ABOUT CORRECTION FLUID....

One of the marvels of my computer is how spell-smart it is. I'll be typing along, my fingers flipping over to wrong keys and noticing those “oops” are automatically corrected before I can blink. If not, I just have to go to the “check spelling” command, which sleuths out all my typos and tells me it will fix them without charge.

I'm so glad to have survived the Dark Ages of typewriters, when any typos required special camouflaging. At first it was those white strips that you poked onto the typewriter roller, over your error, then struck the “bad stuff” to create a white surface (flaky as it sometimes was) over which you could type your correction. Then came a paint-on correction fluid--the invention, I learned, of a typist who concocted it from some paint she had around. Later, I got a typewriter with an extra sticky-white reel that did the same magic.

I once heard someone quip that Jesus is like white correction fluid: He covers over our sins. In a sense that's true, and somewhat biblical. First John 1:7 is probably the best known verse on that, declaring “the blood of Jesus, the Messiah, cleanses us from all sin.”

But comparing “correction fluid” to Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross to cover over the mess of a sinful world is a paltry analogy. The idea of “blood,” of course, is connected with the sacrificial system of Old Testament days. In slaying a perfectly good goat or lamb for a prescribed temple rite, the family was letting go of valuable property. On the other side of all this ancient practice—knowing now that it pointed to Jesus' death on the cross for the whole world's sin-debt—the “covering of blood” makes sense. It is powerful symbolism that was even carried into the mysterious proclamations of “end times” in the book of Revelation (Rev. 12:11).

Put simply, Jesus' death wasn't “white correction fluid.” It was a new beginning. Fresh paper, error-free. A foretaste of the perfection being prepared for us in Heaven.

Before his death earlier this summer, my husband spent more than two weeks in the hospital. I'd wake up in the morning knowing my day meant going to his hospital bedside, holding his hand, and just waiting. And for what? One morning, God seemed to be giving me a gracious hint when a little radio in our bathroom automatically turned on. My husband had programmed it for 7 a.m., about the time when he showered and shaved. And what would come on that morning, from our local Christian radio station? A contemporary song about heaven, with the words, “I can only imagine.” I lay in bed and wept.

Yes, we can only imagine. Heaven won't be splotched with white correction fluid. It will gleam and glow with the perfection of a crucified, risen Savior and a loving Father-God. No errors, no sin, no sorrow. Just splendid and absolutely right.

VOCATIONAL U-TURN

A monthly feature on a hymn of the faith.

Son of an Irish lawyer, Thomas Kelly (born in 1769 in a town near Dublin) followed his father's vocational footsteps, studying law in Dublin and in London. But in London, he changed career paths and at 23 became a clergyman for the Church of Ireland. That didn't last, because he'd started reading works of William Romaine, a noted evangelical Anglican who de-emphasized that church's “works” teachings. Kelly's new evangelical convictions poured into his preaching, leading to censure from the established Irish church. Striking out on his own, he began preaching at various Irish chapels that had broken away from the mother church, gaining a reputation as a “dissenting” preacher. Besides his brilliance as a linguist, poet, and musician, he was known as a pious yet gracious man.

At 30, he married a woman from a wealthy but pious family. At age 33 he published the first of what would become his own 765 original hymns over the next fifty-plus years, included in about a dozen revised hymnal editions. That output led to his reputation as “Ireland's Charles Wesley,” alluding to the prolific hymn-writing brother of reformer John Wesley, author of some 6,500 hymns.

Kelly used his wealth to help the poor, especially those afflicted by the Irish fungus-caused potato famine of 1845-1852, in which an estimated one million died and another million-plus fled the country.Of his huge output of hymns, several still survive some 250 years later. The best known is probably “Praise the Savior, Ye Who Know Him,” which expresses dependence on Christ for salvation and daily life, and the hope of eternal life. Though his hymn lyrics were simple, Kelly's chose unusual rhyme schemes, that hymn being a good example:
“Charms us, arms us, nothing harms us.”
“Forever, never, sever.”
“Cleaving, believing, receiving”
“Would be, should be, could be.”
Most of his hymns expressed praise to the Savior and ended with encouragement about heaven. At a time of limited medical care, when people didn't live long, Kelly was still publishing hymns and preaching into his eighties. At 85 he suffered a stroke while preaching. A year later, as he lay dying, someone shared for Kelly's comfort the psalmist's declaration, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Kelly found the strength to reply, “Not my will but Thine be done” and “The Lord is my everything.” He died a day after his 86th birthday in 1855.

Sing along with printed lyrics and majestic organ this You-Tube recorded at a large California church:
Praisethe Savior, Ye Who Know Him (Grace Community Church) - Bing video

P.S. This hymn came into my list of “beloved hymns” in the mid-1970s when I served at the Southern California headquarters of Wycliffe Bible Translators. (They've since moved their head offices to Florida.) I first heard that hymn in the office chapel services. I needed the hymnal to follow words and music, but around me, seasoned missionary-linguists joyfully sang it from memory.

FRONT AND BACK VIEWS

One skill I needed to learn as a beginning driver was checking the rear-view mirror. Besides helping with parallel parking (this before the wonderful invention of back-up cams), it kept me aware of traffic behind me for any lane changes or turns. In my spiritual “travels,” I also need a big front “future perspective” and a just-big-enough rear-view memory. That's how I might describe Paul's advice to the Philippians, written from a Roman prison where he had lots of time to reflect on freedom and bondage.

His key phrase is “press on.” Today we're more apt to use those words for finishing a personal goal, like a difficult project, job training or college. We know the steps we need to take, and one by one we tackle them. Paul had a different outlook, stuck in neutral in a foreign land because he followed and preached Christ. Yet his words still teach:

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it [“it” meaning “that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me”–v. 12, to preach about Christ]. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

His phrase, “straining toward what is ahead,” grips me. In the original Greek, the word is epekteino, meaning “to stretch forth.” This definition suggests a runner leaning forward with a last, huge effort to be the first to break the finish line tape. Indeed, Paul had a “finish line” in view: “the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (v. 14).

Aside from the historical and technology gap, I just don't see Paul sitting around with his personal electronics, cruising through web sites or checking social media. While such inventions have enabled us to spread the Gospel, they've also fostered an “all-about-me” mentality more focused on “earthly things” (3:20) that can cool spiritual passion.

Paul's focus was helping people become spiritually transformed through a relationship with the risen Christ. He “looked behind” (at his pre-Christ life) just enough to know the misery he was in, and that he caused for others. But he kept his eyes on what's ahead: eternity with His Savior and that personal audience with God to answer the question, “What have you done for Me?”

Today, getting one's driver's license seems to be the “coming of age” goal for 16-year-olds. I was closer to twenty when I got mine. Part of the reason was that we were a one-car family on a limited budget. My mother would have to take Dad to work (5 miles away) and later pick him up to be able to use the car herself for that day's errands. Having a “kid car” just wasn't in the family budget until years later, when I was almost through college and had gotten a job as a newspaper reporter to help pay college expenses. It required that I drive around to interview people. So yes, I learned to watch those rear-view AND side mirrors to be as safe a driver as I could be.

That still tends to be my spiritual style. I'm forward-looking in faith through Bible study, fellowship, and prayer. I stay away from spiritual distractions like unhealthy relationships. And I look briefly back, with gratitude, on the road of life I've already passed over, thanking God for the journey and the destination ahead.

I LIFT UP MINE EYES...

It was the first memorable sight of my new hometown that morning in 1970, when the newspaper managing editor who'd just hired me picked me up at the airport. As we came down the hill en route to the newspaper office, he pointed out a huge, unique land formation on the other side of the Columbia River. “Saddlerock, they call it,” he said. And yes, I could imagine that shape in the rocky crag before us, beileved to be an old volcano's neck. After five years as a reporter and editor, I would move away to other opportunities. When I returned to the valley several years later later to be married, the “saddle” still stood there. Stark, high, and regal.

Many have hiked it, even several times. I never did—busyness and health being my reasons. But in June, “Saddlerock” was the commanding view from the window of my husband's hospital room. He would die, just short of age 78. But, thanks to that physical symbol of our great and mighty God, I would be reminded of the comfort freely offered in Psalm 121:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth....The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. (vv. 1, 8)

As I transition into a “new normal” after nearly 42 years of marriage, I sense the hug of God while re-reading familiar and comforting scriptures. The grief fatigue is there. The sense of being overwhelmed is, too. But there's love, too--in food gifts, the flood of cards, the caring visits and phone calls. All said my husband's life (as a Christian, a great dad, a teacher, and all-around friend to many) mattered in theirs. And that meant a lot.

And so does the even-more-stalwart hope and comfort of God. Just the right scriptures come to my sad heart, reminding me that this was not an end, but a transition for someone who loved and served the Lord. Also, that I am the Great Shepherd's lamb, under His protective eye. He walks alongside in the valley of death (Psalm 23).

I'm told that the view from the top of Saddlerock is spectacular. From the “saddle,” you can see the sweep of the Columbia River as it veers from south to east its serpentine journey to the Pacific ocean. And the hills! Gray, scrubby, scruffy, all part of the unique high desert terrain of Central Washington. But be careful from that viewpoint. The other side is a dangerous drop.

And maybe that's a good reminder for this season of life. Not to indulge in prolonged grief or self-pity, but to look to others, and share the hope you have in Jesus. A friend (my long-ago childbirth coach!), who was also widowed this past year, mailed me a card with a caring note, then later just a Bible verse:

Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me. Psalm 54:4

This is part of healing a big heart-wound, carrying forth the reality that God comforts us in our troubles “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

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Here is one powerful rendition of Psalm 121 set to contemporary music:

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