FLOWING

The spot of blue at middle/left is the Columbia River.

I live in a valley carved thousands of years ago by a mighty flowing river we call the Columbia. This is one viewpoint above the river valley, a pull-off which has also become something of a romantic “date” place. (Okay, “Lover's Leap,” but any who try to “leap” would land in the driveway of the home just below.) Often when passing the turnout I think of the imagery in Psalm 36 as it describes God's love, righteousness, and faithfulness. Especially these verses:

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep....They [people, both “high and low,” v. 7b] feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. (Psalm 36:6, 8)

My hometown isn't perfect. It has crime and homelessness problems. Illegal drugs. Income inequities. Folks living in shacks, others in Hollywood-worthy mansions. But good people live here. So does the God who offers spiritual refreshment far superior to the treated water that comes through our faucets.

Yet every time I read Psalm 36, I pause at this phrase: “your river of delights.” Surely this describes the first river into which Adam and Eve pushed their toes in the very beginning at the Garden of Eden. We're left to guess what it was—quite possibly the area we know now as the Tigris and Euphrates river basin. But the “where” is not as important as the principle: that God's righteousness, justice and merciful provision flow from Him like a mighty river of love.

Not that we won't have tough times in life. Just a mile downhill from this lookout, my husband and I were victims of a crash caused by a young driver who rounded a curve too fast and went out of control, hitting us and totaling our car. It happened in seconds. But we all lived. A tow truck removed our vehicle, a friend took us back home--to a crock-pot dinner and bread-machine loaf that had simmered and baked the whole time of our traumatic experience.

I first lived in this town in the early 1970s when hired as a “intern reporter” right out of university. I was almost broke after paying college bills, but the managing editor took note of that when offering me a job. He also asked around the newspaper office if anyone would like to temporarily “room and board” a young lady coming to work for him for the summer.

I had no car to drive over to this new job, but scraped together enough to fly over (a luxury for me). I still remember looking down into this river valley that would be at least my summer home. The managing editor himself picked me up at the airport, and praised the landscape and advantages of this valley as he drove me to the newspaper office. There, he introduced me to the lady in “advertising” who'd rent me her spare room (and feed me) for a couple months until my first paychecks helped me get a car and my own housing.

I'd end up working as a reporter and section editor for more than five years before moving on, never intending to come back. Little did I realize that about a decade later, a young man I'd seriously dated in that town would decide he was ready for marriage and contacted me—in Chicago! We did marry and I moved back. That was more than forty years ago. Four decades of hard times (like that accident) and burying loved ones. Joyful times of raising children to responsible adulthood.

Undergirding all of that was trust in the One who is the “fountain of life” (v. 9a). Our Refreshment in spiritually dry times. The One in whose light we see light (v. 9b). Thus, whenever I drive past this viewpoint, I am reminded of my “history” in trusting God, and learning how He is my “fountain of life” (v. 9). I'm also reminded of another “river” of delights, that flows from the throne of God (Revelation 22), and will be mine to behold, someday.

CREAM OR SKIM?

 The old phrase, “Do as I say, not as I do,” sadly applies to how many live in ways that don't line up with the Bible. From the perspective of old-old age, the apostle John (believed to have lived to age 94), tackled this issue in his letter we know as “First John.” It is full of adoration for the God who is Light, Love, Righteous, and Life. But it also emphasizes that our “talk” and our “walk” should match. The 19^th Century evangelist D.L. Moody put it this way: “We talk cream and live skim milk.”

So, what does that look like? Dr. Henrietta C. Mears, under whose leadership the Sunday school program at Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church grew from 400 to 6,000, distilled from First John these seven tests for a fruitful life with Christ. (1)

1.      Walk in the Light. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him [the God of Light} and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth”  (1:6). Bugs under a rock scatter when that rock is lifted and sunlight reveals their hiding place. So it is when Christ reveals the worth of every thought, action, and word.

2.      Admit that you sin.  Those who ignore or gloss over their sins are short-sighted. Like rocks that keep appearing in a plowed field, sinful acts or inclinations are there below the surface, soon to be revealed. Ignoring our sin is self-deception (1:8). Confessing it—calling it what it is, sin-- brings it to the surface (1:9). God is faithful and just, willing to forgive (v. 9)

3.      Obey God's will. John said the person who claims to know God but doesn't keep His commandments is a liar (2:4). That's pretty strong language! A major litmus test is the first commandment, to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. Compare, for example, the time and attention given to Bible study and prayer with that accorded entertainment and social contacts. (Today, that would include how we use the internet.)  Dr. Mears added this observation: “Many times we do not want God to talk to us. We will not listen to Him because we are afraid of His will for us.”

4.      Imitate Christ. John wrote (2:6) that “abiding in Christ” means doing what He would do. Some tourists use mirrors to study Michelangelo's ceiling art in Rome's Sistine Chapel. This saves them a “crick in the neck” from looking up all the time. In a similar way, we are to “reflect” the life of Jesus.

5.      Love others. Someone who says to another, “I hate you” doesn't have Christ's character (2:9).

6.      Guard against the world's temptations. These include (2:15): the “lust of the flesh” (physical gratification), “lust of the eyes” (riches and honor), and “pride of life” (focusing on being popular or important).

John's first letter has lots of "chew" power in it--things to mull over and reconsider. Or maybe I should say it's cream, thick and tasty, in leading us in living ways pleasing to God.

 (1) What the Bible is All About (Gospel Light/Regal,1953), pp. 635-640.

SIMPLY TOLD

A monthly post on a hymn of the faith.

How do you describe for young children the awful scene and awesome truths of Christ’s crucifixion? An Irish minister’s wife, Cecil Frances (Humphries) Alexander, looked to her native land’s verdant hills and began:

There is a green hill far away/Outside a city wall,

Where the dear Lord was crucified/who died to save us all.

What’s believed today to be Jerusalem’s Golgotha—a scrubby hill with features resembling a skull—became a gentler scene as Mrs. Alexander sought to explain to little children why Jesus died for their sins. That hymn was part of her quest to present, via songs, the Apostle’s Creed and other Christian doctrines to children of her husband’s parish. Many of these youngsters lived in poverty and were illiterate, but she explained the faith’s great truths in ways they could understand and remember.

Born in 1823, even as a child she was writing poetry. In 1850, she married a minister who later became the Anglican primate (chief bishop) of Ireland. In their early parish in an impoverished area of Ireland, she especially reached out to the disadvantaged of her community, daily visiting the sick and poor and taking them food, warm clothes, and medical supplies.  Her husband wrote: “From one poor home to another she went. Christ was ever with her, and in her, and all felt her influence.”

Believing that basic Christian truths could be taught through hymns, she distilled major doctrines to songs with simple words that children could understand and easily memorize.  One major project was hymns based on the Apostles’ Creed. “All Things Bright and Beautiful” taught about God the creator, maker of heaven and earth. “Once in David’s Royal City” told the nativity story. “There is a Green Hill Far Away” described at a child’s level the story of Christ’s death for our sins.

She also composed hymns for adults, like “Jesus Calls Us,” written at her husband’s request for his sermon on Jesus calling Andrew to become a fisher of men. 

More than 400 hymn texts would carry her byline. Gathered into books, they included the 1848 “Hymns for Little Children,” one of history’s most successful hymn-publishing ventures with more than 100 editions. She turned her publishing success back into ministry, using royalties to help build a school for the deaf, support a ministry for at-risk women (“Derry Home for Fallen Women”), and back a district nurses service.

She died in 1895 at 77; her husband would die in 1911. St. Columb’s Cathedral in Derry, Northern Ireland, has a trio of stained-glass windows built in her honor. They depict three of her hymns: “Once in Royal David’s City,” “There is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “The Golden Gates are Lifted up.”

This YouTube video of a choir singing Mrs. Alexander’s hymn features scenes from her homeland.

There Is A Green Hill Far Away hymn with on-screen LYRICS - Bing video

GLITTERY

 Okay, let's get this straight, right off. I'm not much of a glitter girl. I tend toward warm, soft, and comforting textiles and surroundings. Not that I didn't once wear something glittery. I think it was a blue formal my mother sewed for me when I was in high school orchestra. In those days, girls wore formals for concerts. (The tradition of all-black concert dresses hadn't come yet to my high school.) Since I didn't go to the school dances, that was my chance to “dress up.”

 But that was then. Even when I got married at 34, my home-sewn wedding dress was simple—just satin. No sequins, pearls, or anything flashy. So when my husband recently brought home from a yard sale a big can of sequins, beads and other decorative crafts, I said, “How much?” Meaning, “What price do you want to ask on Craigslist?' He knows I'm not much into crafts and saw a re-sell possibility there. A few weeks later, somebody did call and buy the whole can.

 My “coolness” toward glitz probably reveals a lot about my personality. No frills. Practical. A few little wants, but basically okay with the “basics.” I'm a minimalist for makeup. Utilitarian haircut. All-purpose clothes that date back years (if not decades). This quote from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice resonates with me: “All that glitters [or “glistens”] is not gold.” Some think he picked up the phrase from a 12^th century French monk or from the fabled Aesop of the same century. It showed up again in the 1878 Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera HMS Pinafore. But it expresses a universal truth: that looks aren't everything.

 Even the Bible has its version of this. In the Old Testament, Israel was itching for a king. Its judges weren't good enough. Israel wanted a monarch like the pagan nations around it. The winner of Israel's “beauty contest” for its first king was Saul, who was described as “an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites—a head taller than any of the others” (1 Samuel 9:2). He didn't even know there was a contest to anoint a king, and when his time came was out chasing runaway donkeys. Of course, the rest of the story was that Saul descended into decadence and ineptitude.  Finally, God chose a new king—an unlikely youth who tended sheep and played the harp. But David (unlike Saul) showed that he was a man after God's heart (1 Samuel 15:16).

I applaud the God-fearing youth pastors and Sunday school teachers, noble Christian teachers (especially in public schools!), and other adult role models who augment (or, sadly, must replace) the life modeling of parents and other family members. Our culture tends to exalt the glitter: the music and media stars, TV luminaries, beauty queens and stellar athletes with little second thought to their spiritual fiber. They may have the “glitz,” but it won't sustain them their entire lives. What Isaiah said centuries ago still rings true: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).

 The apostle Peter saw the same problem, and offered this non-glitzy alternative lifestyle for Christ-followers:

Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8-9)

 Such a lifestyle isn't very “glitzy,” but it's genuine. And that's the way it should be.

ROLL WITH IT

If you came to our front door, you’d find a huge cardboard tube swathed in black plastic bags to keep it from disintegrating in the rain. Catch us on a sunny day with grandsons visiting, the protective bags off and the tube in the front yard, you’ll likely find the little guys crawling through it (enjoying its echo chamber), rolling inside it, one rolling/the other inside, straddling it—you name it. Who would guess that a construction form for a pillar (from a yard sale) could provide so much entertainment?

Okay, so their grandma is always thinking, and this time the phrase “roll with it” came to mind. The saying has several versions. In sports, we hear “roll with the punches” for how boxers shift their stance to avoid incoming strikes. Todd Beamer’s last known words on a soon-doomed airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, were “Let’s roll,” calling any to help him storm the cockpit which hijackers had commandeered.  But I’m going for the generic meaning of “roll with it,” which means to adapt to unexpected hardships.

Wow, could that also be a Biblical concept? I think of a verse I’ve often recalled as I faced a difficult or potentially impossible situation: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).  This, alas, is a verse that some folks twist and distort to their expectations. It’s not claim to super powers or a guarantee that they’ll rise about the world’s common woes. Its context was Paul’s note of appreciation to this particular early church, which took up an offering for his “keep” while chained up in a prison in a foreign country. In his early life (particularly “before Christ”), Paul presumably had a comfortable living. That all changed when the Christ he once despised became the Christ he loved and served with all his being. Even in putrid First Century jails.

In other words, Paul looked around at his impossibilities and still said, “Let’s roll.”  Let’s still witness for Christ and let Him show us “the secret of being content in any and every situation,” comfortable, primitive or even what the world would call miserable (Philippians 4:12).

My grandsons enjoyed their short dizzy rides in the tube. They laughed over the echoes of their voices. This cheap little toy was a happy place for them.

But sometimes life is a tube with both ends closed off. It’s dark, the air is suffocating, and we don’t know how to get out. But God knows, and His “exit strategy” may surprise us and build our faith. I think Paul pointed to that as he composed the “close” to his letter to the Philippians. He thanked them again for their sacrificial “support” gift, reminding them that God was equally able to meet their needs:

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. (4:19)

Roll with life’s dizzy, bumpy, unknown journeys? Absolutely, if you know who’s in charge of things “on top”—the One Paul described in closing as “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 23).