What, No Drums?

   Did you ever walk into a place that you had never set foot in before, and felt it was like home?

   That happened to me this morning. We are visiting some friends in Franklin, NC, and we all went into town this morning to worship at the First Methodist Church. It was like stepping back into time, into a version of worship that just felt right to me.

   Walking through the back doors of the sanctuary into a room with stained glass windows all around, sun light shining through into the room, an atmosphere that seemed to invite us in, a place of peace.

   Perhaps it was nostalgia, a longing for a time long ago, when this was a safe place and a place of quiet and reverence. As we slipped into a pew, it just felt like we belonged.

   Then as I looked at the bulletin for this morning, I realized that I actually knew all the hymns and even the closing refrain which was more modern, but no less meaningful. Even the prelude, by the handbells, was music lifted from a piece by Dvorak entitled "Going Home", that was also a favorite of mine

   The the music that the congregation sang, from hymnals no less:

   Jesus Calls Us O'er the Tumult
   The Solid Rock

   The handbells played "Lead On O King Eternal"

   The congregation sang "Jesus Loves Me" as the children's portion of the service began.

   We sang the Doxology and the Gloria Patri, both staples in services that I grew up in.

   We all sang the Congregational Response to the message by the pastor, "Here I Am, Lord"

   How great is it to be able to sing along with others, all of us lifting our voices in worship, together.

   As I asked before, nostalgia? Maybe, but I sensed it was more. At least this was for me, true congregational worship, something that is missing from a lot of contemporary services where the songs are too new to sing, and the music too loud to hear anyone else around us singing.

   I loved it and did not miss the drums at all.

   And I was grateful to be able to be there and participate.

 

Great Revelations, A Necessity?

   What happens when I seem to do all the right things to insure hearing from God and there are no great revelations in the offing? Does it mean that all my time is wasted and that I should have just stayed in bed? Should I expect insights into eternal things as a given and be disappointed when they don't appear?

   Do I cry out with the psalmist as he begs in Psalm 71:

"Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
Do not forsake me when my strength fails."
   or further on in the same passage:

"And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me

   I get up early, I read my designated passages, I walk and enjoy the quiet of the early morning, and then I come back in ready to be wowed by some great insight that I can take in and then communicate to any who might read what I write today.

   But then nothing great comes. Could it be that there is sin in my life that blocks this transmission? I definitely do sin, and that can be a hinderance surely. So I think and reflect on my life and confess what I see, but still nothing jumps out at me from anything that I read and reread.

   The question may not be in what I am looking for, but in what I am overlooking in the process. Is it a question of what I can get from God each time I sit down, or is it what God wants to give me in any of these times?

   Perhaps that is the Great Revelation that is there for me right now.

   Perhaps it is not the mountaintop "aha" moments that define my life, but the living out of the things that He has already made known. Life is lived out in those valleys between the mountains.

   Let me celebrate those times and walk in obedience to them.

   That is great

Seeking What?

   The first words, in a small devotional book, for today, September 18, 2013 are "Seek to please me", the me being Jesus. This makes me pause and wonder, "who am I trying to please?"

   That is not so easy a question to answer truly. The Christian in me wants to blurt out, "God, Jesus, Holy Spirit", but is that just the response that I want people to think I would say, or need to say?

   Seeking is a powerful word. Not just looking for something, but searching hard with a given purpose in mind, doing it with diligence, with perseverance,  with vigor. This is not an idle pursuit, it is a quest.

   The Bible, in Matthew 6, says:

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness"

   Then I have to ask the question: "What do I seek? What is my first priority?"

   A new day opens up before me. Opportunities abound for doing stuff. A bunch of choices will come my way. I have free will to make the choice I want. What will I do? Will I even think about the magnitude of a possible choice before I make it and go my way?

   I can even think seriously about seeking right now and forget the whole exercise in a few minutes. How much harder to keep it up for the whole day, or a whole lifetime?

   Preaching to myself is an easy thing to do, especially in this quiet time where no one sees or hears, but are these just words that I write or prayers that I utter silently?

   Seeking to please God. maybe, for me, some of the time, but how about the times I seek to please me or I seek to please others around me? Wanting to please God is easy to write or say, but how hard is it to live on a consistent basis?

   I confess I do not know that much about this "seeking". I kinda understand the word, but I don't have the life experiences to prove it out.

   God help me to live this day in a seeking mode, not for myself, but for You.

   Truly seeking.  Where could that take me, what journey?

 

My Plans

   I thought about this yesterday when I wrote. It came back to mind last night as Mayre and I were planning a little trip, and again early this morning as I went out to breakfast and then to the courts to play tennis.

   So many times my ideas seem to be the right way to go, but then changes come. I can be upset or just go with the flow. I know in my mind that there are things out there that I cannot see, situations that will be there as the time unfolds, that I would not have seen or been involved in if I had insisted on going my way regardless.

   It is like that last Sunday morning at the pier. Until I looked behind me, away from the sunrise that I was trying to photograph, did I see something spectacular. Too many times I plan ahead because I "know" the best way for things to work out, just like that sunrise shot, then look back and realize something much better has happened, a thing that was not at all on my radar.

   My youngest son put a post on Facebook Sunday, telling the world (or at least that part that has him for a "friend" on their pages) of his accomplishment in completing a half marathon that morning. He was proud of his time and the fact that he could run the 13.1 miles and not die. I commented on his picture and asked if he had lost weight during his training. Maybe so and maybe not, he did not say, but it made me think way back to my days of running.

   I began running back in the 70s. My oldest son was a good runner in high school and college and I wanted to be able to run with him sometimes (if he would condescend to slow down for me). My plan was just to run a bit, get in better shape and do something with him. But I got the bug and began longer distances and times. I started out with a 3 minute jog and continued on a schedule, a little bit more each week, that allowed me to run a full marathon in the 80s ( a story for another day). I had fun and my plan was working, but there was an unexpected and unplanned for surprise in all of this. Not only did I feel better but I managed to lose about 50 pounds in the process.

   So, as I looked back, I realized that God had more in His plan than I did in mine, and His plan was much better than mine, even though they were comprised of some of the same things. This verse comes to mind from Isaiah:

"“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord."

   One translation uses the word plan for ways, and it seems to fit.

   Sometimes my plans seem to be radically changed. Sometimes the path is not the one I would choose on my own, and sometimes the outcome is not what I had in mind although the path seemed the same. Then I think of another verse. From Jeremiah this time:

" For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."

   I rode my bike to the tennis courts this morning, under a cloudy sky with thunder rumbling, and only got in one game before the storm came. I wanted to play, it is fun and good exercise, but I remembered the verses and thought "wonder what this new path will look like today?"

   I know I have to plan. There is just no profit in floating along, but then I need to commit these prospective plans to God, not to get Him to bless my plans, but to let Him have the freedom to change or tweak them as He knows best.

   I read, after I got home from the aborted game, these words in Jesus Calling:

"You will not find My peace by engaging in excessive planning, attempting to control what will happen to you in the future. Commit everything into My care. Turn from the path of planning to the path of peace."

   My path and His may run along the same way, or they may be completely different, but I know which is the better one. His has the signposts that point in the direction of blessing.

 

 

There is a Time to Look Back

   "Of course, that is easy for you to say". That is what I hear in my mind, the thoughts of others as I pen those words in the title of this post. "You have a lot more time in the past than you will have in the life you have left." Which is true, but is there not some value in looking back?

   Take for example, yesterday morning Mayre and I went to the pier early, me for some photography and her for accompaniment. As I focused on the sunrise over the ocean to the east, I was prompted to look around, and there was this cloud formation, with not only the light of the sunrise reflecting on it, but also some generation of lightening as a small storm passed over Jekyll to the south.

   There are things to be learned from contemplating what has gone on before. Where have I come from? How have those influences of the past shaped my present? Did I expect to be where I am now, both in terms of situation and of living? How did I get here and why?

   The psalmist writes in Psalm 139:

"Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them."

   God is not bound by the restraints of time. Past, present and future are all bound up in His knowledge and will. As I try to be in the center of that will, seeing where I have come from seems to be a profitable exercise on my part.

   Am I more of the man that God planned for me or wanted me to become? Am I even aware of His plans for me? Do I care about His plans or mine?

   If I am honest I say, "Sure I want to be in His will. I want to accomplish something for Him. I want Him to be pleased with me, for I know that it will be the most blessed place for me, and my life will be that blessing for others also."

   I know I cannot live in the past or the future, only the present, but that fact does not mean that I can't learn from and be encouraged by the past.

   Just like the cloud I saw yesterday morning, there is an element of storm in that look behind, but there is also the promise of a new day.

   It is well worth the time to take that look, just don't dwell there.

 

A Voice Out of the Past

   The phone rang the other day, and a voice on the other end of the line asked a question; Is this Don Bowman, to which I answer tentatively, expecting some sort of sales pitch, "yes it is, what can I do for you?"

   Then another question; "are you the Don Bowman who was a school teacher?" I replied again in the affirmative, wondering who this was I supposed to know them from somewhere. I could not place the voice and wondered if it was a long ago student.

   The caller must have noticed my hesitancy and said, "this is ________, remember me?"

   Truthfully I said "no" and he proceeded to tell me he was with me on a Kairos walk at Ware State Prison some years back. Having worked with 42 guys on each walk, and having served on the teams for at least 10 walks, there was the possibility of him being one of 420 men that participated on that 4 day Christian retreat in that prison over that time period.

   But then he went on to tell me why he had called. He just wanted to thank me for taking the time to come to prison and minister there. He thanked me for the time that I had spent with him and how much it meant that a man from the "outside" would take the time to come and just treat him like a member of the human race.

   So many times those men had been treated as faceless, less than human, and forgotten by a society that valued them as worthless. Just to have someone acknowledge them, and talk with them, and be interested in them could be a powerful thing in their lives.

   What did we talk about? What did I say to him? It could have been about Jesus, or it could have been about college football, who could remember? What mattered was that one person was in need and another saw them, not as a number, but as an individual face.

   Now I don't relate all of this to say how good I am, God knows that is not true, but to remind myself about the importance of people that He puts into my life, some for a brief moment and some for a long time. Seeing them, really seeing them, can make a huge difference. Chance encounters? No way!

   I think of my three kids, not kids but adults now, and all working in some part of the education process. At the beginning of each school year, or each term, they do not know who will be in their classes or their labs or even on their campuses. God has placed them in that particular spot, and He alone knows the impact that one person can have in their lives. He knows  those needy ones, what they are looking for, and what He has in store for their lives. Each of us only have one responsibility, to see them as important and to minister where He leads.

   But instead of patting myself on the back for helping to raise 3 good kids who are making an impact on the lives of young people (and I acknowledge that my good wife was the most responsible for the positive outcomes), and not remembering that I did such an awesome job in prison, which I definitely did not, I see the many times that I have not seen so many that have come my way. Whether I have been too busy with my own things or what, I have not been engaged.

   God reminds me yet again to see the people he puts there in my life, for whatever time period, and be sensitive enough to treat them as He would have me do.

   Sometimes a conversation, sometimes a quick word, and sometimes maybe just a smile, but something to say, "You are worth something and I show love to you because God does love you." Jesus' words from Matthew 25:

"Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me."

   Let that not be said of me, please.

 

Go Ahead and Smile

   As I was walking down the hallway in the condo last evening, I realized I was smiling. I could feel the muscles in my face move and form that look. I was not thinking of anything in particular, just a general feeling of happiness. That is a good way to feel.

   If I had taken the time to sit down and analyze all the facets of my life, I'm sure I could have found a bunch of things that I would wish were better, but I did not do that, just smiled my way along and felt a peace about it all.

   When I read the Psalm 50 reading for this morning, this verse was at the end:

"The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!”

   It did not appear to me to be any sacrifice to be thankful, it just felt right. I remember the phrase "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world", and it seemed to fit my mood.

   Maybe it was the fact that I had been reading a book about a young man who was riding his bike from England to India, detailing all the problems he was facing along the way, but it seemed more than "I'm glad that is not me".

   And it was still here this morning, as I woke up to begin a new day. The theme of "a new day" seems to be prevalent in my thoughts these days. As I finished the Gospel reading, there was another verse that seemed written to me:

"When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

   One thought triggers another, and I remembered a small devotional book I had distributed in the prison ministry, Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young, so I found one, read the thought for September 12 and then went back and read the introduction.

   Ms. Young goes into some detail about how she had come to write this little book. It all stems from her quiet times with God in the morning hours, an idea that resonates with me as well.

   I like the quiet morning times, but it is not only the absence of noise that makes a time meaningful, it is the channeling of my thoughts away from my schedule and plans and toward Him. Even as I walk, I can focus on Him, His world, His words, and I can "be still and know that He is God".

   I have not always done this. Perhaps it is retirement that gives me the time and inclination to pursue this course, but I now realize that it could have been done even when I had a much busier life, and I wish it had.

   Go ahead and smile.

   Jesus is calling