Make Music

speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, Ephesians 5:19 

  

  Back at the beginning of the year I decided I wanted this to be “The Year of Music” for me. Time to knock the dust off of my bass and other electric guitars. I had neglected them for too long. And so it has been, I have spent time learning and playing music this year. 

  I had no idea how much I was going to need music. Going to need something to focus upon beside the gloomy news about the Covid-19 virus that would devastate the entire world. When the news brought one bad headline after another, I could take a badly needed escape into music, singing and praising God. When I wasn’t playing music, I was listening to it, giving a portion of my day to that gift from God that brings healing to the heart and soul. 

  Music is indeed one of God’s greatest gifts to us. Music can remove the sorrow in our souls, return us to better times, and it can lift our hearts and minds toward God as we remember what He has done for us. Music allows us to sing our praises and give Jesus glory for everything He has done for us. 

  Though music is not an answer for every problem, it can lift our spirits and turn our minds away from pain and misery to a place that brings wholeness to heart and soul. 

  You may feel that you are surrounded by gloom and misery. Pain and suffering may fill your days. I encourage you to turn on the radio, listen to that favorite Christian band or musician that stirs up the goodness of God in your heart. Let peace and love for God wash over you and remove the gloom and sorrow that so easily engulfs us.  

  Let music be a balm for your soul. 

  Prayer: Dear Jesus, fill our hearts and minds with praise for You. Put a song in our soul and lift us above the pain in the here and now to a place where praise for You surrounds us. Amen. 

The Fire Of Affliction

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Isaiah 43:2 

  

  Jack Pines grow well after there is a fire. Fires cause the older trees to open their cones and release seeds which can grow in the fire-scorched ground. The forest management service will often set fires on purpose just to help these trees thrive. 

  The fire of affliction may “burn our body” but it cannot harm our soul. Yet our physical afflictions can cause us much pain and misery. What matters most is how we come through the misery of our affliction. We can release “seeds” of kindness and compassion, we can learn empathy and mercy and give those gifts to our children, friends, even strangers we come into contact with. The fire of affliction can destroy us or make us stronger. Affliction can make us better. 

  When we were children we had to go through numerous terrible experiences. We received shots to vaccinate us against disease, and we considered those shots awful at the time. We may have endured blood tests, or other tests that seemed pure torture to our childlike minds. Our parents forced us to do chores, our teachers made us do homework, and to us, none of these things seemed to our benefit at the time. 

  I have wondered if, someday, when we can see better from God’s perspective, when we are with Him in eternity, we will consider our present troubles and suffering much like we now consider the challenges of childhood. We may think of our troubles as important lessons and experiences we needed to grow. 

  Even to our adult mind current difficulties do not seem either helpful or good, they may make us feel that our heavenly Father is being cruel and unjust toward us. Feeling just as we felt toward our parents, thinking they were being cruel by the many difficult things they allowed us to go through as children. Yet someday we may see things in a different light, just as we now see those childhood difficulties as a necessary part of growing up. 

  Today the fires of affliction may be burning fiercely all around you. It may be that you feel the world could not be more unfair or unjust by forcing hardship into your life. I would encourage you to remember that though the pain and suffering in this life may seem unfair, God can take your misery and make you a mature person fit for His glory. 

  Prayer: Dear Lord, as we go through the fire of affliction, make us stronger, better, more like You. Amen. 

Breath Of Life

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 

  

  I have been thinking much about breathing. Every year as just as Spring arrives, and depending upon the temperature outside, tree pollen arrives with it. During this time as the air warms, the wind blows, and the trees bud out, my lungs become extremely irritated. They begin to close with inflammation. In addition to the medicine cabinet of drugs I’m already taking for allergies and asthma, I need even stronger medications just to breathe. 

  This year has been warmer than most and the tree pollen came early. My lungs are about as bad as they have ever been during this time of year leaving me at times contemplating a trip to the emergency room as my breathing has been such a struggle. Meanwhile, people throughout the world and my own country, in fact, just a few miles away from me, there are individuals battling the Covid-19 virus. Many of these people are on ventilators as the virus attacks their lungs and makes breathing nearly impossible. While thankful that I am not in such straights, nevertheless, as I struggle to breathe, I well understand the panic, fear, and worry that comes from working hard just to get air to breathe. 

  Without oxygen in our lungs we die. You cannot survive without it. I think that makes the current Covid-19 Pandemic especially despicable as it seeks to steal the very air people need to survive from its victims.  

  Our God in heaven began our existence by breathing air from himself into the first human being. With that breath of life, we came into existence. By that breath He continues to give us we continue to live.  

  

  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:28 

  

  We have so much to be thankful for. If you are alive and breathing you have reason for gratitude toward God. We should never take one breath for granted. If you have ever struggled to breathe, you know better than to take it for granted.  

  Thank God today for giving you breath, for giving you life. If you can breathe easy and walk outside under God’s lovely sun and sky breathing in the fresh air, you have more to be thankful for than you realize. 

  Prayer: Dear Lord, help us never to take life for granted. In you we live and breathe and have our existence. We thank You for it. Amen. 

The Panic Apocalypse

The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. Proverbs 28:1 

  

  It is the middle of the month of March in the year 2020 and I’m walking down the aisles of my local Walmart shopping center. The toilet paper aisle is a barren wasteland, not a single roll in sight. Indeed, most of the shelves are devastated, like the wet wipes area, and not a bit of hand soap available. The bottled water area was sparse, and it was that way through much of Walmart. 

  Stores in other cities across the United States were similarly devastated. What brought on this buying panic? The Covid-19 virus. To be sure it is a contagious bug. It has taken lives. Yet upwards of 80% of those affected by the Covid-19 virus have mild or no symptoms at all. Were there millions of cases of this virus spread across my country? Were people affected on every street and the hospitals packed with patients? No. In my home State of Ohio there are 16 cases mentioned during last night’s newscast. My State has a population of 11 million people. My small city has a population of about 20 thousand people. If all 16 of those infected people were in my small city it might be reason for some concern, but not spread among 11 million people. Perspective is lost when panic is incited. 

  I have no idea how bad the Covid-19 virus will become in my Nation, or State, or City. But I do know with so few cases as of this writing, there is not the slightest reason for panic buying and the fear that is so badly out of proportion to the facts on the ground. 

   

Surely the righteous will never be shaken; 

  they will be remembered forever.  

They will have no fear of bad news; 

  their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Psalm 112:6-7 

  

  We need wisdom and common sense in all things. People are looking to us, to Christians to see our reaction, especially in times of crisis. We have no reason to fear, for we shelter under the wings of our Lord (Psalm 91). He is our Defender and Protector. We need not fear plagues or diseases or anything else under the sun. We are people of faith, and we should lead the way with boldness in times of crisis, standing our ground with courage in times of fear and panic. 

  Prayer: Dear Lord, we are surrounded by fear, bad news, and panicky people. Help us to remain strong, to stand courageously knowing we are protected by You. Thank You for being our Defender Lord Jesus. Amen. 

Is Sand In Your Well?

So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. Genesis 26:15 

  

  Poor Isaac. God is supposed to be on his side, but everywhere he goes he is made unwelcome, and people keep stealing his wells and filling them with sand. 

  Sometimes I feel like Isaac. I know God is with me, but something keeps clogging my well with sand. Financial challenges increase, health problems increase, and inter-personal relationships become problematic. Just when I think my well is dug and filling with water, something comes along to stop the flow of God’s blessings and resets my well of optimism to one of disappointment. 

  It is tough to be on the brink of blessings and then get slammed by disappointments. We can sometimes feel victory within our grasp but then disappointment comes along to stop up the well of blessing we foresaw. It angers me to see victory snatched out of my hand, and just like Isaac going to drink from his newly dug well, instead of blessed water finding only dry sand. 

  Chronic disappointment can sap our hope and our will to keep fighting. I can imagine Isaac throwing his hands up to the heavens and asking the Lord “Why? Why do you let all my hard work, my hope for life-giving water, why do you let my wells get filled with sand by my enemy?” 

  Our enemy comes in different guises. Sometimes our enemy is affliction itself, but often it is the difficulties that surround affliction, such as strife with family members or friends. Our enemy may be added financial hardship because of our inability to work or due to added health care costs. Whatever the guise our enemy takes, we know how it feels when our freshly dug well of hope is dashed by the sand of disappointment. 

  Fellow sufferer on the path of affliction, I know what it is to have hopes dashed, and to want fresh hope and strength, yet find sand flung in your face. It is not easy to deal with disappointment in the best of times, much less so in the land of affliction. We need the refreshing water of hope fulfilled. 

  I would encourage you with this word, Isaac’s enemies eventually made peace with him. He found a well that was not taken from him, and he drank of its life-giving water. I encourage you to go to the well of the Spirit of God, ask for your hope to be fulfilled, and drink from that eternal well that can quench your thirst even in a dry and thirsty land. 

  Prayer: Dear Lord, give us the water of the Spirit, refresh us, fulfill our hopes, renew a sense of optimism for the future in our hearts and minds. Amen.