ENTHRALLED

This book had my grandsons’ attention—all three of them (ages 2, 5, and 6).It’s one that plays the tink-a-tink electronic music. This one advertised itself as “lullabies” but was actually excerpts from well-known classical music. Here the threesome (in front of my rocker) are absorbing Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” 

When the book finished its “play,” the oldest turned and said to me, “I like that lullaby!” Someday he will learn it’s a sacred song, not intended to put babies to sleep, but to wake up sleepy Christians to how Jesus should be our joy and our desire!  Isaiah 12:2 says “the Lord is my strength and my song.”   And guess what the next verse says? “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”

It’s my desire (there’s that word again) that these little guys (and my granddaughter) grow up with a deep love for scriptures. I know that’s hard in a culture shaped by prolific media sources that exalt "self"  and self-gratification over God-focused choices. I think of Joshua, as he took on the leadership mantle of the Israelites after Moses’ death. On the cusp of entering their new homeland (after 40 years) they no doubt felt like orphaned children without Moses to lead. But Joshua was a wise and seasoned leader.  His first charge was...yes...that they would continue to desire to follow God and find joy in His commands and precepts:

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and succeed....Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:8-9)

As the “reading trio” broke up to migrate to other toys, the oldest said, ”I’m going to my office!” That’s what he calls a child’s desk in the guest room set up with learning games and books, crayons and such. It’s his place to get away from siblings who’d rather play trucks or build train tracks. I thought to myself, “Don’t we all need a place to get away, to read that ‘Book of the Law’? And to be reminded of the riches that are ours because of Jesus (Jesu) , the true joy of man’s desiring!"

CROSSED

It’s ironic that the adjective form of “cross” means “marked by bad temper, grumpy.”  The verb forms indicate “to contradict, obstruct.”  But at Easter, there is no greater meaning than "amazing love" for the symbol of an upright and transverse beam. Often at this time of year, I recall the quiet, simple hymn titled “Lead Me to Calvary.” I never paid much attention to the author of the lyrics. Now that I know her story, it means all the more.

A fourth generation Quaker, Jennie Hussey was born in 1874 on the family farm in New Hampshire. You hear her Quaker upbringing in the “thee’s” and “thou’s” in this hymn’s diction. Before long her life was reshaped by the crippling effects of rheumatism. But she couldn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself. She had a sibling who had even greater physical ailments, and Jenny spent much of her life caring for this disabled sister. Instead of complaining about her lot in life, Jennie reportedly had an upbeat attitude about life.

Besides care-giving and writing hymn lyrics (some 150 besides “Lead Me to Calvary”), she wrote children’s stories, devised crocheting and needlework patterns, and published articles about flowers. Eventually, she, too, became an invalid from her rheumatism, dying in a care home at 84.Little more is known about her except that, like King David, she expressed her faith through poetry. Hear the heart honed by suffering in lyrics like the fourth verse of “Lead me to Calvary”:
May I be willing, Lord, to bear/Daily my cross for thee;
Even thy cup of grief to share, Thou hast borne all for me.
Her focus was summarized in the chorus:
Lest I forget Gethsemane; Lest I forget Thine agony;
Lest I forget thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary.

Could it be, that in our secularization of Easter into a spring festival with bunnies, egg hunts, and new clothes, that we’ve shut out the agonizing yet amazing message of the cross? Yes, we need to shout, “He is risen! He is risen indeed!” and sing “Up from the grave He arose!” But it’s important to backtrack regularly to Friday, to a cross, and be reminded of what it cost God to reconcile sinful man to Himself. 

Following Christ doesn’t mean everything turns out rosy. We may be asked to carry a cross.  Perhaps, like Jenny Hussey, we’ll be assigned the care of a sick or troubled person.  Perhaps, like for her, fragile health will define our days.  But our attitude can turn on three simple words, “Lest I forget.”  And that can make the difference.

EASTER'S GARDEN

At a neighbor's home, half a block from my home, is a wonderful sidewalk

 corner display of daffodils. The  trumpeted flowers appropriately bloom around 

Easter. I was given some daffodil bulbs about a decade ago but for some reason 

they quit blooming though they share a planter with tulips that always do.

Maybe someday I'll solve that mystery!

Be encouraged by the story behind a beloved Easter hymn.
Picture yourself beside Mary Magdalene in the early morning at the Garden of Gethsemane.  You’re awash in deep grief over your Leader’s awful, undeserved, execution by crucifixion.  The least you can do is follow the customs of anointing his wrapped corpse with spices. But something—something wonderful—happened.

Fast-forward almost two thousand years to the cramped darkroom of a Philadelphia man named Austin Miles.  He’d trained to be a pharmacist but also had music training and some success having hymns published. So, giving up his pharmacist’s career at age 24, he went to work for a Christian music publishing company. Its talented founder was Adam Geibel, a German-born music genius, blinded since youth, and known for his organ-playing.  Dr. Geibel asked Miles to write a hymn text that would be “sympathetic in tone, breathing tenderness in every line; one that would bring hope to the hopeless, rest for the weary, and down pillows to dying beds.”

INSPIRED IN A DARKROOM
So one day in March 1912, Miles was seeking inspiration as he sat in his photographic darkroom where he also kept a little organ.  He took his Bible and it opened to John 20, his favorite chapter--“whether by chance or inspiration,” he later wrote, “let the reader decide. That meeting of Jesus and Mary had lost none of its power to charm.”

His recollection continued: “My hands were resting on the Bible while I stared at the light blue wall. As the light faded, I seemed to be standing at the entrance of a garden, looking down a gently winding path, shaded by olive branches.  A woman in white, with head bowed, hand clasping her throat, as if to choke back her sobs, walked slowly into the shadows.  It was Mary.  As she came to the tomb, upon which she placed her hand, she bent over to look in, and hurried away.”

Next , it seemed, he saw John and Peter looking into the tomb. When they left, Mary reappeared and wept before turning and seeing Jesus standing nearby.  Kneeling before Him, arms outstretched, she looked into His face and cried, “Rabboni!”

Miles continued: “I awakened in full light, gripping the Bible, with muscles tense and nerves vibrating. Under the inspiration of this vision I wrote as quickly as words could be formed the poem exactly as it has since appeared.  That same evening I wrote the music.”*

Along with “The Old Rugged Cross,” this song was widely sung in the Billy Sunday evangelistic campaigns, with Homer Rodeheaver as song leader.

As for Miles, biographies say nothing about whether he married and had a family. But writing Christian music became his passion and ministry. By one account, he wrote some 537 hymn texts until his death in 1946 at age 78. “In the Garden” became his most famous, placed in more than 200 hymnals. Some of his other better-known hymns: “Dwelling in Beulah Land,” “Sweeter as the Days Go By,” “I Have a Friend,” “Wide, Wide as the Ocean,” and “A New Name in Glory” (featured in a 1998 Gaither Homecoming video series).

But by far, his most famous work is the one inspired while he sat in a darkroom, about history’s life-changing, death-conquering miracle in a garden cemetery in Jerusalem.


*This account appeared in Forty Gospel Stories (George W. Sanville, 1943), and was also quoted in 101 Hymn Stories (Kenneth Osbeck, 1982), and Then Sings My Soul (Robert Morgan, 2003).

VISION CORRECTION

Welcome to the virtual “Sing and Share” at my home congregation. For several years several dozen of us have gathered for a monthly Sunday afternoon time together of singing favorite hymns, featuring the history behind a featured hymn. With the severe restrictions on public meetings during the worldwide pandemic, we’ve temporarily halted these hymn services. But the “hymn stories” are well worth sharing—and I am doing so via this blog.

Scripture to think about: “Where there is no vision, the people perish, but blessed is he who keeps the law.” –Proverbs 29:18

We recently whizzed past St. Patrick’s Day as the emergencies of the Covid-19 descended upon the world.  But there’s a message in an ancient Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” that we shouldn’t miss.  No, St. Patrick didn’t write it. He lived three or four centuries before it is believed to have been written. But we might consider it a part of his long-term legacy.

Early in human history, Ireland was believed to have been settled by people from the European mainland.  Four hundred years before Christ, Celtic tribes from Great Britain and Europe invaded Ireland and set up small kingdoms. About this time, over in what’s now called Scotland, a baby boy was born into a religious family and named Patrick. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest.

When he was about 16, raiders invaded his town and burned his home. He fled to the countryside, but one of the pirates spotted him hiding in the bushes, seized him and hauled him aboard ship to take him back to Ireland as a slave.  In that dark time, he gave his life to Christ.  Eventually he escaped Ireland and studied in France for the priesthood.  Then one night he had a dream that was much like that which the apostle Paul had in his call to evangelize in Macedonia.  In Patrick’s case, an Irishman in this dream pleaded with him to come evangelize Ireland.

Now thirty years old, he returned to Ireland with one book, a Latin Bible, in his hands.  Multitudes listened as he evangelized the countryside.  He famously used a shamrock to explain the Trinity: one stem, three leaves for Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The superstitious Druids sought to kill him.  But Patrick persisted, and planted about 200 churches and baptized about 100,000 converts.

Irish monasteries flourished after his death, resulting in many hymns, prayers, sermons and worship songs. Irish missionaries labored from Scotland to Switzerland.  One was Columba of County Donegal, best known as a poet of the Irish church. Not long after Columba’s lifetime, an anonymous Irishman wrote a prayer-poem asking God to be his vision, wisdom, and best thought by day or by night.

Jump forward more than a thousand years, to 1905, when a scholar in Dublin translated this Irish poem into English.  Then another scholar, in England, took that translation and crafted it into a poem with rhyme and meter.  It was matched to an Irish folk song from an area in Ireland where Patrick had preached to the Druids.

And so we have this hymn of worship with its almost lilting melody. Who would have thought it would come into the heritage of hymns via a route that involved pirates and slavery, a vision to evangelize the Emerald Isle, and the enduring message of redemption in Jesus Christ?

Note in the lyrics the phrases of adoration: “Lord of my heart,” “my best thought, “my Wisdom,” “my true Word,” “my great Father,” “mine inheritance,” “My Treasure,” and “Heart of my own heart.”

In this time of uncertainty and fear, consider using those phrases as you pray for a world that’s physically and spiritually at risk. And remember, when Jesus is our vision, He enables us to hope beyond all this.