindfolded, Love offered His perfect head for us all.  Now everyone is dancing in the street!  Praise music is being played on every instrument imaginable!  

The old Law System has been bought for the express purpose of destroying it, so that the Joy System could be put in its place.  Satan has been made to watch his plan breaking apart—agony for him.  But the ultimate agony is that Satan himself and all his tricks will be burned at the stake.  Gone forever! 

Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God almighty we’re free at last!

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What to Give Up for Lent

What are you giving up for Lent?  During this season I hear this conversation-starter in restaurants and in other social settings.  Various answers follow:

“I gave up Chocolate.”

“Well, I gave up TV baseball.  I don’t like it that much anyway; I just watch it because my husband watches it, and if I’m going to be with him, I have to watch baseball.”

“I’m swearing off shopping at Walmart.  Whenever I’m there, I end up buying a bunch of stuff I don’t need.”

I find myself asking where did Lent come from, and why do people give up things for it? I can’t find any such religious observance mentioned in the New Testament account of the early church after the resurrection. When did Lent as an observance start and how did it get institutionalized as a Christian ritual?

What I found out is that Lent became a mandated observance at the Nicaean Council held in 325 C.E., a gathering of Christians from various areas where the church had spread in the then-known world.  It seems that at that point it had a self-denial and sacrificial emphasis, to somehow make oneself worthy of redemption and to self-atone for sins and shortcomings. 

Most historical traditions seem to relate Lent to the forty days of fasting that Jesus did in the wilderness as he battled Satan’s enticement to succumb to the lure of materializing His mission by seeking power, provision, and notoriety of an earthly kingdom.  If this is indeed the basis for Lent, it must demand far more than giving up chocolate or going on a diet for 40 days.

Fasting as a form of physical, mental, and spiritual purification has a long history in Jewish law and is a discipline of many world religions.  So the days leading up to Jesus’s arrest, trial, abuse, and crucifixion is certainly a sobering and appropriate time for followers of Jesus to fast.  The effort to somehow comprehend the suffering of the Master and, as Paul says, to “fellowship in his suffering” can bring us to a more acute awareness of the agony the disciples experienced as they all too often failed to supply the support Jesus needed, especially when their own safety was at stake. 

It is important to realize that Jesus’s followers did not know the outcome of those days.  Even though Jesus had given plenty of metaphors for what was to come, there was no comprehension of a coming resurrection. Those last days with Jesus was their own testing in the wilderness.  Would they succumb to the pressures of the power structures of the ruling strongmen or the ecclesiastical politic?

I hear some people say they are giving up certain “sins” for Lent, like gossiping, drinking, gambling, cheating on a spouse, or lying.  Others say they are going to give money to a charity or volunteer for a good cause.  It seems the implication is that as soon as Lent is over, they can go back to old behaviors, that Lent is a temporary discipline but not a permanent change. 

But the resurrection did come!  And the resurrection is all about new life and the power to live it.  We are no good at atoning for our own sins, and good intentions to change ourselves are always too weak.  Oh, but if Lent can be a turning, an about-face from where I have been to where I long to be, a turning from the regrets of my failures to a vision of the Resurrection and a brand-new life and a fresh attitude and perspective, then a “time” for that turning is a good thing. 

In deciding what to give up for Lent, I think of the end of Psalm 139:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts.  Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (LB)

If God points out the things in me that make Him sad, and I willingly give them up for Lent, I know the Lord of Lent will give me grace for each moment as I leave those things behind and choose Life for tomorrow—and forever.

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The Prayer Chair

For this last Christmas two dear friends gave us a valuable piece of bronze sculpture by Scott Rogers, the artist famous for capturing life in the American old West.  This piece was inspired by the artist’s visit to the Cibolo Ranch near Marfa, Texas, originally built in 1850 by Milton Favor and restored by John Poindexter.  While Rogers was exploring the adobe rooms-turned-museum in the ranch, he came across a simple “prayer chair”, once used in simple churches and pioneer homes as a place of prayer.  Rogers said that the instant he learned the strange chair was used for prayer, he “knew that one day I would use it in sculpture.”

The night we received the gift, we brought the wrapped box home and opened it in our kitchen.  Overwhelmed by the generosity of such treasured friends, we sat the sculpture on our kitchen island.   There it stayed for a week while we discussed where we should place it, somewhere where it would be in the traffic of our daily life so we would naturally pass by it in the course of regular activities and thus see it often to remind us of our friends as well as of the importance of prayer.

Now, well into the new year, I thought maybe I’d send to our friends a snapshot of the sculpture in our home and say a second “thank you”.  As I went to do this, I stopped to focus my camera on the art, but actually focused for the first time on its position in the room.  We had placed it on a vintage victrola we have kept through the years because of Bill’s collection of recordings dating back to the 78RPMs he bought as a kid in love with music.

The victrola sits between our well-used grand piano and the grandfather’s clock the Gaither Music staff gave us early on when there were so few of us it was an exaggeration to call us a staff.  Above the victrola was our all-time favorite collection of photos of our three now adult children.

As any parent knows, one never stops being a parent, even when children become peers and often wise advisors.  What, when it’s all said and done, did we give our children?  What do they still need that we can still give them?  What of those things—from tennis shoes to a college education—will last when this home we built around them is gone and, as Carl Sandburg said, the grass has covered all.

I had not really noticed when we chose to put the sculpture on the victrola, but there it sat—a soul at prayer between the piano and the grandfather’s clock.  What do we most hope we have given our children that we can still give now that they don’t need us as much as we need them?  

We can give them music.  We can give them our time.  And prayer, we can give them prayer.  These will take us all, joyfully singing, into forever, where the need for both prayer and time-counting will be no more.

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Distractions

When I was a little girl, my grandfather owned a small farm in Michigan.  When it came time for the spring plowing, I often walked behind my grandpa as he held the reins of the team of horses that were hitched to a four-bottom plow.  I usually had an old empty coffee can grandma gave me for picking up earthworms and nightcrawlers from the fresh furrows, so we could fish the many lakes in Calhoun County.

The horses pa used wore thick leather flaps attached to the bridle that kept the horses from seeing to the side.  He called them blinders.  Always full of a hundred questions, I asked him why the horses had to wear them.  He said “So they’ll keep looking straight ahead.”

“Why,” I asked. “Why should they keep looking straight ahead?”

“To keep them from getting distracted by rabbits or coons or blackbirds.”  He stopped long enough to give me an answer that he thought would silence me for a while, and told me to hop up on the bar that held his metal seat in place.

“Look down there to the other side of the field,” he said.  Do you see that old oak tree?  It’s right straight ahead of where we are now; do you see it?”  Yes, I saw it.

“When I plow, I find something like that tree straight ahead of each row, and I keep my eyes on that thing and plow toward it.  If the horses don’t get distracted, the furrow we’re plowing will be straight.  But if I lose sight of my goal or the horses jig sideways because they spot a rabbit, the row will be crooked.  If this row is crooked, the next one lined up beside it will be crooked.  When we plant seeds, we follow the furrow and if the furrow is crooked, the rows of corn will be crooked.”

“But why does it matter if the corn is crooked?” I asked.

“It matters to me,” he answered in a tone that signaled that he was finished with this conversation.  I hopped down from the plow and went back to picking up fishing worms.

In the more than seven decades since, I’ve thought a lot about plowing a straight furrow.  I’ve had reason to consider distractions and when they are and are not a good thing.  I’ve seen the results of a field where a crooked furrow followed the one before it and the crops that then followed suit. I’ve thought about why keeping my eyes on the far away goal is important, and why horses wear blinders because they can’t remember why they’re out there in the field in the first place and can be distracted by a rabbit, why someone wiser must hold the reins.

And I am hoping as I look back over my field of service, that the rows have been mostly straight and the crops have been mostly full and that there have been plenty of seeds left over for another season.

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These Things Remain

Life is an attitude, an exercise in contrasts. Do I live open or closed, optimistic or pessimistic, hopeful of cynical, joyful or gloomy?  Of course, for all of us there are moments of all these outlooks.  But overall, do we for most of life think of the glass being half empty or half full?

There was a movie released in 2007 called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon) about Jean-Dominique Bauby who was chief editor of the French fashion magazine Elle.  He rode in the jet-setting circle of the privileged playboy culture until at 43, he had a stroke that damaged his brain and paralyzed his body, leaving him with what is known as “locked-in syndrome”.   What most of us lose bit by bit--our physical prowess, our muscle tone, our quick articulation, our ability to move—Bauby lost in an instant.  For him, all that was left was his sight, his hearing, and the ability to blink his eyes. Over months of being locked in, despairing and depressed over all that he had lost, he began to ask himself, “What do I have left?”

Not a bad question to ask ourselves at any juncture of the journey, from the jumping-gym to the walker or from the three-story house in the gated community to the care facility.

This next December Bill and I will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary.  We have walked a long and stimulating road together.  We have been blessed to travel the world, to have and love three amazing children who have given us seven very unique and invigorating grandchildren.  We have moved in many circles of influence and made friends with some of the greatest and endearing people, known and unknown, who have lived on this earth in our lifetime.  We have risked and lost; we have reached out and been welcomed and rejected.

Today, this Valentine’s Day, we have been so enriched by it all and have never been so grateful. So much remains. How full is the glass?  Brimming over. As we have had to relinquish, we have found our hands and hearts incredibly more full than ever! So here is my Valentine to the country boy I married.

These Things Remain

The barn was disassembled from the homeplace some years back,
‘Cause barnwood was more valuable than barns;
And with it went the stanchions where the cattle used to wait,
The haymow, and the pride in family farms.
The tire swing, the orchard, and the hen house disappeared
About the time you went away to school;
They went the way of duck tails, white bucks with pink and grey,
And big white sidewall tires we thought were cool.
The landscape keeps on changing, and the fads will come and go;
The things of earth can never stay the same.
But some things you can count on and know that they are yours – 
Yes, through it all you know these things remain:

The happiness that comes from finding joy in simple things
Like eating supper by the kitchen fire
And watching trees you planted grow so tall they shade the house
Or laughing children swinging on a tire.
And nature still will lavish all its riches without charge, 
The golden sunset or the emerald hills,
And dangle crystal drops of rain like diamonds from the leaves--
These simple, lovely gifts are with us still.

Photo by: Angela Kellogg

The place you went to high school has burned down to the ground, 
And grass has covered over where it stood.
The apple and the cherry trees you used to like to climb
Have long ago been split for firewood.
A house now stands where you and all your cousins used to strip
For skinny-dippin’ in the quarry hole;
Grandmas, aunts, and uncles are all buried over there
Where evenings we now take our quiet stroll.
And most things keep on changing as time keeps marching on;
You can’t expect them just to stay the same.
For birth and death and growing are a part of every day –
But, even so, my dear, some things remain;

We still can judge a person by the value of his word,
And love is best expressed by what we do.
The milk of human kindness still nurtures those who hurt;
The universe still echoes what is true.
Wisdom and integrity, honest and grace
Will live on after all of us are gone.
And God will make provision for the dark and lonely place;
He knows that we just have to have a song!
These things remain.

We’ve put away the playthings our children thought were great—
The dolls and all the puppets and the stilts,
The “Star Wars” and the Weebles, the Barbies and the Gnomes,
The villages the Lincoln Logs had built.
The swing set sits there silent at the bottom of the hill;
The paddleboat last summer sprang a leak,
And I think our grandson mentioned maybe going with a friend
To look for an apartment late last week.
I guess we can’t expect for things to stay just like they were;
Changes are predictable as rain.
Yet with all the changes, I wanted you to know
Some lovely and eternal things remain:

A home is still the place that you can come to night or day,
And “family” are the folks that take you in.
And those who still believe in you through all your ups and downs
Are still the precious treasure we call “friends.”
The Lord who has been faithful to lead us from the start
Will walk with us until our journey’s through,
And I will walk beside you “for better or for worse” –
I really meant it when I said, “I do”.

© Gloria Gaither 1986

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Holistic Medicine

I’m a believer in holistic medicine.  We can no more expect to have a healthy body without addressing the areas of our existence that effect our physical health.  Choices that cause anxiety of mind will eventually elicit responses from our bodies.  Behaviors that contradict our moral sense of right and wrong, violate our commitments to each other, and destroy trust in community will inevitably rob us and others of the peace and joy of mind and erode spiritual, emotional, and physical wholeness.

No wonder to get to the source of issues, Jesus asked such disturbing questions and gave what seemed to be unrelated advice.

“Where is your husband?”

“Who is my mother and my brothers?”

“Sell all that you have and give it to the poor.”

“You need to be born again.”

“Who touched me?”

“Unless you become like this little child, you’ll have no Kingdom status.”

“Whose name is on this coin?”

“Let me tell you a story....”

“Do you want to be well?”

“But who do you say that I am?”

It is so human of us to segment, compartmentalize, detach, escape, divert.  When confronted with one issue, how easy it is to focus on someone else, change the subject, divert attention from our problem to some other problem. It is so like Jesus to go to the heart of the issue.

I passionately believe that serving Jesus is the best holistic medicine for an injured and malfunctioning life.  Over time and practiced consistently, the gospel of Jesus will heal us from our innermost parts outward—nourish us and make us well.  Jesus is not a quick-fix hit that will make us feel instantly better, then, like most other medicines, leave us with not only the disease we started with but several more serious side effects.  

No, He came to make us friends with God who made us perfect in the first place.  His deep “passion” is to remake us from the inside out in the model and mold of Himself.  His objective is to make a creature enough like himself that both He and we will be filled with joy in relationship together.  He wanted a friend with whom he had something in common; He called it fellowship.  

Satan’s objective and only power is to destroy and distort, but God creates and recreates.  As we relinquish control of our lives to God, we will become creative, too, and go about the joyful work of leaving behind us a trail of beauty and joy!

But here is God’s lovely secret plan:  He does this not by making us autonomous “little gods”, but by making us body parts infused and made alive by the life-force that is flowing through us.  We become completely a part of Christ himself, yet we can only be that as we function in active (exercised) parts of each other, responding to the brain and soul of God.  That way we are never alone, always fully alive, and knowing that no matter where we are, we are right where we need to be.

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Diamonds in My Pocket

Tonight, I will have dinner with my friend and mentor Ann Smith.  Ann is here in Florida visiting her niece, so it was a happy discovery that we were going to be here at the same time because of Bill’s concert schedule.

Ann has been a mentor and friend for many years, as she has been to a long parade of college students, men and women in ministry, couples whose marriages were in trouble, and thinkers struggling with their faith.  I love Ann because she is so alive and ready to take on any discussion, constantly pushing herself (and me) to grow.  She is one of the sharpest minds and wisdom-seekers I know, so as a friend she is a rare and invaluable fellow pilgrim on this “journey to the sky”.

While Bill and the Vocal Band are singing in Ocala, I am meeting Ann and her niece Marcie for dinner.  We will laugh and tell stories and inevitably land on some topic that speaks to the core of life.  I will wait as on the edge of the ocean for the waves of Ann’s insights to wash up on the shore of my comprehension, then try to memorize the moment, make mental note of her words and, maybe, while she isn’t looking, scribble her wisdom on a napkin and tuck it into my pocket.

I will forget that it’s in my pocket, in all the gathering together of things to return home to my life in the dark January cold of Indiana.  But on some bewilderingly regular day of my real life, I will reach into that pocket for a tissue, and there will be the paper napkin laden with diamonds from Ann.  It will hold just the right words for just the right moment to reflect a prism of light on my path. And I’ll thank God again for a friend like Ann and for that dinner in Florida when we celebrated Ann’s 97th birthday, for I will have in my hand the sparkling dust of eternity from the youngest woman I’ve ever known.

(For more about Ann, see “Wisdom from Ann” blog for Oct. 31, 2018)

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How Then Should We Live Now?

It was in 1981 an awesome challenge to create a lyric to fit a long established and well-loved melody like the classic “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius, but my desire to help preserve such expressive pieces of music with power and relevance for the present generation motivated me to try.  When writing any lyric to existing music, I try to listen, with an ear as unprejudiced as possible to any previous suggestion, to the “idea” that lies imbedded in the music itself, much as the sculptor who sees already hidden in the block of marble the masterpiece, he/she must liberate by chipping away the encasement that imprisons it.

This music was originally performed on July 2, 1900, as a statement of support for freedom of the press in Finland and of resistance to the increasing pressure of Russian influence.

The strength and tenderness that gave this wonderful music its tension seemed to me to parallel the tension in commitment to relationships that are worth the struggle to persevere, whether those relationship be between spouses, siblings, parents and children, neighbors, the family of human persons or, ultimately between each of us and our God.  It is this ultimate relationship—the one between us and God—lived out with integrity, that is the liberating key that releases us from the prison of our self-made hang-ups and teaches us, heals us, equips us and models for us how to be in relationship with each other. 

As the new year lies ahead, I now reread these lyrics.  Little did I know in 1981 what the dawning of the year 2022 would bring—the cultural climate of the world and our own country, the reshuffling of the various communities and denominations of the organized church, the economic crises resulting from a global pandemic, or the political upheaval of established assumptions worldwide.

Needless to say, the circumstances of this moment in time—more than 40 years later and now more than two decades into a new century—demanded that I search my heart to see if I am still as convinced of and committed to the aspirations of this lyric, inspired by music written in 1899.  As I knew then, the words were easier to write that to live.  Am I any further down the road of my spiritual journey now?  Am I better living out the clear, yet gently insistent, mandates of the gospel that so long ago captured my heart?  And, assuming I have made some progress, how now do I live the next mile of this journey of faith?

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Gifts I Would Give the Grandchildren

I want to give our grandchildren the gift of solitude, the gift of knowing the joy of silence, and the chance to be alone and not feel uncomfortable.  I want to give them transportation for the inner journey and water for their desert places.  I want to make them restless with diversion and disenchanted with the artificial excesses of our culture.  I want to give them a desire to strip life to its essential and the courage to embrace whatever they find there.

I would teach them to be seers, to notice subtleties in nature, in people, and in relationships.  I long for them to grasp the meaning of things, to hear the sermons of the seasons, and the exhortations of the universe, the warnings of the wounded environment.  I would teach them to listen.  It would bring me joy to happen in on them one day and find them with their ears to the earth or humming the melody of the meadow or dancing to the music of the exploding symphony of spring.

Yes, I would teach them to dance!  I would teach them to never so tie up their feet with the shackles of responsibility that they can’t whirl to the rhythm of the spheres.  I would have them embrace the lonely, sweep children into their arms, give wings to the aged, and dance across the barriers of circumstance, buoyed by humor and imagination into the ecstasy of joy.  I would teach them to dance!

I would teach our grandchildren to cry, to feel the pain that shatters the violated, to sense the emptiness of the deserted, to hear the plaintive call of the disoriented and lost, to understand the hopelessness of the powerless.  I would teach them to cry – for what is locked away, for that which is broken, for those who never know Life, for what was not realized, for the least and the last to know freedom.

I would teach our grandchildren gratitude.  I would have them know the gift of where they’ve been and who brought them to where they are.  I would teach them to write each day a liturgy of praise to read to the setting sun.  I would have them dwell upon the gift of what is, not wasting their energies on what could have been.  I would have them know that twin of gratitude: contentment – contented to live and breathe, contented to love and be loved, contented to have shelter and sustenance, contented to know wonder, contented to be able to think and feel and see.  To always call a halt to senseless striving, this I would teach our grandchildren.

I would teach our grandchildren integrity, to be truthful at any cost, to be bound by their word, to make honest judgments, even against themselves, to be just, to have pure motives.  I would have them realize that they’re accountable individually to God alone and, then, to themselves.  I would have them choose right even if it is not popular or understood, even by me.

I would teach our grandchildren to pray, knowing that in our relationship with God there is much to be said, and God is the one who must say it.  I would have them know the difference between prayer and piety; I would make them aware that prayer often has no words but only and open, vulnerable accessibility to God’s love, mercy, grace, and justice.  I would hope that they discover that prayer brings and is an awareness of our need, a knowledge without which there is no growth or becoming.  I would have our children know through experience and example that there is nothing too insignificant to lay before God. Yet, in that openness, we often find Him lifting us above what we brought to Him making it insignificant compared to the revelation He brings to us as a result of our coming to Him.  

I would not have our grandchildren think of prayer as a commercial enterprise, a sort of celestial clearing house for distributing earth’s material goods.  Rather, I would have prayer teach them that what we so often think we seek is not on the list of what we need, yet God does not upbraid us for our seeking but delights in our coming to Him, even when we don’t understand.  Mostly, I would have our grandchildren know how synonymous true prayer is with gratitude and contentment and have them discover the marvelous outlet prayer is for communicating this delight with God.

Lastly, I would teach our grandchildren to soar, to rise above the common, yet find delight in the commonplace, to fly over the distracting disturbances of life, yet see from this perspective ways to attack the knotty problems that thwart people’s growth and stymie their development.  I would give them wings to dream and insight to see beyond the now, and have those wings develop strength from much use so that others may be born aloft as well when life becomes too weighty for them to bear.  At last these wings, I know, will take our children high and away from our reach to places we have together dreamed of, and I will watch and cheer as they fade from my view into vistas grand and new, and I will be glad.

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