QUICK GOLD

 

When winter's grays and browns yield to the warmer days of spring, our landscape is quickly splashed with bright yellow, among the first vibrant hues of new vegetation. Without intending to insult lovers of tulips and daffodils, you have to admit that dandelions burst in happy profusion after their long winter's nap. I can remember when my then-toddler children went out to the lawn to pick “bouquets” of the lawn's dandelions for Mommy. Beauty to their little selves, to the world they're weeds. The other day I drove by one of our schools and noticed the lawn a mass of yellow, soon to be mowed and tossed away.

American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) noticed the same thing when he wrote of how “spring's first green is gold.” Fall has its gold, too, when the season turns the green leaves gold, russet, red and brown. But spring's gold is vibrant, alive. A yellow that's short-lived.

I confess to being guilty of making unlikely “connections,” and this time spring's abundant display of dandelions brought to mind a little old faith-song, “Brighten the corner where you are.” Probably my mother (born 1919) sang it, as did her her mother, and who knows how far back. Hymn histories credit the song to Ina Ogdon. (“Ina” is an Irish form of “Agnes,” which means “pure.”) Ogdon lived 1872-1964—just about the same interval as Robert Frost. She is credited with more than 3,000 hymns, anthems, cantatas, and miscellaneous verse. But she shirked publicity, saying God gave her the songs and without Him she could do nothing. No doubt, if you went to church or Sunday school as a child, you sang its chorus:

Brighten the corner where you are (2x)

Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;

Brighten the corner where you are.*

Probably like me, you've run across people who don't brighten the corner of our lives. They're touchy or prickly, like thistles. (Hopefully, none of us could be compared to the infamous “corpse flower.” It blooms once a decade with a putrid, rotting odor! See: Why Titan Arum, the Corpse Flower, is so Popular | Nature and Wildlife | Discovery )

I'd rather be a dandelion. Though short-lived, they're cheerful as our long, gray winter welcomes the change of seasons. And they remind me, as Ina Ogdon wrote, to brighten the corner where I am.

*Review all the verses and Mrs. Ogdon's biography here: Brighten the Corner Where You Are | Hymnary.org

SPARED TO SING

 A monthly feature on a hymn of the faith.

Since this is the weekend that many hurry to finish their income tax returns, it might be worth mentioning that one of history's most famous Gospel-song musicians, Ira Sankey, had ties to the Internal Revenue Service. But just briefly. President Abraham Lincoln had appointed his father, David Sankey, as “Collector of Internal Revenue.” The younger Sankey joined his father in government service after his own stint in the Union Army where a song saved his life.

The story was told in the Dec. 24 entry for Mrs. Charles Cowman's classic devotional compilation, Streams in the Desert, Vol, 2. That entry shared the story of a night in 1862 when Sankey, then a Union Army member, was on military watch duty. Unknown to him, out in the darkness, a Confederate soldier had aimed his musket right at Sankey, a sure target. Unaware of this danger, Sankey had looked to the sky—the heavens—and began singing the 1836 hymn, “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” in his rich baritone voice. The enemy put down his musket, thinking he'd let Sankey finish singing the hymn. But the hymn's words and music gripped the would-be killer:

We are Thine, do Thou befriend us,/ Be the guardian of our way.

The man never fired his weapon at Sankey. And he never forgot that moment.

As time went on, Sankey finished his commitment to military service. He married, worked briefly in government service (the early “IRS”), but soon came to the attention of evangelist Dwight Moody, who needed a song leader for his crusades. Moody challenged Sankey: “Come join me.”

From then on, Sankey built a reputation as a Gospel singer (accompanying himself on a little reed organ) through Moody's evangelistic campaigns throughout United States and two tours to Great Britain. In London, Queen Victoria and statesman William E. Gladstone heard Sankey sing. He also compiled a hymnal, “Sacred Songs and Solos,” that sold extremely well, and introduced the Christian public to emerging Gospel poets and songwriters, like the prolific Phillip Bliss and Fanny Crosby.

But here's the rest of the story of “Savior Like Shepherd Lead Us.” On Christmas Eve, 1875, he was traveling on a steamboat up the Delaware River. Passengers gathered on deck asked if he would sing. He intended to do a Christmas song, but instead obeyed an impulse to sing “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.” That hymn, the words by Dorothy Thulip and music by William Bradley, was long a favorite. It was also the song he had sung on his lonely Civil War guard watch thirteen years earlier.

Afterwards, a man with a rough, weather-beaten face came up to Sankey and asked if he'd ever served in the Union Army. Sankey said yes. The man probed further: “Can you remember if you were doing picket duty on a bright, moonlight night in 1862?”

To Sankey's surprised affirmation, the man revealed he almost killed him that night, but the song caused him to put down his weapon. Especially convicting were the lyrics, “We are Thine, do Thou befriend us, Be the guardian of our way.” Stricken by the hymn's message, the man asked Sankey to help him “find a cure for my sick soul.” That night, Sankey's former enemy became a Christ-follower.

As Sankey aged, the intense pace of crusade and singing ministry strained his voice and compromised his health. Moody and Sankey conducted their last campaign together in Kansas City, just a month before Moody's death the end of 1899. Sankey's own health suffered more after solo campaigns to Egypt, Palestine and Britain. He lost his sight to glaucoma, finally dying in 1908 just short of age 68. By one report, just before he slipped into unconsciousness, he was singing an 1891 hymn by his contemporary, blind hymnist Fanny Crosby:

Some day the silver chord will break/And I no more, as now, will sing;
But oh! The joy when I awake/Within the Palace of the King!

*Among the hymn texts (by others) for which Sankey wrote the tunes were: “Am I a Solider of the Cross,” “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” “God Will Take Care of You, “Under His Wings,” “There Were Ninety and Nine, “Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne,” “Hiding in Thee.”

Here's a rare recording of Sankey playing and singing: Bing Videos

OUCH!

 A dozen-plus roses—some of them forty-plus years old--fill a planting area next to my driveway. My youngest grandson has a naughty habit of taking the quickest route from Mom and Dad's car to the front door, which puts him at risk of lots of thorns grabbing his clothes. He just doesn't listen to his Nana's warning, “Go on the driveway pavement, NOT through the roses.” Well, he's six. What more can I say? Each spring I tend to each bush, carefully cutting away dead stalks and trying to achieve a “bowl” shape with the remaining healthy stalks. If I have done my job correctly, by May I will have a lovely bouquet to pick from the new branches.

But, oh, those thorns! I have a sensitivity to thorn pricks in my hands. If one gets through my thick leather gloves, I head to the kitchen to make a paste of water and MSG (used for meat tenderizing), which seems to help the allergic reaction. The other day when this happened, my thoughts randomly went back to my high school days and that troubled era when some of my classmates were shipped off to the Vietnam War, some never to return. My husband's family had a relative who joined the military and died shortly after landing in Vietnam.

We don't talk much about that conflict. Hopes of liberating Southeast Asia didn't work out. Their fighters' primitive assault strategies helped turn things in their favor. My roses, with their mean thorns, remind me of some of the “weapons” the enemy used: like camouflaged holes in the jungle trails which sent any who stepped on them into deep pits of lethal spikes, grenades, poisonous snakes, or scropions. If you're curious, just search “booby traps” on the internet. You'll learn more than you want to know.

Sadly, booby traps aren't limited to national warfare. They're all around us through social interactions with folks whose minds aren't working as the Lord intended. Instead of loving and affirmative, they're mean-spirited and bitter. Their words—spoken or written—are like booby traps, apt to trip you up and hurt you when you least expect it.

When I've been wounded in such a situation, I'm grateful for God's assurances that He is in control. There's nothing such people can do, as mean as they may get, to separate me from His love. In my young adulthood, when I was dealing with some negative people and situations, the Lord prompted me to memorize some scriptures about victory and perseverance. One was the end of Romans 8:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (vv. 35-37).

God's Word says it. I claim it. If I am in right relationship with the Savior, no traps of human deceit, lies, or unfounded accusations can separate me from God's love. The going may get rough at times. But He knows what's on the path ahead. Sometimes He'll warn me to stay away from emotional danger pits. Other times He shows me the safer detour. In this life, I won't escape thorny relationships or hurtful circumstances. But I remember that at the end, God will redeem my pain.

My favorite quote regarding this comes from George Matheson (1842-1905), a Scottish pastor who was blind and single all his life: “My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorns. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorns. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross: but I have never thought of my cross as itself a present glory. Teach me the glory of my cross; teach me the value of my thorn.”

CROSS-PURPOSES

Like many, I have a cross necklace

A monthly feature on a Christian hymn.

Sometimes, the histories of old, familiar hymns turn down detours we don't expect. That's the case with “In the Cross of Christ I Glory,” written in about 1825 by a brilliant Englishman named John Bowring. Ten years after he penned the words, halfway around the world, Macao (near Hong Kong) was hit by a typhoon. The winds and a fire destroyed the city's impressive St. Paul's Church, leaving a wall of sculptures and a cross. In 1849, Bowring would come to Macao on a British political appointment as its “consul.” That's when he would have seen the ruined church whose condition illustrated his earlier poem, which begins:

In the cross of Christ I glory,/Towering o'er the wrecks of time.

His poem was meant to echo Galatians 6:14: “Far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

But Bowring's life path prior to government service did not unfold as one might expect. As a young man he felt called to preach in the ministry of the Unitarian Church, whose theology conflicts with Christian denominations that emphasize the atoning death of Jesus Christ. His father encouraged him to pursue other life work, probably realizing his son's brilliance would take him far. By one biographical account, Bowring could speak fluently in twenty-two languages and converse in nearly a hundred more. A prolific author, he edited a magazine; eventually some 36 volumes of published works bore his name. He was a biographer, naturalist, financier, statesman and philanthropist. He also served in the House of Commons and was eventually knighted by Queen Victoria. He would die at age 80 in 1872.

Bowring's lyrics (more Gospel-oriented that his later beliefs) would have been lost to time without the inspiration of a frustrated organist and choirmaster at Central Baptist Church in Norwich, Connecticut. One rainy Lenten Sunday in 1851, only one choir member showed up to sing at the worship services. Profoundly disappointed by his choir's unfaithfulness, he turned off his organ after playing the prelude and left the church building, leaving the minister without music support for the rest of the service!

That afternoon, remorseful for so abruptly leaving the service, he recalled a hymn assigned to that day. It had a dull tune. He was inspired to compose another tune for it, naming it after the one choir member who showed up that morning: 24-year-old Mrs. Rathbun. That's why in hymnbooks today the tune is identified as “Rathbun.” Dying just five years later, she would not live to learn of its widespread use.

As for Bowring, his literary and government credentials are rarely remembered today. But on his tombstone are inscribed the words to “In the Cross of Christ I Glory.”

Vocalists and an artist sing and illustrate this classic hymn (link to click):

Bing Videos

 

"WELL"-DONE

Sometimes I have to push my chin back up to close my mouth over the dating-life excesses of our media-fueled, love-weary culture. I'm not talking only about the “bachelor” or “bachelorette” television episodes (which I never bothered to watch) which (assuming by their previews) were likely grounded heavily in sensuality. A few years before that, one television show featured a woman “choosing” to date one of three men hidden behind a barrier. All she had to go on were their voices and answers to some inane questions. When her choice was revealed, her reaction was...well, let the audience decide.

Maybe the problem was the media in charge. Not the Master.

One of the most faith-challenging romance stories of the Bible gives a more God-dependent perspective on man/woman match-ups. Flip to Genesis 24, about the unlikely “romance” of Abraham's old-age miracle offspring, Isaac. Abraham's wife Sarah had died. Isaac was an aging bachelor, with no wife in sight. Before Abraham died, he wanted to check that box for his son. Most important, he wanted Isaac's wife to come from his own family line—days and days of camel-travel away.

No internet. No smart phone. No easy way to check things out beforehand. And no, Isaac wouldn't go along. No way would Abraham risk losing his son to unknown wilderness travel and wife-shopping.

And so Abraham's old, devoted servant left. No jet airplanes in those days. No nice highways. Instead, camels plodding over wilderness and sand, both left feet forward and down. Both right feet forward and down. Over and over. About 3.5 miles an hour. A journey of some 300 miles to Mesopotamia where Abraham's kin originated. Even more tricky, Abraham wanted a woman from his clan of the many living back there.

You probably recall the rest of the story. After nine to ten days of weary travel, the entourage stopped at a well to water the animals. The servant put out one of those risky “fleece” prayers, asking for a miracle sign. (That's not typically how God works.) He asked for a lovely virgin to offer him and his camels water—no easy job for those humped H20 guzzlers. Out came a beauty queen who just happened to be single, from the right clan, and happy to help the weary travelers. Imagine her surprise when the servant honored her with jewelry and asked to meet her family!

Where am I going with this? To the servant's statement of amazement; “I being in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master's brethren” (Genesis 24:27 KJV). In our times, “in the way” implies something negative, like you're not needed or impeding a project. But here in King James grammar-era, “in the way” meant that as he was progressing on his way in need of a miracle, God showed up. The rest of the story involved some conversations with the young lady's family and her eagerness to get on her way to meet her future husband. Sight unseen!

This story of God-at-work may be interpreted by some as showing “prayer-answers-on-demand.” But God doesn't always work that way. His ways are higher than our ways. Our call is to be “in [or "on"] the way,” trusting God to lead us to answers or solutions, or even to closed doors when something is not right. Or maybe “not yet”--coming as slow as camels, right feet/left feet/repeat over endless sands, the destination in His timing.

WHEN GRATITUDE'S HARD...

My baby photo--probably one year old....
My name means "God is gracious."

One discipline my parents tried to instill in me was gratitude, my childhood lessons happening around birthdays and Christmas. Before too many days ticked away, I was to sit down and write a thank-you note that “gifted” the “gifter” with appreciation for their effort and thoughtfulness. In the long-range view, this was more than an etiquette thing, especially when the gift we opened was, well, disappointing to a young child. Maybe the gift was socks instead of a new toy. Or an ugly sweater instead of that “cool outfit” everybody else was wearing. Such “thank-you” notes were basic training for bigger things—like trusting God for life's unwelcome turns.

Friends who shared my grief in my husband's recent death helped me see “thanks” in a new way with their sympathy gift of a book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy* by Mark Vroegop, a pastor and conference speaker from Indianapolis. My husband's packed memorial service, the kind words, the hugs, the baskets of cards, the meals—all brought comfort. But they didn't address the ache in my heart that asked, Why him? Why now? What next?

Long ago I'd memorized Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” Grief—times of silence and stillness--tested me to the core. It also sent me deeper into scriptures, with this book as a helpful guide.

Vroegop wrote from his own deep pain of holding his just-born but lifeless nine-pound daughter. His and his wife's heartbreak in this inexplicable loss eventually led him to understanding Biblical “lament,” a different emotion from what we understand as “sorrow.” Lament, he said, “is how you live between a hard life and God's promises. It is how we learn to sing and worship when suffering comes our way” (p. 84).

How many years had I read and studied psalms without realizing the “sad ones” had messages for my own sorrows? Vroegop described these “lament psalms” as ways to “turn to God in prayer, lay out our complaints, ask boldly, and choose to trust.” It's not gritting-one's-teeth and thinking somehow you'll get through this. It's banking on the Bible's promises and God's character to learn and grow through pain. It's forging through mourning platitudes to God-directed gratitude.

I'm still on this journey. It actually began decades ago when my parents died six months apart the year I was 31. Then still single, I was tasked with the emptying their home. I tried to be brave, do the “post-death” work. But I didn't grieve well. I'm trusting God to show me renewed hope and healing as I embrace scripture's “lament” passages in fresh ways. To be able to say thank you, even from a broken heart.

*Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019, 223 pages)

ONE BULB AT A TIME

I spent most of my growing-up years in Washington's Puyallup Valley, which for decades has celebrated spring with a “Daffodil Festival,” complete with royalty, a parade, and many other events. Now I live about 150 miles away, but I acknowledged my “valley roots” by planting a few daffodil bulbs at my home. However, my “patch” was a pittance—especially after I learned of “The Daffodil Garden” near Julian, a town in the mountains above San Diego. And that garden was originally no commercial venture. It was the love-labor of one woman, planting one bulb at a time, until the region exploded in the hues of yellow, orange and white of some 80,000 daffodils.

She began in 1958 by planting a couple dozen bulbs around her A-frame home, its shady trees and garden. The collection grew over the next half century, one bulb at a time, until plethhora of blooms became a local tourist attraction that survived her death. The plantings even survived the devastating 2021 month-long “Willow Fire” which scorched nearly 2,900 acres—because the bulbs were resting after their bloom cycle underground.

Did you catch that phrase, one bulb at a time? Her quiet dedication inspired a book with the bigger life principle of starting and steadfastly pursuing a big goal. Like planting bulbs, life goals happen one action at time. This link takes you to a narration of the book:

The Daffodil Principle (abundance-and-happiness.com)

So what? Well, so what of your goals? Maybe an educational or health goal. Or cleaning up your room or home or yard. Or garage! Or tackling a new skill. Nosy question: do you have goals?

I don't know about you, but I faced goals I thought impossible to achieve. Some were financial, others educational and relational. Transforming a goal to reality took tools requiring courage to start and sustain. When I talked to God about them, I was taken back to the advice shared by one of his most energetic, sold-out followers, Paul. He had many strikes against him: health, enemies, folks who didn't really care about the “Jesus story.” Not to mention financial (but he wasn't too important to sew tents for food and housing). He shared his secret: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

Not quite the “Daffodil Principle.” But similar. There's no reaping without sowing. No daffodils without bulbs. No spiritual fruit by avoiding what God calls us to do.

Challenge question: Are you planting bulbs to bloom where God has planted you?

Be inspired by this montage of daffodil photos:

"the daffodil garden" in julian, california - Search Images (bing.com)