Wind

I live in the heartland of the United States, in eastern Nebraska. I suspect that people living in other parts of the country say the same thing to each other, but we often find the weather here to be somewhat unpredictable. Certainly, the broad sweeps of the seasons do cause some certain changes; the middle of the summer is usually hot and dry; the middle of the winter is usually cold, and possibly snowy. Fall and spring are somewhere between those extremes. But to expect a particular type of weather on a particular day? Unlikely to happen. I’ve seen a warm 70 degree day in January, and a chilly 40 degree day in June.

The local weather forecasters do their best to tell us what is going to happen tomorrow, or next week or next month. But all they have to go by are what the current conditions are, and where things seem to be moving. We recently had a “winter weather watch”, that anticipated the “first winter storm of the season”. Two to four inches of snow was expected, with blowing and drifing possible. Within twelve hours of the expected event, it appeared that the winds had shifted things more to the north, so it totally missed my part of the country. We got the cold temperatures, but not the snow.

What this tells me is that even when an experienced meteorologist attempts to make a prediction based on current conditions, he might be right; but a million variables can combine to make a forecast totally wrong.

In Matthew 16:2-3, Jesus criticizes the spiritual leadership of his day, the Parisees and Sadducees, for being intelligent enough to make predictions about the weather, but blind enough to be unable to see clearly the times in which they lived. And even today, with our twenty-four hour news networks, instant reports from around the world, and even instant messaging between each other, we still find ourselves getting lost in the details, and unable to see the broad sweeps of the times in which we live.

The thing with the future is that it is totally unpredictable. I live every day with the expectation that I will be around tomorrow, but I have no guarantee of that. The only certainty that I have about tomorrow is that Jesus will be there to take care of me and my life, regardless of the events of the day. A sunny day with warm temperatures? A cold windy day with snow? The best day of my life? The worst day of my life? He has it all covered, and He will be there to help me through it. The old quote is true: “I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know Who holds tomorrow.”

The 2nd Chapter Of Acts sang about this on their 1974 debut album, With Footnotes, in their opening song, Which Way The Wind Blows.

Feel a feeling
Say a saying
But you’ll still
Be lonely
If you think life is only
For this moment

Do a doing
Mourn a mourning
Still won’t get you off your sorrow
So go ahead and cry, but you
Can’t pry a look at tommorrow

You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?
You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?

Run a running
Hide a hiding
Whenever you hear the truth
And when you ask for the proof,
You won’t listen
Listen

Praise a praising
Build a building
Trying to get peace into your life
And you don’t even know wrong from right
Oh, where’s your wisdom?

You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?
You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?

Die a dying
Ressurecting
By believing and receiving
Forgiveness from Jesus
Who took the sin from sinning

You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?
Jesus knows which way the wind blows
So how give Him your tommorow!

Believe and recieve
Believe and recieve

You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?
You don’t know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tommorow?

Tags: 2nd Chapter of Acts, future, wind, worry

I pointed out just a little of the concept of praise in my last post. I mentioned its “therapeutic” benefits. That is, I described the ways in which praise is helpful to your spirit, how it can unlock the power of God in your life to change your circumstances – or change you in the midst of your circumstances. And this is definitely true about praise. What is also true about praise is that it is also similar to exercise to your physical body. The more you do it, the more you want to do it, and the greater is its effect on you.

If you were to join a gym and start a program of physical fitness, aerobics and weight training and the like, you would find that the first time or two that you did it, you would feel your muscles complaining about this unaccustomed work you’ve forced them to go through. But as time goes by, the exercise becomes more easy, and many people find that they actually look forward to going in for their workout sessions. And the end result is that you build up strength and endurance, and your physical health improves.

When you make the decision to praise God, and to start making it a part of your life, the same kinds of changes can happen to your spiritual “body”. It gets easier, and you can feel a connection to the presence of God that you might have never felt. My rational mind would say, “This is ridiculous! You’ve got to get up and do something about this — ‘praising’ God is not going to make any difference!!” I might say the same thing about putting a pill in my mouth and swallowing it; how in the world is doing this twice a day going to have any effect on making this pneumonia go away, or my blood pressure go down, or whatever it is for which I am taking the pill? But if I choose to ignore these doubts and just obey the instructions I was given, I will most likely find that the medicine actually does have the effect I was told it would, and it increases my faith in the future that I can trust the potency of this treatment.

In Hebrews 13:15 we are told to continually (there’s that word again) offer to God a sacrifice of praise. Music is an effective and powerful means of bypassing the efforts of my mind that might try to block my entry into praise. Also, depending on what kind of effect music has on you, it can be a means of helping me to get into that “continually” state of mind. If you are the kind of person that finds it easy to get a song running through your head, then the kind of music to have running through it is the kind that focuses on praise.

So, when I heard this praise song that was familiar to me start running through my mind before I woke this morning, I realized that this needed to be a praise day, and so I wanted to share it with others.

Beautiful One, performed by By The Tree, is from their 2004 album Hold You High. It is one that we often sing in my church.

And by the way, did I tell you that it’s not played on an organ? 🙂

Wonderful, so wonderful
Is Your unfailing love
Your cross has spoken mercy over me
No eye has seen, no ear has heard
No heart can fully know
How glorious, how beautiful You are

Beautiful One I love
Beautiful One I adore
Beautiful One my soul must sing

Powerful, so powerful
Your glory fills the skies
Your mighty works displayed for all to see
The beauty of your majesty awakes my heart to sing
How marvelous, how wonderful You are

Beautiful One I love
Beautiful One I adore
Beautiful One my soul must sing

(repeat)

You opened my eyes to your wonders anew
You captured my heart with this love
‘Cause nothing on earth is as beautiful as You!

And You opened my eyes to your wonders anew
You captured my heart with this love
‘Cause nothing on earth is as beautiful as You!

Beautiful One I love
Beautiful One I adore
Beautiful One my soul must sing

(repeat x 2)

Tags: By The Tree, Praise

Tags: healing, Praise, The Imperials

This post is going up on Thanksgiving Day 2008 in the U.S. So what one would expect is a post and a song about how we should be thankful, or some other theme that directly addresses the day. Well, that’s not what I’m going to do — exactly.

There are millions of people around the country and around the world who have nothing but positive things to think about and experience on this day when remember our blessings. But there are millions more who cannot think of anything for which they can be thankful. Are you one of them?

Perhaps it was that conversation with your boss that ended with, “I’m sorry, but we have to let you go.” Now you have no income and no health insurance, and you really need both.

Possibly it was the visit with the doctor, and you got the bad news. Cancer. A bad heart. The need for a risky operation. And you are scared.

Maybe it was that bad news phone call in the middle of the night. An accident has claimed the life of a friend or family member, or the “one phone call” allowed after an arrest.

Regardless of the nature of the disaster, it causes a reaction within. You are stunned. Speechless. Angry. Tearful. Fearful. Perhaps a sense of being trapped. And possibly a sense of the injustice of it all. “I’m a good person! I haven’t killed anybody, I haven’t robbed any banks! Why me!!” Or maybe, “But I’m a Christian! Why didn’t God prevent this?!”

Excellent questions. And not very easy to answer. I could give you theological explanations about why the world is the way it is. Maybe they would satisfy you about the “why”, maybe not. Even with a defense of the world situation that was acceptable, you are still in that situation: The lost job, the health crisis, the family emergency.

My point is that even knowing why the world is the way it is does not bypass that difficult road left to travel. How do you get through this, anyway?

FIrst of all, know that God does care. He knows our sorrows and our burdens. Jesus walked through life and has experienced sadness and sorrow. In Isaiah 53:3 Jesus is described as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. In John 11:35, Jesus is brought face to face with the immense sorrow of the death of his friend Lazarus, and the shortest verse in the Bible reads simply, “Jesus wept.”

Secondly, find people who will care for you in your time of need. Talk to your pastor or a godly counselor. Don’t expect that they will be able to solve all of your problems; just look for a sympathetic, listening ear. And if you who are reading this are not experiencing the life calamity that I’ve described, but you know of someone who is, why don’t you be that kind, listening ear.

The song that I found that prompted this post is Life Is Hard (God Is Good), by Pam Thum from the 1995 album Feel The Healing. I remember hearing this around the time when I first heard from my mother that she had received the diagnosis of lymphoma. It was a comfort to remember that regardless of what we were going to face, that I could be assured that God is good.

Link on iTunes Store

Tags: healing, pain, Pam Thum