Farewell to Summer

The end of summer is the victory season! It is the wonderful “big win” over the drawn-out battle with beetles, weeds, and dry spells when we can relax and enjoy the fruits of our labors. How natural and beautiful it is, then, to decorate our tables, mantles, countertops, and doorways with the harvest! 

How about filling a huge old wooden bowl with acorn squash, gourds, small pumpkins, colorful cabbages, and even red potatoes? Slip in some red oak branches with the acorns still attached, sprigs of golden wheat, or twists of bittersweet to fill in the spaces and add color.

Or fill a tall container (a tin bucket, an old crock or churn, a hollowed-out birch log, or a copper pitcher) with cattails, Japanese maple branches, sunflowers, or black-eyed Susans.

Photo credit: Suzanne Gaither-Jennings

English ivy, bittersweet, and Washington Hawthorn branches with their red berries all make a beautiful mantle display. Add chunky candles in a fall color and a few Osage oranges for accent.

With chrysanthemums, so plentiful this time of year, create a welcoming entry with pots or bouquets of yellow, orange, rust, or burgundy mums. Add a basket of shiny red apples and a stack of pumpkins around a rustic fountain or a weathered garden bench.

Think of the five senses—sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch—as highways into the city-center of the soul and mind. The more “roads” we can use, the greater the impact, so let’s use as many textures, colors and shapes, fragrances, tastes, and sounds as we can to invite our guests into the soul of our home.

Have the soup on, the music playing, the candles lit, the apples polished. Let everything say, “Welcome to our home! Now you can breathe!”

Firmly Attached

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about vines and tree trunks and vineyards and orchards. I’ve been taking pictures of our old grape vine that is more than 50 years old now, and the sturdy trellis we built when it was planted to hold the branches that would tendril up to the sunshine.  This spring the vines were putting out leaves and sprouting new branches. Now, it is the beginning of September, and these branches hold their heavy clusters of purple grapes for making jellies and jams.

This spring I watched our old orchard blossom, too. White apple buds, blossoms of Asian pears and white peaches, and in the English garden pink cherry blossoms, all brought a fantasy of color to the bare branches of winter. Some of these trees are decades old; a few are just on their second season. Some of the trunks and branches were climbed by our agile grand-children; some are still spindly but now firmly rooted. But August brought a bumper crop of white Indiana peaches and crisp MacIntosh apples.

And I’m thinking that the branches and tendrils aren’t much concerned about the fruit that is now being picked and made into jam and pies. The pruning of dead branches was done last fall, so this year’s burst of blossoms and finally fruits were driven by the strong flow of sap coursing through the branches to do what branches do:  produce fruit. All the branches needed to do was to stay connected.

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

Photo credit: Rebecca Allen-Gull

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

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

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

Photo credit: Rebecca Allen-Gull

So today, as we harvest a bumper crop of grapes and enjoy on our morning toast the peach jam my niece made for us, I, like the branches and vines, just want to stay connected to the trunk, plugged into the strong vine. Today I just think it’s enough to be in love with Jesus and the life He brings, to be totally aware of His sweet presence and bask in the knowing that I am His child. What drops off into the yard of my life is really not my problem. The fruit will take care of itself. If the fruit nourishes someone hungry, I will just be glad. Surprised, maybe, but thankful.

The Rhythm of Grace

I love reading the different translations and paraphrases of scripture, because, as Paul said in trying to describe the dimensions of love, we can never really grasp “how long, how wide, how deep, and how wide” the Word really is. Like anything deep and true, we can choose to skim the surface and skip around its table of contents, or we can go to a deeper layer of understanding and connectedness, and still only be discovering what we have yet to know.

The journey of translating scripture begins with many very different motivations. Tyndale in 14th century was determined to give English-speaking people the scriptures in their own vernacular to free them from the restraining control of those who would keep it in Latin. (read Tyndale by David Teems) During this terrifying process, he was threatened, pursued, and eventually died for the purpose of giving regular people the Word of God. In his passion to free us to know the Word for ourselves, he was driven to find the words we could understand, and in doing so gave us many passages so insightful that they have never been improved on to this day.

King James wanted to settle the tension between the Puritans and the Church of England. (read Majesty by David Teems) He assimilated the greatest scholars of his time to research accuracy while also creating the most “elegant” use of cadence, rhythm, and poetic flow so the translation could be read aloud in churches. Both the King James Bible and its contemporary Shakespeare gave us hundreds of words and phrases that have become a part of our language today.

On through the centuries as English continued to evolve, lovers of the Word have tried to help us not only to understand the original intent of the writers from Abraham to Moses, from Isaiah to David, from Matthew and John to Paul to Timothy, but to take that meaning to the streets of America, Britain, South Africa, and wherever English is spoken. How would the original meaning in the culture of that day translate to our fast-moving cultures today? Good translators were driven to their knees to ask God for the words.

Today we have the rich insights each set of translators and paraphrasers have received as they studied the settings and context of the original manuscripts to bring the meaning of the scriptures to us. NIV, RSV, the New King James, the American Standard  Version, the J. B. Phillips translation, each have brought new dimension to our understanding. 

In trying to help his children understand the bible around their family worship times, Ken Taylor began to put the scripture in the words children could understand. That began the journey that we now call the Living Bible. Bill and I have given this paraphrase to each of our children and grandchildren as they got old enough to read the scriptures for themselves.  In my opinion, there will never be a better translation of Psalm 139 that the one Ken Taylor has given us. (see <lovesongtomylife/Praise You>)

Eugene Peterson’s The Message was not intended to be the most “elegant” paraphrase. Peterson has said that what we now know as the New Testament was written and spoken by regular people in regular circumstances, coming to see, recognize, and follow Jesus. He wanted his paraphrase also to be in our regular language as we are in the process of our regular lives.

Those who handle language must do so with fear and trembling. Words are so much more than words. Every word or phrase is a metaphor for an idea, a meaning, an intension. The sound and rhythm of language plays into its positive or negative implication. Words are art. Words are weapons. Words are promises and pledges and prayers.

Surely, revelations and epiphanies come to translators, too, as they do to scientists and theologians and songwriters. Various translators and paraphrasers have given us unforgettable passages when they were seeking just the right way to impart the eternal truths.

Tyndale’s “In Him we live and move and have our being” will forever give us the assurance that we or our children or those we love, can no more run far enough away to be out of the love and presence of God, than a fish can run away from water.

It was Eugene Peterson who was given this amazing paraphrase of Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-29:

“Are you tired?  Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live feely and lightly.”

Oh, how we try to force the beauty of Jesus through the tight sphinctered, man-made institutions of religion! How disillusioned we get, trying to get “right with God” by striving to follow the formulas and regulations made to force our allegiances to something beside the free air of the Holy Spirt and the sweet friendship with the lover of our souls!

The rhythm, the music of our lives is God, singing His grace over us, and we, in turn—so full of grace—singing it to others in need of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. The sweet music of our grace, given to others, reaches the Father’s heart, and He gives even more grace. Rhythm, indeed!

Whether we hear the Father’s grace-song in Greek, Aramaic, Latin, Spanish, French or English, His words are carved, “not on tablets of stone, but on the flesh of the human heart.” (II Cor. 3:13). In turn, we become, as Paul said, a living, walking letter of what Jesus defined God to be, and how that can change us from the inside out.

Eugene Peterson found the words to say it best in today’s English. Jesus invites us to lay down everything that is “heavy and ill-fitting” and “learn to live freely and lightly.”

What songwriter could resist the rhythm of the very line itself? “Livin’ in the rhythm, livin’ in the rhythm, livin’ in the rhythm of grace.” At least Bill and Larry Gatlin couldn’t and that’s how a life of joy--and songs—begins to happen!

A Game of Tones

I found this remembrance our daughter Amy wrote a few years ago about Bill teaching her musical intervals, She has given permission to share it with you.

"This is one."

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

     "One."

     "Now, give me 'three'," he says.

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

     "Three," I sing.

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

     "Give me 'two'."

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

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

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

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

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

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

     "Daddy." I have to say it two, three times. "Daddy. Daddy."
"What?"  He is still absent.
"Earth to Bill," my mother says.
He blinks, focuses.  "What?"
"This is one," I say.  Back to one.
He grins, returning. "Okay, give me seven." His favorite interval.

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

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

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

--Amy Michelle Gaither 

More Than Flowers

My gardens are full of tributes to the women who have helped shape the woman I am. Lovers of flowers, all, their beauty nods at me as I walk the corners and borders of our yard. 

I created most of the garden spaces almost sixty years ago when Bill and I first tackled this hillside we made from the soil we dug out of the swampy low land. In fact, the basement of our house was constructed on top of the rise, then, as we dug out the small stream to drain the land, the hillside was made of that dirt until it reached what would become the main floor of the house. And the tiny stream and the swampy land became “Gaithers’ Pond” and the creek.

A lot of the soil we dug out was clay, so making gardens of it was a long-term project. It has taken years of adding sand and humus, leaves and peat moss and manure to the clay to make it flower-friendly.

But gradually, and with a lot of hard work, I began to plant the “starts” other gardeners gave me. Most of the plants were perennials, but there were seeds, too, from hollyhocks, sunflowers, Rose of Sharons, echinacea, and morning glories. And then, too, there were bits of wise advise, especially about how to conquer the stubborn chemistry and consistency of Indiana clay.

Meanwhile, Bill was planting trees.  Some were spindly shoots of silver maples and sycamores that he and his grandpa Grover rescued from the jaws of the backhoe. Others were the young arbor vitae we ordered from Indiana Department of Conservation to plant as a hedge along our property line.  And Bill, bless him, was determined to give me some of the white pine, scotch pine, and spruces I so loved about my native Michigan, as well as a trio of white paper birch.

That was the beginning.  Now, these decades later, we live in a woods that we planted, with a yard full of flower gardens, now added to and maintained by Dawn who does the work of enhancing and maintaining the gardens. Dawn was once the accountant at Gaither Music Company, then retired from there and took up garden design; she now works her magic on all our garden spaces.

Come walk with me, and I will show you what I see. First, my mother is everywhere. She divided the tubers of her blue, yellow, and peach irises, and gave me starts of them that to this day dazzle my gardens with color. She dug up those irises every time she and daddy moved until he finally said those roots stayed in a constant knot just waiting to hop into a bucket to go to the next place.

And then there are the Michigan bluebells mother brought to Indiana from various Michigan woods that she planted in the border behind the garden swing and all around the water pump at our log cabin. When she died, those who knew her love for “diggin’ in the dirt” sent gift certificates to flower nurseries with which we created “Dorothy’s Garden” at the corner of Hanna Street and Highway 9.

Bill’s mother Lela is the reason for the tall zinnias of hot pink, orange, yellow, and green along the west side of the front porch. She always insisted George plant rows of them in the vegetable garden. Green beans, peppers, and tomatoes for the body; zinnias for the soul.

My Grandmother Sickal was legally blind, but loved flowers, and up close was able to see the bright colors of gladioluses, marigolds, and zinnias. She also loved the clove fragrance of carnations and pinks, and grew them around her fieldstone porch. She took bouquets of her bright blossoms to display on the altar table at her small holiness church. As she cut them, she would hold the blossoms close to her eyes and marvel at what God had made. Her “glads” are there in my cutting garden at the bottom of the hill by the wisteria trellis.

It was my sweet sister Evelyn that loved nothing more than our spring and fall expeditions to buy  geraniums, petunias, and begonias in the spring and chrysanthemums in the fall to fill in all the spaces between the perennials like purple coneflowers, daylilies, black-eyed Susans and Russian sage. Because I loved Evelyn so, you will find all of these flowers somewhere in gardens.

My love for hostas came both from my other grandmother Margaret Effie Boster and from Bill’s grandma Blanche Gaither. Blanche would much rather be outside working, than being inside doing housework—picking cherries, feeding the chickens and cows—anything but housework. Her hostas lined the drive along the lilacs. She also gave me starts of what she called a sweet pea tree. Those still bloom beside the swing set on which two generations of children have played.

My Grandma Boster kept her lawn neat, and hostas fit the bill. She, too, loved working outside. On the Saturday before she died, she took a butcher knife and dug up the dandelions from her yard to cook for greens, then scrubbed the porch.  Sunday morning she put on a roast to cook with potatoes and carrots and went to church. When she got home, she fixed dinner, washed the dishes, took off her apron, folded it neatly and lay down to rest...and went straight to Jesus.  So my hostas remind me every day that a job is to be finished, and that it’s okay to “rather be outside”.  I have a whole garden of hostas!

I love the flowers, but they are much more than flowers to me.  Almost everything in my flower gardens are reminders of the strong, tender, intelligent, enduring, and Godly women who shaped me, taught me, pushed me, and encouraged me. And there they are—do you see them?  They are the  flowers in my gardens.

A Needle Speaks

She made her living with her needle—hemming up pants, letting out dress seams, lowering hems, patching up holes in the knees of jeans (something we pay big money for now). She even darned socks because during the war they had to last.

But needles were hard to come by, and seamstresses kept their precious assortment carefully attached in a row to a piece of felt, then rolled up in a quilted fabric cover with ties. Certain needles were for certain tasks—a circular needle for mending upholstery, a long sturdy needle for thick rugs and heavy blankets, and the precious alteration needle.

My life was shaped by testimonies like hers from the characters in our village who faithfully came to the Wednesday night prayer meeting at the church my parents pastored. And, thankfully, I was a child and teen-ager before churches decided that children should be partitioned off from the adults to “do their own thing”.

Our church was in a farming community, and the faithful in that congregation lived close up to the provisions of God, tithing their butchered beef, making sure the pastor had eggs, and helping each other by sharing what they had.

 Mildred made her living with her needle. I must have been about four years old, sitting with my mother and grandmother while daddy invited the folks to share their testimonies.  There were several that night, some to request prayer for illnesses, some to thank the Lord for the crop they’d just harvested, and then there was Mildred.

Usually shy and uncomfortable standing to speak, she fidgeted with the handkerchief she had in her hand as she said:  “I just want to tell you how thankful I am that Jesus is our best friend and is truly ‘closer than a brother’.  I had a lot of sewing to do this week, and Monday when I went to do my hemming, my hemming needle was gone.  I tell you I looked that house over.  I went everywhere I’d been, even crawling on the floor to see if I’d dropped it. I was praying all the way from room to room. I told Jesus, ‘You know how I need that needle.  Please help me find it. You know where it is.’ But with all my searching, I couldn’t find it.  Finally, I just sat down on the couch to think and pray. I was desperate. I gave my search to the Lord, and like I do when I’m cleaning, I ran my hand along the cushion of the couch, and something pierced my finger. It was my needle! Tonight I want to tell you to trust the Lord with the problems you can’t solve. He knows your every need. Praise His name!”

Now, these decades later, I remember in detail Mildred’s words, her desperation over that needle. I learned two things that prayer meeting night. Jesus is your best friend, and don’t underestimate the understanding of a child.

Rewiring the Mind

In response to the last blog, “Don’t Believe Everything You See”, I received the following piece from our friend Andy Andrews.  I thought I should share it with you to continue the conversation about A.I. and its effects on our children and young people.

“The conversation concerning artificial intelligence in schools is usually about the possibility of cheating. Did I say, ‘Possibility?’  Anyway, we get that. Today, teachers are trying to figure out what is real, parents are trying to figure out what is allowed, and the kids–just like every kid who ever lived–the kids are trying to figure out what they can get away with. 

Still, cheating is not nearly the biggest problem. The deeper issue is what kind of adults our children are becoming. So the real challenge isn’t cheating.  Instead, it is the illusion of having ‘learned’.

Remember English class? Do you remember being required to turn in a 300-word paper on the Magna Carta or the themes evident in Canterbury Tales?  And you had to do it with a fountain pen, handwritten in cursive? Remember just trying to start?  Just trying to put one coherent sentence on the page with barely half an idea of what you wanted to say? There was no computer program to ask, no shortcut to take, no machine to make you sound smarter than you were. There was only the work of ‘thinking’.

At the time, I had no idea how I’d use any of it in real life, but as it turns out, I use it every day.  Writing those dull essays forced me to learn how to harness my imagination into usable solutions.  Those essays allowed me to sit in confusion until I made a sentence appear. We were learning to organize, revise, choose pathways, and keep going until something inside us became clearer. The paper, I see now, was not the point. The person being formed by the paper was the point.

When a child uses A.I. to produce an answer without practicing the thinking normally required to produce an answer, he or she is not just using a new educational tool. Without active ‘thinking’, nothing is learned. A.I. seems to produce the illusion of education—that is the appearance of ability without any authentic development of that ability.  A student can now turn in a grammatically correct essay without ever having learned how to write one. The parents see the grade and are relieved.  The teacher senses something is off, can’t prove it, and  doesn’t want the fight it would produce if she could. Meanwhile, the student learns a dangerous lesson: I can skip the struggle and still appear to be successful.

A.I. is a tool, and since a tool cannot be an enemy, A.I. is not an enemy.  A.I. can translate, explain, organize, and help a struggling student see what he could not see before. But the first step must still be to THINK: What do I know? What have I tried?  After using A.I., this question should be applied:  Could I do this again without A.I.? Did my use of A.I. strengthen who I am, or did I just get a fast result I’ll never remember?

Our children will live in a world shaped by A.I. They should learn to use it. But they must not confuse ‘using a powerful tool’ with ‘becoming a capable person’.  Our goal should not necessarily be to keep children away from A.I. The goal is to make sure A.I. helps them actually become better—not merely appear more capable than they really are.

So…think with me here:  what enables a child’s reliance on A.I.?  Time alone with their screens.  What counteracts time alone with their screens?  Conversations. We did not get to this crisis in thinking just because of A.I.  Our nation’s children have been veering toward this cliff for two generations.  As the age of videos and headphones emerged, conversations between adults and young people began to diminish and the Great Separation gained momentum.

Children participating in a real conversation at dinner about real issues became a thing of the past with the advent of I-pads and cell phones. Now, even the adults are on their devices at dinner and the children are, too. Even an after-dinner movie separates the family with large screen TVs  in the playrooms and the adults watching a movie of their own choosing with no conversation to follow.  And whoever said music was the great uniter was wrong.  In the car on family trips, the kids are on their cell phones with earbuds while the adults listen to stations of their own preference. 

Kids used to spend the 3-hour car ride to Grandma’s in the backseat, listening to their parents discuss life.  We gave them headphones and screens, which not only cut them out of the conversation--it also didn’t even allow them to listen to one. 

What can a family do? One thing is  WisdomHarbour.com, an inexpensive streaming service being used by schools and families to generate meaningful conversations…ones between adults and young people. Wisdom Harbour’s mission is to create America’s next greatest generation. This unique vehicle is being used as a connecting point of conversation between parents and their teenagers, parents and teachers, as well as students and all the adults in their town. Becoming a part of placing Wisdom Harbour in your local or state school system is one way you can have a direct effect on the culture that makes America whatever it turns out to be from here.

How else can you help?  Can wise people somehow convince students that the struggle that intelligence requires is worth it… even when a tool exists that can remove that struggle in seconds?  

For the sake of the adult your child will become, we must make sure that answer is ‘yes’.”

Don't Believe Everything You See

After several obituaries, serious diagnoses, accounts of my or Bill’s collapses on stage, videos of us dancing on the porch or of me playing the piano and guitar, Bill and I are still alive and well and living our ordinary lives in the same house we built sixty years ago in our small town in Indiana. Bill still travels and sings many weekends a year with the Gaither Vocal Band (who also are all healthy and joyful).

 Welcome to the world of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), where not only can you not believe everything you see or hear, but you can’t believe almost anything you hear or read if you spend your time on social media.  Guy Penrod did NOT sing at the Super Bowl and none of the Homecoming family of artists are in arguments or confrontations with big TV personalities or super stars.

Today on this rainy day, I am home writing with our two Cavalier King Charles dogs, Windsor and Dorset, at my feet;  all the while, Bill is in Nashville, recording several episodes of Homecoming Radio.  He’ll be home later this evening.  In my afternoon tea break from writing, I emptied the dishwasher and cleaned out the refrigerator.  You probably won’t see that on social media, but, hey, it’s my real life.

I guess I am just asking you to not click on wild stories and certainly not forward them to anyone.  Every click empowers A.I. and gives more impetus for generating more ridiculous fictions.  And while I’m ranting, whose head is that on a person’s body that is supposed to be Bill, and whose body is that whose hands are wildly clapping for Bill as he plays an elementary chord as if it were some score by Beethoven?  On the other hand, maybe A.I. isn’t so bad; it gives me a better body than I had at forty.

There isn’t a better Bible verse to quote and internalize right now than Paul’s advice to believers of his day:
     “Finally, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

Ah, yes!

A 250-Year Experiment

This Fourth of July will be an important milestone for families in America. It is the 250th year of this Republic and its great experiment in trusting the people of this land to govern themselves.  A genius Constitution sets the interconnected boundaries that establish and protect a series of checks and balances for this brave form of government.

Our founding fathers realized that both authoritarianism and rule by simply a majority of voters’ public opinion were equally dangerous. A system that would protect a great people from both the iron hand of a dictator and the selfishness of individualism was needed, one that kept us all aware of each other and the needs that both make us different yet uniquely the same.

We needed a Republic, a government that would give voice to both the smallest and the greatest, the urban and the rural, the most diverse and the most like-minded.  We needed a form of government that would pull each of us out of the tendency to cocoon in our personal affairs into seeing the needs of others.

The Continental Congress Assembly Room—Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the U.S. Constitution was drafted.

Benjamin Franklin, along with others like John Adams and James Madison, believed that personal virtue was necessary if a democracy were to work. There could never be enough laws enacted to make a people do the right thing, unless they were already guided by principle and morality, an accountability to a higher authority than government.

In 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Franklin what the Constitutional Congress had accomplished. “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” to which he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Public Ledger Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

His wry response remains a challenge to us now in this 250th year anniversary. Can we keep a form of government that depends on accountability to God to do the right thing?  Can we keep risking to interact with good deeds and kindness to those with whom we may not agree? Can we keep investing our time and resources in our own communities? And as Believers, can we not tire of praying for our leaders and being involved with compassion to those near us?

As your family gathers to eat and play and celebrate together this national anniversary, I would suggest two films that would be good to watch with your whole group.  One is a powerful new film available on Prime, YouTube, and other platforms about the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and the English evangelist George Whitefield, A Great Awakening. This film is sure to educate and inspire.

The second family experience is Circuit Rider, a video written by Suzanne Jennings and Woody Wright, available in its full version on GaitherTV+. If you are not yet a member, it can be viewed by signing up for a 7-day trial.

This weekend, while the grills are hot and the games are being played all over the yard, remember to pray together for our country, and sing songs of gratitude for this amazing 250-year experiment we call America.  Light some fireworks in the field—and a few in our hearts!

It's All A Matter of Perspective

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, 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 also 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)

June 2026 Mute Swans and their flock of cygnets

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.

My Deal with the Devil

Sometimes I can’t sleep, Lord.
At night everything looms large before my mind.
At night the issues of the day organize themselves into an army,
marching like an enemy advancing
to pillage my storehouse of
peace.
Worries and concerns of the day turn into terrors of the night.
Simple shortcomings and human frailties become terminal failures
for which there is no grace or mercy.
I feel as if I am slipping off a precipice
and the sapling I grasp
is coming up by the roots.
I am alone and a stalker lurks in the shadows.

I know, Lord, that You are not
the author of confusion.
You are never the source of fear,
for fear is the opposite of faith;
I recognize the terror of the night
as the imposition of Satan.

So, I’ve made Satan a promise:
If he awakens me in the night,
I will spend every sleepless moment praying.
I will pray for my children;
I will intercede for the lost;
I will lift up my husband
to the Father.
I will plead for the salvation of our neighborhood,
our country, our world.
I will pledge with the psalmist to spend every waking hour
“remembering You on my bed.”
I will “meditate on You in the night watches.”

Since I made this promise I find I win
either way:
If I am awake, I have sweet communion with You, Lord.
Or I doze into peaceful rest. Selah!

Listening to the River

Lord, it is so easy to take things into our own hands,
get ahead of Your timing, mess things up.

How impatient I am!
How arrogant sometimes--
thinking I can bring about justice,
hoping I can precipitate heart change,
believing that I can hasten the coming of Your kingdom
in the souls of other people.

Let me learn from the river, Lord.
Day by day,
year by year,
decade by decade it flows to the sea.

No matter what men do to try to change its course
to accommodate and facilitate their self-serving purposes,
the river persistently, consistently responds
to the magnet of the great waters.
It seeks its own destination from a source deep
in the bedrock of the planet.

For a while men and engineering genius
can reroute the river--
but rise the high floods,
descend the drought years,
the river from its deep source re-carves its path
to the sea, to the arms of the embracing sea.

And in its pure and unquenchable thirst for the sea,
its current carves through any obstacle in its path.
Mountains are dissected; plains are traversed,
valleys are created.

In the natural course of its mission, the river serves.
It carries rich soil to the riverbed farmlands.
It makes a way of transportation across flat stretches of prairie.
It irrigates strips of food-producing and life-sustaining land
in the midst of the desert.

Fish thrive in its cool moving waters.
Birds and wildlife grow fat along its banks.
But all these things are only results,
never for the river's own purpose.
The driving force is just the simple and powerful pull of the sea.

Lord, I want to seek You.
Let the passion of my life be to lose myself in You.
Let the deep desire that springs from the bedrock of my being
be to flow to You.

Keep me unaware of any result
except the deep peace of knowing
that part of my spirit has already reached
its destination and is at rest in You.

May the journey of my life cut its way through any obstacle
for the insatiable hunger to empty myself
into the great sea of Yourself.

You--the Source.
You--the destination.
Whatever else may happen today, let it only and always
be the natural result of a river, flowing to the sea.

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A Text from My Songwriting Friend

The other morning while Bill and I were having our coffee, I got a text from my friend and well-known songwriter Kenna West.  When I finished reading it to Bill, we were both in tears.  We thought what she said was too good to keep to ourselves, so I texted her back to see if she would let me share it with you as a guest blog.  I hope you “get it”.  It is the reason we write songs.

“Hey! Just wanted to say that I thought of you this last week. :) Mary Alice Lovelace, her daughter, and I went to hear Jimmy Webb at the Country Music Hall of Fame. He’s my songwriting hero and I’ve seen him on stage three times in the last ten years or so. He plays the songs of my childhood, yes, but he also tells the stories behind them… “Galveston”, “By the Time I Get To Phoenix”, “Up, Up, and Away”, “Didn’t We”, And my favorite song of all time, “Wichita Lineman”.

Long story, but Wichita Lineman was the song I would cry to when I was 7 years old and my parents were getting a divorce. I have a distinct memory of turning left at a big Orange Crush sign, which was halfway between both sets of grandparents where my sister and I would transition from one parent to the other. Over fifty years later, I still remember the feeling of being that little girl, and how my heart ached when we turned left at that Orange Crush sign. I still remember the sadness in the Glen Campbell song that was on the radio. And I still remember the ache in his words.

To be fair, I had no idea as a kid what he was talking about. In fact, I thought he said “Lyman,” which was a town in South Carolina where you would end up if you turned right at the Orange Crush sign. I truly thought that the guy in the song was from Lyman, and that’s how I sang the song for years. I had no idea. Yet even though I didn’t know the word Glen Campbell was saying, or even what a “lineman” was, I somewhat understood his feeling of “needing” and “wanting.” And it made me sad. And the sadness I felt as a little girl for the man I thought was from Lyman became the emotional space where I could be sad for me.  

That’s the power of a song.  

And as I sat there Friday night and listened to Jimmy Webb sing that song, my favorite song of all time, I didn’t even think about the lineman from Wichita. I sat there and remembered a little girl in the backseat of her grandfather’s car as it turned left at the Orange Crush sign. I remembered her sorrow. I remembered all of that as Jimmy sang. And I cried. I was literally wiping the tears from beneath my chin. It was this crazy mix of sadness and joy. I grieved for a little girl and her broken world, but I was also grateful for a song that became a safe space for me to feel my feelings and to let the tears fall. And I was thankful, as a songwriter, that— because of Wichita Lineman—I understand the power of descending chords upon the heart. And I was grateful that for the last 25 years, God has allowed me to co-create 3 1/2-minute spaces for folks to feel their feelings. Of course, it’s mostly all been Christian music, so what I am trying to say in a song is always framed by faith in Jesus, but my goal is still the same—to give folks a place to feel their feelings. And maybe it’s worship. Maybe it’s lament. Maybe it’s celebration. Maybe it’s conviction. Maybe it’s repentance. It’s always different. But every time, it tethers back to the first song I ever “felt,” which was “Wichita Lineman”.

As I drove home after the concert, I thought to myself, “I bet Gloria would have enjoyed the songs tonight.” And I bet you would have passed me a Kleenex. Which made me smile, so I thought I’d text.

 Hope you are doing well.

 I sure appreciate ya. And we’ve never even met. :)

 Have a great week!
Kenna

Strange Lullabies

My mother sang me strange lullabies. I was born in March after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, so now I understand why the songs about longing for a loved one to come home or a child crying in the night for a family to be reunited were on her mind. Some of her songs were probably popular on the radio in those years when I was an infant or toddler.

The songs I remember had what I call “rockin’ chair rhythms”, so were easily adapted to the times in which this beautiful young mother was rocking her child to sleep. And in the war years, everyone was waiting for someone to come home. Or not.

One of the songs that I can still remember verbatim was a reflection of the era as well as an unforgettable story.  Like many great songs, the meaning between the lines was greater than what was in the lines.  It reflected the importance of telephone switchboards and “party lines” that we now only get to know in movies.

When I researched this song, I found it was written not after World War II, but in 1901, by  Charles K. Harris. The conflict then was the Philippine-American war, which took the lives of 4,200 Americans and an estimated 20,000 Filipino combatants, plus thousands of civilians who died of violence, famine, and diseases.

Charles Harris’s thoughtful lyric seems to have resurfaced whenever mothers waited for their soldier sons to come home. This song my mother sang to me was revived by the war of her generation, and though my father did not serve in World War II, his brother did.  Many more in their circle of family and close friends were wounded or died.

So, as mother rocked me to sleep, these words embedded themselves in my mind. In this story, a young mother has died, evidently leaving a grieving young father and a little girl, who is trying to call her mother on the telephone, routed through the switchboard of operators called “central”.  The song lyric my mother sang went like this:

          “Hello central, give me heaven, for my mother’s there.
She’ll be waiting with the angels on the golden stair;
She’ll be glad it’s me who’s speaking; call her, won’t you, please...
For I surely want to tell her we are lonely here.

          When the girls received the message o’er the telephone,
How their hearts grieved with sadness, and the wires began to moan;
We will answer just to please her—‘Yes, dear heart, I’ll soon be home.’
‘Kiss me, Mama, kiss your darling through the telephone.’”

The song would sometimes make me cry myself to sleep out of compassion for the little girl and her lonely father.

Another war song I remember my mother singing emerged later as a prayer song my sister and I sang as a duet at our state camp meeting.  I was still so short I had to stand on a chair to sing with her. The church knew this song as “Search Me, O God”, but the song mother had sung to us was much different. Evidently, when I was six, it was recorded by Bing Crosby, and in 1948 it was one of the top ten pop songs in the nation.  It was credited to Clement Scott, Maewa Kaihan, and Dorothy Stewart. It was sung to me like this:

           Now is the hour when we must say good-bye,
Soon you’ll be sailing far across the sea;
While you’re away, oh, then remember me;
When you return, you’ll find me waiting here.

Another song mother sang to me was “When My Little Boy Blue Went to Sleep”.   I found an old Jimmy Davis recording of the chorus. Another recording was by the Sons of Song.

           “When my little boy blue closed his eyes and went to sleep,
He prayed ‘...the Lord my soul will keep,
And if I die before I wake, I know the Lord my soul will take;
Now, darling mother, do not weep.
God bless my daddy, too, for he’s been so kind and true,
His soul, dear Lord, I know you’ll keep.”
Then he closed his big blue eyes and sailed to away paradise,
When my little boy blue went to sleep.

            Sometimes he comes back to our house in a dream
He sits on the rug on the floor,
He takes out his playthings, and plays once again,
And we live in our haven once more…
When my little boy blue, closed his eyes and went to sleep....”

She also read me a poem by Eugene Field titled “Little Boy Blue” and all the children’s poems by Robert Lewis Stevenson.

Often mother would tell me what a treasure I was to my daddy and her.  She would say they knew God would protect me, because He had promised them that I would be a glory to His Kingdom. That, she’d say, was why they named me Gloria.

Looking back now, I believe it is important for a child to know that life isn’t perfect. People aren’t always happy, and things sometimes disappoint us and destroy our best plans. But the arms of our Lord will hold us secure and be present in all circumstances. No matter what happens, we are and always will be in good hands.

Seams and Curls

She combed through my wet hair, clean from washing with green Prell shampoo, then parted off narrow vertical portions. One at a time she wrapped the wet sections around her finger, making curls she then secured vertically with bobby pins.

Gloria at age 4

It was Saturday night—bath night—and the pinned-in-place curls were soft enough to sleep on. By morning they would be dry, and mother would remove the pins, gently brush out the curls, forming shiny ringlets for church.

After our breakfast of bacon, eggs, and biscuits, she would pull my freshly ironed dress over my hair. I would find clean white socks with lace around the edges tucked into my black patent leather shoes to put on for church. Most of my dresses had a sewn-in sash that mother would tie in a bow in the back. She hand made all of my dresses, as well as those of my sister and her own.

She was an expert seamstress, a skill she learned from her mother that equipped her to work before I was born at a designer dress shop in Battle Creek, called the Francine Dress Shop, where she was part of the designer sewing team. She also modeled these dresses in style shows and for magazine and newspaper ads for the shop.

My red satin dress

Mother was a stickler for finished seams and sculpting details that made a garment “hang right” as she used to say. And both my mother and her mother loved quality fabrics. One of my favorite dresses when I was around ten years old was made of red satin with a white yoke.  I felt so beautiful when I wore it, and at ten, beautiful is important. I didn’t wear this dress to regular church; it was saved for special occasions.

Most of our life revolved around the church, since daddy was the pastor. Even special occasions were special services like New Year’s Eve watchnight services, area conventions, or performances of the Easter and Christmas plays and programs mother wrote and directed.

From the time I was four years old my parents pastored churches in small towns, churches that were struggling that they nursed into strong, stable congregations. This was a full-time job, and I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase “my day off” from my father’s mouth. Our phone rang at all hours and on every day in the week with calls from someone who was in trouble, in need, or in a hurry. We had weddings in our living room, cook-outs in our back yard, and area youth skating parties at the rink just down the road. Our car was the taxi for kids or older people who didn’t have a ride to church.

Like getting my hair set on Saturday night, watching my mother construct fine garments out of good fabrics, or hanging out in the barn where my dad made beautiful things out of wood, I saw my parents take whatever characters a community provided and love the best out of people, then patiently train and encourage them into a strong commitment to the Father of us all. Some characters were more difficult or complicated than others, but my parents thought everyone had the potential to become more than even they believed they could be.

Some of the toughest old characters there were just the best challenges to my dad. I watched him take on crusty men who wanted nothing to do with the church and persistently and consistently meet them where they were. Some never came to church but came to respect and embrace what the church stood for. Others became some of the strongest believers with the most amazing testimonies to what God can do in a life.

Burlington Church as it looked when we went there

We went to the Burlington church when I was four. I literally grew up with many of the families that became (and are still) a part of that church. One family had children my age. I remember one Sunday when most of the families were snowed in from a serious blizzard and, for good reason, couldn’t make it to church. But daddy shoveled out our driveway and went to the church early to shovel off the steps and porch of the church. He turned up the heat while mother put some pine sprigs and holly on the communion table.

Gloria at 14 with the Sunday School class she taught — Janet Funk is standing in front of Gloria

“Well, at least we’re here and God’s here!” my dad said.  About the time we decided it would be just us, in drove a big farm tractor with George and Eleanor Funk and their three small children, bundled up to their noses in coats and scarves and hanging on for dear life to the tractor seats.  They lived in the country and probably the farthest from the church. But, bless their faithful hearts, they were there to worship, snow and all! 

What an impression that made on this little eight-year-old! I have never forgotten the beauty of the Family of God. On our 61st wedding anniversary, we got this text from the woman who was the four-year-old on that tractor that snowy day in Michigan:

Happy Anniversary, Gloria and Bill!  I just want you to know that I am thanking God for both of you...still impacting people with the gospel all over the world!! And, Gloria, you and your family have impacted my life personally for so many years!  I know God is blessing your family.  Have a special celebration of your years together.

Much love,   
Janet  

The Funk family were just some of the great “regular people” who have been giants along my path.  And whether I’m called on to curl hair, make a dress right, shovel off a walk, or plant roses that won’t bloom until after I’ve moved away, I just hope that all I do today will be done right and for the glory of God.

CONNECTED

There are things that tie the generations together, and I think of those I’m tied to as a chain of paper dolls cut out of newspaper.  Mother used to cut them for me out of the Battle Creek Enquirer and News when she was cutting patterns for sewing.  Both the paper dolls and the patterns amazed me.

The patterns she would cut from the folded edges of the paper, and by some miracle, the cloth she would then cut from the pattern would fit to the next piece and suddenly as she sewed them together, take shape as a dress, blouse or skirt that fit our bodies perfectly and looked as professional as any “store-bought” garment.

The paper dolls she cut, too, from the folded edge--in fact, many folds.  She would cut only half a person as if the doll was hiding behind the paper and only half of her was showing.  But by what seemed to me some miracle, when mother unfolded the layers of paper, there was a chain of dancing girls, all holding hands like the dancers do around the May pole in their celebration of spring!

It seems as I look back over my life that I am also in some great dance, connected hand to hand to the strong women and men that preceded me.  Hand to hand they have passed on to me their treasures of experiences, skills, and wisdom that they mostly learned the hard way.  They modeled integrity, honesty, hard work, and compassion.  Our table is often a testimony to the foods they loved to cook.  My walks through the woods are informed by the names of trees and wildflowers they taught me to recognize or the footprints of animals they taught me to know. They taught me to sew, paint, to love color, and plant flowers. All taught me to endure, persist, hope, and, when necessary, wait.  They taught me to pray. Some of them taught me what not to do and say.        

Every day I feel them holding my hand, and my parents’ hands and my grandparents’ hands.  I hope my daughters and son learned from me a few of the delights and disciplines these generations have handed down to me.  And I hope they have also learned the dance steps of joy that these who came before taught me.          

In his book The Wisdom Pattern, Richard Rohr writes, “We must hold the hands of both ancestors and children—hold them well....The chain of being is even longer and bigger than us church folks imagined—and we best come to the telescope and microscope with our shoes off....”

In this time of division and polarization, it seems someone has torn the chain of connectedness apart.  Even families seem to have lost the ability to recognize the ties that bind, ties that should transcend the rancor of social media and loud discourse and hold to things eternal.         

Maybe it’s time to make some people-chains so that we can recognize once more that we are cut from one sheet of paper; we are connected.  Maybe the sequester of COVID was an unlikely gift that shut us in with the people we most love. At least it was a good time to practice, on a small scale, those qualities that would re-connect us to the larger community Jesus taught us to love: qualities like forgiveness, patience, compassion, self-control, kindness.  Right now it is assignment enough to love those who love us. Then, perhaps, we will have sharpened the tools for daring to love our enemies and see that they are also connected to us.

Fiercely Present

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God.” - Isaiah 41:10a

The Lord is fiercely present, though some have painted Him as a blithe spirit, easily offended and quick to dissipate like some mist in the scorching sun.  He is powerfully and fiercely present.  In times of fear, He is present and fear has no power when we focus on that presence.  In times of doubt, He is present, nudging us to knowing, crowding us to the certainty of Himself.   When we are full of joy and confidence, He is there in the festival, whispering that He, not we ourselves, is the joy pure and essential.  He is there.  He is present.   He is.  His presence fills the whole earth, and He is not fragile.

Law and Love

Judas is busy making a deal with the chief priests and elders he thinks will force Jesus into starting the new kingdom. Judas is thinking he will be a major player when this happens. He is selling access to Jesus for thirty silver pieces. He then shows up for the Passover meal with the rest of the disciples.

During the sacred meal, Jesus says, “One of you will betray me.” Everyone at the table is distressed by this and each begins to ask if he could possibly be that one. Jesus says it is the one who dips the bread in the common bowl with him. Well, that pretty much would have included every one of them. But then Jesus dips a piece of the broken bread and hands it to Judas.

Then, Jesus says a strange thing. He says this betrayal was prophesied and would of necessity be fulfilled, but it would be horrible for the man who did it. Judas then joins the “Is-it-I” chorus and Jesus says to him, “You said it.” Judas then goes “out into the night”, as John later told it, and, indeed, out into the darkness of night Judas goes.

Judas misses the agony of the next few hours in Gethsemane, the cup of sorrows Jesus saw there, and what was in it for Jesus to drink. Jesus’ anguish was so great that his human body was not equipped to bear the realization of what God’s son must do—to become both the victim and the victimizer of all sin from the beginning of time to the end of time—yes, to drink it all.  His very pores hemorrhaged great drops of blood at the immensity of this eternal realization.

“Oh, remove this cup from me,” Jesus pleaded with his Father, but the cup was not removed, and he would have to drink it.

The sleeping disciples were most likely awakened by the approaching sound of the mob that came with Judas and the chief priests and elders to seize Jesus.  Judas identifies him by a prearranged sign—“the one I kiss”. That begins the horrific chain of events that leads to the beatings, the mock crowning of the “King of the Jews” with a crown of thorns, and all sorts of cruel humiliations.

Judas, ever the literalist about the Kingdom Jesus came to build, realizes that the betrayal has gone horribly wrong. He takes his bag of silver back to chief priests and elders, and by confession, tries to relieve himself of the immense burden of guilt.

“I have betrayed innocent blood,” he cries, but their cynical response is, “That’s your problem.”  Judas throws the silver down and runs out and hangs himself.

These same law-keepers who allowed the porch of the temple that was to be reserved for the poor, the strangers, and the visiting pilgrims, to be filled with crooks—these same priests and elders who were so concerned about Jesus “healing on the Sabbath” and legitimizing the story of the lepers being made whole—these same law-keepers had another meeting. This time it is to decide what to do with the 30 pieces of silver Judas has thrown down at their feet. 

“We can’t put this into our treasury,” they say to each other, “because it is blood money, and that would be against our laws.”  They decide to use it to buy a useless piece of land that potters used to discard the chards of shattered pottery. The same hypocrites that cheated the poor and usurped their welcoming porch are now concerned about keeping the law prohibiting blood money from being used in their treasury.  And they decide to use this useless field to “bury the poor”.

But broken pottery eventually weathers back into soil, clay soil for making new pottery. And on a hill not so far away, a Potter on a cross is making provision for shaping shattered vessels into something beautifully brand new.

Stench or Fragrance

According to the book of Matthew, after his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, Jesus “cleansed the temple” in a confrontation with the bunch of salespeople who were selling to outsiders animals for the required sacrifice for Passover. The whole rotten system used the spiritual requirement as an excuse to swindle two ways: requiring local currency to buy a sacrificial animal, then overpricing the required animals. Visitors had to first change their money at whatever rate these crooks wanted to charge them, then use that new currency to buy overpriced animals.  This all took place at tables set up in the porch space that was reserved to welcome the strangers.  

Jesus was furious that this crooked system was going on in the name of God, leaving no welcoming space for the strangers and pilgrims.  He went through the whole porch, pitching the tables to the ground, scattering the money being collected, and probably opening the cages holding “holy” doves and other animals.  Is there anything that displeases God more than doing evil in the name of God?  What could have been a service to visitors had been turned into racketeering enterprise, deceiving the innocent and trusting.  This confrontation from the “gentle Jesus” made him lots of liturgical enemies and probably a lot of grateful friends of those too powerless to confront the system themselves.

Two days before Passover, Jesus had told his disciples that he would be delivered up to be crucified. What about this did they not get?

Meanwhile, the chief priests, scribes, and  elders had a committee meeting, at the home of the high priest Caiaphas, to plot how they could trick Jesus and kill him.  But in the meeting they shrewdly decided that the people would riot if they captured Jesus during the days of “holy” feasts. 

During this evil gathering, Jesus was at the house of Simon who had been a leper before Jesus passed by his life.  While at Simon’s place, a woman came in with an alabaster flask of  essence of spikenard oil. She broke the seal and poured the oil on the head of Jesus while he was at the table with Simon’s family and the disciples.

The disciples went crazy at the “waste” of something so expensive and gave her a hard time for not selling it and donating  the proceeds to a cause benefiting the poor.

Okay, let’s just stop there.  Jesus had already told them how precarious the next couple of days were.  How oblivious can we be sometimes?  How many ways can we still miss the point?

Jesus had to spell it out for them, even then. “Quit picking on her,” he said. “She is the one that gets it. She has the intuitive and sensitive heart.  While your greed accuses her, she has anointed me for burial.  It is her tender story that will, in her silence, preach the gospel to the whole world.  She has not only done a holy and sacred thing out of love, but this will also be a forever memorial to her.”

What timing! The very next character in the Jesus story was to be Judas who was absent because he was out making a deal with the chief priests.

The Dance of Life...and Death

IT  WAS GOOD FRIDAY, and Sunday would be Easter.  Death and resurrection danced together, not only in the death and resurrection of our Lord but in spring's final battle with winter. Alphas and omegas, beginnings and endings seemed to whirl and clash in such a blinding confusion it was hard to tell them apart.

There is struggle in both dying and birthing, and although we tend to think something has to be born to die, the truth is, says the Word of the Lord, something has to die to be born. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24 NASB).

On Good Friday a year before, our daughter Suzanne was having a very difficult time with a pregnancy that had begun just two weeks before she had undergone what turned out to be major surgery. Not knowing that she had conceived, the doctor had laser-stripped her reproductive organs of a serious case of endometriosis. The hope was that this procedure would give her a chance to conceive. The truth was, a tiny life was developing already.

As the pregnancy progressed and her lasered-raw womb expanded, Suzanne grew weaker and weaker until about all she could do was sit with me on our front porch or make a short trip to the grocery store.  There were times she felt she wouldn't live to mother her child; other times she was able to gain fresh energy from the hope that once the baby came, her body could begin to repair.

Then too she was concerned that her child might have been damaged by the surgery itself or the anesthesia she had been given.

At last, in August, little Will was born. What joy we felt, what relief, to find that he was healthy and that Suzanne had survived this whole process. Maybe that was why Bill and I were such crazy-and thankful-grandparents!

The following spring, as we enjoyed this new life given to our family and as new life sprouted all around us in nature, my mother was in the last stages of cancer. For five weeks my sister and I stayed at the hospital to be with her. "Well, we've never done this before," mother said to me, for she was always an adventurer. This was the last and most risky adventure my sister and I would ever take with her.

On that Friday before Easter, as my sister and I watched our grandbabies play games in the hospital room, our mother began her last journey. It was a difficult trip. Earth does not give up easily, and winter sometimes rages its final grasping storms violently. I remember years when there was snow even on Easter. But winter is doomed, nonetheless. Spring does come.

The blustering wind rattled the hospital windows behind the spring daffodils and hyacinths friends had sent to bring color and fragrance to Mother's room. Along the street outside, the ornamental crab trees ventured their first white and pink blossoms.

I turned from the window to rearrange the pillows to make Mother more comfortable, then leaned down to kiss the velvet cheek that was so familiar to me. Because her kidneys had almost ceased their function, her skin had turned the color of the daffodils on the windowsill. I soaked a washcloth in warm water and steamed her calloused feet, then rubbed them with expensive cream. Touch becomes very important when touch is all you have left to nurture the spirit.

This body is like the casing of a seed, I thought. It won't be long until it will burst with the life that swells inside. My mother had always been hungry to learn, thirsty to drink every drop of truth life could teach her. This body wouldn't hold this sprout much longer. Winter's shell would soon explode with the urgency of life.

"Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54 KJV).

Alphas--beginnings. Omegas--endings. In Him, they are both the same. I had watched Will playing with his cousins, so new, so eager to learn all the new things. Mother had celebrated her eighty-fourth birthday, frustrated by the same limitations that frustrated little Will.  So much to embrace, so little time.

I sat down beside my dying mother. Time and earth were shackles to her that Will was only beginning to know. Like a snake's skin, like the casing of a seed, the confines would have to give way to life.

I wrote in my journal:

The process--this alpha-omega dance, this rite of spring--may thrash and rage and threaten; but death, though it will have its ugly moment, will itself die. It's been Friday all day. Tomorrow will be Saturday. But Sunday's coming! There is Easter in our bones!

A few days later I held my mother in my arms as she breathed her last breath. A lyric I had written years before sang to my heart. I had proven it true for myself.

Where, death is your victory?
Where, O grave is your sting?
Come, children, and dance with me!
Sing to our living King!

I knew Mother was dancing too. Alleluia!

Resurrection 
Hang out the banners and shout the news!
Blow the trumpets and horns!
"Til there is no one who has not heard:
"We shall not die anymore!"

I'm here to tell you that Jesus lives;
As He lives, so shall we!
Dying and fear have passed away, Swallowed in victory!

Morning has broken the cords away!
There's no reason to fear.
Why seek the living among the dead?
Jesus, your Lord is not here—He is alive; He's not here!

Where, death, is your victory?
Where, oh grave, is your sting?
Come, children, and dance with me!
Sing to our living King!

Love wins over everything,
Melts the spears and the swords.
Join hands, let your voices ring;
Christ is our risen Lord.

Open the prisons and ring the bells!
Join the ransomed and free
In celebration for what He's done;
Jesus, the Christ sets you free—Jesus, the Christ sets you free! 

Lyric: Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither and Michael W. Smith
Copyright©1982 Gaither Music Company and New Spring Publishing, Inc. (admin. by BMG Music Publishing, Inc.). All rights reserved.