SUN OF OUR SOULS

 A feature on a hymn of the faith

A bright yellow rose brings its sunny cheer every spring to my front-yard rose garden. At one time, a stake by each rose gave the floral name. This one is now “stakeless,” but I recall it as named “Oregold.” It's the sunshine bush of the “patch,” and my floral reminder of the “Sun of My Soul,” the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, there's a hymn of that name, and it goes way, way back to the late 1700s. The lyrics are credited to an English curate and scholar named John Keble (1792-1866). He didn't have all the scientific information we do about the sun. But he had a heart for God as well as a stout Anglican upbringing. He also knew his Bible, drawing the text for his most famous hymn from this prophecy of a Messiah:

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. (Malachi 4:2)

Keble, son of a vicar, became one himself after his education at Oxford where he excelled academically. Loyal to his birth family, he turned down clerical promotions to serve in a small parish, taking care of his widowed father and sisters. He also was part of the “Oxford Movement,” which sought to return the Anglican church to its historical liturgical roots, in contrast to the Wesleyan “holiness” emphasis of that time. That's a very brief summary of his life; that in the online Wikipedia goes on and on (3,000 words plus charts).

In singing this song, my mind goes to the gleaming, blinding globe of the sky that we call “the sun.” I cannot even imagine its role in creation, except to trust in a God whose power is so great it is beyond human understanding. The entry for “sun” in the World Book encyclopedia (which supposedly condenses things down) goes on for 13 pages. All that technical information just scratches the surface, And then come the “sun” analogies in language and literature embracing its size, fury and sustaining power for life on earth. Keble tapped into that image in this hymn, one of many hymn texts attributed to him. (One resource said he wrote 56 hymns, another connected him to 765 hymn texts.) This hymn would eventually be included in more than 1,200 hymn compilations in several languages.

Despite his brilliance and credentials as a preacher and scholar, Keble was a modest man who published his hymn texts anonymously. Their royalties helped him pay the bills for the small village church where he served for more than three decades. He died at about 74 in 1866; his wife survived him by six weeks. They are buried side-by-side in churchyard at Hursley (about ten miles north of Southampton in England), his longtime parish.

In this classic “YouTube” rendition (a recording of hymns of 100 years or older), George Beverly Shea narrates and sings:

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LIGHT-BEARERS

The summer and winter Olympics begin and end—so appropriately—with a torch. From Greece, birthplace of the Olympics, a torch is ignited via the sun-reflected heat in a parabolic mirror, then begins its journey to the current games site. There’s a lot of pagan mythology in the torch background, but it’s a good cousin to this décor saying:

Be the light.

The Olympic flame has an on-again, off-again world-wide life.  In contrast, Jesus is all-on.

[Jesus] said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

To this statement, the religious types of His day complained, “You’re just saying that about yourself.  Who would back that up?” (John 8:13).

He replied that He did have a witness to His claim to be the light: His Father in heaven (John 8:14-19).

That was tough teaching for folks who figured “righteous living” depended on keeping umpteen hundred little laws handed down (and invented) through antiquity. Of such people, the apostle John wrote, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:5). They weren’t expecting God to visit this planet!

Later on, in the letter written in his old-age, the apostle John urged right and “light” living, as opposed to religious “pretenders” whose man-imposed rules for living and behavior just kept them in spiritual darkness:

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

That quote is powerful.  Re-read it. It reviews two choices: to walk down life’s road in the darkness of grudges, bitterness, fear and other negative attributes. Or to get so close to Jesus that we bask in His glow.  The ritual for the Olympic torch begins with the heat of the sun. We have so much better: the Sun of Righteousness, who has risen with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2).

Chase away the clouds

A devotional series inspired by sights in Kauai
Storms hang over even paradise. Our four-day visit to beautiful Kauai in the Hawaiian islands came at the end of a series of tropical storms, treating us to gray skies, rain, and mud. One morning, my husband had to take off his shoes and wade through several inches of standing water to reach our rental car in the hotel parking lot.  These clouds lingered through the day.  As we explored nearby sights, I could have dwelled on the gray clouds. Instead, I marveled at the lush green vegetation that the clouds sustained. Back home in parched eastern Washington state, just months earlier, a scary summer of wildfires included one that torched a neighborhood just a mile away from ours.

The Kauai sky that day reminded me of the “Lit’l Abner comic strip,” which ran in newspapers across the nation during 1934-1977.  One of the minor characters, named “Joe Btfspik” (the comic artist “pronounced” it like a rude sound), wandered the story line with a perpetual rain cloud over his head.  The world’s worst jinx, everywhere he went, something bad happened.  It was an amusing caricature, but, sadly, I know people who live in a constant “cloud” of negatives. God stretches me in trying to help them look for the sun that’s trying to break through.  Some of their “weather reports” go like this:

 “The sun will never shine on me like it does others.” This “poor-me” outlook imagines that people reject them because they have some terrible flaw. The truth is that we’re all imperfect, but we’re people in progress as we draw nearer to the radiance of Christ, whom Malachi 4:2 called by the prophetic label, “the sun of righteousness.” One source of this distortion is popular culture, which uses media savvy as a measure of personal worth. Interestingly, a recent study by the University of Houston found a link between depression and Facebook-“lurking.” If virtual comparisons foster “nobody appreciates me” reactions, it’s time to quit the social media.

 “That thunderhead might produce a terrible storm that destroys my home!” Fear and exaggeration are not of God. Caution is. Near Kauai’s coastal areas, we noticed huge sirens ready to warn people of coming tsunamis.  But gloomy people always think the worst, revealing their fears that God won’t help them if it does happen. One published counselor suggested that such people may be reading about, listening to, or watching the news too much. All these media sources tend to emphasize the worst of any disaster. Reporters on live media (radio, TV) have a practiced, intense tone in their voices, adding to the sense of urgency. The counselor suggested: quit your news intake for a while until you can get your what-if’s under control.

“My life is just a big fog bank.  I’m hopeless and stuck.” Where I live, we can expect gray, foggy, frozen days in January and February.  It can be quite depressing unless we choose to find spots of cheer. Some simple things I do: wear colorful clothes, open the curtains, eat healthy, and connect with other people. Bringing order to the physical clutter where I live also helps.  But emotionally fog-bound people aren’t proactive in simple lifestyle things. They’re paralyzed by “I can’ts,” instead of asking God to help them overcome excuses. They’re so down on themselves that they may interpret a harried store clerk’s reaction as a snub on them.  Too much emotional analysis can lead to behavioral paralysis. Their “fog” may be a clue to a chemical imbalance in their bodies that needs medical treatment. But there’s also a spiritual aspect. David had this “future” perspective for his “fog” times, a phrase repeated several times in Psalms 42 and 43: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God!”

Hopeless, fictional rain-cloud Joe Btfspik didn’t enjoy what believers have for life’s storms: a God who promised: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2, emphasis added). By the way, we did enjoy some blue skies before flying home across the ocean. As an old Gospel song puts it, “Sunshine after the rain.”