Number Our Days

My family recently had the pleasure of taking a vacation to the beach with some dear friends.  It was especially meaningful because these days, with both our sons working and doing the college thing, it can be hard to get us all in to the same place for 30 minutes, much more so for several days.  I'm grateful for every such opportunity we have.

Because our trip spanned a Sunday, we did as we've done for years in such situations and planned to have our own Sunday worship session.  Usually one of us Dads will prepare and share a devotion, and we spend a little time in prayer and musical worship.  This time around, I volunteered the lead the devotion, and set about praying and considering what might be of particular relevance to our families in this season.  "This season" is more than just another milestone along the course of our collective aging.  We've recently endured quite a bit of heaviness between our families, including the death of a mother/grandmother and the wildly destructive Hurricane Helene (which is what brought us to the beach in the first place, since the mountain vacation we'd already planned became a non-option).

It's a bit challenging to convey all that went into my consideration of a text to focus on, but there were several key things.  It started, of course, with the weight and near reminder of how close death can be.  But beyond that, I'd had recent conversations about how the more melancholy worship songs (some of which are musically lovely!) always feel out of place in a Sunday morning service, at least in my denominational context.  The book of Psalms has such songs, so songs of sorrow are completely relevant and legitimate for congregational worship.  I recalled that the Church has had for many years a mechanism for touching on all the various valid emotions of the Christian life:  cyclic, planned liturgies.  On a whim, I looked up the Anglican liturgical calendar to see what readings were scheduled for our Sunday away.  Almost unsurprisingly, they were all readings focused on sorrow.

Two other things happened while at the beach that narrowed my search into a decision.  While walking in a beach souvenir shop, the overhead radio program (featuring John Tesh) was musing about midlife crises.  I was only half paying attention, but I heard Tesh saying something about age 40 being the halfway point of the average lifespan.  Then the following day, I took a solo side quest up to Southport, where I spent some time poking around an interesting cemetery.  (In a fun plot twist, I later went off to find a multi-stage geocache that led me around town picking up clues, and the final destination turned out to be none other than that same cemetery.)  There I noted the ages on many of the headstones — people dying at age 60. 40. 21. 18. 7. 1. Even a trio of three-month-old children laid in a row.  My thoughts kept returning to just how fleeting life is for us.  And that was all I needed to secure a text for our Sunday morning devotion.  Without yet knowing where the study would lead, I chose Psalm 90.

I won't attempt to recount the whole devotion here, but as I studied the text over the next half-day, I couldn't avoid seeing phrases and themes that reminded me of the Genesis accounts of Creation and the Fall.  Themes of toiling, day after day; literary hints such as the morning and evening cycle; an eventual return to dust — all point to Genesis 1-3.  A Psalm that at first glance might appear to picture an arbitrarily wrath-filled God is reminding us that because of the first sin, the earth and its inhabitants are under a curse.  God hates sin.  It was sin that introduced death into Creation in the first place.  And the Psalm (with a bit more authority than Mr. Tesh) reminds us that life is roughly 70 years long — 80 if you're lucky.

After reading and commenting a bit on the Psalm that Sunday morning, I employed an unconventional analogy in order to help our families consider what "80 years" looks like.  If life is a pizza with eight slices, our family members' ages fell pretty neatly into clean "slice counts".  My daughter is 10 — one of her slices is already gone.  The older boys' ages hover around 20 — two slices gone.  Jason and Cassandra (the parents in the other family) have consumed half of their pizza.  And Amy and I are down to just three slices left.  This is a sobering thought, and is surely why Psalm 90's final section asks of God, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

Father in Heaven, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.  Have pity on us.  Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.  Amen.

Ten Commandments of Dating

Some years ago, as my sons were approaching the age at which words like "girlfriend" and "dating" were being used more often, I began thinking through what a biblical framework for dating might look like. This is not the most obvious enterprise because the Bible was written to a culture wildly different than our modern western society, with patterns and norms for establishing relationships of this sort that look nothing like those we experience today. Still, I was convinced that the Bible carried principles that reflect the character of God and His intention for all people across all of time, so I turned to what I felt was the most obvious place – the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are of course pretty widely known, and are both respected and recognized for what they are: brief summary statements that encapsulate many deep layers of thought and consideration.  From these ten basic commandments would flow another 600+ more detailed laws given to the Israelites through Moses, which would then give way to countless codified interpretations and applications over the years as the nuance and complexity of society would give rise to such a need.

What follows here is my attempt to apply the basic principles of the Ten Commandment to the realm of pre-marital romance.  The document carries a heavy Christian slant (for which I make absolutely no apology) and is written from a first-person perspective, as if each party in the relationship was speaking his or her commitment to these principles to the other party.

"Shepherd of My Soul"

While on a recent out-of-state trip to visit family, I found myself mentally reflecting on the twenty-third Psalm.  You know the one I'm talking about:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

— Psalm 23 KJV

Yes, I realize that I posted the King James Version above.  I almost never use that translation myself, but I can't deny that as a child every bit of the Holy Bible that I memorized was memorized from that translation.  And that childhood memorization turns out to have been important, because I was reflecting on the psalm while in a musical frame of mind ... and while driving my family's minivan around West Virginia!

So with no instrument in hand (unless the steering wheel counts...) I began morphing Psalm 23 into a singable tune.  By repeating the song in my mind over and over again, I managed to retain the concept until I was able to get back to North Carolina and see how it felt over an instrumental accompaniment.  A few days later, I recorded a demo version (with my son Aidan providing the drum tracks) to capture the idea.  Here's that demo version, imperfections and all:



In an unexpected twist, I plan to introduce the song to my church family this coming Sunday.  This fact pushed me to try my hand at using MuseScore 2 to transcribe the vocal parts for the song so I can get the rest of my worship team up to speed on the song quickly.  Writing sheet music is still not something I claim as a talent of mine, but MuseScore certainly makes it easy enough, especially since it runs flawlessly on the Linux and Windows platforms that occupy all my desktop computing devices.  If you care, you can get my MuseScore musings from my GitHub repository at https://github.com/cmpilato/worship-music/tree/master/Shepherd_of_My_Soul.

Finally, here are the song's lyrics.  Feel free to sing along!

Shepherd of My Soul

You are my Shepherd.  I'll want for nothing.
You make me lie down in pastures of green.
Beside still waters and down paths of righteousness
All for Your name's sake, Shepherd, You lead.

You restore my soul. You restore my soul.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow.
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
There with my Shepherd, the Shepherd of my soul.

Even when walking down through the valley,
There in death's shadow no evil I'll fear.
You're always with me.  Your rod and staff comfort me.
Jesus, my Shepherd, You're always near.

You restore my soul. You restore my soul.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow.
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
There with my Shepherd, the Shepherd of my soul.

You set a table before me with my enemies all around.
Let your anointing fall on me.  Let my cup overflow with your pow'r.

© 2019 C. Michael Pilato; License: cc-by-3.0

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UPDATE (2/28/19): We ran the new song at our full worship team practice last night, and thanks to the extra layers of instrumentation and my super-talented fellow singers, it sounded A-MA-ZING!  I'm so excited for Sunday!

UPDATE (1/11/22): Updated sheet music references to point to my GitHub repository.

Parenting by the Sixes

I suspect that at some point every Christian parenting seminar, magazine, or discussion eventually finds a way to bring up the opening verses of Ephesians 6:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
[Ephesians 6:1-4 ESV]

And to be sure, this is not a bad thing.  The author and apostle Paul does a good — if concise — job here of addressing both "sides" of the oft-opposed factions within a household.

But I was surprised and enlightened this morning when I found conviction and instruction for the parent as I read the opening of not Ephesians 6, but Galatians 6:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.  [Galatians 6:1-3 ESV]

I can't tell you how many times I've admonished my children for some behavioral shortcoming only to find myself succumbing a similar (or identical!) issue shortly thereafter.  So while Paul may not in this second passage be addressing parents and children specifically, I think the prescription applies nonetheless.  As a father, my supreme aim for my children is that they increase in holiness.  But I need to offer guidance to that effect in love, with gentleness, and in all humility as I openly confess my own failures, my insufficiency, and my outright dependency on the grace of God as He works out holiness in me.

Bibles, copyright, and restrictive licensing

One Wednesday evening as Pastor John Cashwell wrapped up his sermon, I found myself staring at the binding of a pew Bible. "Holman Christian Standard Bible" … and then that big ol' ® (registered trademark) symbol. Recalling that in the past I'd read the New International Version (NIV) licensing statement, I flipped open the cover of the HCSB to read its own, and found stuff pretty similar to what I remembered the NIV's to be. You can quote the text, but not more than 250 verses, not quoting a whole book, and not using the quotes as more than 20% of the body of work in which you are embedding the verses.

Why do modern Bible translations carry restrictive licenses?

How can a publisher restrict the free distribution of a work that is, by its very definition, just a remix of some other, written-before-there-were-even-copyrights, text?

I Googled around a bit for some answers. My first hit was a FAQ entry on BibleGateway.com, which talks—among other things—about the cost and effort involved in creating an accurate Bible translation. It contains the following wrap-up summary:

To sum up, Bible versions are copyrighted to make sure that translators are fairly reimbursed for their hard work. Most copyrighted Bible versions have relatively lenient quoting rules that should cover most common situations. But if for whatever reason the copyright rules prevent you from using the Bible as you like, you're free to use a non-copyrighted Bible version.

The article also states that "there is nothing stopping you from creating your own Bible translation—there are online projects dedicated to doing just that!" This intrigued me. I'd never considered the idea of crowd-sourcing a Bible translation before, so I Googled again for "crowd-sourced Bible translation". This led me to a project called The Seed Company (theseedcompany.org). Initially, I was excited, but as I read on, I didn't see many obvious differences between the Seed Company and other traditional translation methods such as those employed by its sister company, Wycliffe Bible Translators. Some digging around further led me to a well-written set of blog posts which somewhat echoed much of what I was thinking (plus a bunch of stuff I'd not considered).

Dissatisfied, I tried a different search: "-wikipedia.org wikipedia style Bible translation".

Finally, I landed on something promising! The WikiProject Wiki Bible (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WPWB) is the project that I found myself wishing into existence.

In Spirit and in Truth

For a few weeks, the topic of worship has been hot, hot, hot around Providence. For some, that’s made for a great opportunity to think about how we as leaders can facilitate a more active and purposeful worship in our services. For others, it’s been a source of confusion and even hurt feelings.

"Does the Bible require that I sing in church?"
"Does raising my hands make me a better worshipper?"
"Why does the pastor invite folks to come forward and pray at the front of the church, anyway?"

These are just some of the questions I and others at the church have been asked in recent weeks.  But while there are surely some specific answers to those questions that could be given, I'd like instead to explore from a more high-level perspective what the Bible teaches about worship that is acceptable to God.  I genuinely believe that when we understand the big picture of acceptable worship, these more specific questions will fall away as less interesting.

Framing the Question

John 4 tells us of a unique encounter that Jesus had with a Samaritan woman he meets at a well.  He impresses this woman with His supernatural perception and insight into her personal life and failures.  So she does what many of us would do:  she tries to change the topic away from her own sin and onto something else — in this case, she chooses some religious debate the Jews and Samaritans have been having.
We’ll pick up the text in verse 19.

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

What’s going on here?  Jesus is deflecting the woman’s question by indicating that it’s essentially no longer relevant.  He’s saying that the old questions about worship style no longer apply — a new worship paradigm has been introduced.

Worship in Jesus' day was, at its core, much the same as it had been since the days of Moses:  as proscribed by Mosaic Law.  This worship was primarily about specifically prescribed activities at specific geographical locations — sacrifices, festivals, ritual cleanliness, at the Tabernacle, Tent of Meeting, Holy of Holies, etc.)  Jesus’ own family would have been bound to these same rituals.  (Luke 2 tells us how Mary and Joseph had to go to Jerusalem to offer the prescribed sacrifice for a first-born son.)

Our text describes a move away from Mosaic worship and into something else. Moreover, Jesus indicates that this transition “is coming and has now come”.  Well, if the change has now come, what ushered in the change?  What happened in the world that would permit worship to deviate from the strict patterns of Mosaic Law?  Put simply, Jesus happened.  He’s the difference.  Jesus changes the game.  Elsewhere in the Bible we are taught that He is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices; the High Priest to eliminate the need for all other high priests; and that the body of the believer is the new temple of the Holy Spirit.  Worship as prescribed by Mosaic law appears to have received an update.

So what’s the new worship paradigm?  If it’s no longer about being at the right place at the right time with the right ritual, then what is it about?  According to the text, it’s about worship "in the Spirit and in truth".

In Truth

Worship that honors God must be true.  This worship must be educated and informed, and must not behave contrary to what it knows to be true.  True worship is:

• true to Who God is and what He's done (and doing).
• true to who God designed you to be.
• true to the Gospel, grateful for the gift of Jesus (“the Way, the Truth, and the Life…”).

In true worship, there is no room for anything artificial, manufactured, manipulated, or fake.  There is no room for anything that’s uninformed and unbiblical.  We are compelled, then, to grow in our knowledge of and relationship with God.  In doing so, our worship can more fully align with His truth.  Without that, our worship will always fall short.

In the Spirit

John 3:16 is arguably the most popular verse in the Bible, but do you know the context in which it appears?  In John 3, a prominent religious leader named Nicodemus is visiting Jesus under cover of night to question the Rabbi about His teachings.  They enjoy an almost comical (if understandable) exchange in which Jesus coins the phrase "born again" and Nicodemus misses the metaphor.  But then Jesus explains this second birth in verse 6:

⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

As Christians, we are (re)born of the Spirit, therefore we have a spirit component to our existence.  The life of our spirit flows from God's Spirit.  Our entire identity is rewritten in light of God becoming our spiritual Father.

We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit at the time of salvation.  The Holy Spirit’s jobs are many:  to act as our Counselor, our Guide, our Comforter; to help us understand God’s Word and His revelation (past and present, written or otherwise); etc.  These are all very real-time activities.  The Holy Spirit is a person, alive within us, actively working right now to help us make sense of God and His Word and the world He created.

So this new worship is not just physical — right place, right time, right ritual.  It flows from the Spirit, which means:

• it can only be embraced by those born of the Spirit (Christians).
• it involves our whole re-born being.
• it carries the characteristics of the Holy spirit — it’s alive and interactive.

Missing Pieces: Where Things Go Wrong

Worship in the Spirit and in truth is the recipe Jesus gives for successful worship approved by the Father (God).  But like most recipes, things go wrong when we are missing an ingredient.

Worship that is sincere but not guided by the living, interactive Holy Spirit is incomplete and dry.  It removes the interactive element provided by the Holy Spirit’s on-the-fly, in-the-moment communication and revelation about the things of God.  As such, it tends to be emotionless, focused on rituals and patterns that run the same course regardless of what's happening in the worship environment.  This is very much like Mosaic worship.  It may not involve animal sacrifice, but the major components of Mosaic worship are still there.  This kind of worship tends to happen only in certain environments (such as a church building) and at certain times (such as on Sunday mornings), performing the same rituals every time (such as singing songs and listening to sermons without any genuine emotional or spiritual response to them).

On the other hand, if you have worship that's emotional and interactive but lacks truth and sincerity, you have mere emotionalism.  Emotionalism in worship is, when it comes down to it, the result of making the hunt for a good feeling the point of worship.  Sadly, this is all too common in churches where worship is all about having “an experience”.  Don't be deceived!  Feelings and emotions are easy to manipulate.  I can feel joy, sorrow, excitement, anxiety, and a whole range of other emotions simply listening to instrumental classical music or opera in a foreign language.   (Actually, I can't tolerate opera music, so I mostly feel only pain and irritation when I listen to that!)  The service and retail industries have known for years how to use music to manipulate consumers.  You cannot have “an experience” with the Holy Spirit and the only effect be that you “feel better” for an hour or so.  Our God is a Universe-authoring God!  Nothing He touches remains the same!  If your worship leaves you with little more than an emotional high, is that anything more than you could pick up at a concert or a ball game?

Worship in the Spirit and in Truth — How?

Moving beyond ritualistic worship and into Spirit-led, interactive worship can be a challenge due to many reasons:  social pressures, ignorance, fear, doubt, and so on.  Certainly, it's much easier to just keep going with the flow, doing what you do, and not rocking the boat.  But that's pretty much never the course God calls us to take.  So how can we start to move past those challenges and into the fullness of the worship that God actually desires?

First, we must be born of God’s Spirit.  You cannot worship God fully and completely and in a fashion that He will accept if you don't have a relationship with Him. You must be born again, in and of the Spirit.

Secondly, we need to understand the relationship between obedience and faith — namely, that they go hand in hand.  Without obedience, there is no faith.  Faith without obedience is called "dead" in the Scripture.  I can say that I believe that God is worthy to be praised by all of my being, but if I withhold part of myself in worship (my emotions, my natural physical expressions, my vulnerability), then my actions tell the sad-but-true story of what I truly believe.  God's word is absolutely full of worship-related instructions, from prayer and fasting to singing and shouting and even various postures of worship.  When we ask God for faith regarding things he's already told us to do, his response is often, "My child, just obey me.  When you see how it all works out, faith won't be an issue for you".

We also benefit from the support of our church family.  The first time we break from our established, ritualized worship patterns in public is always the hardest time.  We’re probably convinced that everyone is noticing that we’re doing something different and judging our sincerity.  This kind of free exploration of Spirit-led worship is so, so much easier when we’re surrounded by folks who we know are not judging us because they love us.  (This is also why we are often more free in our worship when we attend Christian conferences or concerts — we figure that the random folks we sit near in those venues and who we'll likely never see again aren't judging us, either.)

Finally, I strongly suggest and beg (beseech!) you to take all of this and process it in your private worship time.  If you don’t have a private worship time, get one.   It will revolutionize your relationship with God.  In your private worship time, read your Bible, pray, sit silent and listen, “try out” the various biblical postures of worship, paint a picture inspired by Scripture, write a poem or a song.  It doesn't so much matter what you do specifically.  The idea is simply to commune with God, to expand the scope of what you consider "worship", and to learn to follow His lead regarding how He wants to spend that specific time with you.

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This post was adapted from a lesson I developed and taught to the Impact Student Ministry of Providence Baptist Church in Harrisburg, NC.  And, uh, my apologies to all the parents of teens that I irritated that night by running 30 minutes over my allotted speaking time.

A closer look at Psalm 108

Tomorrow (or today ... gosh, it's late) my church will sing the song "I Will Sing To You", which is a worship song I composed nearly a year ago from the text of Psalm 108. Actually, I didn't use all of Psalm 108. I only used the first five verses. In fact, the whole reason that Psalm 108 is on my mind right now is because I wanted to remind myself what the rest of that chapter said — the part I didn't use in my song. Suffice it to say that having read Psalm 108:6-13 again, I'm reminded why I didn't use it in the song. There's nothing wrong with the text, of course. It just didn't lend itself so easily to being reworked as a modern song of praise. (What rhymes with "Moab is God's restroom"?)

But this whole detour got me looking into the chapter in more depth. By perusing my Bible, multiple commentaries, and Wikipedia, I realized some things I didn't previous know about Psalm 108.

First, the psalm is a remix! The entirety of this psalm is constructed from pieces of other psalms. Psalm 108:1-5 is pulled from Psalm 57:7-11; the rest of the psalm comes from Psalm 60:5-12. These two original psalms each had their own individual tunes: Psalm 57 was written "to the tune of 'Do Not Destroy'" and Psalm 60 "to the tune of 'The Lily of the Covenant'" (whatever those tunes are). Wah-lah — remix. That would make my song a remix of a remix. A second-order remix. Remix². (Shall I continue?)

David asks in the psalm, "Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?" and petitions God for aid in a military campaign. Fortunately, we get to know how that story ended. 2 Samuel 8:13-14 says that David became famous after his military victory over Edom, that Edom was fully subdued, and — further — that "the LORD gave David victory wherever he went."

Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion about the details about this particular victory. The 2 Samuel passage credits David with the slaying of 18,000 men in Edom (though some translations refer instead to a region called "Aram"). A parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 18 names Abishai — who was one of the captains of David's army — as the victor over those 18,000. And the header for Psalm 60 credits Joab — Abishai's brother and another of David's captains — with the victory, though only over 12,000 men. In any case, it was ultimately David's army or a portion thereof led by his subordinate that won the day.

"I Will Sing To You (Psalm 108)"

Part of my journey as a Christ-follower involves discerning how to apply the talents and spiritual gifts that God has given me (and/or allowed me to develop) toward the goal of serving Him and His people better. I love music, and enjoy making/playing/sharing it. I'm not a gifted lyricist, and over the years I've learned to understand and be (more or less) okay with that. But I've heard from a few different sources that it can be a lovely personal worship experience as well as artistic exercise to crack open the Bible and let the words therein be the lyric to whatever accompaniment springs up from within, and have enjoyed such experiences in the past.

The other night, the wife and I were having trouble falling asleep. For her, an accidentally consumed caffeinated beverage was most likely to blame. For me, it was a restless mind simply reeling with all the stuff I'd seen earlier in the day during a field trip to the Passages exhibit. So at 1:30am, I quit trying to sleep and headed over to my office/music room. I sat down with my Bible and my guitar, and then (I'm almost ashamed to admit) played a bit of "Bible Roulette" — semi-randomly choosing a chapter in the book of Psalms to read. Within a couple of minutes I was contributing to my wife's inability to sleep by playing and singing (somewhat loudly) a new melody to the slightly rearranged words found in the first part of Psalm 108:

My heart is sure, O God
I am secure, O God
With everything my soul will sing to You
I will awaken the dawn
Great are you, Lord, higher than heavens
Your faithfulness fills the skies
Be exalted, O Lord, above all the heavens
And let Your glory rise!

I will sing to You
I will sing to You
I will praise You, O God, before the world!

I first recorded the melody on my phone's voice recorder app. Then I moved to tracking a little demo on my computer. I toyed with the song all night long — adding and removing tracks, making minor adjustments to the chords for variety, fine tuning the melody, experimenting with harmonies, and really just swimming in the whole experience. Ultimately I did, in fact, "wake the dawn" with my rendition of the psalmist's words.

So... I'd made, I'd played, and now it's time to share. I'm posting sheet music of the song (which I've called I Will Sing To You (Psalm 108)) here for anyone who cares to download it. I've licensed the work under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. For those who are skittish about such things, let me spell out some of what this means. You don't need my permission to play this song, to share it in your own faith communities, or even to modify it to suit your own needs. And you certainly don't need to pay some CCLI royalty for performing it! Take it. Use it. May you or your family or your church or whatever celebrate by singing words that are pretty much straight from Scripture. After all, there is but one true Creator, and I suspect He loves to hear the text of His Word sung back to Him.

You can download lead sheets for I Will Sing To You (Psalm 108) from my GitHub repository. For those requiring an audible demonstration, you can listen to a demo recording.


Constructive criticism is welcome.

UPDATE(2/23/2013): Added demo recording.

UPDATE(2/26/2013): Renamed song from just "Psalm 108".

UPDATE(8/11/2021): Updated sheet music links to point to my GitHub repository.

Working For Good

For as long as I can remember, I've heard Romans 8:28 heralded from church pulpits with no small amount of regularity. Here's the text, if you don't know it already:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (KJV)

And again, in another translation (the one I most commonly read):

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,^a who^b have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

What a powerful verse, right?! And so many applications, from motivation to comfort to conviction (at least according to the various pastors I've heard speak about the verse). Check it out:

• Is life without meaning? Nope. God has a purpose for you.
• What do I get out of loving God? Good stuff happens!
• Why did God make SOME_BAD_THING happen? It wasn't really a bad thing, you just haven't seen the good in it yet.
• Nono. It's really a bad thing. So why did God make SOME_BAD_THING happen? Um... are you not loving God enough? KA-BOOM!

Pretty cool stuff, huh? It's like a spiritual bat utility belt (Bible Belt? Ewww...).

But did you notice those footnote markers up there in the NIV version? I didn't. At least not until tonight. The footnote markers each denote different ways that the text could have been interpreted and translated from the original sources. Check out how the verse reads if you substitute the alternate translation marked "b":

And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good—with those who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

Whoa! It's like a whole different verse now. Suddenly the responsibility for bringing about good in the world falls back in our laps. We no longer just get to live a detached existence, loving God in a vacuum and ignoring those around us and then reaping all the resulting good stuff. Now we have to work — with God, who we of course still love — to bring about that good for ourselves and for others.

Quite honestly, I rather like that interpretation much better. It somehow seems more… logical; more consistent with the action-demonstrated kind of faith championed elsewhere throughout Scripture. What do you think?

Name-dropping Jesus

Don't you just love it when you personally benefit just by knowing someone else? Maybe (just maybe) you're considering an order of some trophies for your eldest son's soccer team, and one of the other dads on your youngest son's soccer teams says, "Oh, you should check out Awards Express — I always get my stuff from them. They turn around high-quality orders quickly and professionally. Tell 'em Tray sent you!" And instantly, you feel like some kind of V.I.P., empowered to trade on someone else's good name and reap the benefits of their relationships with a mutual contact.

That's kinda the way prayer works for Christians. I was thinking tonight about how I was taught that prayers are supposed to end. You know, some variation of "In Jesus name, Amen." This isn't merely the result of some ancient meaningless ritual passed down through the generations. It's the way Jesus told us to pray. In John 14:12-14, He tells us that after He returns to His Father (which, if you haven't noticed, He already did), He will do whatever we ask in His name. We find similar statements in John 15:16 and later again in John 16:23-26. Basically, Jesus is hearing our complaints and concerns and needs and desires, and He tells us, "Hey, I know exactly who you should talk to about this stuff. My Father is the best in the business. He can hook you up. Tell him I sent you."

Now, if ever there was a name worth dropping, the Son of God's is the one. But sometimes I wonder if the following happens when I pray:

[Tinkling sounds of bells rapping against the closing door.]

God: Yes, can I help you?

Me: Uh, yeah. I'm looking for solutions to some of Life's problems.

God: Oh, well then you've come to exactly the right spot. I designed Life — nobody knows how it works better than I do. Now, I could take a small bit of offense that you would claim the product is flawed. I can assure you that it isn't. But as it turns out, I'm also really good at forgiving, so let's just move past that. What did you have in mind.

Me: Well, I was kinda thinking that maybe you could cause X to happen. That would really work out well for me.

God [clearly uncomfortable]: Hrm. Well, that's not really how I had things planned for you, but...

Me: Yeah, I know. See, something tells me that there's a purpose for my life that's bigger than just me, but I really, really want to just get X. I just think that makes the most sense for me.

God: You seem pretty confident about this request. Are you sure you've come to the right spot? I'm usually pretty picky about making sure that the work I do is for everyone's benefit.

Me: Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Your Son sent me; told me you were the best in the business.

God: Oh! You know my Son?! Well that changes everything. You two are close? Good friends? Maybe you guys work together?

Me: [clearly uncomfortable] Well ... I wouldn't exactly say we're close, really. I met Him some years ago, and we see each other from time to time. He's good friends with my wife's grandparents, so, you know, practically part of the family, sorta, I mean, not that we ask Him over for Thanksgiving or anything, but...

[Extended silence. Awkwaaaaard.]

Maybe I should strengthen my friendship with Christ before using His name for my gain, huh?

Go back and read John 15:16. Better yet, check out some more of the context by looking at John 15:14-17:

¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other. — John 15:14-17 NIV (emphasis added)

Think my fictitious scenario above exaggerates too much? I'm not so sure. See what Jesus says in Matthew about folks trading on his good name without the fruit to justify it:

¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. ²¹ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' — Matthew 7:18-23 NIV

Are you just name-dropping Jesus? Man, sometimes I do. I've witnessed the power of prayers made in His name and in a spirit of obedience, but I confess that many times my name-dropping is just bogus. I need to work on that — need to work on my friendship with Christ, need to work on my obedience to His commands, need to work on bearing fruit, and need to work on loving my neighbor — because I definitely don't want to experience any awkward encounters with God. How about you?

God's love letter to artists

Jon Acuff (of Stuff Christians Like) writes today about God's love letter to artists. Like Jon, I've overlooked multiple times the Artist Ordination Ceremony there in the book of Exodus. I especially appreciate Jon's challenge to those gifted artistically to use their gifts to "rebuilt the temple" — to improve the physical, spiritual, and emotional lives of our fellow man. What better way to bring glory to God than to use the tools He has given to edify the objects of His greatest affection?

Q4H: What did the seven thunders say?

Today's reading has me in the book of Revelation. This book is an interesting read, as the whole thing is a massive vision given to a man named John who was living in exile on the tiny Greek island of Patmos. Is the vision full of allegory and metaphor, or is it to be interpreted literally? Well, that's an entirely different — and much larger — "question for Heaven".

Today, however, I have a more specific question. (Though, I won't be surprised if this turns out to be just the first of many such questions I have about this book's content.) In chapter 10, John is witnessing a strange event. A mighty angel is straddling earth and sea and toting a little scroll. Read with me from Revelation 10:2-4:

2 He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. 4 And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, "Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down."

By now, my question is probably obvious: What was it that the seven thunders said, and why was John instructed not to reveal this?

I'd love to hear some scholarly opinions about this. Googling around turned up all kinds of not-so-defensible opinions, but maybe somebody else has a saner suggestion?

Faithless footnotes

Mood: A little confused, with a hint of irritation.

The Bible I primarily read is The Student Bible, an NIV version "with notes by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford." Today's reading has me in the minor prophet Micah's little book. As I started reading chapter 4, the text sounded a little familiar to me. Sure enough, I ran into one of the mini-sidebars in the text added for explanation presumably by Misters Yancey and Stafford. The note reads:

4:3 Parallel with Isaiah

Micah 4:1-3, which describes the wonderful future in store for the world, has an almost exact parallel in Isaiah 2:2-4. Isaiah must have quoted Micah, or vice versa, or perhaps both quoted a third unknown prophet. Both prophets spoke in Jerusalem at about the same time.

My questions of the note-writers are: "How can you possibly have crawled the entire Bible, adding scholarly notes at a rate of approximately one note per every two chapters, and come to the conclusion that the only way Isaiah and Micah could have both managed to reveal the word of the Lord near-identically is if they were sharing source material? Did it never occur to you that God might say the exact same thing to more than one person?"

Pascal's Wager found useless — news at (Hebrews) 11

One common argument that Christians use to persuade atheists to risk a belief in God runs like so:

God is or He is not... Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Of course, it typically comes out these days sounding a touch more linguistically modern: "If God exists and you believe in Him, you win big; if God exists and you don't believe in Him, you lose really big; and if God doesn't exist, it doesn't matter what you think. But why risk it?" The original quote sounds old because it is — it comes from 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal, and is commonly referred to as Pascal's Wager

I grew up hearing this sort of argument all the time. All the time. It wasn't until much later in life that I learned of its origins. And of its shortcomings. Namely, that the whole thing depends on God necessarily rewarding folks for believing in Him. Christians, of course, think that dependency is met by simple evaluation of the nature and recorded words of God — of course God wants us to believe in Him. But you can't play those cards with an atheist, since you have yet to establish that the God with said nature exists.

Now, if you're reading this and expect my next paragraph to be a newly revised wager that's logically solid, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm only here to say to that in my Bible reading for today, I came across a verse that — perhaps loosely interpreted — pretty much shoots Pascal's wager in the foot on the same grounds. Hebrews 11:6 says:

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Did you catch that? Not only does the author of Hebrews state up front that belief in God's existence requires faith — that is, cannot be proven empirically — but then he says that even if you get that far, you need still more faith to believe that God actually wants you to seek Him. This pretty much buries Pascal's Wager. But at least atheism can't say it was first to bury it.

Context. It really does matter.

Context is everything.

3 Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.

Yes! Prosperity Theology! Name It and Claim It! "Dear God, I commit unto You my big plans to win the lottery without even playing it! I know You have the power to accomplish this in my life, so now I await your outpouring of success."

4 The Lord works out everything for his own ends — even the wicked for a day of disaster.

Doh! "So, um, God … scratch that last one, will You?"

(Quotes taken from Proverbs 16, verse 3 and subsequent verse 4.)

Q4H: Why does God allow suffering?

I was reminded this morning of a question I think most theists — and many atheists, when in let's-just-suppose mode — ask at least once in life: Why does God allow suffering? What's the deal with all the floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and so on? I certainly have asked this question of Heaven myself.

Some time ago I was pointed to an online audio clip of an NPR interview with John Piper, a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can listen to the interview yourself at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Interviews/1678_The_NPR_Tsunami_Interview/. I think Piper's responses throughout the entire interview are amazing — his mastery of Scripture and natural ability to deploy it as needed are incredible. But two threads in this interview really stuck with me:

1. God is sovereign. Not only can He do anything, He rightly and justly may.
2. God is always mingling judgment and mercy, both of which are useful for bringing people back to Himself.

Judgment and mercy. The Flood and the Ark. The sweeping through Egypt of the Death Angel and the passover sacrifice. The wages of sin (death) and the gift of God (eternal life through Jesus Christ).

What brought this interview to mind today was a bit from this morning's Bible reading. I'm in the book of Job, now. If you don't know Job's story, it runs something like this:

Once upon a time, there was an extremely wealthy and extremely righteous man named Job. Job had a wife, kids, and crazy amounts of livestock and servants. Job pleased God.

One day, Satan and God were chatting, and God asked Satan if he'd noticed what a good, righteous guy Job was. Satan replied, "Well, of course he's righteous. You've given him everything he could possibly want and more. He only loves you because you're good to him." So God granted Satan permission to do whatever he wanted in Job's life, so long as Job himself was granted immunity. Satan used his temporarily extended leash to kill all of Job's children and most of his servants, and to have his livestock stolen by raiders.

Job was shellshocked, but remained faithful to God (a fact that God bragged about to Satan). Satan said to God, "Yeah, yeah, okay, so he passed the test. But that's only because you didn't let me touch his body." So God fed Satan a few more feet of tether, and Satan struck Job with terrible sores over his entire body.

Thirty-five chapters' worth of (really poetic) dialogue fly by. Job's bummed but still faithful, his wife isn't offering much by way of help ("Just curse God, die, and get it over with already!"), and he has three friends who've come by to cheer him up but seem to offer more mouth than mind. Finally, God Himself comes[1] to speak to Job and his buddies, to set the record straight, and ultimately to restore Job's wealth and rebuild his family. And they all live happily ever after.

Anyway, while reading about Job this morning, I noticed this bit from Job 12:13-15:

To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his. What he tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man he imprisons cannot be released. If he holds back the waters, there is drought; if he lets them loose, they devastate the land. [emphasis added]

Why do we — why do I — find it so easy to assign credit (blame) to God for the holding back of good things, yet routinely fail to assign credit (praise) to Him for holding back the bad stuff, too? God may let many problems come our way, but just think about the ones He didn't let come. Two things routinely taught in Christianity are that mankind has a supernatural adversary (Satan) who seeks our ultimate destruction, and that Satan has been given dominion over the earth. How long do you suppose we'd survive if those were the only two factors at work here? So why do we remain? Mercy.

Job had it right. After Round One...

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. [Job 1:20-22]

...and then after he was bodily afflicted:

[Job] replied [to his wife], "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. [Job 2:1-3]

[1] By the way, I love how God enters the scene here in Job 38:1-3: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: 'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.'"

Justincasion

Over at Stuff Christians Like today, Jon Acuff is remixing one of his previous posts on the topic of subtly finding out if others drink beer, too. It's a humorous look at the awkwardness that exists when two Christians with potentially differing views about the morality of alcohol consumption try to discern each other's beliefs without revealing their own.

I left the following comment on his post:

Jon, this issue is just one of many flavors of a general problem with the Church called "justincasion". Not to be confused with "justification" (remember "just as if I'd never sinned"?), justincasion ("just in case I ever sin") is quite the opposite. Its symptoms include blurred vision, inaccurate depth perception, paranoia, and an odd fascination with sidewalk chalk. To best learn how to identify a person (or organization) suffering from justincasion, let's look at an example. Say, alcohol consumption.

Two people -- one with justification, one with justincasion -- read the same Bible. They both see the same texts prohibiting drunkenness, both read about Jesus turning water into wine, etc. Now, the person with justification recognizes the value of what these scriptures offer: the freedom to drink what he wants so long as he keeps his head, the freedom to celebrate (rather than stifle) important cultural gatherings such as weddings, protection from the consequences of bad decisions made with judgment impaired by alcohol, etc. To the justified person, the law exists to give freedom, not to restrict it.

Enter the justincased guy. The minute he sees words like "not" or "never" in the text, his paranoia kicks in. He begins to sweat the definitions of words such as "drunk" and "wine" and ... "and". While still a little woozy from this sudden onset of Heavenly pressure and the threat of eternal damnation, he does the only thing he knows how to do -- he reaches for his sidewalk chalk. He eyeballs (as best as he can in this state) a "safe zone distance" from the forbidden thing, doubles the distance "just in case", and then draws a circle at that radius around this particular evil on the ground. That line is never, ever, to be crossed. All must remain outside the circle.

Of course, the problem with said circles is that, once you've drawn one around each and every sin in the Book, you find there really isn't all that much of the Earth left not in one of those circles. Getting from one place to another requires carefully planning and often some quite complex acrobatics to avoid falling inside one of the circles and (of course) certain death. The law becomes a burden, causing these people to spend all their time looking down at the ground and the circles instead of looking up to their God.

In fairness to some, there was an important freedom I neglected to mention that is available to the justified person: the freedom to avoid drink altogether for any personal, non-judgmental reason that seems fit to him. This includes abstaining in the presence of others who don't understand the other freedoms, or avoiding things which he from past experience knows leads him into temptations he cannot resist. When in doubt, our relationships with each other should be of far more concern than our relationship with the bottle.

Songs I wish I could sing

But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.
My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure.
I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, O Sovereign Lord; I will proclaim your righteousness, yours alone.
Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.
Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.
~ Psalms 71:14-18 (NIV)

It's All Part of The Plan

Today's Bible reading had me in the book of 2 Kings, another in a series of relatively dry books describing the history of the Jews after they settled into the Promised Land. It's been a pretty depressing read as of late. Over twenty times in the books of 1 and 2 Kings alone does the Bible say that somebody — typically one of the kings of either Israel or Judah (yes, a nation split into two, as if the story wasn't enough of a downer) — "did evil in the eyes of the Lord". And usually, that phrase is followed with "… like his father". [Sidebar: Dads, if you think you've got even a remote chance of your kids not learning to behave from own example, you've got another think coming!]

So today I braced myself for more tales of war, deceit, betrayal, and some good old-fashioned doin' evil in the eyes of the Lord. And the reading didn't disappoint. 2 Kings 21 briefly describes Manasseh and Amon as two more of the evil kings.
But there was one bit in a previous chapter (chapter 19) that was actually hopeful; that actually made me read it twice over. In 2 Kings 19, the prophet Isaiah is comforting King Hezekiah (of Judah) with words from the Lord regarding the very real threat of an Assyrian takeover of Jerusalem. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, had been pen pals as of late with Hezekiah, but was using his quill to hurl insults against God and his people. Hezekiah knows the score: Assyria has basically conquered every land they've stepped foot it, and without some divine intervention, Jerusalem would surely be just another statistic in the Assyrian conquest. And now Isaiah is presenting to Hezekiah God's response to Hezekiah's earnest prayers for help.

You can read the response for yourself in 2 Kings 19:20-31, but if I may, I'll summarize it here. The response goes something like this:

My dearest Sennacherib,

You're nothing.

Yeah, yeah, you talk all big. You've got some military successes behind you, and you're getting a kick out of bragging about all that. I get it. But — oh? what's that? — oh, you didn't know? All that stuff you think you did back then?

That was all me.

You say you knocked over some strong cities? That was me. Oppressed some people? Me again.

It's all part of my plan, a plan I developed looooooong ago. And per my plan, you're time has come. Enough is enough. Lights out. Game over.

Sincerely, Almighty God

Within the time span of the next six verses, Assyria is struck by a plague that kills 185,000 people, and Sennacherib is murdered by his own sons.

God intervenes often in the stories of the Old Testament, but I appreciate how He reminds us now and again that He's ultimately in control of everything, even the stuff that looks at first glance like it's only happening to us because He's too busy to notice how we're getting dumped on.

Non-complementary relationships are a bad thing

In contrast to the loving and supporting wife I described Samson's mother as, Samson himself didn't fair so well in love.

His first bride he chose from among the Philistines, a people group that was oppressing the Israelites at the time. She betrayed him shortly after their marriage, prompting him to go on a murdering spree. Her father, figuring Samson was too angry with her to forgive her, gave her away to "the friend who had attended [Samson] at his wedding" (Judges 14:20). This prompted Samson to go on an arson spree. Which prompted the Philistines, angry at Samson, to burn his wife and her father. Which prompted another murderous outrage from Samson. Sheesh.

After dallying with prostitutes, Samson meets the infamous Delilah. Delilah — working as an agent of the Philistine rulers — tries repeatedly to get Samson to reveal to her the secret of his great strength. And he repeatedly makes a fool of her by feeding her false answers to that question. But the Scriptures record that Delilah keeps pressing. I think Judges 16:15-16 pretty much sums up their whole relationship:

Then she said to him, "How can you say, 'I love you,' when you won't confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven't told me the secret of your great strength." With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.

Given the relationship his own parents had, how in the world did Samson manage to go so wrong when choosing partners?