I Will Always Keep You Safe

Isaiah 46:4 Contemporary English Version

⁴ I will still be the same
when you are old and gray,
    and I will take care of you.
I created you. I will carry you
    and always keep you safe.

 

It is Sylvia’s birthday today as I write this. She loves the Lord. She has always loved the Lord. When I got disillusioned and was ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater, she still clung to the Lord. Growing up she aspired to be a missionary to Africa, to the islands, to Asia, to South America, no matter. We ended up going to Tanzania in Africa. When it came time to leave Africa, she resisted until the Lord almost had to chase her out.

Two of her babies were born in Africa. Numerous times her first daughter nearly died of malaria there, but our great God took care of both her and the child He gave her.

She had placenta previa when her second daughter was born, and she praised the Lord that He placed her in the greatest hospital in Iowa. He had her up and walking the next day.

Later South African Airways tried to ban her from flying because she was with child. They were heartless and anxious to destroy her by abandoning her in the big city of Paris. However, God carried her and kept her safe. He forced SAA to abandon their malicious attempt.

When she was “old and gray,” she fell some thirty feet down a rock face, broke seven bones, and gashed open her head. God sent a helicopter to pick her up and take her to hospital. Again, she was up and walking around the next day.

She was a passenger in a car when an 18-wheel truck T-boned her. In what appeared to be a sudden death situation, God stepped in and slid the car out of the path of the accelerating truck after letting the truck push it sideways for over 50 feet. Insurance totaled the car, but she got out and walked away.

Yes. She had her bout with COVID-19. For ten days she could barely keep either food or water in her stomach. She ran a fever and coughed. God helped modern medicine shake her out of death’s clutches.

Thank You, Lord, for taking care of and keeping Sylvia safe through more than eight decades!

 

Enthusiasm in Worship

 

Habakkuk 2:20 King James Version

²⁰ The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.

 

The words of this text were stretched in a banner across the front of our church when I was a kid. They were read from the pulpit, and we were urged to exercise reverence before the Lord. Our songs were sung in subdued voices. Only very seldom did someone in the congregation venture a softly spoken, heart-felt “Amen!” There was definitely no running in the sanctuary. The robed choir would sacredly chant these words as they filed somberly in and took their places on the platform.

My grandfather was hard of hearing, so our family always sat on the right-side, front pew. Since Dad was an honored member of the church, his family was expected to behave with perfect decorum. Mom was very cognizant of this expectation and did her very best to make the family live up to the ideal. Yes, we respected the fear of the Lord—and of the razor strap behind the bathroom door at home.

Our salvation was received with solemn acceptance under the realization that it could be withdrawn on the slightest infraction. We trembled lest there be a hidden sin lurking in our past that might be revealed on the day of judgement, and we would be cast into the outer darkness, where all unfortunates cringed weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth.

We read, but rejected and ignored, such verses as “You will take up your tambourines and dance joyfully!”[1]  “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.”[2] “Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.”[3] “Clap your hands for joy, all peoples! Praise God with loud songs!”[4]   

A visiting week of prayer pastor taught us to sing the following with gusto (* indicates repeat three times):

 

I've got a home in Glory land that (clap) outshines the sun, *
Way beyond the blue.

Do Lord, oh, do Lord, oh, do remember me, *
Way beyond the blue.

 

I took Jesus as my Savior, (clap) you take him too, *
Way beyond the blue.

Do Lord, oh, do Lord, oh, do remember me, *
Way beyond the blue.

 

The next year the song was banned because it had a beat to it, and this caused the youth to move to the music. God forbid!

Was it always this way? “I saw,” wrote Ellen White in 1850, that “singing to the glory of God often drove the enemy, and shouting would beat him back and give us the victory. I saw there was too little glorifying God in Israel and too little childlike simplicity.”[5] In Paris, Maine, in 1850, Ellen White noted: “Sunday the power of God came upon us like a mighty rushing wind. All arose upon their feet and praised God with a loud voice; it was something as it was when the foundation of the house of God was laid. The voice of weeping could not be told from the voice of shouting. It was a triumphant time; all were strengthened and refreshed. I never witnessed such a powerful time before.”[6] Ron Graybill noted these and many more instances in his article “Enthusiasm in Early Adventist Worship” in the October 1991 issue of “Ministry Magazine.”[7]

John the revelator reported on Christ’s reaction to lukewarm religion: “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit you out of my mouth!”[8]

Dear Lord, build a fire under us and send us forth with an enthusiasm that will ignite the earth!

 

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[1] Jeremiah 31:4 GNT

[2] Psalm 32: 11 KJV

[3] Psalm 149:3 KJV

[4] Psalm 47:1 GNT

[5] Ellen G. White to Arabella Hastings, Aug. 4,
1850 (letter 8, 1850).

[6] Ellen G. White to The Church in Brother
Hastings' House, Nov. 7, 1850 (letter 28, 1850)

[7] https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1991/10/enthusiasm-in-early-adventist-worship

[8] Revelation 3:16 GNT

Toy Trains

 

[1]

[2]

 

Ezekiel 37:5 Good News Translation

⁵ Tell them that I, the Sovereign Lord, am saying to them: I am going to put breath into you and bring you back to life.

 

 

The first few thoughts that flowed through my waking brain this morning were the words of the last verse of Amazing Grace. As I remember it, it goes--

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
            Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,
            Than when we first begun.

 The vision of Revelation of the 24 elders sitting in a circle around God’s throne and continually throwing themselves face down on the ground and praising Him in vivid poetry flashed through my mind. I confess to not being inspired to an eternity of that nature. But then other things raced through my mind.

I have always been intrigued by languages. I listened to a series of 34 lectures by a Great Courses professor entitled Language Families of the World. He described the various classes of some 7,000 languages spoken in the world today and their unbelievably different ways of expressing ordinary thoughts. I’ve dabbled in over 10 of them. I would love to spend time exploring them all. The words of my thesis advisor came to mind, “I only have one life to live!”

As I tackled graduate mathematics, I found myself at the bottom of a vast quantity of knowledge surrounding me in every direction. I recognized that I had to forge my way through this in one direction until I reached its fringe. Then I pushed outwards and added a new bubble to it. What this did was open an even more vast array of unknowns to explore. I then had even more questions I wished to answer. The more we know, the more we realize how much more there is to discover. My curiosity is endless.

As a child I longed to have an electric train. We were much too poor to even consider buying one. I discovered a little shop in Bulawayo that had a delightful array of electric trains. I could stand there for hours and imagine what I could do with them. On one of our trips, Sylvia and I discovered a farm in southern Wisconsin where a farmer had a whole barn filled with trains and tracks. His wife showed us around, ran a bunch of the trains for us. When she left, she turned the power off, and all the trains stopped and sat there, dead, until she would provide them power again.

Life is like that barn of trains. The huge array of life thrives around the world. All of it depends on external power. When that “power” is cut off, life ceases. Everything lies there in obvious readiness to spring into action. Life is like that barn, and in some ways, God is like that woman in the barn. As long as God provides that elusive spark of life, it roars on; otherwise, nothing—desolation. We need the Sovereign Lord to put breath back into the dead bones.

Lord, thank You for Your constant supply of breath and life and the glorious promise it holds for our future.

 

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[1] https://www.scenicpathways.com/toy-train-barn-argyle-wisconsin/

[2] https://www.travelwisconsin.com/museums-history/toy-train-barn-198829