No Status Jobs

The names and faces of Christian artists, musicians, and speakers you have come to love are well known to you because the place God called them to serve happens to be visible.  You see them on TV, listen to their music in the car on your favorite platforms, and have their books in your home.

But it is important to remember that there are no “status jobs” in the Kingdom of God. “Visible” and “significant” are not necessarily synonyms.  For every one of us, if we have any worth, we are where we are because some truly significant people crossed our paths along the way and helped us grow, gave us support, taught us to forgive.  Their faces never appeared on television; if we “googled” them, we probably wouldn’t come up with anything impressive or, more likely, anything at all.  But they were life-changers on our journeys.

I think of people in my life whose names would not ring a bell for you, people like Mildred Shaffer, Louisa Bowler, Ann Smith, and Milton Buettner.  Some were teachers who saw in me something I couldn’t see in myself.  Others were those who through conversation and example gave me the belief that choices matter and every day faithfulness was never an exercise in futility.

Their significance wasn’t measured in hits or awards or positions on charts, but in kids loved, teen-agers encouraged, or dignity saved.  These are the “heroes and the brave” in the trenches of regular life.  They showed up for work, opened their homes, shared their pools and backyards, used their cars to haul kids to youth camp, or gave us advice we can never forget. And they taught us that if any of us are ever truly great, it will be for consistency, selflessness, and a generous spirit.

I’m thinking that this just might be a good day to celebrate those heroes in our lives, to take a few minutes to say by note, email, or phone call, “Thank you” to the not-so-visible giants who made a significant difference in our lives.  If those life-shapers are not still living, maybe a note to their grown children would be in order, to let them know what their parent meant on our journey.

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Beautiful To Me

Bill and I started a puzzle after supper to relax from a busy week and to detox from the evening news and media feeds. We almost finished the picture in two evenings except for the last twenty or so sky pieces.  I will admit that for me working on same-color background of a puzzle is right up there in frustration with untangling the knots in a tiny gold chain necklace.  I just can’t do it!

So this morning, while Bill went for the sky, I began my reading of materials that demand a morning mind.

I’m a writer, so my work and discipline is reading all kinds of writing by great authors and poets, essayists and historians that stretch, engage, and challenge my own writer-mind.  Morning is also the time that Bill and I discuss great ideas, issues of the day, and things that bring us great joy, like our grandkids and our Cavalier dog Windsor, who pulls his bed between Bill’s chair on one side of the kitchen and mine on the other.  He loves a good discussion!

This particular morning, Bill had a late morning appointment at his office, but before he left for that, he started a fire in the kitchen fireplace beside my reading place, piled up enough firewood to keep the fire going through my morning study and took Windsor out between the patches of winter rain that was predicted to go on all day.

Bill and I are both poets and romantics; both of us love music and candlelight. I love beauty and flowers and chocolate as much as anyone I know. And it’s almost Valentine’s Day.  If I know Bill after all these years, he will likely have a dozen multi-colored roses delivered to our door on Valentine’s Day and I will make his favorite dinner, put on some soft music, and light the candles on the table. At bedtime, he will probably light candles in the bedroom and turn on some classical music.

But whether flowers and favorite foods, candlelight and music make our love gentle and beautiful depends as much on the morning as the night.  His completing the sky, keeping the fire going, taking Windsor out in the rain, and us both sharing ideas over a second cup of coffee is as much “making love’ as the tender holding of each other in candle light.

For the last couple of months, the Vocal Band has been recording a collection of classic love songs.  The harmonies and melodies of these songs are break-my-heart beautiful, and they have never been sung as meaningfully and these guys sing them.  A couple of weeks ago all five of the wives came to witness these songs being video recorded at our studio.  Singing these songs to the women with whom they have committed to spend the rest of their lives brought a whole new authenticity to the love songs they were singing. It definitely was a day of “more than the music.”

At one point in the day, Bill asked the guys “Will you still sing to your sweetheart when you both are old?” We all then had a discussion about what exactly is “intimacy”?  With the exception of Bill and me, these couples are young and beautiful.  They are rearing children in various stages of development and are caught up in the mainstream of life. Will these marriages withstand the pressures of life?  Will these families stay intact as they weather the storms of life that will inevitably come?  And what is beauty after all?

Bill and I just celebrated our sixtieth anniversary.  What had brought us to this milestone still loving each other, as the definition of loveliness and beauty gathered new shades of meaning along the way? 

I can only say that through sunshine and rain, this man has gotten more “beautiful” to me one fire at a time, one kindness at a time, one forgiveness at a time, one respected idea at a time. The patience to finish the sky when the picture is incomplete, to bring a hot cup of coffee so life can go on, and to offer so many other loving gestures on life’s wintry, cold and rainy days has made our lives together and each other, well, beautiful. 

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In the Best Light

“Let there be light!”  Should be any good decorator’s mantra.  Other tools of décor—color, furniture, flooring, cabinetry, textiles and fabrics—all are less than effective in creating the homing experience without well-designed lighting.

Light is to décor what punctuation is to as good sentence.  If the room (or sentence) is to convey the intended meaning, it must be present.

Lighting creates the mood, draws the eye to the focal points, invites and ushers the guest into the interior places. It can create the sparkle, calm the weary spirit, or send a subtle message.

Indirect lighting, especially in windowless interior rooms, can open up the space and chase away unintended shadows.  Strip lighting can accent art glass, sculptures, paintings or greenery.  It can also brighten a workspace or play area.

Lamps (with appropriate bulbs) can invite the reader to a book nook, warm a conversation area, or simply create a welcoming place for solitude.

If I had my way, there would be no traditional ceiling lights, because they tend to be harsh and impersonal.  Florescent lights often cool or distort the carefully chosen colors of the room and cast those in it in the worst light—really!  Hanging light or recessed lights over desired areas—the bath, the table, and the workbench—can be both effective and beautiful.

Best of all is the ever-changing natural light from windows, skylights and sidelights.  Leaving these spaces to change as the light changes creates angles and shadows in the room that are often a work of art in themselves.  Sheer curtains or shades that help to filter sunlight when it is harsh and give some privacy at night without blocking the light entirely let natural sunlight work its transforming magic.

Special note to homeowners who want to sell:  Always create the best first impression of the home with complimentary lighting in every room and the wonderful smell of cinnamon and apples or chocolate chip cookies before the house is shown will help the possible buyer “experience” your home in an unforgettable way.

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Staying Put

In a mobile culture, physically, vocationally, and spiritually, it has been delightfully refreshing to discover a small book about a huge topic:  THE WISDOM OF STABILITY by Jonathan Wison-Hartgrave.  Founder of the Rutba House community and associate minister at St John’s Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, Wilson-Hartgrave addresses an ancient truth about which the current popular Christian conversations are for the most part silent:  the strength and power in staying put.

Never has the church talked more about “community” and practiced it less.  Living in community has been pretty much reduced to a 20-minute coffee-and-donut break in the lobby of the church or a few volunteer hours in the church neighborhood food pantry.

But actually staying in one place, working out our calling among family and neighbors who know us only too well and whose warts and foibles we would rather not have to deal with over time is an almost lost concept.  We love the “go into all the world” words of Jesus, but are not so fond of the “go back to your village and live it out” mandates. 

By contrast the whole idea of “ministry” and” vocation” is too often “go away to college” so we can “go where God sends us”, usually meaning that if we don’t move around every few years (or months), we are not really ministering or being successful in our chosen professions.

This convicting (and might I say also confirming) book addresses the idea that like a tree, there should be as much below the ground in rooting as there is above the ground in branching if the tree is to survive the storms of life.

It shouldn’t be as novel as it seems to be that some of us are called to make homes that kids can come home to no matter how far away they roam.  The author points out that “the practice of stability, then, is an exercise in putting down roots.  A good tree bears good fruit…but we are product-oriented people, eager to skip over the process and enjoy the apple without attending to the soil and sun and roots that help it grow.”

It seems that our culture is in its death throws because “nobody’s home.”  Kids without parents, houses with no “familying”, neighborhoods with no “neighbors”, churches that are not “sanctuary” for those who need a safe and consistent harbor. Maybe, just maybe, some of us could pledge to stay put for the rest of us.

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How Can We Change?

Transformation.  Conversion.  Alteration. What precipitates change?  Definitely, hitting-the-wall can.  Or a crisis situation in which a human being gets a sudden clear picture of his or her limitations and insufficiencies.  A moment of glory, too, can turn us around:  a transcendent moment, a revelation of a reality beyond the routine of mundane habit.

There are two memoirs by a great Indiana author Haven Kimmel.  One is called A Girl Named Zippy about a little girl who basically (with some help from neighbors, teachers, townspeople and the magazines at the corner news stand) raised herself in the little Indiana town of Mooreland, while her mother sat on the couch and read books from the library.  Then one day (book two) her mother got up off the couch, rode her bike from Mooreland to Muncie and signed up for classes at Ball State University.  She also lost a lot of weight (probably from all the bike riding) and totally came alive! (She Got Up Off the Couch is actually the name of the book!)

The first question is, “What makes people change?” and the second question is, “What good is a ‘faith’ that doesn’t?  Without a transformation, what good is religion?

It his book AHA! about the change-points that actually transform, Kyle Idleman says that there are three stages that are necessary to bring about a life-altering “A-ha!” moment and set us on a new path.

The first is a sudden awakening, a “coming to your senses.” This new realization may be generated by a positive moment, like falling in love, communing with nature, or an undeserved mercy.  Or it could be a negative happening, like a near-death experience, a spiraling out of control, or a time of monumental failure.  But whatever brings it about there must be a wake-up-stupid jolt into a new awareness.

But it takes more than an alarm clock to change the soul.  There also has to be a time—usually a painful time—of brutal honesty.  No more rationalizing the truth away.  No more blaming someone else.  No more living in denial.  An awakening worth its salt must bring a coming-to-grips with the real culprit, and, as Commodore Oliver Perry once said, “We have seen the enemy…” and, guess what?  The enemy is in the mirror!

But even an awakening and a gut-wrenching honesty will fall short unless we “get up off the couch,” or, as the prodigal in the pigpen put it, “I will arise and go home.”  We have to get up and go home—to God, to our messed-up and embarrassing past, to whatever work it will take to us get whole, and, most of all, to the self God created us to be.  Even the self-righteous older brother had to do that.  He had to swallow his I-can-earn-my-way self-sufficiency and learn to dance!

The really great news is that we have an advocate!  The Father has sent us the Holy Spirit of empowerment who will never check out or give up, who will never leave us or forsake us as we make new paths and walk a new way.  He is infinitely patient, and will give us the grace to be patient with ourselves when we fall off whatever wagon we once were on.  As C. S. Lewis said about this advocate: 

“Make no mistake,” He says, “I will make you perfect.  The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for.  Nothing less, or other, than that.  You have free will, and if you choose, you can push me away.  But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through.  Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect.”

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Christmas, Pure and Simple

In our complex, hype-filled, spin-ridden world, Jesus comes as a naked baby—pure and simple.  It is His first and lasting message to us:  life is good enough, beautiful enough, powerful enough.  Without embellishment the Word—the Message—is enough.

The Good News started with a resting newborn infant full of joy and life and peace.  And the final message was the same:  “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Joy and rest have always been the marks of those who truly follow Jesus.  The great issues of life are laid to rest in Him.

This joy and rest does not require perfect surroundings or easy circumstances.  They are not at the mercy of situation or environment.  This life, pure and simple, is portable and present in the harshest of conditions.  It can make its presence known in stable or palace, hamlet or metropolis. It was present on a midnight escape to Egypt and  in a simple carpenter’s cottage in Nazareth.  It does not need a scepter, badge, or medallion.  It’s purity and simplicity are its own defense.

But we must never mistake the pure and simple for the weak or ineffectual.  True courage, power, and strength are only weakened by distractions and embellishments.  True greatness always seeks to sharpen its focus, pare down accumulations, and strip away impediments.

From the womb to the tomb, the power of Life—pure and simple—has had one piercing focus:  to bring that Life to every person who will receive it.  Life unencumbered by all that would weigh it town or slow it down has come to set us free. Pure and simple!

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He Was Just an Ordinary Baby

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We All Love a Baby

The Christmas story is the greatest story ever told.  It has all the elements; a difficult journey, a young couple left out in the cold, a baby delivered in the crudest of circumstances, a miraculous choir of angels invading a dark and lonely hillside, a new star spotted and followed by foreign astronomers.

But there is nothing more profound or impossible to wrap one’s mind around than the Story behind the story:  that God the source of all things would choose to limit His limitless essence to a single cell to come all the way to where we are—to become one of us—so that we could come to Him and not be afraid.

That story strains human comprehension and defies the boundaries of human logic.  Yet, if it is true, it changes everything we could think about the deity, about what is actually power, and about all the goals we ever could make for ourselves as human beings.  Theology, the study of God, is left speechless at such a profound claim.  Yet, for well over two thousand years, there have been no end to the books and sermons about this deeper story. We will never be done with connecting the dots of every detail of this story from creation to this very day we are living.  Nothing is incidental or accidental.  Every “simple” detail is an eternal metaphor.  This baby began in a rough-sawn wooden manger and ended nailed to a rough-sawn wooden cross. This helpless infant started his life wrapped in long bands of simple cloth to swaddle him and ended unwrapping his own burial clothes, folding them neatly, and walking out of his own tomb.  Every detail in this story matters.

Yet, I hear some say, “Of course, we love Christmas!  It is the story of a baby that doesn’t demand anything from us. We love the helpless-little-baby story.”

I can’t help but think that such comments must come from someone who never had a baby.  Babies demand a total commitment from the start.  There is no backing out.  There is no letting up.  A baby silently demands our all, right from the beginning.

Any mother knows a baby is a 24/7 responsibility.  A baby consumes her energies, her attention, her engagement and her sleep.  Without a word, without a job description, without a recess or a vacation, a baby demands our all.  And there is no ending to this commitment, no moment when a parent can say, “Okay, this child is finished; he’s on his own.”  No, a mother is always a mother.  Every hurt, every rejection, every set-back this child endures tears at her very heart.

No wonder wise old Simeon said to Mary, “... and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”  Did his prediction come to her mind as she held the bled-out, dehydrated body of her son when the soldiers took him down from the cross?

Even as a grown man, this baby never forced anyone to serve him. He simply invited them to “leave their nets and follow him.”  And still today it is the reality of Immanuel, God with us, that constrains us like a baby does its mother to commit to something that will change everything.  It is the Love that will not let us go.

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A Natural Christmas

When Bill and I built our house 57 years ago, I dug up the stubborn Indiana clay and created what we have always called “the English garden”.  On the white fence around the garden, we installed a white wood fence with two arched trellises, and along one section of the fence we planted three starts of bittersweet, knowing that we had to have both male and female plants.  Evidently all the plants were of one gender because all these years we have never had one berry on the abundant veining plants.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

Around one of the trellises I had planted a start of wisteria.  This fall to my amazement I found the trellis and another section of fence totally covered with a vine that turned out to be not wisteria but bittersweet—loaded with berries.  I was thrilled!  That was the beginning of a “pure and simple” Christmas!  This year I have decided to use only natural things to decorate for Christmas:  lots of bittersweet, fresh holly, some birch logs saved from a clump of birch that had died in our yard, pine branches, and whatever else I could find that was natural.

I will create garlands by stringing cinnamon sticks with cranberries on yarn.  The old yard swing could be wound with pine and cedar branches.  Wide strips of burlap ribbon can be made from the bags we had collected from the corn we feed to the swans. 

While still on the plant, I sprayed-painted the dried blooms of the hydrangeas gold, silver, and copper to fill baskets and other containers, and I have collected the seed pods of the clematis vines that look like fuzzy whirligigs to put in tiny pottery vases with small sprigs of yet more bittersweet.

I will only have to add lights, candles, and a few bows of velvet ribbon, and the house will be filled inside and out with cheer--all natural and simple reminders of the creator himself who came to walk among us!

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These Ol’ Tables

In looking back over the decades living in this house, I am realizing how many memorable moments have been made around the two tables in our well-worn home.  I guess it stands to reason that the place where family and friends come to eat together would emerge as a center of home and its welcome.

In every season the table is where special holidays are celebrated.  At the end of every workday and workweek, it is the food, family, and fellowship that brings us all home.  Christmas parties, Thanksgiving dinners, intimate Valentine desserts, Passover and Easter rituals, summer birthday parties, graduation gatherings—great memories of all kinds—are honored around the table.  Indeed, so much of what we have all become after spending our lives together as a family has been informed and influenced by experiences around these tables.

Both the kitchen table and the dining room table at our house seat ten.  In the beginning, we chose big tables because we wanted to always be able to “set another place.”  But it has been not only meals together that have shaped us, but the conversations and shared activities at these tables. The tables were often spread with homework, poster paints, family puzzles, writing projects, and remodeling plans.

The tablecloths, runners and centerpieces have chronicled the changing of the seasons.  Around these tables kids, grandkids, and their friends have made valentines, colored Easter eggs, strung Christmas garlands of cranberries and popcorn, and played dominos and Scrabble.

Here at these tables we have discussed our faith and our doubts, cried and prayed over lost loved ones and broken relationships.  We have laughed our heads off and been silent over disagreements.  Through the seasons and the years these old tables have been a magnet for feeding both the body and the soul.

Soon these tables will draw us all home again to give thanks for the years and miles and to remind each other that there will always be a great table, where our place will be set and our special chair will be waiting.  Yes, there will always be a place at the table at the end of our journey home.

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Keep Telling the Story

Was it the farmhouse smelling of wood smoke and pumpkin pies?  Was it the sound of the pump organ or guitar; piano or harmonica?  Was it the crunch of snow underfoot or the corn shocks leaning into each other in the fields?  Was it the candles in the windows or the happy voices of the whole clan playing dominos, Rook, or Pit around the kitchen table after supper?

Photo by Angela Kellogg

Was it using mother’s best sewing scissors to cut pink, red, and white hearts out of construction paper or snowflakes out of tissue? Was it carving jack-o-lanterns, stringing cranberries and popcorn, cutting bunny-shaped cookies out of fresh sugar dough, or sitting around a bonfire, giggling at wisecracks and singing songs, silly and serious, to the strum of a guitar?  What made home the place to which your heart needed to return?  What made Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving?  Or maybe, for you, all the seasons and holidays are just a hungry longing for something you had only heard about in other people’s songs and other children’s stories.

Memories have to be made good and precious on purpose.  The holidays may be printed on the calendar but you have to make them meaningful and sacred by being truly reverent and actually present and intentionally joyful.  “Meaningful” can't be printed in calendar ink.  Treasured memories don’t necessarily result from declaring a national holiday and they can’t be abolished by eradicating them, either.

“Going on holiday” isn’t the same thing as celebrating Christmas.  Having “turkey day” is not the same as truly celebrating our national heritage and giving thanks.  Easter is not the same as spring break.  Symbols are symbolic of something.  Easter eggs, Christmas trees, Seder candles, the American “stars and stripes,” the Thanksgiving pilgrims and turkey are only meaningful if we parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles make them so and keep them so by never tiring of “telling the story.”  It’s all about the story and your special telling of it.  Without that, sacred moments will crumble into, well, merely trinkets and a day off.

To tell the story of both the history of our country and the faith that shaped it, I can’t think of a better way to spend Thanksgiving evening together as an extended family of all ages than to watch the DVD of Circuit Rider.  This historical musical pays tribute to the early carriers of the gospel across the rugged territories of what would become America’s states. Lyrics and narration were written by Suzanne Jennings to music mainly by Woody Wright, and acted and sung by many of the favorite Homecoming artists.

For our family, Thanksgiving is the holiday for everyone to come home. This gathering becomes dearer as our family grows and spreads to other parts of the country and even abroad. It is also the time to bring around our table those who may not have their families close. This often includes college students who can’t go home and those who have lost family through death or separation.

After the food is displayed on the big island in our farm kitchen, we all pull chairs into a big circle around the room. The youngest child is chosen to pass a small basket of Indian corn kernels around the circle. Someone tells once more the story of that first Thanksgiving and the winter that preceded it when many died and those who survived were given, finally, just a ration of a few kernels of corn and some water.  We tell of the natives who, when spring finally came, taught the immigrants to plant seeds that would survive in this adopted land and how that year at harvest, the pilgrims and the natives brought their crops and wild game like turkeys and venison to eat together and to give thanks for survival in this new land.  Often, we then read the Felicia Dorothea Hermons poem, “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers” and Abraham Lincoln’s original declaration of Thanksgiving.

Still holding our kernel in our hand, the tiny basket is passed again, and returning our corn, now with new meaning, we each take our turn at telling what we are most thankful for since we were last in this special circle. Laughter and tears always punctuate this Thanksgiving ritual, which ends with a prayer of gratitude from one of the older generation—now, usually Bill or me, since our parents are all gone now.

I’m sure there have been times over the years when a teen-ager in the circle has thought, “Do we have to do this again?”  The answer is, of course, “Yes, we do, because the reason we do anything is as important as the doing of it in all of life.  Being certain of the “why” will take us through the hard times.”

We all need a ground zero, a true North, when the world seems to be shifting beneath our feet like sand sucked away by the receding tide. For us, here are some things we can hold to:

 --There is a God who is way bigger than we can comprehend whose love spoke everything into existence

 --You can always go home, home to God, home to family, home to your true identity

 --Always ask why before asking what and how.  What and how must always be in service to why.

--Guard your heart and keep your joy!

This Thanksgiving let’s tell the story—our national one and our personal ones.  This Christmas let’s tell the Story.  Be sure even the smallest child knows what every symbol stands for and every practice means. And let’s live the story together, for the telling of it brings us home—to each other, to God, and to our true selves.

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Waking a Tired Old Bedroom

Rooms get tired, too.  And habit keeps us from noticing.  Our house has seen many seasons come and go.  It has endured a lot of changes, too, poor thing!

The house used to have an attached garage, which we turned into a shipping room and sheet music warehouse (Remember sheet music?).  Well, that is until our little music company outgrew the garage, and we built what we called the A-frame (which we also soon outgrew).

Our three kids were by then in need of rooms of their own, so we knocked out the wall of the garage and turned the garage into a family room.  What was originally the family room and Bill’s old office with sheet music shelves along one side, became our bedroom with a small en suite bath.  We took out the shelves and put in clothes rods, and, voila!, we had a closet.

A few years later, when we got three kids through college, we decided it was time build on a real bathroom with walk-in closets.  We took out the sheet music/closet and had beautiful bookcases built in instead; we tore out the small bath room from the bedroom corner, and had room for a real chest of drawers. 

Now, fast forward another twenty years.  The carpet was tired (or maybe I was just tired of it); the chaise lounge that once belonged to my mother needed to be recovered.  Our new bathroom mirrors told us that we had aged, too, with a few new wrinkles, dryer skin, and less hair. This revelation reminded us that we had gradually gotten used to our faces and the bedroom, too.  We couldn’t reverse the changes we saw in the mirror, but we could do something about our tired bedroom.

We decided to take up the carpet that had refused to wear out, and replace it with a vinyl wood floor and area rugs.  We called Ron Whitlow who has been our painter for thirty years (and his brother and father before him), and held a time in his schedule for new wallpaper and paint. 

I ordered a big oriental rug for the middle of the room and went shopping for new upholstery fabric for the chaise.  I ordered new shades to replace the broken one at the patio door and found a great deal on a velvet quilted bedspread and new set of sheets.

My mother was an artist who loved Japanese art and floral arrangements and passed that love on to me. Added to that was the bucket-list trip I was able to take a few years back with our daughter and her little son and our dear friend and mentor Ann Smith who was a missionary to Japan for twenty years.  These influences drew me to a wallpaper with stems of Japanese cherry blossoms on a mint green background.  Mother had given me years ago her trio of jade green iron geisha women which would sit beautifully on our antiqued bronze Ionic column shelf.  

The hydrangeas around the yard were by now drying as the leaves fell, so I spray-painted them on the stem in shades of greyish mint, pale pink, and copper.  When the paint was dry, I arranged them in a big silver urn with stems of silk cherry blossoms.

Finally, with everything done and the furniture back in place, the bedroom feels like a breath of fresh air every time we walk through.  I, too, may be feeling weary on a given day, but I refuse to be anything but alive and wide awake as long as I live!

I remember a poem my artist-writer mother wrote in the inside of a great Webster’s Dictionary she gave me for my high school graduation.  I carry this poem in my mind and now share it with you.

     The Shepherd Friend

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.

Dorthy Sickal
©1988 Gloria Gaither
Hands Across the Seasons
Abington Press

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Bibliophile

Okay, I admit it! I am a bibliophile.  If you remember the “root words” you learned in junior high school you know that bibliophile means “lover of books.”  And I love books!  I love the smell of bookstores.  I love the way well-loved antique books feel in my hand with their use-worn leather covers fraying at the edges from all the hands that have eagerly opened their pages.  I love brand new hot-off-the-press books that promise me a story, an insight, or even an argument to test my assumptions.

I love children’s books, too, all the way from classics no child should miss like Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island, and Gulliver’s Travels to books that have captured this generation of kids and enticed them to leave their I-Boxes and computers to enter the more exciting universe of imagination like Lord of the Rings, Lemony Snicket, and A Wrinkle in Time. 

I love deep books of theology and philosophy that make my brain itch trying to wrap my mind around their concepts, and I love dense, engaging stories like the regime change bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow.

And then there are the golden moments spent with collections of poetry, poetry that distills our lives into sharp unforgettable phrases that carve our very identities on the oak trees of our souls.

I never leave home without a book.  (Even in church, I usually have a book in my purse, just in case.)  One of my phobias is the fear of getting stuck on a plane, in the check-out line, in the hospital waiting room, or at Starbucks without a book.  And when I have come the closest to losing my faith in God and mankind, it has been a book that has come to my rescue. 

Thank you to all those men and women who have walked the lonely writer’s life.  Thank you to Shakespeare, Frost, Steinbeck, Sandberg, Dickinson, L’Engle, Merton, Buechner, Dillard, Yancey, Colson, O’Conner, Faulkner, Wolfe, C. S. Lewis, Ken Gire, Calvin Miller, Millay, Silverstein, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Dickens, Molière—writers of so many enriching books that have challenged our minds, schooled our wit, inspired our hearts and, yes, saved our faith.  We are indebted to you.  May we show our gratitude by reading to our babies, telling stories that teach principles of truth to our children, discuss concepts with our young people and share ideas with our peers by passing around and discussing great books. 

And when it comes to the Book of all books, may we never get so focused on arguing about the words that we miss the Word that came to walk among us to lead us into all truth.

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Time for Separating

Photo by Angela Kellogg

Thank God for fall –
The time for letting go
Of all for which the sowing work was done,
The labor in the sun,
The watering and weeding,
The nurture of the seedling,
And praying for the rain,
Through all the spring and summer.
The hope that made the waiting
Worth the wait
Has been anticipating
This fine day
When seedlings stood up strong
On stalks that bore the weight
Of lovely buds and blossoms
Of their own.
And all along we knew
There’d be a separating,
A time when roots reached deep
Into the soil
To nurture what we’d planted.
The labor and the toil –
That happiest of work –
Would be much less demanding,
And there’d be time for standing
In the sunset
Hand in hand.

Photo by Suzanne Jennings

So, here it is, the fall,
The time for separating;
Yet, nothing’s lost at all,
And nothing disappears
This harvest time of year;
And, yes, there’s time
For savoring the joy,
For storing in the heart
And filling up the soul’s wide granaries
With what has grown to be,
The fruit of finest dreams.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

We sift the kernels through our hands
And sing
To find them pregnant with the spring!

--Gloria Gaither from HANDS ACROSS THE SEASONGS

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Make It Real

Our daughter Suzanne wrote the words to the song “Make It Real”, a song that has rescued me more than once as I wrestled a few angels to the ground with my own questions and doubts.  I asked her if she would be willing to write a guest blog for this song.

On Florida beaches that we love, we walk by the quiet shoreline and pick up shells deposited there by a gentle gulf tide.  But on the North Shore of Oahu in the Pacific, there are no shells, only crabs and thick snails which have the tenacity to ride rough currents and hang onto jagged coral for dear life.  The sea here belongs to the few brave souls who respect and willfully challenge its absolute power.  The white caps rolling in from Japan have no mercy, have been commanded to carry out their marching orders seemingly without feeling or compassion.

I have never seen waters so resolved, so relentless.  I have watched from a safe distance in fear and reverence.  Sometimes the winds move in and with them the sudden rains which launch surprise attacks intermittently throughout the day.  The sun teases you with its warmth and brilliance, coloring the sea as aquamarine as stained glass; then after you are lured out into the open, the sky perforates and spits sheets of cold, wet rain and before you know what has happened, you are soaked to the skin and shivering in some reef-rimmed corner.  You become helpless—these elements will not allow themselves to be controlled.  So you sit and wait in the mystery of them.

Maybe that is why I love it there so much.  The coral along that beach has never been removed to make the walking easy; no sand has been brought in to smooth the way.  The vegetation is riotous; the birds exotic and everything natural is unpredictable. 

The surfers understand about living in this “openness.”  They understand the importance of gambling on one amazing ride on a wave perfectly curled.  They get jobs that can be “optional,” wear clothes that can go anywhere, live in huts close to the breathing, living sea.  They eat and sleep solely when the ocean allows them to, and the only supplies they keep on hand are board wax and radios tuned into the local weather station.  They take her on knowing full well that she is a volatile lover, that they may lose skin or arms or consciousness in the process of riding. . . or, she may roll them beautifully into heights they cannot imagine, their throbbing hearts caught up in their throats; she may lay them down lovingly sand-smooth as they wonder what undiscovered world they just experienced.  “Keeping it real,” they call it.  Either way it is her call, her hold on the fragile humanity of them, on all of us.

The North Shore reminds us how vulnerable and mortal we are, how susceptible we are to attack and invasion, to misjudgments—how much we do not know.  It is no coincidence that from that point one can see the lookout station where in December of 1941 incoming planes were detected but ignored because our lookouts assumed they were something else, something benign and routine.  There are lessons taught in this tumultuous school about submission and risk, about knowing and not knowing, about doubting, about assuming nothing and expecting, well, anything.

 --Suzanne Jennings                                                                       

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I'll Worship Only at the Feet of Jesus

It is curious to most new millennium minds that the first and greatest commandment for both Judaism and Christianity is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Deut.5:7) Jesus echoed this when He summed up all the laws and the prophets and incapsulated His own mission statement by saying, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul and mind and strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Deut. 6:5, Lev. 19:18)

The old word for what the commandments forbid is idolatry.  Since we don’t live in a multi-deity culture, we tend to think we aren’t idolaters.  Graven images, sun gods, moon goddesses, sacrifices to the Nile River, sacred cows:  all these seem ridiculous to most religious American minds.  “Of course, we worship the one true God!  Idolatry was another time, another place, right?”

In His book, Addiction and Grace, Gerald May confronts our self-righteousness and calls it addiction, another word for idolatry.  “‘Nothing,’ God says, ‘must be more important to you than I am.  I am the Ultimate Value, by whom the value of all other things must be measured and in whom true love for all things must be found…’ It is addiction that keeps our love for God and neighbors incomplete.  It is addiction that creates other gods for us.  Because of our addictions, we will always be storing up treasure somewhere other than heaven, and these treasures will kidnap our hearts and souls and strength.”

We counter immediately, “I’ve never been addicted.  I’ve never abused drugs.  I’m not an alcoholic,” Yet in truth, attachments to things and relationships other than God Himself usher us unwittingly into “addictions that make idolaters of us all.” 

Idolatry is the opposite of freedom.  Jesus said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36 LB) He, Himself, is personified truth.  And anything that tugs us from Him—even so-called good things—can beguile and addict us.  Anything that becomes our pleasure center, taking the place of God as our measuring-stick for joy, is addicting and idolatrous.  Sadly, this loss of balance, this skewing of focus is capable of eventually destroying the very pleasure it seems at first to deliver.

No wonder Jesus said, “Anyone who loves his father, mother, children more than me is not worthy of me.”  Such misplaced focus of our finest love will eventually latch itself on to its object and suck it dry, destroying it in the end.  No husband, wife, child or friend is able to fulfill the deepest needs.  No lover can complete the picture, be our “missing piece.”  Only God is a source so infinite that our needs will not exhaust it.  He is a source so boundless that out of it we can draw the love it takes to nurture all relationships and fill our own deepest longings at the same time.  He is a source of love so boundless that from Him we can draw the love needed to nurture all our relationships and fill our own deepest longings from Him as well.

I have a habit of reading ads and listening to commercials.  Ad agencies are pros at naming the deep spiritual needs we all share, then tying those needs to a promise of fulfillment by some product.  What do we need?  Acceptance?  Happiness? Peace?  A place to belong?  Security?  Love?  To be valued?  Things that promise to satisfy our longings are standing in line.  Our economy runs on convincing us we can’t live without products that didn’t exist a decade ago, last year, last month! 

Yet, we drive the cars, furnish our houses with the couch and easy chair, cover our floors with the carpet or hardwood, send our kids to the schools, wear the designer lines and the makeup, carry the leather briefcases and only grow more restless and empty.

Few of us would actually admit that we think products and artifacts could ever satisfy the hungers of the soul, yet Christians and non-Christians alike, find it nearly impossible to resist the beguiling promises of an “easy fix” and truly simplify our lives, refocus our affections and embrace unadulterated truth without fear or hesitation.

Sadly, instead of keeping God the measuring stick for all joy and pleasure, we all too often let our addictions become the measuring stick for God.  We attach our spiritual hungers to the things we invent to express our worship—our style, modes of expression, theological systems, “aids” to worship, certain emotional or cerebral or artistic experiences connected with religion.

Some of us have fallen for the “high” we get from doing good, helping others, for being applauded one way or the other.  Our “god” might be building churches, holding meetings, moving crowds, creating beautiful liturgy, evangelizing the neighborhood, feeding the poor.  As good as these things are, they are not God, Himself.

No wonder Jesus said to those who scoffed at Mary as she “wasted” the precious perfume of her love at the feet of the Master: “She has done a beautiful thing to me.  The poor you will always have with you.”  (Matt. 26:10b-11 NIV) He knew that helping the poor would naturally result from adoring Jesus, but when helping the poor becomes the focus, it would turn us into idolaters who have lost the joy of the journey with Him.

In the classic tales of King Arthur and his knights of the round table, Arthur begins with the search for the Holy Grail—the cup that his Lord had offered to his friends that night in the upper room.  It would be a tangible reminder to Arthur and his knights to drink the cup of sacrifice and service, calling them to righteous living and noble deeds.

The search leads them into all kinds of adventures and conquests.  In the process, the search for the grail becomes such an all-consuming quest that the dear Lord, Himself fades from view.

As good as these men aspire to be, as urgent as their search becomes, they lose sight of the face of Jesus and His hands that held the cup.

The book of Hosea the prophet is a call to us all who have ever gone off on our own adventures of misplaced affection.  There is dear yearning in the voice of God that even rings through the warnings of destruction.  Listen to the lover of our hearts:  “I don’t want your sacrifices – I want your love; I don’t want your offerings—I want you to know me….  Oh Judah, for you there is a plentiful harvest of punishment waiting—and I wanted so to bless you!”  (Hosea 6:6 –11 LB)

But what a merciful God we have!  In spite of our unfaithful fickle hearts, His love calls us always back to the true center where we can find healing and wholeness.  His resurrection has brought us the cup of joy.

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Why We Stay

Photo courtesy of Christopher Stephens | The Herald Bulletin

We recently attended the life-celebration of a long-term friend, our neighbor and our dentist.  He wasn’t just a dentist, but an exceptional, innovative dentist who used the most up-to-date equipment and methods.  He belonged to several state and national dental associations and organizations, including membership in the Pierre Fauchard Academy, whose membership is by invitation only and whose purpose is to select outstanding leadership in the various fields of dentistry who exhibit excellence, integrity, and ethical practice within and outside of their professional arena of service.

Dr. David Steele began his life in our town as a Methodist preacher’s son. As a young boy he delivered newspaper to our community, but soon developed a love for photography.  By the time he was in high school, he had a thriving business taking the pictures of his fellow students for special honors, sports events, and graduations.

After graduation he headed for college, then on to pursue his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree and to start his 47 years of service to our town.  He liked to say he had either delivered papers, taken the wedding pictures, or fixed the teeth of every person in Alexandria.

Dr. Steele and his son.

I could write much more than a blog about the humor, service, and impact this man had on every aspect of our community, from education, governance, and beautification of Alexandria to making us laugh at ourselves by playing jokes on those he loved the most.  So, it was also a community of sadness that we shared when this brilliant generous, witty man began to lose his memory.  Alzheimer’s disease is, as Presidents Reagan’s daughter called it, “a long good-bye” that takes a loved one a little at a time.

Bill and his dentist

At the celebration of his life what was most obvious and impressive was that this little town had been the keeper of his memory all along.  We had his back. From the “groundhog society” he invented, the mystery of the giant hairball he denied propagating, and the gold tooth he gave his cat, to goading the city council into beautifying Harrison Street with new storefronts, hanging flower baskets, and light-encircled Christmas stars, everyone who paid tribute gave his family the assurance that nothing was forgotten. We had kept every smile he ever gave us, not only on our faces but in our hearts. It was also obvious that for a person to give forty-seven years to one profession in one place, he had more than an occupation; he had to have had a calling.

“Why do you and Bill stay in that little town?” we are often asked. “Why do you live in the house you built 57 years ago when you were teaching at the high school two blocks away?” Why do we still live where some people still call Bill “Billy Jim” and where we know who sells the best eggs from chickens they raise in their back yards?

I guess we stay here because if a song doesn’t ring true at the Bakery, it probably won’t be sung around the world.  We stay because in a town like this we have to create our own magic out of regular things on regular days.  We stay because we are the keepers of each other’s memories, and we have made a silent pledge to show up on some dark day to remind each other that the light we shine just might lead someone home. 

Kevin Williams, Jeanne Johnson, Vestal Goodman, Jake Hess, Larry Ford - Old Friends [Live]

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I Heard It First on the Radio

Bill grew up on a farm in a part of Indiana where the land is flat and the corn, hay, soy bean, and wheat fields stretch clear to the horizon. This is the region where the prairie begins, reaching across Illinois and on through Nebraska--the breadbasket of the world.

So many Indiana farm boys like Bill grew up learning to bale hay, thresh wheat, and shuck corn--by machine, of course. Many a midwestern farm boy took over his father’s farm before small farmers were squeezed into oblivion by huge agribusiness investors. Other boys aspired to attend technological schools, hoping to secure management positions in one of the auto-related industries that pumped lifeblood into the midwestern economy.

Bill, however, was something of a mutation. Allergic to the hay fields and not the least bit mechanically inclined, he spent his Saturdays and after-school hours pretending to broadcast to the neighbors out of the upstairs window of the old farmhouse where he grew up. Mornings and evenings, while milking the cows his father raised, he would tune in one of the "clear channel" stations from Nashville, Atlanta, or Memphis on the dust-covered old barn radio. That's where he first heard the rich harmony of the quartets and family groups from the South.

At first it was just the rhythms and the harmonies that captured his heart. But the more he listened, the more the messages began to sink in. The radio became his lifeline to another world, another reality. 

Although they didn't completely understand this strange child, his parents encouraged his dreams. When he went to school in the mornings, young William left instructions for his mother to record on their wire recorder (the forerunner of the tape recorder) the gospel music radio shows that came on in the afternoon. If a group he loved came on while he was in the fields helping his dad in the summer; his mother would run across the farm to let him know.

Family vacations became trips to hear these groups in person at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville or the Quartet Convention in Memphis. Never did he miss an opportunity to attend the "singings" at Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis when the groups came to Indiana.

Meanwhile, Bill was becoming involved in his local church and teaching his little sister and younger brother to sing harmony. He was learning the words to the songs the best groups sang, words with meaning and content.

Many influences play a part in bringing each of us to a personal encounter with God: pastors, teachers, godly parents, old saints, great writers and communicators who express God's love with passion and compassion. But Bill would probably tell you that the singing groups he heard on the radio were among the most important influences in his young life.

Over the years we have received many letters and e-mails telling us stories of the part radio played in someone else's conversion, encouragement, healing, or enlightenment. New communications technology emerges every day. But for countless thousands like Bill Gaither, it was, and continues to be, radio that carried the message that changed their lives. Only eternity will reveal how many will be assembled around the great white throne because they “heard it first on the radio."

I, too, grew up with great songs that have become a part of my life and experience. In writing the words to this song, I made a list of the songs that have influenced us both. Fitting their content and words into a new poetry was a crossword puzzle of a challenge, but how I love to hear again the texts that have been the themes of or our spiritual journey.

 I Heard It First On The Radio

Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so—
And I heard it first on the radio.
This love of God so rich and strong
Shall be the saint's and angel's song
I heard it first on the radio.
Amazing grace-how sweet the sound—
The lost and lonely can be found,
And grace can even save a wretch like me!
No other love could make a way;
No other love my debts could pay,
And I heard it first on the radio.

Needing refuge for my soul
When I had no place to go—
I heard it first on the radio.
From a life of wasted years,
He gave me peace and calmed my fears—
And I heard it first on the radio.
Had I not heard, where would I be
Without this love that lifted me
When I was lost and nothing else would help?
Just as I was without one plea,
Sweet Jesus came and rescued m—
And I heard it first on the radio;
Yes, I heard it first on the radio.

Alas, and did my Savior bleed
That captive spirits could be freed
And I heard it first on the radio.
My soul has found a resting place
Until I meet Him face-to-face,
And I heard it first on the radio.
I love to tell the story true,
And those who know still love it too;
Oh, what a precious Friend we have in Him!
And when in glory saints will tell,
‘Twill be the theme they love so well—
And I heard it first on the radio.
Yes. I heard it first on the radio.

Lyric: Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither
Copyright ©1999 Gaither Music Company. All Rights Reserved

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I Just Feel Like Something Good is About to Happen

Bill is an optimist. He always thinks things are going to get better, or at least resolved. He believes problems are for solving, mountains are for climbing, and impossible isn't a very useful word. I tell him he's like the kid who got a barn full of manure for his birthday and was so excited because he just knew there had to be a pony in there somewhere!

Bill can make an adventure out of a convertible ride in the country and a celebration out of the first white Indiana peach to ripen in the orchard. He's made our children, and now our grandchildren, remember the times they "camped out" under the dining room table spread with a blanket to make a tent more than they remember the trip we took to Paris.

He believes in people and in the treasure of talent he sees buried in them. Even when they disappoint him and sometimes betray him, he always hopes they will learn from their mistakes and believes that God isn't finished with them yet.

Now don't get me wrong. Bill isn't naïve, and he doesn't avoid confrontation. He's an old teacher, and although his patience is much longer than mine, eventually, he is not fooled by "shenanigans," as my dad would say. When he feels the time is right, he will bite the bullet and, if he can, use a negative situation as an opportunity to teach, still believing that human resources are the most valuable creation of God and that they should not be wasted.

Many times in our lives we faced circumstances--business reversals, failures, disappointments--that might have made other men give up and quit. But Bill's nature is not to consider an obstacle a dead end. It might take a detour, but there is always a way. At times like these he always quotes an old football expression; "Just stay in the pocket."

Someone once asked Chuck Swindoll for the secret of his and Cynthia's incredible ministry--the number of books he has produced, the powerful media impact of their broadcasts. He said something like this: "Well, our main secret is just to show up for work." Bill loved that. Just keep doing what you know to do, and do it with all the energy you have.

There is a wonderful line from a well-known poem by Kipling, titled "If" that says, "If you can meet with triumph and disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same." We often quote those lines to young people who think they're winning or losing big. We often say, "The truth is, you’re probably not winning as big as you think you are, and when you fail, you're probably not losing as big as you think you are, either." Both great successes and huge failures are impostors in our lives. Real life is the regular days. It is in the ordinary that we must find something magical, like diamonds embedded in black coal.

Scripture is full of soothing and encouraging words; it is full of instruction. But the verses that get quoted most around our house include these:

 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV)

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from
the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39 NIV)

Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things
that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others.
Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about. Keep putting
into practice all you learned...and the God of peace will be with you.
 (Philippians 4:8_9 TLB)

Genesis 1 tells us that God saw the light and said it was good. God said the land and the sea were good, the plants and flowers and trees with their fruit and flowers and seeds were good. God said spring and summer, fall and winter were good, the sunshine and stars and moon were good. He said the squirrels and birds, geese and wolves, woodchucks and butterflies were good and that it was good they could make babies and reproduce themselves. And then He made people and said they were very good.

God Himself found miraculous delight in things we stumble over every day and never say, "My, how good this is!" Things such as our homes, our children, the peaches and tomatoes, friendships and stars, snapdragons and water, bumblebees and business associates. Bill is right! In all that, if we "stay in the pocket," show up for work, and love God with all our hearts, something good is bound to happen.

I Just Feel Like Something Good Is About to Happen

  I just feel like something good is about to happen!
I just feel like something good is on its way!
God has promised that He'd open all of heaven,
And, brother, it could happen any day.
When God's people humble themselves and call on Jesus,
And they look to heaven expecting as they pray,
I just feel like something good is about to happen,
And, brother, this could be that very day!

 I have learned in all that happens just to praise Him,
For I know He's working all things for my good;
Ev'ry tear I shed is worth all the investment,
For I know He'Il see me through-He said He would.
He has promised eye nor ear could hardly fathom
All the things He has in store for those who pray;
I just feel like something good is about to happen,
And, brother, this could be that very day!

Yes, I've noticed all the bad news in the paper,
And it seems like things get bleaker ev'ry day;
But for the child of God it makes no diff'rence,
Because it's bound to get better either way.
I have never been more thrilled about tomorrow;
Sunshine's always bursting through the skies of gray.
I just feel like something good is about to happen,
And, brother, this could be that very day!

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

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Hear the Voice of My Beloved

Maybe it’s because our lives have always been so public. Or maybe it's because I'm a hermit at heart. But the times I treasure most are private, intimate moments with those I love. Oh, don't get me wrong. I love a party, and massive "happenings" are fun to plan and a thrill to experience. Bill is the event champion of the world! Show him an arena and his mind will go off like a rocket, planning a celebration to fill it. No one can touch him, in my opinion, at putting together an evening, programming talent, and making everyone "win." It brings him joy to see artists use their gifts in the best possible setting so that no one is the star but the total experience is life-changing for audience and performers alike. It's what he does best.

But when the lights go out and the building is an empty cavern, when the posters are crammed into gray plastic trash bags and the popcorn is swept from the hallways, I long to slip away with Bill someplace where no one knows our name. I want to walk with him beside the sea or climb through the woods at the top of a cliff or simply walk under the archway of willow boughs that weep beside our own creek in a little Indiana town.

I never get enough of times like those, and I can't stop my longing for them. Sometimes I feel selfish. I reprove myself for wanting to leave the throngs and disappear into the desert... together, alone.

Many times in our marriage I have felt guilty for wanting Bill to myself. "Ministry" can be a challenging rival. How could I be jealous of "God's work"? Most of the time it was work we chose and did together. Yet just when I felt our love needing nourishment, the schedule was already set, the concert advertised, and the worship planned; I knew in my heart we were going to be ministering out of our own need, not out of our plenty. Those were the times we simply had to admit our emotional bankruptcy to ourselves and to God and rely on the knowledge that God’s storehouse is always full. Amazingly, we would come away not drained but restored, and we knew the multitudes were fed as well.

We have always loved the Song of Solomon. We love it not just as a metaphor of God's longing for His church, His bride, but as a very passionate and human poem about two lovers who can't get each other off their minds. Even in the marketplace, they search for one fleeting glimpse of the object of their affection. The night breeze carries her perfume to him; the lambs nestled on the hillside remind him of her breasts. Everything she does to make herself beautiful is for him; the sound of footsteps below her window arouses her hope that he is coming to their secret place.

I truly believe that the sweetest of intimacies on earth--the marriage of two lovers--is the nearest we can know of the intimacy God longs for us to experience with Him. On the job, in the street, in the crowds, in the commerce of life, His presence is always hovering on the periphery of our consciousness. He makes no bones about His affection for the beloved of His heart. He is jealous of all other loves; He will have no rivals! And in return He will withhold no good thing--even His own Son--to woo back the affection stolen by lesser gods. When He has our exclusive allegiance, He showers every good and perfect gift on His bride, and He spares no expense to make her perfect and bring her home to His singular presence.

On my finger I wear a ring Bill had made for me of eighteen-carat gold in the land where the Song of Solomon was written. On it is an inscription I will never be able to resist. I don't hear it often enough, and I can't get enough of it.

"Arise, my love, and come away" (see Song 2:13). It says in Hebrew, "I will arise, my Lord, and come.”

Hear The Voice Of My Beloved

Hear the voice of my beloved
Gently call at close of day,
"Come, my love; oh, come and meet me.
Rise, oh rise, and come away."

"Winter's dark will soon be over
And the rains are nearly done;
Flowers bloom and trees are budding
Time for singing has begun."

I have waited through the shadows
For my Lord to call for me.
Now the morning breaks eternal;
In its light, His face I see.

"When you see the fig tree budding,
You will know the summer's near.
When you hear the words I've spoken,
You will know My coming's near.

"Keep on list'ning, my beloved,
For My coming's very near."

Lyric: Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither and Ron Griffin
Copyright © 1985 Gaither Music Company and Arose Music (admin. by EMI Christian Music Group.) All Rights Reserved.

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