Sending the light

Second of a series based on photos taken in Kaua’i, the Hawaiian islands.

A postcard perfect sight, a classic lighthouse grips a cliff above the Pacific Ocean near the north shore town of Kilauea. It’s a few miles east of the island’s famed, steep and dangerous NaPali coastline, where huge cliffs plunge right to the sea. Only the brave and fit venture to hike the trail that links the ends-of-the-road on the north and west sides of Kuai’i. Tourists who can afford it take the helicopter tours along the picturesque, wild coast.

The lighthouse reminded me of Jesus’ proclamation in John 8:12:

I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
It also brought to mind three well-known hymns and Gospel-songs about our spiritual Lighthouse.

 “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning,” by prolific Gospel musician Philip Bliss, was inspired by a sermon he heard evangelist D.L.Moody preach in 1871. Moody told a story of a ship approaching the harbor on a dark, stormy night.  The captain saw a light from a lighthouse. But no lower lights, which would mark the way into a harbor, were lit.  The pilot missed the channel into the harbor, and the boat wrecked on the rocks with much loss of life.  Moody appealed to his audience, “Brothers, the Master will take care of the great lighthouse! Let us keep the lower lights burning!” In other words, keep showing the way to the unsaved.  A stanza of Bliss’s hymn concludes:

Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor struggling, sinking sailor you may rescue, you may save!

 “Send the Light” came from the pen of Charles Gabriel, whose output included seven thousand hymns. While leading music at a San Francisco church, he was asked to compose a missionary hymn for Easter Sunday. A visiting missionary representative was in the congregation for its debut performance in 1890, and liked it so much he carried it back to the East. Many still know the hymn whose chorus goes:

Send the light, the blessed Gospel light,
Let it shine from shore to shore....forever more.

 “The Lighthouse,” a Southern Gospel-style song, was composed by Ronnie Hinson in 1970 in a most unlikely place: the men’s restroom of a church where he and his siblings were practicing for a concert.  They needed a new song for their concert, and thought Ronnie was kidding when he said he was going to the restroom for some inspiration.  He came back with the words he’d written on a length of toilet paper. The siblings added accompaniment, and the song became a hit. Here’s a strange twist: he had never seen a lighthouse before until later, when he biked thirty miles to Santa Cruz, Calif., and saw the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. For him, it reinforced the hand of God in this memorable song about salvation.

 
Burn the lower lights...send the light...Jesus as the lighthouse: what soul-touching music has risen from the tasks of a beacon tower on a rugged shore

Seeing Jesus: Oh that will be glory!

How does one illustrate "glory"? One way:
through the glory of God's creation. Here,
looking up through a pink dogwood tree.

The word “glory” has been on my mind, along with a wonderful old hymn whose refrain replies to the prospect of seeing Jesus after death:
Oh, that will be glory for me,
Glory for me, glory for me,
When by His grace I shall look on His face,
That will be glory, be glory for me.

Composed in 1900 by Charles Gabriel, who wrote verse and/or tunes to some 7,000 hymns, it was part of the turn in 19^th century Gospel music from meditative to energetic, easily-sung hymns. The hymn grew out of Gabriel’s friendship with Ed Card, director of the Sunshine Rescue Mission in St. Louis, Mo. Card was known for his smile and nicknamed “Old Glory Face.” He was legend for exclaiming “Glory!” when he preached, and ended prayers with “And that will be glory for me!” The song he inspired Gabriel to write came to the attention of international evangelists, whose use popularized it around the world. Before Card died, he reportedly had the joy of singing Gabriel’s hymn and knowing his life had been its inspiration.

 

Gabriel was born in 1856 in an Iowa prairie shanty. Christians gathered in his family’s home, with his father usually serving as leader. Early on, Gabriel loved music. He taught himself to play the family’s little reed organ, and the lad told his mom he’d someday write a famous song. She replied, “My boy, I would rather have you write a song that will help somebody than see you President of the United States.”

Among his songs that “helped somebody” were “Send the Light,” “I Stand Amazed in the Presence,” “What a Savior,” “He is so Precious to Me,” and “More Like the Master,” He also wrote the tunes to others’ lyrics for “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” “Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” “Higher Ground,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and “Since Jesus Came into My Heart.”

Many of these are part of the “music fabric” of my spiritual life. But recently I’ve been drawn back to these hopeful words from Gabriel’s hymn:

When all my labors and trials are o’er
And I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be near the dear Lord I adore,
Will through the ages be glory for me.

What an amazing thing—to know a God who is high and exalted, but intimate and tender, who cared enough to visit this earth in Jesus Christ. The Bible says God sent an archangel named “Gabriel” to announce the birth of the Messiah. “Gabriel” means “devoted to God,” and how appropriate that a gifted man from a poor home, his last name “Gabriel,” should grow up to “announce” the good news of Jesus through song!