New Song

   The song that is running through my mind this morning is:

"I Am So Glad That Jesus Loves Me"

   Even as I rush out the door to get in an early morning golf date, that should be enough to keep me thinking for the rest of the day.

   Maybe someone else also.

Look on the Other Side of that Cloud

   I woke up this morning with a feeling of "I goofed", and as I read the Gospel reading for today, whose words in John 1 seemed to be for me:

 "Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

   God seemed to say, "yesterday you did not look at the whole picture. You spoke out of conviction, but there was more. You need to look farther."

  As I walked and thought and looked at the world around me, one thing caught my eye.

   I looked to the east and saw the dark clouds on the horizon, but behind them the sun was rising and the sky was a beautiful shade of blue. As I got my eyes off the low clouds and looked higher, it looked like a more positive beginning to this new day.

   Thoughts of other times and other skies came to my mind. Times when Mayre and I were flying somewhere. The skies above us, as we waited to take off, might have been dark and cloudy, but when we broke above those low lying clouds, the sky was bright, and those same clouds shone with a great light, just because we were looking at them from the other side.

   So, as I considered what I had written yesterday. I knew my personal preferences had come through again. The message from our pastor had been about the glory of God. One of his main points was that this whole life was not about me it was about Him, and there I was writing about "me".

   I was invited by the Scripture verse to "come and see". There was much more to be gotten out of that service than my perceived idea that it could have been better.

   People were there..

   People heard The Word preached with power..

   The were opportunities for lives to be forever changed..

   I don't want my negative reaction to some music take away the more important positives. After all it is my preferences that rose to the top, and as the pastor said "it is not about me".

 "Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

   I need to be a Phillip and not a Nathanael.

I Like to Sing, Why Can't I?

   Our Bible study leader this morning taught from a few verses in Revelation 16, where the verses speak of the wrath of God poured out on the earth:

"Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

   But this is not a blog about wrath, even though it is an attribute of God's character, along with mercy, grace, love and justice, this is about music, and we got to it in that session like this.
 
   There is evidently a controversy going on in the Presbyterian Church USA, concerning a new hymn that is not to be included in the new hymnal, because of the mention of this wrath. The hymn written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend contains the verse:

In Christ alone! who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied -
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.

   If anyone wants to listen to it sung by Keith Getty's wife, Kristen, here it is:

http://www.gettymusic.com/hymns-inchristalone.aspx

   But I don't want to get into that debate, suffice to say that I love the hymn and think the words are accurate to Scripture, as I thought about hymns and music in general inside the church's worship, a different group of thoughts ran through my mind, brought on by a quote in a newspaper article:

Hawn said what one person thinks is a great hymn might be seen as less than desirable by another. He said a good hymn must be well written, well chosen for the occasion and well sung.

“Take away any of those and it’s not a good hymn,” he said. The song might have beautiful music and lyrics but “If a congregation can’t sing it, it’s not a good hymn.”

Hawn said the health of a congregation can be seen in its music.

“I’m not talking about if they sing beautifully ... but when one walks into a congregation for worship and people participate and sing, you tend to come to the conclusion there is some vitality here,” he said. “It’s about people feeling like they really have a voice.”

   So many of the songs that are used in our current day church are new, and, while they may have a lot of Scripture, and be theologically correct, I don't know them and can't sing them. For me, part of worship is singing in unison with the congregation, but to do that, I need to know the song. Just listening to the praise team sing it, no matter how they do it, seems to make it more of a performance and less of a congregational part of worship.

   I like to "make a joyful noise", and I confess that I do not sing well, but I also like to hear the voices of people singing around me. I don't like to stand, not participating in the music, watching others around me doing the same, and just listening to the stage. It may be a generational thing, but I don't just want to be led in worship, I want to actually do it.

   Music has so much power. There is power in listening to a song or hymn, but, for me, there is more in being able to sing it in conjunction with others and feel the commonality of purpose in worship and praise.

   I know there is so much of personal preference contained in any discussion of music, and I definitely have mine. Just so you know.

Generational Responsibility

   It is easy, when you are in the prime of life and everything seems to be going well, to think of what you have accomplished. After all, you worked hard for those degrees, you put the time and effort into a job, you deserved the raises and the praise for a job well done, and you still had time to raise a family and keep them fed and clothed.

   I know, and I have been there. I have looked at my family, seen them happy, enjoying life and doing well in all they do. When I was caught up in all of that, I thought I was performing the role of the good Christian father, doing and saying all the right things. One of our goals as parents was to raise our kids so that they might be independent and able to take their places in the world and prosper, and not just monetarily, but in service to others and to God.

   I read these verses in Psalm 78 this morning:

"He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;"

   I'm sure that those Israelite parents wanted to raise their kids and give them the best that they could, but God says that they did not do enough, because they did not live in such a way that their children knew where the blessings came from, that God was behind it all, blessing their family whether it was deserving or not. Oft times, we as parents give lip service to those Scriptural precepts, but live out the lie that we have done it by ourselves.

   The generations that follow us need to know what God says and what is important, but they also need to see us living it. Then they will know it is really important.

   I would pray that God would give us parents, and grand parents, too, the ability and the want-to, to live the life of gratitude and obedience, that we should, in God's eyes.

Called Back to Remember Why..

   Several thoughts ran through my mind this morning as I walked along the path. I thought of some things that related to our last trip, of sights, of places, of people, of thoughts. I thought about things that I may have missed by hurrying through the places, items that I could have learned and people that I could have interacted with, if I had given the proper time.

   I thought about things that I could write about when I sat back down, things that fit in to how I felt my life needed to be lived in light of what God had put in my path. I realized that all these things were not happenstance, but road signs that I needed to heed, to live as I should.

   All of this was good, but then I understood that a lot of times I had been putting these experiences and thoughts ahead of what God might have been trying to say to me. My priorities were somewhat mixed up.

   When I started this blog, some time back, it was an attempt to see what God was saying to me through the Scriptures that I read each morning. I believe that He can, and wants to, speak in this way to each of us if we will take the time to listen.

   I also feel that He speaks to us through our experiences, and the combination of the two, experiences and reading His Word, form the backdrop for learning the hows and whys of living.

   But I found myself taking my experiences and trying to shoe horn them into the Scriptures that I read. Some days I used the happenings by themselves, without any thought of verses that might have shed some light on them.

   Three times in Psalm 80 this morning the psalmist says:

" Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

   Or the translation in The Message:

"God, come back!
    Smile your blessing smile:
    That will be our salvation.

   This seemed to be God's Word to me today. Put things in their proper order. Put Me first, and then see how your experiences tie into that, not the other way around.

   I believe that God has been there to show me lots of things through the people and events that He has put into my life, but I also believe that there could have been more if I had used the correct order.

   The difference between good and better, and the possibility that the right combination of the two could be the best.

   It is not all about me, though sometimes I want to make it that way.

   God help me to put You first and get it right.

A Rambling Tale of People and Searching

   On our way home from Arkansas the other day, we made a couple of stops to add to our county courthouse collection. These two places did not fall on our route to anywhere, but we were in the area and wanted to check them off our list.

   Crossing back over into Georgia from Alabama, we turned south on state route 39 toward the town of Fort Gaines, the county seat of Clay County. Fort Gaines, once an outpost on the frontier, is a town of around 1100 people, in a county of 3300, with a town center of about 2 acres (according to the web site), so how hard could it be to find the courthouse?

   Bur as we rode into town, we did not see it. So I stopped to ask a woman cleaning the windows of a Radio Shack store on the main street. She gave me directions, and off we went. Not seeing the sought location, we stopped at a Chevron station and asked another. After finding out that he was from somewhere else and was just there delivering chickens to the fast food store located with the gas station, we listened to a man that he had summoned, who pointed us back north on that same street for a couple of blocks. Passing back down that way we found a building that housed the tax assessors office, but no courthouse sign or monument, staples of Georgia courthouses all over the state.

   So I stopped to ask again. As I pulled to the curb, I noticed a little shop with the door open. Seeing a woman in the place, I quietly knocked so as not to scare her as she worked. Telling her what I was looking for, she smiled and told me to go back toward the Chevron, and I would find it on the left just before the station. After telling her what I was doing there and expressing some concern about finding my target, she walked out to the street and pointed the way, saying that I could not miss it. I jokingly told her she should just go with us and point it out when we got there, but she explained that I could not fail to see it this time. As I got back into the car and turned around, she began walking up the sidewalk to the corner, and when I spotted the courthouse and got out to take a picture, I saw her standing in the middle of the street, watching me. We waved to each other and went our separate ways.

   As I stood on the sidewalk to get a picture, a truck drove up and stopped and the window rolled down. The sheriff had stopped to find out what I was up to. After explaining my quest, he gave me a little brief history and went on his way. After taking a few shots, I wandered in the building. I saw no one, and all the doors to the offices in that hallway were closed. Knowing from the sign outside that this courthouse had been built in 1873, and calculating that it had been in continuous use for 140 years, I knew that I needed to see more. A stairway led to the second floor, and as I creaked up it, I wondered what I would find. At the top a double doorway, unlocked conveniently, let me into the courtroom, where I just stood drinking it all in. I thought of all the things that had gone on in that room, and all the people that had passed through that spot in their various situations of life in that area. I saw the juror's chairs on the side of the room, looking like they had just been vacated at the end of another trial, and I wondered about those people that had occupied those seats, for that last trial, and all those others that had gone on before.

    Deciding that I had better rescue my wife, who had been patiently waiting in the car, I clomped back down those squeaky wooded stairs only to find three people in the hallway below watching me suspiciously. Thinking that maybe I was not supposed to be up there on the second floor, I explained my purpose, and told them that I was impressed with the building and with the courtroom in particular. They seemed satisfied, and I felt  relief, even as I noticed the sheriff coming in the back door heading my way. Thanking everyone, I beat a retreat out the front, back to the car, and back on the road, no doubt leaving a whole town wondering what idiot would be poking around old courthouses and just shaking their collective heads at the whole episode.

   As I walked this morning, in the absolute quiet of an early Saturday morning, I wondered about those folks in that little town, in an out-of-the way spot of southwest Georgia. The Radio Shack cleaner lady, the chicken deliverer, the wrong information man, the lady in the alteration shop that wanted to make sure I got where I wanted to go, the sheriff, checking up on a stranger, the courthouse employees wondering about the noise from upstairs, and the many people who had come to that courtroom in so many capacities. All those different people, living their own particular stories.

   My life intersected with theirs, at least the living ones that I met, not the courtroom ones from 100 years back, and was it for more than just to give them something to talk about that afternoon? Was it more for me, too?

   Was there also more for me in that part of our state that I missed from being in such a hurry to get home that day? Maybe I ought to go back one day, but will I?

   Perhaps, but at least I got to think about it all again this morning, and wonder.

   They may still be wondering, too.

Old and Gray Time

   As much as I like to visit my family in far off places, it is good to be back home again. No matter how much joy I have when being with kin, there is just something about being back in a routine, and in a place where you know where all your stuff is. Sleeping in your own bed is great.

   So, when I noticed the title of the Psalm that I was to read for today, I knew it was for me. Psalm 71 was entitled in the New American Standard like this:

Prayer of an Old Man for Deliverance.

   And the verse that caught my eye was this:

"And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,"

   The more I travel, and the longer the trip, and the number of days on the road, especially when they pass one, the more I feel my age.

   On our way to Arkansas last week, our first travel day was from home to Mississippi, and I spent time, as I drove, to think about and watch for things that would make a good photo opportunity, knowing that I would be back that way in a few days. Even the second day going west I saw some neat things, but we were almost to Conway, and they would still be available on the way home in a few days.

   Then, the visit was over, and it was time to return to the east and home. The closer we got to home the more I would make the comment that "that spot we just passed would make a good picture" as we continued on our way, not even slowing down.

   We did make a couple of stops, but, by and large it was just "let's get home".

   So, when I realize what my life is looking like, and where I am on that continuum, I know that that psalmist's prayer is for me too.

   But I notice also that this one who penned the Psalm was not selfish in his request, there was a purpose to his asking. There was a purpose to his life. He wanted to declare God's strength. From the footnotes to the verses, the word used as strength is literally "arm". So the psalmist wanted to tell what God had done and would do, not only in his life, but in the lives of the others that were in that generation, the ones living in his time.

   And, as I quoted this verse in this blog, that same psalm writer continues even far past his lifetime.

   I would that my life, even the old and gray part, would have such purpose.

   PS. I did stop a couple of times. Here is the 1904 Library, still in use, in Eufaula, AL. Everyone has to take a bathroom break sometime.