I Declare - Psalm 19

It was the sun pouring through the kitchen window at 7:00 am for the first time after the long winter that made me turn to Psalm 19 instead of the chapter in Colossians I had been reading that week to the kids at the breakfast table.  And I thought I knew that “nature psalm,” for I’d heard it since childhood.  I was reading it “for the kids,” right?  So they’d focus on this glorious first sunny morning of early spring. 

But as I read, I became overwhelmed with the way this fellow-poet had reached from the circumstances of his life (writing a song for this “director of music” to use) into mine more than two thousand years of mornings later.

The psalm was divided into five parts, I noticed as I read.  It opened with the familiar “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”  It went on to say that day after night the articulate heavens and the knowledgeable firmament verbalize wisdom, and there is no corner of the earth where their voices cannot be heard and no language barrier that keeps everyone from understanding.

Next is a lovely metaphor.  Pretend that God has pitched a wedding tent in the sky and the sun is the bridegroom who comes out, greeting and spreading a warm welcome on all his guests.  Or pretend that the sun is a champion rider who gets his joy from racing perfectly from one end of the course to the other delighting everyone in the stands on the way.

Well, then, the psalmist asks, what are the heavens declaring?  And verses 7-11 are a list, an amazing all-encompassing beautiful list of what the heavens declare.  These declarations so powerfully bring into focus what life should be about, so speak to our human frailties, so heal our broken dreams, so reassure our lost confidences, so pinpoint our areas of weakness that the Psalmist literally falls to his knees in repentance.

His error and hidden faults, his smallness and willful sins are all exposed.  And more than that, he begins to ask himself if we are supposed to be the most articulate of all God’s creatures, what are our lives saying?  Are our faults and pettinesses, our selfish narrow-mindedness and lazy preoccupations, our lack of faith and our paralyzing fears making the declaration of our days?

Shamed by the articulate firmament, we hear our own voices praying aloud with the Psalmist’s in repentance and supplication. 

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
my Rock and my Redeemer!”

The children were very silent as I sobbed through the final words of the Psalm, then together we prayed:
Jesus, this day let our actions and attitudes be in sync with all creation.  May we articulate praise in the moments we have.  Amen

 A song lyric came from this morning’s devotion with the children.  I simply called it “Anthem”, and I wrote it to music by Michael W. Smith.  Steve Green recorded it.  Here are the lyrics:          

In the space of the beginning was the living Word of Light;
When this Word was clearly spoken, all that came to be was right.
All creation had a language—words to say what must be said;
All day long the heavens whispered, signing words in scarlet red.

Amber rays and crimson rainbows, twinkling stars and flashing light,
Punctuated heaven’s statement: “God is glorious, perfect, right!”
All day long the sun proclaims it like a bridegroom, dressed in white,
Coming from his tent to greet them, all his guests feel his delight.
Words of love and warmth he whispers, warming all who hear his voice,
“Oh, be glad and share my table, dance and celebrate!  Rejoice!

All creation, sing His praises!
Earth and heaven, praise His name!
All who live, come join the chorus!
Find the words! His love proclaim! 

Lyrics: Gloria Gaither © 1988 Hanna Street Music
Music:  Michael W. © 1988 O’Ryan Music, Inc.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Prioritizing...Again!

Today is my birthday.  I’ve always liked having a birthday on this day, because it is the only date that is a command to go forward:  March 4th!  And forth I intend to go.  But how?  And to where?

 This is not the only time I have paused in mid-journey to listen to the urgings of my soul and to ask God for wisdom in re-aligning priorities.  Over the years Bill and I have had to focus and re-focus on our main calling and the demands it might make for this time in our lives. 

Suzanne, Benjy, and Amy

 There were the years when we were new at being a couple and new at being parents of young children; we were new at being writers and had to sing our own songs if they were going to be heard.  Bill had sung with his brother and sister through high school and college, but by the time we were married, his siblings had taken another path, and he was directing the music at a local church, putting small groups together to sing with the choir.  We were both teaching high school and writing our songs; he would try them out on the choir at church.

 As the songs began to have impact, calls began to come in from churches where Bill, Danny, and Mary Ann had sung as kids, asking if he would come and sing the new songs.  He tried putting together various combinations, but finally said to me, “You need to sing; I’m just used to a family group, and we are writing these songs together.”  Like all preachers’ kids I had sung in our local churches, but never considered myself a “singer” in the professional sense of the word.  I was confident writing and speaking; those were my comfort zones. Vocal performance was not my strong suit.

My mother (Dorthy Sickal) and our middle child Amy.

 But priorities shifted.  To sing our songs enough to let people hear them, I had to balance that with keeping our little children our priority.  Between our two youngest babies, my pastor parents retired from the ministry and moved to Indiana to take over with the children on week-ends when we sang. We knew this was not an accident, and we began to write our travelling/familying life in new songs.

 Singing and traveling seemed to spawn other necessities if our concerts were to be effective:  our own publishing company, a choral division so church choirs could sing our songs, a recording studio so we wouldn’t have to be away from our kids during the week when we were recording, decent sound/lights/instruments, a road crew.  Still we were home during the week being a family, running a publishing company, and writing songs. On week-ends we took the child with us who seemed to need special attention that week.  I was writing books, too, and at first Bill was still teaching, but soon his night job took over his day job.  Prioritizing again.

 For more than twenty years we traveled and sang, first with Bill’s brother Danny (when he moved back to our home town) and then with Gary McSpadden.  But when our first daughter graduated from college and our other two were in high school and college, I felt God stirring around in my soul again, and I knew it was time for another chapter—to quit traveling so much to concentrate on finishing my Master’s Degree in English and to be available to “launch” our beautiful emerging young adults.  Suzanne and I took our Master classes together, another delightful mile on my journey.

 I began speaking more and writing more books.  The Vocal Band had continued traveling and felt as if maybe their tenure might be coming to an end; they decided before they “hung it up” to do a Southern Gospel flavored project to honor and thank the aging heroes who had drawn them to gospel music as kids.  Pretty much by accident, Bill discovered a television camera (we had avoided television to protect our children and private lives), and another chapter of our journey began:  The Homecoming Videos.

 Out of that holy accident came a new traveling chapter of Homecoming Concerts, the Homecoming Magazine, and creating a place to enjoy the people who started to travel to our home town studio to see where the videos were being taped and recorded.  We started what we called Gaither Family Resources and the Pure & Simple Restaurant.

 We remembered when our little sheet music business was in our garage.  Song evangelists and traveling groups would stop by our house to get music for the road.  I would fix them lunch, Bill would show them new songs, and after a sweet time of fellowship and stories, they would get sheet music and be on their way.  When we outgrew the garage and moved to a real office with a warehouse, we always missed seeing and praying with the artists.  So when the need arose again, we created a homey place with food, music, great books, and all kinds of resources for home and family where people could find much needed solitude and real community. For 23 years Gaither Family Resources and Gaither Studios have welcomed people from every state and scores of foreign countries.

 Now we find ourselves in another season of prioritizing. We are assessing our time and energy for what may prove to be our final miles of the journey.  Again we have asked ourselves the question:  With the time and energy we have left ahead, what is to be our focus, our main calling?  We have come full circle, perhaps.  Now we feel it is time to simplify our lives down to our first and consistently central calling.  As someone has so aptly said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  Our main thing for the days ahead is to love God, treasure our marriage and home, enjoy and encourage our three grown children and their children (ages 9-26), and to make music.   Bill will continue to travel with the Vocal Band with a doable and enjoyable schedule, working with young artists, and writing and recording great songs.  I will write—all the kinds of writing that I love the most, including this blog.  Thank you all for not only reading it yourselves but sending it on for others to enjoy and for sending back your comments.  I read them and they give me more ideas.

 If we’ve learned anything over time it is that simple is better and less is more.  (Sorry for the length of the blog this time!) We’ve learned that keeping our private lives central keeps our public lives true.  To tell you the truth we’re more excited about life than we’ve ever been.  And to the next miles of our journey, I say, “Bring it on!”

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Visiting Presidents

Bill and I have spent many hours over many years traveling the United States and Canada in our tour bus.  You’d think we surely had seen most of the beauty of America and visited every national shrine, but the truth is we mostly have driven right past the wonders of this great country because of the tyranny of our schedule.  Most of the time we have traveled at night after a concert to get to the next date; we have awakened in the backstage parking lot of another city arena or auditorium.

 Last summer we asked our driver, Jimmy, if he could block out some days to go with us to see some of the places we have missed.  Bill is a history buff and his reading is mostly biographies of great world leaders and our American Presidents.  When he finishes a biography, we see together every documentary we can find on that leader until we have exhausted the subject and then move on.

 Our list for last summer’s trip was to see three of the Presidential Libraries and really absorb the beauty of our great land, especially the Grand Canyon.  What an experience that trip was!  We found each Presidential Library to be as unique as the personalities and passions of each President they celebrated.  The regions of the country that nurtured the formative years of each life were evident in the strengths and viewpoints each brought eventually to the Office.

 Abraham Lincoln was every bit a product of the Midwest—Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois—that shaped his values and developed his courage to walk alone, if he had to, to do the right thing.  It molded his sense of justice and mercy.  His library is a down-to-earth experience of the simplicity of his childhood, reflecting the long strides not only of his tall legs, but of his determination to walk the lonely road to freedom for the oppressed.  Yet he battled depression and was belittled and ridiculed by the press.

 We drove across the vast belly of the country that has come to be known as “the bread basket of the world” to Abilene, Kansas, and the Eisenhower Presidential Center.  On the grounds are not only the library, but the Eisenhower family home and the whole restored neighborhood where Dwight Eisenhower grew up, and a chapel called the Place of Meditation, where Eisenhower himself and First Lady “Mamie” and their first-born son are buried.  Also, on the grounds are an Eisenhower statue placed in a circle named “Champion of Peace” and five pillars, representing the stages of the President’s life.

 The Kansas small town neighborhood, the traditional house, and the Chapel of Meditation all seem to represent a well-grounded man who knew balance—a man who went from being one of our history’s greatest generals and Commander of all NATO forces of World War II to being a peace-building President who opposed war and the military-industrial complex.  Yet, as is true of all great men and women, he was flawed and imperfect.

 The third Presidential Library we visited was the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Our son had checked with some friends to see if President Clinton might be in residence there.  It turned out he was and graciously agreed to meet us before opening hours, though he was leaving that morning for a trip.  It was a rare opportunity to hear first-hand the ideas this 42nd President had wanted to have built into his library to capture the tone and history of not only his administration, but also the nineties and the turn of the century.  The long corridor-style building implying the journey through each year he was in office (1993-2001) ended with a two-story tall glass wall looking toward the outside representing the future.  Along the elongated central walkway are alcoves containing visual and archival collections documenting the cultural, governmental, and global happenings day-by-day of each year, including Clinton’s own successes and failures.

 On our trip we stopped in Durango, Colorado to visit our grandson.  He took us on a picnic up, up to a clear mountain lake high in the pines.  We inhaled the air, refreshing yet still hinting at the smell of the destructive fires that had recently swept through the forests below.  We filled our eyes and souls with the wonder of God’s beauty and provision.  We drank in these precious hours with our handsome, strong nature-loving grandson and the gift of being with him this day.  This moment.  This place.

We went on to visit the Grand Canyon, which I had never actually seen because we had always passed it in the night, even once parking the bus on the rim of it so our driver could sleep a few hours.

 We had planned to stay where we could watch the sun slip from full day to sunset, casting ever-changing shadows and revelations of color at day’s end.  What candy for eyes it turned out to be!  Every artist must long for paint and a canvas, yet knowing that this changing panorama could never be captured in a painting.  We stayed in a rustic lodge and went back the next morning to see what tricks dawn had up its sleeve.  Turned out morning had more light-shows that we could have imagined!

 The canyon, our sweet picnic by a mountain lake, and the visits to the archives of three American Presidents was a study in perspective for me.  It reminded me that relationships are more enduring than power or politics. It made me remember that each of us is a motley mix of strengths and weaknesses, even those who hold the highest offices in our land or positions of power in the world. We each—even Presidents—are a combination of great gifts and fragile flaws, or, as Shakespeare said, a “brief candle...a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage and then is heard no more.”

 This Presidents’ Month I want to remember to appreciate the gifts of national leadership we have been given over more than two centuries and be grateful.  I want to remember that only God is God and His Kingdom is not of this earth; it is an invisible Kingdom built mysteriously in the hearts of those who believe.  I want to remind myself, too, that this Kingdom’s work can never be achieved by earth’s systems, but only by each believer being faithful to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the children, lift up the fallen, embrace the lonely, and pray for both our leaders and the powerless.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Heart Keeping

“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life,” wisely advises the psalmist.  Heart keeping begins the moment a baby is born, before the child is able to do any heart keeping of its own.  Good mothers and fathers know this and begin from the first day surrounding the baby with soothing sounds, stimulating movements and colors, and all manner of visual experiences to help the baby want to connect with the world and people around him/her.  The fresh smells of lotion and the comfort of being bathed and clean and wrapped in soft clothing and dry diapers, the taste of warm milk while being cuddled close, and the sweet sound of a lullaby all are first efforts to keep the young heart “with all diligence.”

Liam’s first hair cut.

Right away our stories begin, and making memories together is and should be the serious occupation of the loving family.  As the child experiences all those amazing firsts, each person in the family gets to relive them, too, and regain the sense of awe and wonder that comes with splashing in the water, feeling sand between the toes, rolling in the cool grass, hearing the song of a bird, listening to music, experiencing new tastes, feeling a furry puppy….

Photographs, drawings, homemade recordings and movies, stories, poems, prayers, and jokes all become ways we use to preserve and relive those shared experiences that make each person both unique and a part of a family and community.  There develops an unspoken agreement between us to treasure the story that is being written with the days of our lives and to keep it safe and accurate so that we can from time to time when the need arises, remind each other exactly who and Whose we are.

As these babies we so tenderly hold begin to grow, there are piano and guitar lessons, sports accomplishments, academic achievements, pool parties, cook-outs, family vacations, and a hundred other moments to celebrate and store in our hearts and add to our scrapbooks.  Usually, during adolescence when kids sometimes try on other identities and tend to forget who they are, those who love them most are there to remind them of the person they are becoming and how valuable they are, “too good to waste” on influences that would pull them down.  We are the community of love that keeps singing the songs of the redeemed when other voices would entice them to trade freedom for license and enduring riches for cheap trinkets of the moment.

When they come through the maze and choose a life partner, a new heart keeper will join the circle, and promise before God and this community to love and cherish and keep the heart “’til death do us part.”  The new adventure begins that songwriter Andrew Peterson has called “dancing in the minefields,” a new relationship committed to keeping their hearts and joining them in the journey of being memory makers and keepers together.

It is the communities each of these two brings to this new union that will in most cases make or break the hearts, depending on how seriously and how well they have been memory makers and heart keepers.  Now the parents and families must begin the tricky dance of letting go without going away, keeping the treasures of who these two are and pondering them in our hearts.

As we all make new memories on this journey, heart keeping sometimes makes more literal demands of us.  Some of us will find our memories turning to liquid and slipping from our grasp.  With the memories can go our identities, too, and we may have to then ask someone we trust, someone who has walked with us, who we are and where we’ve been and where we might be going.  How treasured then are those who have been the keepers of our memories, guardians of our hearts.  What a gift that long ago some lovers of life signed on to be the keepers of our hearts and the guardians of our true identities.  Thank God for those who have walked with us, shared our adventures, weathered our losses, celebrated our great joys and are still guarding not only their hearts with great diligence, but our hearts as well; for truly out of the heart flow the issues of life!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Best Story of All

I am a child.  I must be four or five years old.  It is Wednesday night, and we are having what we call prayer meeting but what is really, at our little church in the tiny farming village where my father pastors, an informal hour of singing, testimonies and a short study of a passage of scripture.  The person “leading the singing” is not a “musician” or a “minister of music.”  He is a farmer who has finished his chores, taken a shower, put on a clean cotton shirt and “work pants” and eaten a simple supper with his family before heading off “into town” to the service.  His wife plays the piano as those gathered in the little white church by Michigan State Road M-60 begin to sing.

I am singing, too.  I know the familiar words by heart to the first song “When We All Get to Heaven.”  But I have my finger in page 444, marking my favorite just in case the song leader says at the end of this song, “Does anyone have a request?”

I will be quick.  I am ready.  “Page 444!”  I say before anyone else even has time to thumb through the hymnal.

“Turn to page 444,” the song leader says with a twinkle in his eye and a smile in my direction.  I am suddenly bathed in the warm embrace of acceptance, love, and confirmation.  And I sing – do I ever sing! – at the top of my voice.

I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love;
I love to tell the story because I know ‘tis true;
It satisfies my longing as nothing else can do.

Now I am a songwriter myself.  I have written my life’s journey into nearly a thousand lyrics to the wonderfully accessible tunes my husband has heard in his head.  I’ve watched amazed as my words of praise, discovery, question, and revelation have found their way into other persons’ lives, words that at the time seemed so personal to our pilgrimage that I couldn’t imagine them helping someone else.

And I have come to believe that we as a body of struggling, growing, emerging believers need a shared history with God to stockpile against the winters of our lives and the dark nights of the soul.  Like the Israelites who carried stones from the bed of the parted Jordan River, we need to have resources in our possessions with which we can stoop to build an altar in celebration of those times when God “showed up” in our distress.  We need to be able to point to these altars – those Ebenezers along our path – when “Satan would buffet” and say to each other and our children, “I know God is with us!  He met us there, and there and there.  I know He will be faithful in this hour, too.”

The words I learned as a child flowed over me like a warm shower.  I loved the sound of them, the embrace of the voices around me singing them.  But decades have passed since then.  The words and the tune that glued them to my memory have been investigated and scrutinized under the glaring eye of reality.  What have I discovered? A resource of truth richer and deeper and broader then I ever could have imagined.  As the years have passed, life experiences have spotlighted the validity of different verses for me. 

 At this juncture of my journey, this is currently my favorite:

I love to tell the story for those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest;
And when in scenes of glory I sing a new, new song,
‘Twill be its old, old story that I have loved so long.

When we tell the eternal story, let’s tell more than the punch line.  We need the whole song, all the verses and the choruses to serve us as our own story unfolds because, trust me, life is hard, but God is good.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

January Bones

How I love the starkness of January!  I love that everything is shucked down to the bare bone essentials.  Oh, I love the lushness of June, too—the trees lavishly clothed in leaves, the outrageously vibrant greens of the grasses, the surprising flashes of color from flowers and birds, the blue, blue of the summer sky.

 But January tells the truth.  It confesses the framework that holds everything together--the skeletons of the giant maples and oaks, cottonwoods and sycamores, black against the pale gray sky, the brave sticks of bushes and vines that in summer inched their way sunward through the thicket of obstructions while holding up the weight of foliage and fruit.

 January exposes the crimes of men who under the guise of “tree trimming,” assault and rape the pride and grandeur of hardwoods, slashing the branches off like a privet hedge, wounding and forcing the proud oaks and maples to form knuckles of scar-tissue, making them vulnerable to disease and insects, and, eventually, making the tree send out twig shoots as if they were saplings.

 Nature does no such assassinating.  Even an ice storm picks and chooses, pulling down branches grown too heavy or eliminating limbs hollowed by disease. But January also lays bare the beauty of trees that have survived storms and injury to spread their giant arms over fields and meadows to shelter wild life, shade cattle herds, and cool homesteads.

 January reminds me to be thankful for the framework that holds up our lives as well—thankful for the laws that protects our freedoms, the social systems, like hospitals, schools, government agencies, and churches, that hold the communities of breathing peoples together, giving society shape, structure, and strength.

 The starkness of January reminds me to be thankful for the gracious mercies of God and for hope and love and faith that hold us together when we forget to be thankful.  And in the chill of winter when the sky is black and dotted with constellations, I am reminded to be grateful for the Greater Law, the very breath of God that holds together our fragile universe and those beyond, galaxies unending.

Thank you, God, for January, that reveals that you are the ultimate framework that
holds all things together.  Without you, we are just leaves and thistle down, fragile
grasses and chicken feathers the wind blows away.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

The Gift of Memories

Bill and I got for Christmas one of the best gifts ever from our kids, their spouses, and grandkids!  It seems it was their solution to giving something meaningful to parents who are in the “riddin’ out” phase of our lives, as Bill’s Aunt Lillie used to say. We hear it was Amy who came up with the idea, but eventually all three of them, their spouses, and all of the grandkids (ages 9-26) eagerly signed on.

 What we received when we got together at Benjy’s and Melody’s house for our big Christmas dinner was a huge glass jar filled with folded slips of paper.  They all seemed to hold their breath while Suzanne explained that this was our main gift. Each person—all 13 of them—had been given color designed paper on which to write their best memories growing up with Bill and me on our homeplace.

 What a joyful adventure we have been on ever since!  Each morning while we are having coffee in our old farm kitchen, Bill and I take out a handful of slips of paper and take turns reading the “memories” aloud.  Then we sort them into piles from each person.  We have laughed.  We have cried.  We have giggled at each experience remembered by each of these thirteen very different personalities.

 Almost every day since Christmas, we have texted or called various contributors to say how much their memory of life on this hillside has meant to us.  We can’t wait to eventually reread each stack of memories from each separate person.  They are such unique personalities that each collection of memories will be better than a personality profile or DNA test.

 The beauty of this very special gift is the assurance that all those years of trying to make memorable their experiences in this house we built 54 years ago, actually have become treasured memories to them.  Little do they know that we could fill another jar with our memories of and with each of them!

 When we watch the snow fall and stack high on the iron framework of the slide and swing set, when we see how tall the maples, oaks, and pines have grown that we planted when Benjy was six, when I pick daffodils Mia and Liam helped me plant, or hang the child-sized hammock we got for Madeleine, our hearts are flooded with the moments God has allowed us to have here as a family.

 We are ambushed by memories from behind every hedge, from the “fishin’ rock” by the creek, and in the English garden.  They will never know the joy and richness each of them has brought to our lives.  And best of all, now we know they remember, too!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Dreaming The Best Dreams

The Bible is full of dreams and dreamers.  According to this reliable source, dreams may turn out to be the roadmap for our lives, the warnings that keep us from tragic blunders, and the aspirations so lofty that we spend the rest of our lives trying to live up to them.

Dreams may usher us into heaven or leave us with a limp that will always remind us that it’s worth wrestling with angels to find our true identity in God.

One thing is sure: as the wise man said, “Without a vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)  There must be a dream.  There must be a hope.

I love the idea that God has a dream for us.  We are a “promise” He has made to himself and to the world.  Brian McLaren suggests in his book The Secret Message of Jesus that we might even paraphrase the line from the prayer Jesus taught us to pray that says “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” this way: “May all your dreams for your creation come true.”  If we pray this, of course, it means that we must “trust God and God’s dreams enough to realign our dreams with God’s, to dream our little dreams within God’s big dream.”

As we live this year out, may we dare to “Dream On”, and may those dreams be lived inside the eternal dream of God, a dream so big that “we will never see the end of it or fully understand it” until we are at last “filled up with God himself. “ (Ephesians 3:19b)

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Give It Away

In the U.K. December 26th is Boxing Day.  The tradition started when servants who worked hard during the labor-intensive Christmas holidays, were given time off the day after Christmas; gifts of needed clothing, food, and extra money were given them by their masters. But in the U.K. today, this day has become the day to box up things families have accumulated or outgrown and give them to charities that serve the needy.

 But not just on Dec. 26, but as a way of life, maybe “Give It Away” should be more than a catchy song title, but a revolutionary way of living that goes against the grain of almost everything we see or read or hear in the culture around us.  We hear much about accumulating as much as possible, protecting and securing what we accumulate, and making sure that when we die, we keep our accumulations from being taxed, siphoned, stolen or diminished any more than is absolutely necessary and legal.

But Jesus taught a different way and invited those who want to be truly happy to totally tip the culture up-side down.  If we spend our lives always striving to win, He taught, we will ultimately lose.  But if we spend our lives giving ourselves away, we won’t be able to even hold all the winnings.  He said the gentle-spirited folks would end up with the whole earth, and that the comforts of life will fall to those who know how to mourn.

Now, it seems, psychologists and counselors are catching up to what Jesus said.  Ingrown living tends to contribute to depression, fear, and anxiety, while caring about others, getting involved in great causes, and investing energy to be the answer to the problems we see and sense is an incredibly enriching, joyful, and rewarding way to go – and an effective cure for sadness, depression, and feeling overwhelmed.

So, after this season of gift-giving how shall we live?  We can “live large” or stay small.  One thing is promised: we can never outgive the Giver of all good things.  Go ahead.  Just try!

If you want more happy than your heart can hold ,
If you want to stand taller – if the truth were told –
Take whatever you have and give it away!
If you want more happy and a lot more fun
And deep satisfaction when the day is done –
Throw your heart wide open and GIVE IT AWAY!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Touch Christmas

What a wild circus of textures Christmas is!  Come, let’s “feel our way” around the glories of this tactile celebration!

First feel the soft skin of a baby, who is God-made-most-touchable, most-vulnerable for us who “were afar off.”

Touch a baby; tenderly embrace a child to honor Him who was Love in a baby blanket…. in our arms.

Touch the rough texture of a well-worn wooden manger and the prickly straw that fills it.

Touch the moist noses of the cows and horses that stand, curious, around.  Feel the night air.

Then touch the celebration that has gradually come to surround this “most touchable” happening.  Feel the needles of the evergreen tree and boughs that announce that because of Jesus we shall always live!

Touch the snow that covers the ground and remember the “covering” – the atonement – that makes us “whiter than snow” in the eyes of God.

Touch the red berries on the branches we gather and put in all sorts of containers, remembering that this child would one day shed his blood that its life-giving qualities could fill us all no matter the shape, size, or condition of our containers.

Touch the lights as they burn warm, string them everywhere.  Light the streets and the houses, the cathedrals and the back streets with them, for the chill of death has been replaced by warmth and light.

Touch your children, your neighbors; the community with reconciliation.  Take someone a warm cake; extend a warm handshake; offer the thawing warmth of forgiveness.

Hold and ring the gold and silver bells.  Ring out the news that the Creator of the galaxies has touched us.  Yes, ring the bells and pass them on!  Touch someone else.  We are not alone!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Christmas in the Country

I believe there is a homing device in every human heart.  Even if we’ve never had a good home to go home to, there is an innate yearning for one where we are cherished and understood.  In our yearning, we see this as a place of peace where there is no pretense and where we are accepted for who we truly are – not for what we’ve accomplished or how we look.

And there is no time like Christmas for pulling us back to such a place.  Usually, how much we love and look forward to Christmas as a holiday is in direct proportion to how close to this ideal home really is.  Sadly, for many the reality of the holiday is one of the most painful experiences of the year.

Perhaps the reason we cling to the ideal at Christmas more than any other time is that this celebration is in honor of the One who came to bring true peace, joy, love, and a place to belong.  And the truth is that no family home and no human relationship can ever totally give us what we need.  Every parent fails sometimes.  Even love falls short.  Every child disappoints and turns prodigal at one time or another.  No sibling is totally supportive or faithful to protect the secrets with which he or she has been entrusted.       

Even so, home is the nearest thing we have to a metaphor for belonging.  The imperfection of us all keeps us yearning for another place – that place that will truly be Home. 

Thankfully, our memories tend to preserve the good and forgive the flawed.  I’m sure my Grandma’s house in the country was not as good as I remember it.  The “front room,” as she called it was not as big, the kitchen not as warm, the snows not as white or as deep as I remember trudging through to get to that farmhouse with the fieldstone porch.

As I recall, she and grandpa opened the big double doors to that front room only for special occasions.  The piano was in there, and she would always have the old itinerate piano tuner come just before Christmas so we could sing carols around that piano when we all crowded in.

The Christmas tree she put in that room was not a pine, but a cedar tree Pa would cut fresh from the woods behind the barn.  The ornaments were of World War II vintage and before – scenes painted on clear glass balls – and there were strips of foil we called ice sickles, big lights of every color and real candy canes.  Grandma would always make fresh popcorn balls with sorghum molasses, wrap them in a new thing called Saran Wrap® and hang them on the tree for us kids to “snitch” when no one was looking.

Grandma baked for days before Christmas: pies of apples and cherries from their orchard, fudge, taffy, and “divinity” layered in boxes between buttered sheets of waxed paper, cinnamon rolls for breakfast and homemade bread.  These were all prepared before the real cooking started.

To this day I find myself running my fingers over mixing bowls in antique shops that have brown and gold sheaves of wheat on them or picking up green Fire King baking dishes and pie pans longing to take them home to see if they would somehow turn things I make into the magical tastes of my childhood for my grandkids to remember.

Country life always seemed to separate the boys and the men from the women and girls.  The guys would “mosey” out to the barn to talk to Pa while he milked the two cows they always kept to supply them with milk and butter.  The boys would help him throw down hay for the night, feed the cats and gather the eggs from the henhouse.  On summer mornings gathering eggs was Grandma’s job, but in the winter when she was less sure of her footing, Pa brought in the eggs.

Meanwhile, the women would take up stations in the kitchen peeling potatoes, opening jars of green beans Grandma had canned the summer before and cutting up squash, onions, brussel sprouts, and turnips.  The girls would set the table in the living room, then work on the puzzle that became a family project all through the days of Christmas. 

I don’t remember much about the gifts.  They were simple, practical and usually handmade.  I do remember hugs and thank you’s.  I remember Grandma loving whatever I gave her as if she’d been wanting it all her life.  I have a picture of someone in our family holding up a string of pearls – probably ordered from the Sears catalog (“the wish book,” we called it) – and looking as if this necklace was as precious and rare as diamonds.

There was never any doubt why we had Christmas.  Since Grandma had lost most of her eyesight, my daddy read the Christmas story from Luke while the children sat on someone’s lap or on the floor leaning back on some seated grownup’s knees.  We all knew the words by heart, but familiar as they were, they always brought tears to our eyes – like we were hearing this wonderful story for the first time.

Grandma would pray, and when she prayed, the angels quit fidgeting around, swishing their wings and got still.  We knew that sooner or later every one of our names would be specifically mentioned; Grandma would thank the Lord for the gift of each one of us and ask His tender care and guidance as we grew and changed and became what He intended for us to be.

After prayer and presents, the music would begin.  Grandma played both the piano and the guitar; Pa played the “fiddle” and the “mouth harp.”  We all knew sooner or later he’d grab Grandma by the arm and try to make her dance around the room; she’d say, “Oh, Pop, quit!”  And we’d all laugh.

The children would ask for their favorite of the songs that Grandma had always sung to them:  “Redwing,” “Mockingbird Hill,” or “Listen to the Mockingbird.”  It never seemed strange that all our favorite songs were about birds. 

We also sang Grandma’s favorites: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “I Must Tell Jesus,” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

It seems to me now, looking back, that I was the most adored of children, and I know all the grandchildren would say they thought they were.  Truth is we all were.

As night fell and the kerosene lamps were lit, it seems to me that the love in that house could be touched – like soft velvet or the smooth fur of a kitten.  The snow could pile to the eaves for all we cared.  We were home, we were fed and we were loved.

When Bill and I started thinking about recording a video for Christmas with the Homecoming Friends that would come to be called Christmas in the Country, it was the images of Christmas at Grandma’s house that came to mind.  To that, I added the memories of my own childhood home and the rituals that have been now handed down first to Bill and me then to our children, and now to their children.

Someday there will be a new celebration in a new Country. There will be no gap between the ideal and the reality; the relationships around that circle will be perfect and totally beautiful. There will be songs of thanksgiving and praise for Christmas completed, for the One who brought heaven to earth will have then brought earth to heaven, and we will all finally be home.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Thank God For Grandparents

Amy with her grandma Lela

Thank God for grandparents everywhere who love with perspective, and to grandchildren everywhere who so need such love.

Sometimes I think that love – to be it’s sweetest – must ripen on the family tree one generation beyond the parent stage.  Oh, parental love is tough – like a fruit picked partially green; it will take a lot of jostling.  But to be infused with the sweet juices of compassion, humor, and understanding, love needs a little ripening.

Someone has said the generation gap is only between succeeding generations.  Defenses seem to wane after that.  When you can’t tell your parents, you can always tell grandma.  If daddy can’t fix it, grandpa can.  And don’t we all deserve to have at least one person in our lives who thinks we’re the prettiest, the smartest, the cleverest, and the least flawed person on the face of the earth?

With environmentalist Lee in Colorado

Simon with is papaw Bill at Culver Academy

Let others warn, discourage, point out the pitfalls.  Grandparents are for encouraging, embracing, accepting and risking the moon.

Of course, grandparenting has changed.  Granny, these days, is seldom knitting in her rocker.  She is more likely to be racing her grandchildren down the street on her motor scooter or teaching them in-line skating.  Grandads are more likely showing their grandkids to speed-shift the convertible than to plow a straight furrow.  But grandparents still think you can, believe in the impossible, and take the time.  They may even, if you’re good, let you stay up late watching Gaither Homecoming videos!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Thanksgiving -- A Hymn Of Praise

You are probably in the middle of plans either to “go home” or to prepare for family and friends who are “coming home.”  The foods you are preparing have a history with your family and just thinking about them brings back waves of memories: grandma’s pumpkin pies, Aunt Lillie’s banana pudding, mother’s homemade yeast rolls.   Even the recipes cards are smudged with fingerprints made by mamma’s butter-covered hand or a drop or two of turkey broth someone smeared on the page as they stirred in the now familiar ingredients.

The tables will be set soon with linens someone gave you, and the arrangement of the house will likely be the way it was last year that seemed to work best for a crowd.  You may go out and cut the flowers for the tables from the rosebush Aunt Evelyn started for you or the hydrangea your daughters sent to celebrate your twenty-fifth anniversary.  And the autumn or Christmas candles will be set in the crystal candle holders that came from dad’s side of the family.

If you stop to consider, you will, like our family, find yourself being so grateful for the long line of memory-makers that have made life rich and beautiful, who taught by being thoughtful, caring, generous and selfless what is truly important in life.

There may be other memories, too, those memories that made you vow to “never say that to a child” or “always notice when someone is lonely.”  Negative memories shape us, too.  We can choose to take a different course, to forgive instead of holding grudges, to embrace instead of pushing away.

Rituals are those habits we make in celebrating what is good and sacred and important.  They are sometimes the motions we go through – the framework of our lives that holds us together until the more worthy emotions return after love has been betrayed or promises broken.  Rituals and heirlooms help us remember our better selves, our purer natures, our more admirable moments.  They call us home to our ideals and reestablish our center of being.

In the end Jesus is the only ideal against which all else can safely be measured.  He is the center of our joy.  He is the ground of our gratitude.  He is the focus of our family celebrations.  He is the Source of all that does not disappoint.

May this be the year where like a magnet draws metal, your family and ours will be drawn to the centering force, the only inexhaustible Source for all we expect from holiday relationships: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long suffering, forgiveness, tenderness…and great memories!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

What Good Are Love Songs?

Ezekiel must have been an amazing speaker.  (He must have been the Tony Campolo of his day!)  He warned, he told stories, he reminded people in colorful terms of their history with God.  He called out wicked leaders and exposed corruption in high places.  He predicted the very collapse of the country God had chosen for them and with which he had blessed them.

 He drew great crowds!  The people said, “You’ve got to go hear Ezekiel!  He is such a passionate communicator!  He’s incredible to watch and hear.”  But when all was said and sung, they went home entertained and stimulated, but nothing really changed.

 Ezekiel fell on his face before God for some answers, and God spoke to him giving him even more things to say to the people, things so dire that it tore Ezekiel’s heart out to have to preach them.  Then God said this to Ezekiel: 

 As for you, son of man, your countrymen are talking together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, saying to each other, ‘Come, and hear the message that has come from the Lord.’  My people come to you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice.  With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words, but do not put them into practice. When all this comes true—and it surely will—then they will know that a prophet has been among them. (Ezekiel 33:30-33 NIV)

What God wants is for his creation to not only listen but turn. He woos; he gives a land flowing with milk and honey.  He longs for His children to bask in His love, feast from his amazing supply, love each other, and dwell in His sweet peace.  He longs for us to reflect and spill out mercy to others, joy in His presence, and rest from our frantic and empty pursuit of pseudo-living.  He promises that if we follow the “decrees that give life,” we will surely live.

There is still time to turn.  There is still time to do more than enjoy the music and the poetry. There’s time to internalize the message and let the music draw us into the dance God intended life to be. 

Once there were prophets, but we wouldn’t hear them.
Once there were wonders; we wouldn’t believe.
Fire and manna once rained down from heaven;
Great mighty winds once parted the seas.

When we were blindest, God sent his vision;
When we were deaf, He spoke and we heard.
The Light of the World walked through our darkness—
Jehovah, Himself, the Incarnate Word.

But what good are love songs, if they don’t make us lovers?
Why be an eagle that won’t spread its wings?
Why write our hearts out?  We’re not moved by the passion,
And if love songs don’t change us, then why do we sing?          

Lyric:  Gloria Gaither ©Hanna Street Music (BMI)
Music: Woody Wright Wouldhewrite Music(ASCAP)

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Wisdom From Ann

Our Grandson celebrating his birthday with his friend Ethan and Ann Smith

My friend Ann Smith is well into her tenth decade of life.  She is smart, wise, witty, and perceptive. She is a global thinker and international traveler.  She spends a disproportionate amount of her time with college students, young married couples, and mid-life persons in ministry.  And she has been a close friend and mentor to Bill and me for over fifty years.

 At the beginning of each decade, Ann asks God to show her what He wants to grow in her.  She asks God to give her a clear insight into her deficiencies and a vision of what He is calling her to become in this decade of her life.  Though Ann considers these revelations to be personal, many have turned out to be life-changers for us as well.  Here are a few:

• There is a big difference between expectations and expectancy.  Work on getting up every morning with expectancy and not expectations—of yourself, events, and other people.  With expectations you will always be disappointed.  With expectancy you will see each day as a great adventure and every good thing as a bonus.

• When meeting any human being, ask God to reveal what He had in mind when He made them, then to give the grace to treat them as if that had already been accomplished.

•  Ann and her husband Nathan were long-term missionaries to Japan. On her last three-week trip to Japan to say farewell to the country and people she loves so deeply, she sat alone on a hillside, looking at the mountain in front of her and the flowing river below.  God seemed to be saying: “Ann, I am calling you to be as solid and unshakable as a mountain and as flowing and adaptable as a river.  There have been times in your life when you have been as solid and firm as a mountain, but not as flowing and adaptable as a river.  And at times you have been as flowing and adaptable as a river, but not as grounded and solid as a mountain.  My child, I want you to be both.  Find the balance.”

 How wise are all of these insights!  In these precarious times, God is calling us all to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”  He wants the trademark of our days to be joyful with childlike expectancy, and like Moses when he and the Israelites were facing the formidable Red Sea, be able to say, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

 When we get edgy with others who don’t see things exactly as we do, even people who are contentious and difficult or downright wicked, could we pray silently that God would give us the vision of what He had in mind for them when He made them and give us whatever internal resources we need to be instruments of change for an eternal outcome?

 And dare we strive to be grounded in the things that are deep and unchangeable truths, yet be gentle, flowing, refreshing, and adaptable to the situations and personalities He brings into our lives?  May we “dwell together in love” and dare to trust that we dispel the darkness, not with a sword, but with the light?

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Learning To Lose

Grief comes in many forms.  There is the deep grief from the loss of someone dear—a mother, a father, a sibling, an influential grandparent.  Each of these are totally different losses, and the grieving is complicated by the kind of relationship we had with each when they were alive.  Was the relationship deep and true?  Was it broken by betrayal, anger, or jealousy?  Is there regret on our part that we didn’t try harder, say more, make that trip, write that letter, make that call?

 There is the grief of losing a spouse, a person who has literally and spiritually been the other half of us, a grief that seems to split us right down the middle.  If the grief is a death, especially of a long-term marriage partner, we lose the habits we’ve formed together, the memories we’ve made, the places to which we have travelled or planned to visit together. We lose the “knowing you’ll be there” when we wake up in the morning, the shared routine of each day.

 Some griefs are for the living: friendships lost, loves betrayed, trust destroyed.  Maybe these are the hardest.  Such losses never really resolve but are like a splinter buried deep in tender flesh; scar tissue may form, but the splinter is always there to fester anew when life brings new irritation.

 The bitterest grief must be the death of a child, no matter the age of the child.  The things only a mother knows, the dreams only a father can harbor—all these things (as Luke says of Mary), parents just keep and ponder them in their hearts forever.  A baby is a unique person from the beginning, developing like a seedling every day into the quirky specialness of a personality dictated by generations of accumulated DNA.  Added to that is the environment those who love (or neglect or abuse) these children create for them to live and breathe in, shaping or distorting the person God intended them to be.  So the loss of a child is a deep enduring grief.  And as with most griefs comes with the question, “What if…?”  Even the best of parents, lovers, spouses, friends, care-givers, mentors ask themselves, “Could I have done more, made other choices, taken advantage of other opportunities?”

 Regret and remorse are only helpful to us if we use them to change this day.  Loss is of a part of this temporal life, but, unfortunately, we, especially in America, don’t seem to have a very good theology for loss. We seem to be all about winning.  We are not very intentional in our circles of spiritual formation about asking, What do I have left?  What opportunities do I have today?  What would I do, where would I go, what would I say if I knew the person coming in the door, the friend whose text I just received, the old classmate I bumped into at the grocery this morning, the child I just tucked into bed, the sweet man whose body I just reached for before I went to sleep—what if that person was living for the last time today? What should I let go of?  What should I treasure and notice?  How should I break the silence? What priceless gift am I taking for granted?

Lord, whether I’m losing my shape, my hair, my status, my fortune, my influence, or someone dear to me, help me to choose wisely what I’m hanging on to and what I need to let go of.  Help me to turn my grief into gratitude, my loss into love, and my regrets into restoration. Let me reach for and embrace the joy you promised in the morning.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Enjoying The Trip

I can’t remember when I didn’t love to “go someplace.”  My childhood memories could be chronicled in cars and the trips my family took in them.  I loved, for example, the “Model T” kind of car my grandparents had with running boards and prickly hair-velvet upholstery, and I looked forward to the occasional days they would pick me up from school when my parents were away and take me to Tekonsha for ice cream or out to their farm to spend the night.

1949 Hudson Hornet

            When I was seven my daddy bought a Hudson Hornet 4-door Sedan. It was big and smooth and low.  It had a heating system that actually heated in the winter and even defrosted the windows.  There was room up in the back window (in the space behind the back seat) for a small child to curl up and go to sleep. Those were the days before seat belts.  I remember the magic of night trips when I would lie in the window and watch the street lights go by as we passed through the Michigan towns, and the moon smiling down on me as we traveled through the countryside.

            I remember my first flight on an airplane (all alone to a speech contest in Washington, D.C.) and the trips our family took to camp meeting and fishing vacations.

From the “Bread Truck” to a motor home.

            The first traveling Bill and I did together was in a station wagon.  Our small sound system and boxes of LP albums were in the back and sometimes extra boxes were even under our feet or on our laps.  In time, The Gaither Trio graduated to a white panel truck that we called the “Bread Truck”, then to a Dodge motor home, and eventually to a used “Eagle” bus.

            I always knew that “home” was a lot bigger concept than a house in one town on one street.  Being a P.K. (preacher’s kid) the temporary places we called “the parsonage” were only “home” because our family lived and loved in those houses.  By the time Bill and I had our babies, we were quite certain that “home” was portable – it was wherever we could be together, and when we weren’t together, it was never really “home”, even if one or some of us were at our house in Indiana.

            We learned to  create “home” in motel rooms and dressing rooms and tents and campsites.  We learned to play games, notice things, and savor experiences along the way--together! We found that no matter where we were in the country or in life, it’s all about enjoying the trip…and each other on the way.

            It is a good thing, I think, to know that home is portable, that home is a condition of the soul.  In the meantime, we are allowed places to rest our souls for a while here, and wherever our souls are at rest, it is home. 

            I have a feeling that when we get restless on this journey we call life, if we listen, we just might hear our Father say:  “Hang on, child.  We’re not there yet!”  I can only imagine, because of the wonderful places we have been allowed to “rest our souls” together here, what our Father has up his sleeve when we get where we can settle in forever.  It will be enough just to take it all in and be together with no need to pull up stakes and move.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Victory Lap Of Summer

The end of summer is the victory season!  It is the wonderful “big win" over the long 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.

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 (They are green!) 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, sound, and touch—as highways into the city-center of the soul and mind.  The more “roads” you can use, the greater the impact, so use as many textures, colors and shapes, fragrances, tastes, and sounds as you can to invite your guests into the soul of your home.

Have the coffee on, the music playing, the candles lit, the fountain flowing, the apples polished.  Everything must say, “Welcome home!  Now you can breathe!”

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

The Ultimate Navigation Device

I just signed up for one of those all-intelligent GPS apps on my cell phone because Bill and I are on a road trip, and this thing promised everything, including the moon!  I followed its yellow brick road all the way through the inquisition this faceless entity in silicone valley dreamed up, demanding codes and credit card numbers and my grandmother’s maiden name.  In much less time than all this took, I received an email telling me that I had, indeed, been charged for the app.

The only problem was in setting it up.  I chose every option on every instruction and could find no place to re-set “home.”  Someone at software Oz-land had set “home” to be in Santa Cruz, California.  No matter what destination I set, the directions were always from a home base that was never mine.   As a result, all the directions the lady genie-in-a-jug gave with that I-know-more-than-you-do certainty in her voice were about 1300 miles off.   Oh, the directions claimed to be headed for our destination in the wondrous lake country of Michigan, but they were starting from a place that was never home and would take me back to a place that never would be home.

I want a homing device that will take me home.  I want one that when I am lost or on the wrong road will keep saying, “Re-calibrating.  Re-calibrating.”   And even when I think I know what I’m doing and where I’m going and oh, so confident about taking a shortcut, I want a device that will insistently not let me off the hook until I get back on course and heading home.

A good navigational app is accurate because the chip implanted in it is constantly receiving clear signals from a satellite that can pinpoint where the person holding it is anywhere on the planet.  It tells me exactly where I am on the map.

There are a lot of metaphors for the written Word of God:  a light for my path, a roadmap, a sword to fend off enemies, a guide on the trail of life.  But the greatest thing about the written Word of God is that it is the signal received from the Logos, the Word that is the Source of all things. 

If I “hide the Word in my heart”, if I “eat the Word”, if I internalize it and make it a part of my very being, I am carrying always the “chip” tuned to the signal from above and beyond that can trace my journey, and always, no matter how far I wander, bring me safely home—home to myself, home to the True North, home to the First Cause of all things—home to my God.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

Pain: What Good Does It Do?

When we stand before any audience anywhere, there is one thing at least that unites us: we are all “going through stuff,” and most of what we are going through is not pleasant.  No, it is mostly painful, whether that pain is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual.  Many times, it is all four, at least to some degree.  Illnesses, for example, affect our relationships, our mental well-being, and our emotional state.  These make us question God or lead us to cling to Him more, seeking His wisdom, trusting Him not to waste this experience but to somehow use it for some good and lasting purpose in our own lives or those of someone else.

Some of those to whom we sing have been taught harmful and untrue things about God and pain: that their loved ones were allowed to die or they themselves experience great loss or illness in order to punish them for some past sin, or that emotional agony was sent by God because they were not one of the “chosen few.”

So, not only are we called to sing the truth about the nature of God as revealed in Christ himself, but to dispel some tragic fears and doubts instilled in hearts long ago by ignorance, superstitions, or well-meaning error.  Fortunately, we can trust the Holy Spirit, by His promised presence, to take the inspired songs and the truths in them and speak to hearts on both sides of the footlight correcting what is wrong, illuminating what is true, and revealing purposes never before recognized.

We all know this: that we were promised a great Comforter, and He has come to use every pain, failure, setback and loss for our ultimate and eternal good – both here and in the life to come.  He who came to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair”       (Is. 61:1a – 3a) – He has come!

The pain we feel is not for nothing.  The tears we shed are not wasted.  The losses we know will be redeemed and our mourning turned to laughter.

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below: