The Worrier's Hymnal

You probably know, as I do, some chronic worriers. If they
 wrote a hymnbook, it might include songs like these:

THE GLOOM GOSPEL (sung to tune of “Rock of Ages”)

I’m a worrier, I think the worst,
I’m so anxious I could burst.
I dwell on the negatives,
All the awful life can give.
Yes, I know that it’s a sin,
But my worries always win.

EXPECTING THE WORST  (sung to tune of “God Will Take Care of You”)

Worry, worry, life is not fair,
I might be breathing polluted air.
Every new ache and pain gives me alarm.
Inflation might force me to move to a barn.

Chorus:

An-xi-ety is my way.
Anything bad might happen today.
Accidents, illness or robbed by a bum—
Worrying expects it to come.

Maybe you caught the irony, that the tunes to both bogus “hymns” are stalwart hymns of trust in God. “Rock of Ages,” begins the first, “cleft for me,/Let me hide myself in thee.” As for the second, there’s an interesting story about its composition in 1904 by a pastor’s wife, Civilla Martin. She was among the prolific hymn lyricists of her time, reportedly writing several hundred songs. Next to “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” this is her best known.

Civilla had some health issues, and one Sunday wasn’t well enough to accompany her pastor-husband to a preaching request several hours’ journey from their home.  He seriously considered cancelling it so he could stay home with her.  His young son persuaded him to go, saying, “Father, don’t you think that if God wants you to preach today, He will take care of Mother while you are away?” While he was away preaching, Civilla wrote the four stanzas that begin:

Be not dismayed whatever betide,/God will take care of you;
Beneath His wings of love abide,/God will take care of you.
Chorus: God will take care of you,/Through every day, o’er all the way;
He will take care of you,/God will take care of you.

 What specific Bible text inspired her isn’t known, though she may have been thinking of some verses in Philippians 4:

“Do not be anxious about anything” (4:6)
“My God will meet all your needs” (4:19)
Or, from 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you.”

Civilla knew the best cure for worry: a steady dose of trust in the God who “will take care of you.”  By the way, her husband, also a musician, wrote the tune to it.

Last edition

My work as a newspaper reporter taught me the value of the “last edition” deadline. If a news story needed updates or corrections, five minutes after deadline was too late! That work-day experience came to mind on Memorial Day, when my husband and older sister made their annual trip to the cemetery where their parents and many relatives are buried. While they trimmed grass away from headstones and left flowers in the bouquet cylinders, I wandered among older headstones that included epitaphs. Pausing at this one, I wondered who chose the verse. A parent, hoping their lives as a couple pleased God? Or their children, seeing the steadfast fruit of the parents’ lives? I know I’d want “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” spoken over my life.

The verse comes out of Jesus’ parables about servants, one told in Matthew 25 with “talents” and the other in Luke 19 with “minas.” In both cases, two servants invested to the master’s gain, and one did nothing. The angry master called the neglectful servant “wicked” and “lazy,” hardly what you’d want put on your tombstone.

Later, walking under the cemetery’s entrance arch, I thought how those of us on “this side” of the sod still have time to invest our lives in God’s priorities. But only He knows how much time that will be. Eternity could beckon after a short or long illness, or surprise our loved ones with its swiftness. A few months ago, a church friend was getting ready to go to Bible study. In her kitchen, she collapsed and died. My entire family could have perished in 1997 when a drunk driver smashed into our car.  Then last fall, a careless teen driver totaled our car. Crawling out of it, we realized we’d been given another “second chance.”

 

I’ve been reading a book by Gerald Sittser, professor at Whitworth College in Spokane, who lost his daughter, wife and mother in a wreck caused by a drunk driver (who also perished along with his passenger).  Left to raise his surviving three children alone, Sittser wrote: “I chose in the aftermath of the accident to try to live a redemptive life. I had had enough of suffering and wanted no more” (The Will of God as a Way of Life, Zondervan, 2000, p. 95).

 

Whenever we redeem pain for the good of others and the glory of God, we are being “good and faithful servants.”  Sittser added this perspective, that our role in life is like the Jewish expression Tikkun Olam, meaning “fix the world.”  As God’s co-workers in “fixing the world” we “serve the common good, care for the needy, strive for justice, produce useful goods, provide helpful services, and create beautiful works of art” (pp. 207-208).

 

I didn’t know the couple whose headstone recalls Jesus’ parable of the faithful stewards. When their final deadline came—death—there was no more adding to their story. The time to “edit” our lives and make needed spiritual changes is now. The readers of our “story” are all around us.          

Roots and blisters

I made a blistering attack against our lawn dandelions the other week.  Yes, “blistering,” for my garden “poker” gouged a large, painful blister in my palm. Despite my best efforts, most of the roots broke off mid-way down, giving then a second chance to bloom. Indeed, they did, their sunny heads turning to airborne seeds that laughed “Gotcha” before I could attack the offspring. Oh, those rascal roots of our fallen, weedy world. I’m grateful the Bible gives us another picture of good roots: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love…” (Ephesians  3:17).
 

Rooted in love.  That was big on Paul’s mind as he reflected on his ministry of taking the Gospel message to Gentiles—that is, the rest of the non-Jewish world. I like how the Amplified New Testament  opens up the English equivalents of the original Greek of this text:  “May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell—settle down, abide, make His permanent home—in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love.”

I recently read a helpful word picture of “rootedness” while reading Leighton Ford’s book The Attentive Life. He told of the day he and a friend took a hike and came to two hardwood trees perched on top of a large boulder. Unable to draw sustenance from rock, the trees had grown a long root system that snaked over the boulder to the soil below. “As we looked at this ingenious root system, it seemed to pose a question: What is the root system of my life?  Is it deep and wide and long and strong enough to withstand the pressures of each day?" (The Attentive Life, IVP,2008, p.82).

 

Paul adds to the picture of “love roots” in this passage:  “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness” (Colossians 2:7).  The result of “love roots” is the flower of gratitude!  I re-read that verse after an blistering encounter with an ungrateful person who has some significant "anger" roots. That person's high on my prayer list!

But thankful for dandelions? Okay, I can find some reasons. They're  a cheerful yellow that begs to be picked for a bouquet for mommy.  Doing that is a rite of passage for little children, right?  Plus, I’m due to teach my toddler grandson the fine art of blowing off their woolly seed heads. I’ll try to time it so the wind doesn’t blow them into my neighbor’s yard!  

 

Hang-ups and Hanging-Ups

When the weather turns warmer, I choose my clothesline over the dryer.  This saves electricity, plus “hanging time” is also “thinking time.” That day, as I snapped clothespins onto towels and shirts, the word “hang-ups” came to mind with its double meaning for laundry and troubled minds. Before I could think too much about troubled people I care about, I was distracted by the brilliant chorus of various birds in nearby trees. I thought of the old song, “His eye is on the sparrow,” affirming God’s incomprehensible watch-care. He cares even more than I can imagine for the loved ones whose problems can easily discourage me.

The song enjoyed renewed fame when actress-singer Ethel Walters, who rose from poverty to entertainment fame, used its title for her 1951 autobiography. But the song was originally written in 1905 by a New York pastor’s wife named Civilla Martin. The Martins had become friends with the Doolittles, an older couple who’d long battled illnesses. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for twenty years, and her husband used a wheelchair to get to work. Yet the couple was known for bringing inspiration and cheer to those around them. On one visit with the Doolittles, Pastor Martin asked the secret of their hope. Mrs. Doolittle, alluding to Jesus’ illustration about God’s omniscience via care of bird life, remarked simply, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

Her simple yet profound reply gripped the Martins. Civilla went home and wrote the lyrics, and the next day mailed them to prolific hymnist Charles Gabriel, who wrote the tune. (See last week's blog for Gabriel's story.)

The song refers to these verses:

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26)

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31)

 

Civilla expressed the same theme in a song she wrote a year earlier: “God Will Take Care of You.” But the simple words of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” are what came to me that laundry morning as I hung up socks and shirts. Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come...When Jesus is my portion, My constant friend is He: His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

 

When I snapped the clothespin on the last sock, I went back in the house to other chores.  Inside, I couldn’t hear the birds sing anymore. But my heart replayed the much-needed reminder they provided that day--that nothing, even what I pray about with feeble faith, is outside the loving watch-care of God.