Beggars in Service of a Dour God

If God was not as loving and wonderful as He is, I would probably still try to please Him, because it is my nature to try and please. A beggar at heart, I would approach even a dour God as my only hope and serve Him with all of my heart.

However, He is not a dour God. He loves, He favors, he also judges and chastens. I don't know why God is so good to me, but I know that knowing who He is changes the way I respond to Him. I do not have to fear. I am lifted beyond childish attempts to curry favor to experience the breadth of a personality and a goodness I cannot comprehend but will never cease to amaze me.

The Emptiest Days

I'm looking for the well that won't run dry
The rest the weary soul cannot deny
When you wrap your arms around me,
I can walk away or face the emptiest days.

When I first heard this song in Derek Webb's soulful voice it seemed a little whiny to me, but something struck me about it. There was a grown-up honesty with which I longed to identify. There are empty days, and on one of them, when I couldn't think of another praise song, this one was in my memory. That's the power of a song to bring you to your maker and help you rest in His truth there.

I read these verses this morning, which I feel are a corrollary to "The Emptiest Days":

Thou hast put gladness in my heart,
More than when their grain and new wine abound.
In peace I will both lie down and sleep,
For Thou alone, O LORD, dost make me to dwell in safety.
Psalm 4:7-8

Selah

Second Verse

We sing the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner, which looks back to the creation of our nation. The second verse speaks of our sustenance, and since we rarely sing it, I wanted to present all of the lyrics here. I hope you'll agree that they speak for themselves, and I also hope you enjoy reading them.

And thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just;
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

- Francis Scott Key

Step by Step in the Power of His Love

It has become a feeling less foreboding and more comforting: the power of Christ's love.

It was foreboding because I began to recognize a pattern: He would affirm His love for me, spiritually, on days when I ended up making a big mistake. Once I saw a pattern, I began to fear the revelation of that power because it meant I'd make a mistake.

Lately, I've come to realize that I am going to make mistakes, and feel more grateful for His love. Because of His love, I can go on when I fail. Only because of His love can I go on in the ways He directs, because otherwise I would feel ruined. His love is what keeps me going on, and its power works through my selfish heart to love others. It can overpower my peevishness, my fatigue and my disinterest to create compassion where there was none.

Oh God, You are My God
And I will ever praise You!
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step you'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days.

Amen!

Unsteady

I am sure of some things
But I'm often wondering
The doubt can try me, but
In such times I cry, "Thank you, Savior."

For when I am uncertain
You relieve my burden
And give me grace that carries me back in

When I am unsteady
You are my rescue
I know you are faithful to what you begin

When my heart's unready
Spirit, you lift me
To the solid ground again.

Overheard Conversation

I hear your muted echoes
And I wish I understood
For all the things I think of
And all I wish I could
Lead to the conclusion
That I can understand
Imperfectly, an artist's heart
Through the artists' hands.

I think about your worldview
While images of your times
Flash like summer lightning
On the landscape of my mind.
Wandering like tumbleweeds
Impressions come and go -
The paintings in this gallery
People I want to know.

Pause

Six days shall you work, and on the seventh you shall rest.

Noon approaches this Saturday morning and the coffee is still warm. I have decided that on this day I am going to do no work at all - at least no housework or no job-work. There are some serious chores that need to be done around the house, and I could certainly find ways to spend time perfecting my craft, but as much as I care about those things, I know I need to be still right now and let the peace and joy of God cascade about me. As I lay in bed this morning thinking about how I could possibly spend a day not working at all, a bible verse occurred to me with a meaning I'd never considered before. Do not conform to the standard of the world, but renew your mind. That's one objective of this rest day - and there I go - being task-oriented even while at rest - but surely rest has its purposes. Even in a Psalm of praise there are selah's - moments when the music lingers and the worshippers wait. Moments that linger over coffee bring out the sweetness and sweep of life in a way that transcends the moment itself. I pause to be renewed in this wonder and awe.

Days of Elijah

Everybody gets into the catchy tune and exciting lyrics "Days of Elijah" when we sing it at church. But what do the words mean? There are two verses, and throughout both of them we claim that these are the days of Elijah, Moses, Ezekiel, David. In the chorus we sing:

Behold, He comes, riding on the clouds
Shining like the sun at the trumpet call
Lift your voice, it's the year of jubilee
And out of Zion's hill, salvation comes.

It's the coolest song I don't understand. I actually understand all of the stories, so it wouldn't help if you tried to explain them to me. I just don't understand the temporality of the song - what do we mean when we say these are the days of Elijah?

What I do understand is the hope in the song - that all of the stories are types of Christ's reign, and I think that's why people get so enthusiastic about it. I think our church could use a little more enthusiasm - even audacity - but I want to know what that song means.

Strong Tower

When I awoke this morning is was raining, and quickly it progressed to a downpour. I made my coffee and then sat down in the corner chair to lift my thoughts heavenward, but though my thoughts ranged far and wide, they could not get vertical. It began to trouble me, so as a remedy I opened my bible to where I’d left off in the Psalms, which was in the high 90’s. David wrote the first 70 or so, and then the others were written by guys like Asaph, the lead worshipper/choir director, and various other anonymous writers. I noticed how unlike David’s psalms these later ones were; how when David wrote he brought his personal experience to the table - difficult, painful, triumphant or embarrassing as it was, and then praised the Lord in the midst of it, or despite it, but he from an angle of his own experience. These Psalms I read this morning were more equivalent to a modern-day worship leader who desires for the people to worship the Lord because it is their duty and God’s right. Such leaders are, of course, right to feel that way, but I must say that David’s representation of his own human experience and the Lord’s presence throughout it moves me more than a general call to worship. After reading I got up, made my bagel, and went on the porch for a bit. It was still pouring, and it was freezing cold outside. I felt glad to be sheltered from the elements. Still trying to elevate my thoughts, I recalled Psalms that spoke of the Lord’s power in terms of extreme weather – floods, lightning, and mighty wind. Certainly God is as powerful as Oklahoma weather and more, and those thoughts were entirely true. What really captured my heart and my imagination, though, was the fact that God is my shelter – that He is a strong tower into which I can run and be unafraid when it’s figuratively storming outside, and when the world is just not a hospitable place to be. How tender of the Lord to use these torrents and frozen water to teach me about His tenderness and protection. It’s what I really what I wanted to hear this morning, and it satisfied my soul. I was surprised by how today’s great soul hunger was satisfied in an unexpected way this morning – this time through a storm and a shelter. I’m grateful that He chooses to speak to me at all, and that He never leaves me out in the cold for longer than it takes to realize that I need to find all of my security in Him.

Rich Mullins, "If I Stand"

The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance
I owe only to the giver of all good things.

In life the things of this world can capture our passions. A sunrise, a dancing fire, loyalties, music, relationships, and so on, are all such good things, but if our hope is invested in them, what happens on a cloudy day, or when the music stops? It is because of this question that I believe Rich Mullins wrote "If I Stand." I will just print the lyrics to the chorus, and let you look up the biblical references Rich included with the full lyrics in the album jacket.

If I stand, let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to you.
If I sing, let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home.

"Maybe There's a Loving God," by Sara Groves and Nate Sabin

I'm not a trekkie, but I remember one Star Trek quote, and it helps explain how good this song is. One crewman asks another, when encountering a new civilization, whether a sane person would appear insane in an insane world. "Maybe There's a Loving God" is written in first person from the point of view of a girl who "hears a rhythm call" from the universe and recognizes it as "the echo of a grand design." Scripture says creation proclaims God's invisible attributes, so when in the song the young girl's mother and therapist fret over her and try to straighten her out, the pathos of the song is that they may be persuading her away from truth in the name of reason.

It's the imagination and wonder of the speaker, of which Sara and Nate must be capable, that caught my attention. The girl "spends all night in the backyard / staring up at the stars and the sky," and thinks to herself,

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that's a selfish thought
Or maybe there's a loving God.

Of course the speaker would be right, if she could just be convinced of it. The adults in charge of her mental health

... have a chart and graph
of [her] despondency
They want to chart a path
For self-recovery

As a listener, it strikes me that if she came to a rational conclusion about the existence of God she would be more sane than all the self-recovery plans could make her. In fact, the professionals' help may interfere with her heart's journey back to its Maker. The feeling of the moment Groves and Sabin capture, of a young woman whose inductive reasoning about the universe has brought her to the verge of belief, is beautiful, sacred and fragile.

All of Sara Groves' songs are remarkable, but I found this one particularly original and thought-provoking. I'll conclude with a few last lines from the song.

Maybe I was made this way
To think and to reason and to question and to pray
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there's a loving God
And that may be a foolish thought
Or maybe there is a God

"Maybe There's a Loving God" is on Sara Groves' CD All Right Here, released by Sponge records in 2002

Jennifer Knapp, "Martyrs and Thieves"

There are a lot of songs that I enjoy for a long time before I understand what they mean. "Martyrs and Thieves" was one of those. It didn't quite make sense until I began to understand what it was to be weak, and then it came alive for me so much that I printed out the lyrics and affixed them to my desk for encouragement.

The way I interpret it, in the first verse Jennifer writes about how one's own hopes, enemies and admirers can make a person feel weak.

There's a place in the darkness that I used to cling to,
It presses harsh hope against time.
In the absence of martyrs there's a presence of thieves
Who only want to rob you blind
They steal away any sense of peace
Though I'm a king I'm a king on my knees
And I know they are wrong when they say I am strong as the darkness covers me.


But I think Jennifer's song moves on from these painful thoughts to the humble exultation of a person who has learned that when they are weak, they are strong. The chorus proceeds:

So turn on the light and reveal all the glory
I am not afraid
To bear all my weakness, knowing in meekness
I have a kingdom to gain.

As it progesses the lyrics get more poignant, candid and eloquent. I think many a mature Christian could say, like Jennifer does, "there are ghosts from the past who've owned more of my soul than I thought I had given away." We know, and God sees that we have been "great fools" who, like the prodigal son, have "squandered 'til pallid and thin." Because of this, I too "have never been much for the baring of soul in the presence of any man." In light of the pending judgement of men, Ms. Knapp asks a question to which she knows the answer.

Could it be that my worth should depend
By the crimson stained grace on a hand?

Then, coming to the conclusion that is was never her own strength that made her worthy, the artist prays,

And like a lamp on a hill, Lord I pray in your will
To reveal all of you that I can.

Psalm 119:54 says, "Thy statues are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." Songs like these are spiritual guideposts for me. They mark a path other believers have walked, and they help me understand what God is trying to teach me.

"Martyrs and Thieves" is on Jennifer Knapp's album Kansas, released by Gotee Records in 1998.

Hallelujah Chorus

This Christmas season I have had the privilege of enjoying several performances of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. Every time I hear the song, I get caught up in the elation and feel momentarily transported to another realm. People who have actually performed it tell me that at times they couldn't sing and just had to cry. I believe it!

God loves to hear beautiful music; in heaven He has surrounded himself with angels singing "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is and is to come." On earth He has commanded us to praise Him with all kinds of instruments: strings, winds, percussion, brass, and the human voice singing a new song. In heaven, I believe there will be choral music more beautiful than anything heard on earth, but on earth, when a gifted musician reaches the height of his God-given creative potential, I think it gives us a little glimpse of what heaven is going to be like.

I think the Hallelujah chorus is such a case. Even the lyrics were taken from heaven. In Revelation 19:6 John gives this account of the wedding feast of Christ: "Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, 'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.'" In chapter eleven, verse five John includes this description of his vision, "Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.'"

Amen! Merry Christmas.

Life Means So Much

Every time I hear Chris Rice's song "Life Means So Much," it makes me pause and think about how I'm spending my time.

The song begins with a drumbeat that echoes like a heartbeat, reminding me how closely my life on earth is bound to moments in time. Chris begins with the metaphor of life as a journal page: every day is a page, "every man holds a quill and ink/ And there's plenty of room for writing in all we do and believe and think." Each day we have equal opportunity to bless or curse; in the next stanza he emphasizes that equal opportunity is given to everyone - "we get twenty-four hours each." I'm reminded that time is indeed a resource that I can invest but cannot hoarde, and a gift that I appreciate by using it well.

As with many songs, the theme is expressed most clearly in the chorus:

Teach us to count the days,
Teach us to make the days count.
Lead us in better ways
Somehow our souls forgot.
Life means so much.

The chorus, I later realized, was a restatement of Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days,/ That we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom."

Thanks, Chris, for "filling the page with rhyming verse" to make me wiser.

The song "Life Means So Much" is on Rice's Smell the Color 9, released by Rocketown in 2000.

Hello.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about how meaningful some christian songs were, and yet how obscure that meaning could be. I said to my husband that someone ought to be explaining them. Then a friend of mine told me about his blog, I read it and enjoyed it, and thought I might enjoy blogging to explicate certain favorite songs of mine. So hallelujah, here I go!