SEASON'S GREETINGS!

Christmas, of course, is when the phrase “Season's Greetings” penetrates our culture. I know what people are trying to say, like: “The weather outside is awful, but all those gifts under the tree make things awesome.” So what sort of greetings are appropriate for spring? Please, not “the Easter bunny's comin' tonight.” For me, spring's first smiles are the warm days and earth awakening. The first crocus. Puttin' away the snow boots. Pruning the roses. Looking upward, to the blue sky, and thinking, Oh, God, all this You created. I cannot imagine Your smile as Your plan of beauty emerged.

To borrow from King Solomon and his famous “love ode”:

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone,

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)

Yes, I know, he wasn't giving a weather report for the six o'clock news. Instead, his hormones were bubbling for a certain young lady whose love he craved. But maybe there's a lesson here beneath his poetry.

This winter, two friends lost their husbands. I've been down that lonely road, and while I can offer hugs and words of care, it's a journey we must take in our own way, leaning heavily into Jesus. “Lover of My Soul.”

If that last phrase stirred up some old memories of a hymn, you're right. It goes back to about 1740 when Charles Wesley penned those words shortly after accepting Jesus as His Lord and Savior. Its verses tell of seeking courage and comfort in Jesus when trials come. When the winter of hard times fades. When we can begin to see what God can do with our sorrows and disappointments. Stop for a minute and reflect or sing along about “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”: Bing Videos

The crocus blossom that faithfully pops up every spring by my front sidewalk reminds me of that. When we put away our snow boots and Christmas carols, we didn't put away all our reasons to sing and praise God. This is Easter month! Even as we can rejoice in flowers re-emerging, we can be astounded again by the beauty of this truth: He is risen, just as He said. And just as the angel triumphantly announced to the women who came to anoint a decaying body, and were shocked by the most amazing news ever.

Surely, “the season of singing has come” and we don't need to wait for “Easter Sunday” to proclaim that: Christ the Lord has risen today...Alleluia

Join these singers on You Tube: Bing Videos

FOUNTAIN

A monthly feature on a hymn of the faith. Many years ago, co-workers who invited me home to dinner asked me to play something on their piano. Church-goers, they had a hymnal on the piano’s music ledge, so I opened it to “The Old Rugged Cross.” Within a few notes, the wife said, “Oh, please don’t do that one, it’s so bloody.” Her reaction surprised me. It also made me reflect on how our faith does rest on a blood-stained cross and how Jesus Christ died in a terrible way for MY (not HIS) sins.  There’s another “bloody” hymn, nearly 300 years old, often sung as we anticipate Easter: “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” Its lyrics were composed by William Cowper (pronounced “Kooper”), best remembered as one of England’s greatest poets. Son of an English clergyman and a mother with royalty in her bloodline, he was a frail and emotionally sensitive child. His mother’s death when he was only six further deepened his emotional issues. When he fell in love as a young adult, his father would not permit him to marry the woman. Cowper’s father had urged him to study law, but the young man’s fears as he anticipated his final bar exam before the House of Lords led to a mental breakdown and attempted suicide.                              

  During his recovery in a mental asylum for a year and a half, one day he read from Romans 3:23-25 of how the blood of Christ was God’s plan for forgiveness of sins. Eventually, through reading the Bible, he came into a personal relationship with Jesus. He was 33 years old.

After Cowper’s release, Rev. Morley Unwin and his family took him into their home. The wife, especially, became like a second mother to him. When Rev. Unwin died, his widow and family—including Cowper—were invited by John Newton (slave-trader-turned-Christian minister) to move to his parish in Olney, England. There, Newton often took Cowper on long walks, which proved therapeutic for Cowper’s mental struggles.

Their close friendship resulted in publication of the “Olney Hymns,” a groundbreaking collection of 349 hymns, including 66 by Cowper and the rest by Newton, including Newton’s own “Amazing Grace.” One of Cowper’s hymns was “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” written about 1770, and based on the imagery in Zechariah 13:1. That verse anticipated Christ’s full atonement for forgiveness of sins through His death on the cross: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness.” We sing the hymn today to music of an American folk tune. Other Cowper hymns found in recent hymnals include: “Oh, for a Closer Walk with God,” and “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”

Cowper’s “informal adoption” by Mrs. Unwin and then the Newtons sustained him as he continued to battle depression. Though at times he worried that God would turn His back on him, Cowper came to his death at 69 with eternal assurance. Shortly before his last breath, he is reported to have said, “I am not shut out of heaven after all.” He had taken to heart his own lyrics, “And sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.”

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Bill Gaither musicians sing from their hearts—solo by Vestal Goodman (includes lyrics):

Vestal Goodman - There Is a Fountain [Live] - Bing video

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).

Fifty shades of yellow

 

Unseasonably warm days have brought early spring to my area.  I haven’t shoveled snow in weeks, and crocus blossoms have popped at a sunny spot in my son’s yard. Those happy little blooms always remind me of this portion of Song of Solomon:
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)
Especially for those who live in climates where gray winter days drag on, it’s a happy day when flowers appear again.
 

Okay, I know that “Song of Solomon” can be read at several levels, one being a sensual poem between a man and his betrothed. But rather than the reported raunchy stuff of a current “gray”-named  film (which I have not seen nor plan to see), this is the pure marital love of God’s original plan for men and women,  all the way back to Adam and Eve. On another level, this verse reminds us that temptations and hardships (“the winter”) aren’t forever. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 points out:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
God knows how much “winter” we can endure spiritually. Renewal and hope—like fifty shades of early spring flowers--can come as we walk in trust and obedience to God.

Our early spring has reminded me of another recent film, about winter, which has spawned more than its share of child-focused merchandise. This cartoon took liberties with a fairy tale about a young queen cursed with turning everything she touched into frozen deadness.  She decides to abandon her kingdom and go as far away as possible to the ultimate frozen land.  With her long white tresses, oversized eyes, and Barbie-doll figure, she seems to have everything “right.” But she reminds me of spoiled little kids who stomp off to their rooms when life doesn’t go their way, slamming the door behind them.  The real heroine of the film was her boy-crazy sister, who broke the “ice curse” with an act of sacrificial love. Yet the “ice queen” and her sister were both flawed beings and not true to real life. Real life is this:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:8)
Our “sin” state left us stuck in a spiritual winter. But Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins made it possible for us to have new spiritual life. 

Let those crocuses push through the mat of dead leaves!  In all their buttery glory, they’re the advance scouts for spring’s most magnificent event: Easter.

Holy tears

Oh, how the tears flowed! I was chopping up a large onion for future cooking projects. One of my cooking tricks is to divide the pieces into paper-lined muffin cups, freeze, then remove and toss the handy-sized portions into a freezer bag. That way, I only have to have a good cry from chemical irritation about one time out of five or six.

I’m not as clever in reducing the incidence of “spiritual tears.” I’m not talking about selfish, immature “I-didn’t-get-my-own-way” tears, but those poured out without shame before a holy God. There’s a reason a tissue box is next to the chair where I meet with God. It’s also why I can’t read the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) without pausing and tears welling up.

Bible teachers say Jesus wept because He knew the pain of His dear friends and how they were disappointed that He didn’t come earlier to heal Lazarus. He also wept because death, the result of Adam’s sin, had claimed Lazarus, as it had claimed millions before. He wept in full knowledge that He would soon face death. Already, the Jewish leaders were seeking His death. After the astonishing demonstration of His deity through Lazarus coming back to life, the pressure would increase. In fact, He had to essentially go undercover to a desert village (11:54) until just before Passover. That high Jewish celebration would be the week of His own death.

Fast-forward through the tears of His finals hours and death, the pained good-byes of those who loved Him. Come to the cave where friends put His body, where women have come to anoint His body according to customs. Mary Magdalene is highlighted in John’s account. She sees the stoned rolled back and can only think of body-snatching: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” (20:2). She runs in panic to the disciples. They race to the tomb and confirm her report. They leave, she stays, crying and crying. She’s so blinded by her tears that she doesn’t realize angels are there to give her an incredible hope. Like a broken recorder, she replays her lament, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Then Christ appears. Same basic reply. She can’t see through her tears or understand through her emotions that He’s right there in front of her! Then the Voice: “Mary.”

That, she knew.

Probably more than we care to admit, there is a sobbing Mary Magdalene in all of us. We think the Lord is no longer there for us. We worry or give up. We go through the motions of a religion without the heart-burning recognition of the risen Jesus. Patiently He waits for us to dry our selfish, blinding “it-didn’t-happen-like-I-wanted-it” tears. The plan He had all along is so much better—if we’d only take off the blinders of our own preconceived ideas of what life should be.

Mary Magdalene finally got it right. She rushed to find the disciples and declared, “I have seen the Lord!” (20:18). Actually, that’s what often brings tears when I pray. It’s for others who haven’t yet “seen the Lord” through the eyes of faith. They don’t get past the tears of Friday, or the numbness of Saturday to declare, with everything in them, “He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

And I have to admit: When I join my congregation in that Easter morning declaration of His resurrection--well, tears come. Happy tears!

Easter Sunday Psalm-Drive

Photo: daffodils blooming in my neighbor's yard. I grew up in Puyallup, Wash., famed for its "Daffodil Festival." Besides a daffodil's bright yellow beauty, I love its "trumpet" shape, so appropriate for proclaiming this promise of our own resurrection: "The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor. 15:52).

In my childhood, when gas wasn’t so expensive, my father enjoyed taking the family on a Sunday afternoon drive. Even on familiar roads, we’d discover a new sight. Occasionally, my husband does the same thing. Our favorite spring route winds through orchards and foothills with astonishing patches of wildflowers.

My repeat journeys through the book of Psalms are something like those drives. I have no idea how many times I’ve read that book. I do know the edges of its pages are well-thumbed, with notes and underlining on every page. Yet I still discover new things.

Often when I come back to a psalm, I remember when it previously connected to a life challenge or event. I personalized Psalm 18 in a time of great anxiety and need. I was 32 at the time and still single. My parents had recently died just six months apart. I’d interrupted my master’s degree studies to return home and settle their affairs and empty their home. While it sat unsold, I returned to graduate school and finished that degree. I was near the end of my personal savings and could not find a job in my field. Going “home” was no longer an option. My parents’ still-empty home was 2,000 miles away. I needed to vacate my college housing by the end of July.


My desperate prayers reminded God of scriptural promises to take care of widows (and single women, like me, I hoped), orphans (my parents were gone) and aliens (I was just a temporary resident of this college town). One morning in my personal devotions I read through Psalm 18. Many verses became prayers: “I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise” (v. 3). “He rescued me because he delighted in me” (v.19). “To the faithful you show yourself faithful” (v. 25).

As I walked to the block-away college track to jog, squirrels cavorted in the old trees along the sidewalk. I thought of verse 33: “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer” (the poetic “hind’s feet” in old translations), referring to the strength and agility of deer in mountainous terrain. This time, however, I adjusted it to the prayer that God would make my feet like the agile feet of squirrels flinging among the branches. I needed His strength and miracle to get through these difficult circumstances.

God did answer my prayers, just in time, that last week of college housing. A failed interview at one large institution opened the door to an interview at a sister company, and a job offer there. Plus, the boss arranged for me to have temporary housing with one of his employees. Because I had no car, she drove out and got me and my few belongings, and took me home with her. For several months, until I could afford to live on my own, I slept on a mattress on the floor. Yet even this was of God, and how He “brought me out into a spacious place” (Psalm 18:19).

Other portions of that psalm reminded me of the awesome power and character of God. But I recently realized how much deeper I could go in understanding it. Bible teacher William MacDonald (1917-2007), in his Believer’s Bible Commentary, said this is really a psalm about Easter and the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Psalm 18:49 is quoted in Romans 15:9 as referring to Christ. MacDonald comments: “Nowhere else in the Bible are we given such a vivid account of the tremendous battle that took place in the unseen world at the time of our Savior’s resurrection.”

May I suggest reading and meditating on Psalm 18 this Easter? Some sections to consider, as broken down by MacDonald:
1-3: Praise to God.
4-6: Christ’s dying.
7-15: Celestial war against evil.
16-19: Victory in the resurrection.
20-30: The raising of the sinless One.
31-42: Christ’s second coming.
43-45: Christ’s reign.
46-50: Closing praise.
For your own closing praise, consider speaking back to God the doxology of Romans 11:33-36 which begins: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

It's Friday, but...

The hardest part about Easter is the Friday before. My church’s Good Friday service ends in darkness with a recording of thunder and storm, and then the wham of a bass drum. And quiet.

The tomb.

That’s the mood I brought this morning to scripture reading. My journey back through Psalms landed me at Psalm 17, a sweet song of seeking to live for God in the midst of arrogance and evil.

“Friday” is the violent (v. 4), the wicked and mortal enemies (v. 9), calloused hearts and arrogant mouths (v.10), predators (vs. 11-12), people whose reward is “this life” (v. 14). It’s life without hope of something better or something pure or something with God.

It’s life without Sunday coming. Without Easter.

A relative died last week at 47. So did a godly friend, at 63, barely home from a trip to Israel to walk where Jesus walked. Such news came like the wham of a bass drum. But to borrow the title of a sermon by Tony Campolo, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.” Easter Sunday has come. Death is not the final “wham.” Thus the hope expressed at the end of Psalm 17:
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.
Or, as translated with greater accuracy and fuller meaning in the Amplified Bible:
As for me, I will continue beholding Your face in righteousness (rightness, justice, and right standing with You); I shall be fully satisfied, when I awake [to find myself] beholding Your form [and having sweet communion with You].

One of my favorite Christian songs asks us to imagine waking up in glory, and finding it Home. That’s Easter. Not eggs, bunnies, or new clothes, but glory and hope forever after hopeless Friday.

A Thorny Issue

Thanks to an unusually mild February, our roses are a month ahead in coming back to life. Already tiny red buds dot the thorny canes, signaling the need for spring pruning. I don’t enjoy the task. That’s because it means tackling 30 rose bushes between our home and that of my mom-in-law (still “in process” of cleanout since her death).

In late fall, after the killing hard frost, I lop the roses to thigh-high to prevent damage from heavy snow. But spring means tediously picking out dead leaves and pruning for maximum bloom. It’s time-consuming, cold (I wait for a sunny day), and contemplative work.

As I remove dead canes, snip sucker branches, and lop anything that interferes with a bloom-friendly “bowl” shape, I think of the Bible’s analogy to pruning grapes. Untended, both roses and grapes would propagate into snarled, weak tangles. Thus, even as I prune, I think of John 15:2: “He [God] cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” That’s why the activities and relationships of my life must get tune-ups—some cut away, others encouraged--as God shapes me for His purposes.

As I sit on an upended bucket to prune, I toss clippings into an old plastic cherry harvest lug. Every couple or three bushes, I empty it in our large garbage bin. The stiff, thorny mound grows, needing pushed down to make more room. This I do carefully, as rose thorns can pierce even my leather garden gloves.

Ouch! As I rip off the glove and suck the wound, I think of the crown of thorns heartlessly jammed on Jesus’ head in the insanity of illegal trials before He was crucified. Often the hymn “My Jesus, I Love Thee” comes to mind with this line: “I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow.”

It’s March…and Easter’s coming on April 4. The roses are now pruned. The dead-looking sticks now jabbing at the sky will begin their transformation to summer’s glorious display of red, pink, white, tangerine, and yellow.

For many, Easter’s symbols are lilies (reminder of a trumpet call), hot-crossed buns (the cross on the “bread of life”), pretzels (imitating a prayer posture) or eggs (for new life). But pruned roses have become my Easter symbol. My annual task in our rose garden reminds me that God is the expert spiritual pruner, and I’m grateful for that.