Author Archives: Barbara Harper

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About Barbara Harper

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When the message isn’t for me

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Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

A week or two ago I came across a blog post that got me to thinking about how we respond when a meeting, church service, or even a Bible passage seems to apply to someone other than myself. When there is an ordination service or a Mother’s or Father’s Day message or children’s program, do I skip them because I am not a part of any of that?

I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” II Timothy 3:16-17. It is all profitable for me in some way even if the particular passage doesn’t seem to apply to me.

Some years ago the pastor of the church where we were at the time read a few verses from Exodus with instruction about oxen. He asked, “Do any of you own an ox?” No one raised their hands.

He then asked, “How many of you have even seen an ox?” One or two raised their hands.

“So,” he said, “We should just turn the page and skip this passage, right?” No, we didn’t think so, but what do we do with that passage?

He then brought out several applications from the passage. For instance, someone who owned an ox that was known for trying to push people with its horn was more liable if it injured someone. So if we have, say, a dog with a tendency to bite, we are even more responsible to keep it from people it could hurt. Or, to apply it further, if our tail lights are out on our car, we’re liable if someone crashes into us because they didn’t know we were stopped or slowing down to turn, so it behooves us to keep up with those things.

2. It helps us understand our brothers and sisters in the Lord. I may not be a pastor or a husband or a mother, but the passages that talk about them help me understand their roles, not so I can form a checklist and note when they’re not getting it right, but so that I can pray for them, understand their problems, needs, and temptations, and encourage them. The Bible says the church is the body or Christ, and “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (I Corinthians 12:26).

3. Their position is under attack. Satan is not omnipresent, but he does get around, and he seeks to undermine everything God calls good. Any role or function within the church, home, or family as designed by God is under attack in some way or another. The blog post I mentioned at the beginning was complaining, in part, that the focus on married women and mothers in some women’s ministries left single ladies out. I do think that is a valid point: not all women are called to be married, not all mothers are able to stay home, and we need to find ways to minister to the whole scope of womanhood. However, there are particular ways marriage and motherhood are being particularly attacked and undermined in the world today, so we need to help support those roles.

4. I can learn something that applies to me even though the particular focus of the passage or sermon is for someone else. Loving one another as Christ loved the church is something that applies to us all, not just husbands, so I can take an illustration that may be particularly about husbands and learn something I need in loving others. Years ago in college we were encouraged to read a particular book about leadership which I gleaned a lot from even though I was not a leader at the time (and still don’t naturally feel inclined to be now).

This is not to say that I should attend every focus group within the church since we’re all part of the body of Christ. Some of those were created to handle specific concerns in a smaller group setting. But when a Bible passage or sermon or ladies’ meeting seems to apply to someone else, there is still much I can learn and benefit from if I have ears to hear and a heart to receive.

Book Review: A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live

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Million Little Ways

When you disagree with a foundational statement eighteen pages into a book, it’s hard not to let that color the rest of your reading. But I tried to give it my best effort. More on that in a moment.

I got A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman because I enjoyed her Grace For the Good Girl so much. The title sounds like it might be about finding ways to be more creative or finding time to express yourself artistically. However, though that is involved, that’s not exactly what the book is about, at least not in the way you might be thinking at first glance. The basis of the book is taken from Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Other versions use “handiwork” or “masterpiece” in place of “workmanship,” and the Greek word they are translated from is poiema, from which we get our English word poem.

Being his workmanship doesn’t mean we are all poets. It means we are all poems, individual created works of a creative God. And this poetry comes out uniquely through us as we worship, think, love, pray, rest, work, and exist.

Jesus reminds us we are art and empowers us to make art.

There isn’t one right way to do the job of glorifying God. There are many ways, a million little ways, that Christ is formed in us and spills out of us into the world.

Knowing you are a poem doesn’t confine you to be artsy, it releases you to be you (p. 29).

So the art she is talking about our creating isn’t writing or painting or sculpture – unless we’re called to that – but rather finding the purpose for which God made us, that which makes us most “fully alive” (a phrase she uses often), and then doing that by the enabling of God and for His glory, whether it is being a doctor, a mom, a janitor, a hostess, or whatever. But she is not talking primarily about our occupation, though that’s a big part of it:

I don’t believe there is one great thing I was made to do in this world. I believe there is one great God I was made to glorify. And there will be many ways, even a million little ways, I will declare his glory with my life (p. 40).

So we can express God’s glory whether we’re listening to a friend’s troubles, making dinner for our family, playing an instrument, or whatever else is a part of our day.

Part of uncovering what we are uniquely called to do is examining our desires. “Our passions aren’t the goal, but they are the signposts, like arrows pointing to our center” (p. 60).

Could it be possible that the thing the thing you most long for, the thing you notice and think about and wish you could do, is the thing you were actually made and equipped to do?

Could it also be possible that somewhere along the way you got the message that to follow desire would be selfish, when, really, it would be the opposite? (p. 47)

A couple of chapters discuss the ins and outs of that in greater detail, including redeemed desires (not everything we desire is something we should pursue). Other chapters discuss the need to do all leaning on God’s power and enabling, realizing we can’t do it on our own, handling criticism (I especially appreciated the thought that criticism has a purpose even when unfounded), waiting on God’s timing, learning when to say “no.” Probably my favorite chapter was “Wonder.” A close second would be the one on waiting, from which this favorite quote came:

The Spirit came over Mary in a moment, but it took nine months for him to grow. Jesus waited thirty years to begin what we cal his earthly ministry. But really, wasn’t he always being God in the world, from his first breath to his last? He was crucified and waited until day three to resurrect. Don’t lose hope on day two (p. 155).

Another favorite quote came neat the end: “One masterpiece is the work of ten thousand rough drafts” (p. 195).

So what was it I disagreed with so strongly at the beginning? A statement on page 18 that “God is not a technician. God is an artist.” My immediate thoughts ran something like this:

God is a technician AND an artist! When He creates a beautiful sunset, He doesn’t just throw colors in the sky: there is science behind it, and it’s not the less wondrous for that. When you think of the marvels of human biology, the mathematical properties in the universe that enable space travel, and so many other factors involved in his creation, it’s impossible not to see that He is a master technician. (My kids used to have a book titled God Thought of It First, showing that many of man’s inventions were based on properties in creation, like the similarity between how a submarine and a chambered nautilus works). My husband was a physics major and has worked for most of his career in the science of color, first in textiles and now in plastics. He can’t just say, “Hmm, this looks a little too blue” and add a dab of another color until it looks right, like an artist might do on a canvas: there are formulas involved which enable them to get the right color not just for the moment, but to be able to reproduce it in massive quantities for carpet fiber, plastic bottles, and even paint in artist’s tubes.

I think Emily would agree that God is a God of detail, engineering, and technology as well as artistry and creativity. But that’s not really what she is talking about when she says God is not a technician. She precedes that statement with these thoughts:

Is he only a God of right answers and right angles and acceptable behavior? Have we exalted the will of God and the plans of God above God himself?

He does not manage us, to-do list us, or bullet-point us. He loves us. Is with us. And believing him feels impossible, until we do, like a miracle, like lukewarm water turning merlot red right there in the cup. And hope sprouts new, because God doesn’t give us a list. He invites us into the story (p. 17).

Actually He does give us a list or two, like this one and this one. But, yes, I do get the point she’s making that we’re not saved or sanctified by keeping lists or commandments. It’s possible to keep commandments and totally miss God, as the Pharisees did.  We’re saved by grace through faith and sanctification and service come about the same way. Or, as she says later, when discussing Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and then instructing them to do likewise, “Maybe Jesus is inviting them into a relationship of do as I do rather than pointing to a list and saying, Copy me” (p. 75).

So once I understood where she was coming from, I could agree, but I still had to fight against that feeling when similar statements were made: “Technicians don’t move us. Artists do” (p. 14); “When a poet writes a poem, he isn’t writing a technical manual or a how-to book” (p. 26); “Are you living like a programmer instead of a poet?” (p. 135).

The bulk of the book is written from a right-brained, creative, artsy vantage point, which will appeal to that kind of thinker but not so much to the more left-brained, literal, logical one (I know the whole left vs. right-brained theory has been labeled incorrect now, but you know what I mean.) Although I struggled with that at times, and I wouldn’t agree with every little sub-point, overall I appreciated the message of the book, was inspired and challenged, and gleaned a lot from it. I’ll close with a section which I think sums it up:

 What if we approached the critic, our jobs, the kids at our table with the same wonder and anticipation an artist has when she approaches the canvas? What if we decided our purpose in this world really is to reflect the glory of God?

Would we begin to see ourselves as wildly free to approach the universe – the meal plan, the work project, the yard sale, our neighbor, the roof leak, the doctor appointment, the eternal destiny of our children – to approach it all with a wide-eyed wonder, with an edge-of-your-seat breath, with an expectation that any minute God will show himself in a way we have not yet seen? And he’ll likely do it through us?

When we embrace the beauty of our design, when we recognize that he has made us to be the unique expressions of himself, when we receive the gifts he has equipped us with and have the courage to pour them out, we worship. What else would it be? (pp. 188-189).

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Friday’s Fave Five

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FFF spring2

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

This has been another good week – busy, but different. Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. An outdoor lunch. Great-grandma’s caregiver couldn’t come Tuesday due to having a sick child, so Jim worked from home partly to help take care of her and partly to work on something that he could do better at home without all the interruptions at work. It was a beautiful day, so we took GG (as we shorten her name in texts) in her wheelchair out on the back patio and the three of us had lunch together. It was just the perfect temperature to do that, and Jim and I don’t eat lunch together during the week very often, and I had brought Chick-Fil-A back after a trip to the store, so it was a treat all around.

2. Putting away winter clothes. Even though it’s supposed to get into the 20s again this weekend. 🙂 We still have some sweaters and jackets handy in the front closet if we need them.

3. Greening and pinking of some of the bushes and trees in the yard. More signs of spring!

4. Progress on the project I mentioned last week. I had hoped to be done with it in time to show you today, but these things almost always take longer than expected.

5. Timothy crawling! He’s been working on it for some time, though we almost wondered if he was going to skip crawling and go straight to walking, as he seems to be trying to figure out ways to pull up on the furniture and can stand a few seconds at a time without help. But somehow Tuesday night it all clicked, and he took off! And now I need to buy outlet covers and put some items out of reach. 😀

Timothy standing

Happy Friday!

P. S. I am having a giveaway for the excellent book She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast. Leave a comment on my review of the book to enter – the drawing is Monday.

What’s On Your Nightstand: March 2015

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 What's On Your NightstandThe folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

Often I am caught off guard when the fourth Tuesday of the month is not the last Tuesday, but this time I saw it coming. 🙂

Since last time I have completed:

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope by Christopher and Angela Yuan, reviewed here. Excellent – I am predicting it will be one of my top ten books of the year.

I Deserve a Donut (And Other Lies That Make You Eat) and Taste For Truth: A 30 Day Weight Loss Bible Study, both by Barb Raveling, reviewed together here. Excellent.

She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast, review and a giveaway here. Riveting.

To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner, reviewed here.

The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer, reviewed here.

My Emily by Matt Patterson, a family’s true story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two, reviewed here.

Better To Be Broken by Rick Huntress, his personal testimony of God getting hold of his heart after an accident left him in a wheelchair, reviewed here.

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.

The Pound a Day Diet by Rocco DiSpirito, reviewed here.

That looks like more than usual – but one was a children’s book, and two were very short.

I’m currently reading:

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman. Got off on the wrong foot with this one but am settling into it now. Will explain more when I review it.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, audiobook. I’m about 2/3 of the way through.

The Swan House by Elizabeth Musser

Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter compiled by Pat Alexander, including excerpts from C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, and others.

Next Up:

Hard to say. I’m working on my reading plans for the year, and you people keep adding to my lengthy list of books I want to get to. 🙂 Once I finish War and Peace, I think I’ll get back to the Sherlock Holmes series via audiobook. Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder had been delayed but I am informed it is on its way now just arrived. I’ve seen several people mention Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and I just ordered it. I may need something lighthearted to break up some of the heavier reading.

What are you reading now?

Book Review and Giveaway: She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival

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She Is MineI first became aware of She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast through Carrie’s review, and then I won her giveaway of the book.

Stephanie does not remember her birthday or her given name: she gave herself the name of Yoon Myoung in her book. She was born in Korea not long after the Korean War: her mother was Korean and her father was an American serviceman who never knew of her. Because she was of mixed blood, she was not accepted, even by her mother’s family. Stephanie explains:

In Korea, having a fatherless child of mixed blood brought impurities to the ancestral bloodlines. It was culturally unacceptable – a disgrace. And children who were not given a family name literally had no birthright and lived unacknowledged. They were rejected. Worthless. Nothings. (p. 34).

The Korean people had suffered greatly during the Japanese occupation before WWII. Then the communist occupation had come, and then the Korean War–their cultural identity had been ripped away. Although grateful to their Western liberators, their greatest desire was to rebuild their lives, reclaim their land, and forget their pain. The site of mixed blood children such as Yoon Myoung stirred up their anger, frustration, and hurt. The foreigners may have fought to preserve South Korea’s independence, but they were not permitted into Korean families, heritages, or bloodlines (pp. 35-36).

When Stephanie was four, her mother’s family found someone who was willing to marry her despite her indiscretion, but who was unwilling to take her mixed child. Her mother sent her away on a train, telling her an uncle would meet her at her destination. It’s unclear whether that was an outright lie or whether Stephanie got off at the wrong stop or what, but an uncle was not there when she got off the train. Instead of trying to find out what happened and taking care of her, the station master just shooed her away when he closed. Stephanie decided to follow the train tracks back the direction from which she had come to find her village and her mother, but she never found them. She wandered around the Korean countryside alone for three years. She had to try to find shelter and forage for food, finding out by trial and error what worked and what didn’t. When she did encounter people, it almost always went badly. She was called names, treated in abominable ways, betrayed at the deepest level from someone she had come to trust. At times she lived with groups of other abandoned children, once at a large encampment of many of them. Over time, due to exposure, malnutrition, and lack of ability to get clean, and everything else she had gone through, she was filthy, had a head full of lice, open wounds, and worms, so that added to the repulsion people felt toward her, but the primary hatred always went back to her mixed race.

At a very few intervals she came across someone kind who rescued her from death and danger, until finally she was near the end of her rope, abandoned on a garbage heap. A Swedish nurse passed by who picked up abandoned babies and nursed them back to health so they could be sent to an orphanage and adopted. She cared for all the children but could not possibly help them all, so she concentrated primarily on the babies. But when she saw Stephanie, she was compelled to pick her up. Stephanie then described her time at the clinic, the orphanage, and finally her adoption by an American missionary couple who actually had been planning to adopt a baby boy.

This is a heart-breaking story. It’s hard to fathom people being so cruel to a child for any reason.

But it is also a story of hope.

Stephanie writes in the third person rather than first because she wants people to think not only of her story but of the millions of orphans in need in the world. She has become an advocate for orphan care.

Overall I was greatly touched by this book, and also convicted about how I would react if, as happened to several in her book, I found a dirty, wounded, and somewhat wild child stealing from my garden or sleeping in my garage. I would want someone to help them but would be more likely to call a shelter or something than to take them into my own home. Yet throughout the Bible we’re told both by instruction and example to care for people. I was convicted to look beneath the surface to the person underneath, to see their souls, and to care for their needs.

Stephanie said in her preface that there were great gaps in her memory, so she filled in some of the story the best she could. I can’t help but wonder if much of the filling in was in the first three chapters about her mother and father and how they came together: I don’t know how much of that her mother would have told her in her early childhood. I would rather have had a little less filling in there than to wonder how much of it was true. And I would have liked to have heard a bit more about how she adjusted after being adopted. She told of many doctor’s visits and the healing of her physical wounds, and mentioned that it was a long time before she could return affection to her adopted parents. But after the trauma she went through, it had to have taken a long time for her to heal mentally and emotionally. I think families need to be aware that adoption, as wonderful as it is,  is not necessarily a fairly-tale “happily ever after,” that there is a lot to work through. But I realize, too, that the main purpose of this book is to draw attention to and awareness of the needs of orphans, so perhaps the rest is for another book.

Stephanie says at the end that she eventually came “to a place in my life where I can say with all conviction: There is nothing that has happened to me that I would have been better off without” (p. 224). She plans to write another book about how she came to that acceptance – that is one I can’t wait to read.

A synopsis of her story is here:

I highly recommend this book to you. I’d like to follow Carrie’s example and give this copy away to one reader. I’ll take all comments on this post as entries for the giveaway unless you tell me you would not want to receive the book. Due to shipping costs I am afraid I can only send it to the US and Canada. I’ll draw a name from among those who have commented using random.org a week from today.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The giveaway is closed: The winner is Michele. Thanks for participating!

Laudable Linkage and a Jan Karon Video

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I didn’t do one of these last week because I only had two or three – and now this week I have several. That’s how it goes sometimes. But here is some noteworthy reading found in the last couple of weeks:

Moms Need Theology Too. Excellent. Not just for moms.

Adding to Our Faith? Good study of what 2 Peter 1:5 means when it talks about things we need to add to our faith.

5 Things People Blame the Church For – But Shouldn’t.

A Good [Wo]man is Easy to Find. Excellent piece about finding a mentor.

From Lesbianism to Complementarianism – one woman’s testimony.

Dear Gay Community: Your Kids Are Hurting. From the daughter of a gay couple.

An 11-Year-Old Boy’s Open Letter to Sports Illustrated.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s Advice to Young Writers and Speakers.

Solid Food for Little Ones. A list of books for young children that teach about God. Keeping in mind for future reference when my little grandson gets older.

Remember Card Catalogs? As a former librarian and avid reader, I loved this piece about people who take the old cards from library card catalogs and illustrate them.

I thought this was really cool. With a nerdy family who loves the Marvel universe films, Iron Man being one on them, I loved this video of Robert Downey, Jr. (aka Iron Man) delivering a bionic arm to a boy who has only a partially developed right arm.

And for Jan Karon fans, I saw on her Facebook page this announcement about her newest book coming out this fall!

I loved hearing her talk and watching her expressiveness! I also saw this post on her Facebook page saying that there might be a movie about Mitford and asking for suggestions about who should play which part. I hope if this comes to pass that they let her have creative control. I have mixed feelings – I love the books and would definitely see any film made from them, but I’m not sure I’d want any images other than the ones in my head. 🙂 But we’ll see.

Happy Saturday!

Friday’s Fave Five

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FFF spring2

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

This has been another good week. Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. Pi Day. For years I have heard of other people celebrating “Pi Day” – March 14, the same numbers as pi (3.14 – even more remarkable in 2015 because the next numbers in the sequence are 15) by having pie on that day, and I thought it looked like a fun thing to do (and any excuse to eat pie is a good one! 🙂 ). But I had never done it, usually because I didn’t think about it in time. But this year I did! We had hamburger pie for dinner and then dessert via a store-bought chocolate pie and a pumpkin pie from Christmas that had been in the freezer. It was fun.

IMG_1099

2. Cracker Barrel take-out. Love that place, but my husband doesn’t really care for it. Yet he agreed to bring some home for me one night. Nice man. 🙂

3. Mittu’s dinner. We came home from church Sunday afternoon to a dinner already made by my daughter-in-law. So nice to just come in and sit down and eat!

4. Ceiling fans. During the first part of the week it was pretty warm out (60s and 70s, even got up to 80 one day), but I didn’t want to turn on the AC yet (although I finally did when it got up to 75 in the house one evening). But for the most part ceiling fans helped cool things off a bit as needed.

5. Starting a project that has been on my mind for more years than I want to admit. Trying to decide exactly what I wanted to do held me up for a long while, and then finding the time and motivation (at the same time) to do the preparatory work was a problem. But I got that much done this week and hope the actual execution will go pretty quickly. I had hoped to be finished with it by now, but maybe I will be by next week. Meanwhile, here is a sneak peek:

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Bonus: It’s officially the first day of SPRING!

It turned rainy and cooler the latter half of the week, but I’m still glad it’s not snow and ice any more, and I am looking forward to a sunny weekend. Happy Friday!

Note to Paula – I tried several times to comment on your FFF post but just kept getting a window saying “Error establishing a database connection.”

Book Review: To See the Moon Again

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ToSeeTheMoonAgainTo See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner begins with Julia, a widowed, middle-aged, introvertish teacher of Creative Writing at a university in South Carolina. Her tightly-controlled world has been shaken up a little by the award of a sabbatical, a paid year off from teaching, and she is not quite sure what to do with herself. But it is shaken up even more by a message on her answering machine: Carmen, a niece she has never met, daughter of her estranged brother, is in the state and planning to come to see her. While Julia hopes with everything in her that Carmen doesn’t come, of course, she does, and while Julia plans to send her off again as soon as possible, for various reasons she can’t.

Carmen is Julia’s opposite in many ways: she is free-spirited, open, gregarious, and a Christian. Julia thinks Carmen’s faith is naive and unrealistic. But as the two women get to know each other, we learn more of what makes each of them the way they are. Both have had a number of hard breaks and tragedies, both have actions in their pasts that they can’t forgive themselves for. Julia takes Carmen along on a trip which takes them both literally and figuratively to far different places than they had first imagined.

I identified with Julia and her introverted way of thinking quite a bit, but I can understand that some readers may not like her. Sometimes introverts can come across as standoffish, and Julia has other reasons as well for holding people at arm’s length. Although I like Julia, I haven’t liked many of Mrs. Turner’s main characters in other books, but as I got to know them, their background, what makes them tick, and came to understand them better, I could at least empathize and usually came to like them as well.

I like the way Mrs. Turner gradually reveals the depth of her characters. I like that the spiritual truth in the book comes not from an expert who has it all together, but from a young woman who is still dealing with issues herself. I also like that the ending isn’t tied up with a neat bow: things are left a little more open, but you know both characters are on their way to where they need to be. I have to admit to a little disappointment with the ending: without revealing anything, I had hoped it would go the way Julia was thinking it would. Yet I can see that the choices that were made were necessary to the growth of both Julia and Carmen.

Many of Mrs. Turner’s books have the aspect of an outsider looking in on someone else of faith, and that is an interesting and refreshing perspective. They also have grace and redemption as major themes. She’s often described as a different kind of Christian fiction author, and I would agree.

Since I spent 26 years of my adult life in South Carolina, fourteen of them in the town where Mrs. Turner lives, which is near the town many of her books are set in, I very much enjoyed that aspect of the book as well. I knew some of the places mentioned and knew the pattern of spring blooming that she described and could very much picture it. And some of the different types of Southerners were familiar as well.

Since Mrs. Turner is also a teacher of Creative Writing, there are often literary references in many of her books. This one contains a lot of mention of Flannery O’Connor, someone I have never read but now want to.

An interview with the author about this book is here. I think this is my favorite of her books, and I hope you’ll give it a try.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

“Special” Music in the Church

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choir

Let me say at the outset that I know some people object to the term “special music” in church, meaning songs that are performed by instrumentalists or sung as solos or groups as opposed to congregational singing, because it sounds like we’re elevating that type of music above congregational singing. In the order of service in our own church bulletin, a “special” is listed as “Ministry in music,” and that’s perfect. But if I used that phrase as a blog title, it would sound like I was writing about the whole panorama of music in the life of a church, and I am not doing that. I just wanted to share a few thoughts on this particular aspect of church music.

These thoughts were spurred some time ago by an article I saw (which I can’t find now) which advised that one way to encourage more and better congregational singing was to deemphasize the special music. I don’t know how many people saw that particular article, but it seems like that is the current trend, and I think it is a sad one, for reasons I’ll get into in a moment. We always have such a tendency to be unbalanced in one direction or another, and I think to scrap or at least downplay personal ministry in music creates a loss for the church, a loss for the musicians and their gifts as well as for the hearers who would be ministered to.

The writer of the article in question suggested that one reason people weren’t singing as well as they could congregationally was that having worship leaders and a band on stage made it seem more like they were “the professionals” and everyone else was just there primarily to listen and maybe to sing along occasionally. I have never experienced a set-up like that personally; the churches we have attended have been more traditional, with a songleader behind the pulpit and a choir behind him, and a few instrumentalists to one side. I am not knocking the other style, but I can see the point that if it is set up more like a concert, the audience will be more likely to listen than to participate. However, I really don’t think that’s the problem in most churches.

Some think that when we listen to others “perform” a spiritual song, we’re more likely to enjoy the performance rather than be ministered to by the words. And I do admit that is a danger. But I don’t think it is a reason to deemphasize performed hymns and spiritual songs. I can get distracted by how well I like a song or its melody even in congregational singing, so I think that’s largely a matter of training our minds and taking “every thought captive.” I don’t think it is wrong to enjoy the music, the harmony, the performance aspect of it, but we need to let that enhance the message rather than become the main point.

Some want to downplay “special” music in church because they feel congregational singing is more participatory, whereas with special music we’re just listening. But I disagree: listening is participating if done right. (And besides that, we don’t apply the same logic to the preaching, which is done by one and listened to by everyone else.) I think we need to train our families and ourselves to concentrate, to pay attention to the words especially, not to talk or fidget or otherwise distract ourselves and others during the performance. Part of that is just consideration and respect for those performing, but another part of it is to enhance our own ability to receive the song’s message.

For me personally, the special music, whether an offertory, solo, or ensemble, is the most worshipful part of the church service. (By the way, I don’t believe the musical segment of a service is the only time where worship takes place: worship should be what we do in every part of the service.) I do enjoy congregational singing very much, but I do get more distracted by my own voice, by the voices of those around me, by wondering when we’re going to get to sit down because my knees are killing me, by what I need to do to start dinner, etc. That is my own problem, and I work on it constantly. Our church does display the words to the songs we’re singing, and that helps immensely, but that time is the hardest time in the whole service for me to keep my mind on what I am doing. During special music, however, I’m all in and focused without really trying to be.

Besides being able to focus better personally, I think special music has value in other ways as well. Some people are gifted vocally or in ways of expressing what they are singing so that we can get more of the nuance of a song than when we’re just barreling through it with everyone else. And though I have a wealth of recorded Christian music I can listen to any time, and do often, it means more to hear someone I know personally who is dealing with a chronic illness sing, “Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here,” or someone who recently lost her husband sing about the New Jerusalem, or a sweet couple who have walked with the Lord for decades together singing about Him whom their souls love, or someone undergoing a longstanding trial singing:

What if Your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

(“Blessings” by Laura Story)

I can and have been ministered to through music sung by someone I don’t know, but when I know the people and observe how they walk with the Lord, that adds a valuable layer of ministry to a church.

The article I mentioned also proposed that singers and musicians should take it down a notch and not sound so professional so as not to discourage those of us with more average voices to sing out. But Psalm 33:1-3 talks about playing music skilfully. Those who sing and play need to have some skill in doing so (and that is another reason I enjoy it: I can sing and praise in my own spirit vicariously through them, since I don’t have the skills they do.) I don’t think special music has to sound “professional”: it can be very simple. But it is not wrong for it to sound professional, either. Different people have different skill levels, and I can enjoy a variety of them just as I enjoy reading from writers at various levels of writing skill or listening to preaching from men whose style or gifts vary. A child’s first piano offertory or a simple solo with a guitar can minister just as much as a full scale performance of Handel’s Messiah, and I like them all in different ways.

Not long after I came across the article I mentioned, I came to Chronicles in my Bible reading. Among the many people with various specific functions in the temple were musicians and singers.

I Chronicles 16:4-7: Then he appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief, and second to him were Zechariah, Jeiel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Mattithiah, Eliab, Benaiah, Obed-edom, and Jeiel, who were to play harps and lyres; Asaph was to sound the cymbals, and Benaiah and Jahaziel the priests were to blow trumpets regularly before the ark of the covenant of God. Then on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord by Asaph and his brothers.

I Chronicles 16:41-42: With them were Heman and Jeduthun and the rest of those chosen and expressly named to give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever. Heman and Jeduthun had trumpets and cymbals for the music and instruments for sacred song.

I Chronicles 25 gives great detail about David appointing different people for different musical functions. One of the most interesting verses to me is I Chronicles 25:1: “Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals.” A former pastor used to say that even instrumental music was a form of prophecy.

When the ark was brought into the temple,

all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters; and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud,  so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God. II Chronicles 5:12-14.

“Special” music was also performed at the dedication of the temple, before the army, at the crowning of a king, when Hezekiah reestablished worship in the temple, at the restoration of the Passover,  at the Passover in Josiah’s time, when the foundation for the temple was laid again in Ezra’s time. But special or performed music wasn’t just for special occasions:  II Chronicles 8:14 says  “According to the ruling of David his father, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their service, and the Levites for their offices of praise and ministry before the priests as the duty of each day required.” Singers are mentioned multiple times from Chronicles to Nehemiah: Ezra 2: 65 says they were male and female.

Then of course the Psalms are themselves songs and mention music throughout. Whether they were song congregationally or by the temple musicians, or both, I don’t know. Now I am in Isaiah: I am not sure whether I’ll find references to singing in the prophets, as their focus and purpose is different.

That is all Old Testament: what about the New? I’ll look for specific references when I come to it in my reading, but two passages there come to mind. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” I think that can apply to both congregational and performed music. I Corinthians 14:6 says, “How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.” The ESV has “hymn” in place of “psalm.”

I think songleaders and preachers can enhance the performed music of a church by emphasizing the message of it just before or after the person or people sing. If there is one thing I could say to preachers everywhere on this topic: please don’t joke just after someone has ministered in song, especially about that person. I’m not against laughter, I love to laugh as much as the next person, I know the Lord loves a merry heart, but joking just after someone sings is one of the quickest ways to quench whatever ministry their testimony in song could have had.

Instead of downplaying ministry in musical performance, I think songleaders can enhance congregational singing in a number of other ways: reminding us to sing as unto the Lord and what the Bible says about singing or commenting on something the song teaches (not long: a little sermon before each song or each stanza can dull its effect). Please, however, don’t do what I have heard often through the years and say something like, “Are you a Christian? Do you love the Lord? Then please tell your face!” or “If you could see the view from here, you’d be really depressed. Smile!” That’s basically saying, “Paste a smile on so you look better,” an emphasis on the outer rather than the inner man and not conducive to worship. How much better to encourage better singing by encouraging worship of the one we’re singing about and thinking about the message of the song.

Please understand that I am not trying to exalt “special” or performed music above congregational singing because I have emphasized it here: I’m just asking that we don’t discourage or downplay special music in our efforts to encourage congregational singing. Both have vital places in our worship: both can be great tools the Lord can use to minister to our hearts.

Book Review: The Pursuit of God

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Pursuit-of-GodI had not originally planned to reread The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer for Carrie‘s Reading to Know Classics Book Club, this month because I thought I had read it just last year. When I actually checked, however, what I had read last year was Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. (Good thing I don’t rely much on my memory. 🙂 ) It had been years since I had read The Pursuit of God and I couldn’t remember much about it, so I decided to delve into it again. And I am glad I did.

In his preface, Tozer expresses concern that though there are good Bible teachers teaching vital right doctrine and the fundamentals of the faith, they seem “strangely unaware that in their ministry there is no manifest Presence,” that “God’s children [are] starving while actually seated at the Father’s table,” that “there may be a right opinion of God without either love or…right temper toward Him (pp. 8-9). “The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts” (p. 10). This book is his “modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find Him” (p. 10).

The ten chapters explore different aspects or pursuing God. I had thought about jotting a few notes about each chapter as I finished and wish I had now.

The first chapter, “Following Hard After God,” reminds us that our pursuit of God is preceded by His pursuit of us. Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44a).  “The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him” (p. 12). “We Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can” (p. 13). We still pursue Him even after we first find Him, as Moses and David and others did. “Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present” (p. 17). One of my all-time favorite quotes closes this chapter:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long (p. 20).

The second chapter. “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing,” according to the introduction “reflected his desperate struggle to turn his only daughter over to God” (p. 7). He begins by acknowledging that all good gifts come from God, but we have a tendency to grasp them for ourselves and even elevate them in our hearts rather than Him. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” In our pursuit of God, we need to come to a place of “having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (II Corinthians 6:10b), holding all things, as some have said, with an open hand, remembering that they are His to do with as He will.

We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?”

Since these truths must be learned by experience and not just as facts, sooner or later God will bring every one of His children through such a test as Abraham underwent with Isaac. Though the struggle is immense, when all is yielded to God, blessedness follows.

Chapter 3 speaks of removing the veil of self-life (“self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them”) which hinders our following God and our need of renunciating it. Chapter 4 talks about the reality of the invisible world and our need to set our hearts on unseen and eternal realities. Chapter 5 excellently explains the difference between pantheism (the mistaken thought that God is in everything) and God’s immanence, which means that God is everywhere. Since God is everywhere and wants to manifest Himself to people, “Why do some persons ‘find’ God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience?” (p. 67).

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek” (p. 67).

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound rather, a blending of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. From this it may be gathered that it can be present in degrees, that we may have little or more or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given (pp. 68-69).

He then reminds that this takes time, something our instant and push-button generation needs to reminds ourselves of. “And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice” (p. 71).

Chapter 6 explores the ways God speaks to us. Chapter 7, “The Gaze of the Soul,” perhaps my favorite, is about faith: not so much a definition as a study of how it works, what it looks like.

In the New Testament this important bit of history [Numbers 21:4-9] is interpreted for us by no less an authority than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is explaining to His hearers how they may be saved. He tells them that it is by believing. Then to make it clear He refers to this incident in the Book of Numbers. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

Our plain man in reading this would make an important discovery. He would notice that “look” and “believe” were synonymous terms. “Looking” on the Old Testament serpent is identical with “believing” on the New Testament Christ. That is, the looking and the believing are the same thing. And he would understand that while Israel looked with their external eyes, believing is done with the heart. I think he would conclude that faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God. (pp. 88-89).

I made a note in my book that that is perhaps one reason why God often puts us in situations where we must look to Him, not just for salvation but for our everyday lives as well. “The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do” (p. 91).

“Neither does place matter in this blessed work of believing God. Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen. You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him” (pp. 94-95).

Another of my all-time favorite quotes is from this chapter:

Someone may fear that we are magnifying private religion out of all proportion, that the “us” of the New Testament is being displaced by a selfish “I.” Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole Church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life (p. 96).

This is refreshing to me because there is such an emphasis on community today – a needed emphasis, but we can always get unbalanced one way or another. I don’t hear as much these days about being individually “tuned” to the Lord as I used to, yet without that, we’re not going to be of much use to each other when we do come together in community. But if each individual member is growing closer to the Lord and more like Christ, then we’ll become closer to and more unified with each other.

In chapter 8, “Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation, I have far too many places marked to reproduce here, and chapter 9, “Meekness and Rest,” contains another favorite and piercing quote:

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.

Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method (p. 112).

Chapter 10, “The Sacrament of Living,” talks about what it means to truly “do all to the glory of God” – not just spiritual exercises, but everyday life.

The “layman” need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never so simple task he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (p. 127).

I echo Tozer’s closing prayer in the book” “I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee” (p. 128).

I hope you’ll forgive the lengthiness of this review. I was just thinking recently, in wondering how to cultivate time for other writing, whether to make shorter work of the book reviews I write, especially since they don’t seem to be viewed as much as other blog posts. But I write them not just for blog readers, but also as a reminder to myself not only as I go through a book but also as I look back on it in the future.

There is good reason this book is a Christian classic, and I heartily recommend it to you. I am sure I will revisit it again a number of times in the future. At the moment it is 99 cents for the Kindle and free online at Project Gutenberg, and of course it is available as a paper and ink or audiobook as well.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)