“Take Care of Me!”

Last winter, a terrible walking pneumonia type illness swept the household. It knocked Will out for days, and then, despite our best efforts, Emily came down with the same bug.

She was miserable one night and came to find me in the kitchen. Throwing her arms up she suddenly cried, “Take care of me, Mama!” In one short, plaintive plea, all her longing for comfort came through.

As I swooped her up in my arms, I thought of how often the needs and misery in our lives force us to seek some kind of relief and solace. The cry, “take care of me” is never far from human lips. The healthiest among us can be felled by something so small it can only be seen by a microscope. Ugly surprises in life can bring down the most wealthy, successful and confident.

At those times the need for solace can drive people to find help and relief from a number of sources. Some try to find it in food, in busyness and constant motion, in the noise of news or entertainment media, booze, drugs, sex, shopping and a million other things. None of them will provide the real peace and comfort that is needed. Only God has what is needed at our deepest level. Everything else just medicates the symptoms.

At dark times in the life of a Christian, it can feel as though that cry, “Lord, take care of me!” is not answered. Long stretches of time where it seems as though there are no answers can damage the faith that your outstretched arms are even seen.

Then God does something so unexpected you are blown away. It may not be the specific answer you sought, it may not be anywhere close to the time frame that you had envisioned, but some other form of provision comes, some surprising way God reaches down to you and shows you, unmistakably, that He has seen your need and has provided.

We experienced that this week in our lives in a surprising, unexpected and frankly stunning provision by the Lord, a reminder that He does see the details of our lives and responds in love.

As a child of God, the only way to have needs met is to do what Emily did that night – to throw up our arms and cry out, “Lord, take care of me! I’m needy. I’m miserable. You alone have the answer!”

Emily’s simple trust that I would lift her up and care for her is the trust we need to have for our Savior. He alone has the answer to our needs in every area of our lives, and in tough times, we can find comfort that God is there, in the shadows, keeping watch over his own.

A Few Seconds of Joy in Music

Our out of town family was treated to a private “concert” this morning as Will played the pipe organ for those who haven’t had a chance to hear him this last year. Even Baby Peter got to hear the mighty Widor and some powerful hymns today. It was a truly happy time together.

Here are just a few seconds of what we heard today—a joyful sound!

One Generation Shall Praise Thy Name to Another ~ Psalm 145:4

Holding my little grandson, Peter Samuel, for the first time at the airport last night.

Blessings in the Quiver

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

~ Psalm 127

Thought for the Day

Christ is building His kingdom with earth’s broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth’s broken lives, and there is no bruised reed that Christ cannot take and restore to glorious blessedness and beauty. He can take the life crushed by pain or sorrow and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise. He can lift earth’s saddest failure up to heaven’s glory. –J. R. Miller

Early in the Morning, Our Song Shall Rise to Thee…

A pastor who reads the Hope Blog wrote to me recently and said that he and his wife sang through the hymn I had posted, “Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven” and that it had blessed them to worship the Lord through that hymn. That is what hymnody should do—draw our hearts upward in praise to the Lord. But our canon of hymnnody is increasingly gathering dust in churches today.

Who will sing these grand hymns in another 20 years? If we don’t teach them to our children, will all of these be forgotten? The hymn text in the video is in Dutch, but the tune is familiar. English words below.

 

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

Courage and Freedom

It is easy to give in to fear in life. To do something or not do something because of what others may think. People have lived their entire lives frozen into little caskets of their own making, afraid to be who God intended them to be.

Sometimes the fear comes from our families of origin where children fail to individuate into adults in a healthy way. Underneath everything, there is a lack of confidence in your own decision making, your own abilities, your own person as an individual, free and clear of anyone else.

It takes real courage to face that in yourself as an adult and, no matter what your age, work on becoming who God intended you to be.

If you did not grow up with healthy emotional boundaries in your family, it is never to late to begin to establish them, to tell those who live in perpetually sinful, prideful and controlling ways that you are moving on and tearing up the choreography sheet sketched out for you long ago.

If the old choreography sheet does not get torn up and a new one drafted according to God’s plan, you guarantee that the dysfunction is perpetuated for yet another generation in your own children.

Our children need to see godly courage in their parents–courage to stand in love against sinful behavior in relationships, courage to move on from those who are too blind and unwilling to receive the truth, and courage to love selflessly as Jesus taught us to love.

If they don’t learn this, they are prone to becoming either a perpetrator or an enabler of those who harm others. The twisted concept that enabling and justifying sin is Christian love has left a trail of victims in its wake. It’s up to us to model a godly way.

In the end, we are not responsible for the choices made by others. They cannot be allowed to define us, distract us or impede us from growing into the people God tells us in His Word that we need to be.

There’s a time to hang on and to try to bring about healthy change in relationships. And there’s a time to walk away in freedom, leaving those who choose darkness and self-deception to face the consequences of their choices. That takes strength of character and the knowledge that God has called us to peace.

If someone in your life has rejected you, scorned you, abused you emotionally or otherwise, and you know you have done all you can do to heal the situation, walk away in the firm confidence that God has something better for you than to be destroyed by it. Don’t chase after those God has removed from your life in the name of piety. Sometimes it’s just misdirected neediness. If that’s the case, we’re doomed to a cycle of trying to get needs met by someone who is incapable of doing so. It’s the emotional equivalent of banging your head into a cement wall.

We can stop the senseless head banging, gain a new perspective, stop attributing the status of “god” to a mere mortal and look to the true God to direct our steps and meet our needs. There is tremendous freedom there if we can only see it.

The words of this song are a beautiful description of how God can raise us up, as on eagle’s wings, when our trust is in Him.

Don’t Forget Your Blessings

I love this song. I know I posted it once before a couple of years ago. It is not the familiar “Count Your Blessings” many know, but this version, sung by Welsh singer, Aled Jones, is really lovely, and sums it all up. The lyrics are below the video.

 

Count your blessings one by one,
When dawn appears and day has just begun.
They will light your heart with happiness,
Make each hour bright and bring you gladness.

Count your blessings one by one,
When twilight falls and toil of day is done,
And in sweet dreams they’ll come again to you,
If you will count your blessings each day through.

Count your blessings while you may.
For we are here but little time to stay.
All around are friends, sincere and true.
Lovely things abound, just waiting for you.

Count your blessings while you may,
The big or small, whichever comes your way,
For then you’ll find this world a place of love
If you will count your blessings from above.

Open the Trenches

“Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hands,” (2 Kings 3:16-18).

To human thinking it was simply impossible, but nothing is hard for God. Without a sound or sign, from sources invisible and apparently impossible, the floods came stealing in all night long; and when the morning dawned, those ditches were flooded with the crystal waters, and reflecting the rays of the morning sun from the red hills of Edom. Our unbelief is always wanting some outward sign. The religion of many is largely sensational, and they are not satisfied of its genuineness without manifestations, etc.; but the greatest triumph of faith is to be still and know that He is God.

The great victory of faith is to stand before some impassable Red Sea, and hear the Master say, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” and “Go forward!” As we step out without any sign or sound–not a wave-splash–and wetting our very feet as we take the first step into its waters, still marching on we shall see the sea divide and the pathway open through the very midst of the waters.

If we have seen the miraculous workings of God in some marvelous case of healing or some extraordinary providential deliverance, I am sure the thing that has impressed us most has been the quietness with which it was all done, the absence of everything spectacular and sensational, and the utter sense of nothingness which came to us as we stood in the presence of this mighty God and felt how easy, it was for Him to do it all without the faintest effort on His part or the slightest help on ours.

It is not the part of faith to question, but to obey. The ditches were made, and the water came pouring in from some supernatural source. What a lesson for our faith!

Are you craving a spiritual blessing? Open the trenches, and God will fill them. And this, too, in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways.

Oh, for that faith that can act by faith and not by sight, and expect God to work although we see no wind or rain.

–A. B. Simpson

J.S. Bach and William Schlueter

A fugue is at least two (four in this fugue) melodic lines, each layering over the other ones and imitating them, all while revolving around a central theme. J.S. Bach wrote 48 fugues. The “Little Fugue in G Minor” is one of his best recognized.

Will’s hands and feet are all playing separate melodies that intertwine. If you miss one note, it turns into a train wreck as the notes no longer fit into the scheme, like a math problem where the columns don’t line up right! (My way of saying it!)

At the beginning of his compositions, Bach would write the initials J.J. for “Jesu Juva” (help me, Jesus.) At the end, he wrote the initials “S.D.G.” for Soli Deo Gloria” (to God alone be glory.) The brilliance of Bach’s genius has come down to us through the centuries and will live on as each new generation raises musicians to master his music. And, as Bach knew, God deserves all the glory as the complexity and beauty of the music could only have come from Him.

P.S. I wanted to add that so many times in the last year and a half since Will began organ, God has used his music to lift our hearts. The music is a constant reminder to me that God gives light in darkness, beauty for ashes, joy in the middle of sorrow. I remember one time last year when Will and Tom came home with a digital recording of them playing together for the first time. It was like a shaft of light in a very dark place. Through that glorious music, God reminded me that He was there, that He was the author of that beauty and that He would meet our needs. And He does so every day.