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March 12, 2010

Friday of the Third Week of Lent

By Melanie Rigney

I will heal their defection; I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them. (Hosea 14:5)

“If only my people would hear me, and Israel walk in my ways, I would feed them with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.” (Psalms 81:14, 17)

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

Piety

O my God, I love you above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because you are all good and worthy of all my love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of you. I forgive all who have injured me and I ask pardon of all whom I have injured. (An Act of Love, from the Baltimore Catechism)

Study

Where do you find the Lord?

If your journey’s taken a contemplative bent, it may be in prayer or adoration. Maybe it’s in saying the rosary or in meditation or in spontaneous one-on-one conversations with God.

If you’re in a place where action is your focus, you may find the Lord in the faces of His people—in your family or in those you help at food pantries, homeless shelters, schools, or other work. If you’re an extraordinary minister, maybe you see Him in the glow on the faces of the congregation as they approach you.

Where does the Lord find you?

Everywhere.

He’s there when we’re on our most loving, most Christlike behavior, when we listen instead of rushing to judgment, when we let someone go ahead of us in line, when we’re doing service or reading Scripture.

But He’s also there when we’re visibly impatient with a department store clerk or when we judge a child based on his or her parents or when we’re fearful of a medical procedure or when we get cranky.

And the crazy, wonderful, awesome thing is that He loves us freely all the time. He offers the best of the wheat and honey, even when we’re not ready to accept that nourishment.

And if we try to live by those two greatest commandments, even though that can be incredibly difficult, it gets easier and easier to believe in, accept, and share that love.

Action

Let the Lord heal one of your defections this week.

As all who know me know, I am a mono-tasker. At best. Additionally, I'm fairly easily-distracted.

So when I'm studying, particularly in places where there are competing noises, I need some sort of music for "white noise," to cancel out everything else. It can't feature vocals, and it can't be soundtracks for movies I'll be tempted to visualize. It should be just engaging enough, but not distracting.

To meet that need, I have Phil Keaggy instrumentals, some Celtic music, some fusion jazz — and now Matt Stevens.

Since I've featured some instrumental guitar music, Matt Stevens contacted me directly to see if I'd be interested in reviewing his album, and I was glad to take the offer. It is available for download here.  Payment is "name your price."

Matt is a North Londoner, a guitarist who provides his own layers of sound for his own compositions. He's quite a prolific presence.

What did I think?

Funny thing about my musical tastes. Some of my long-term favorite music, I did not like at first listen. I didn't like Chicago at first — and now they've been my favorite band for nearly forty years. Some Chicago songs turned me off at first, then became favorites.

It was similar with this album. At first listen, my reaction was mixed. I didn't love it. It is all acoustic. I did not immediately warm to the thump-knock percussion (presumably off the body of the guitar), found myself longing for real drums. I found the direction of the leads odd. The rhythm backing was strange, not immediately easy to get a hold of.

Challenging, is the word.

Then, as I listened, every single track grew on me. Stevens is rather a daring guitarist. Either he's completely fooled me, or he deliberately takes his music into dissonant ranges, just to avoid the numbingly predictable.

The opening track ("Burning Bandstands") starts off with an insistent strum, then shifts into a melodic, semi-flamenco style, with more changes on the way, ranging in feel from mellow and relaxed, to urgent and probing. And that's just one song. Then "Airships" mixes a driving beat with mixed tempo, and a haunting recurrent melody. "Drama in the Coals" follows with a pell-mell journey feel, its signature-line weaving in and out, then providing the final notes of the song.

"Flies in the Basement" again brings in something of a more Spanish feel, combined with fast-paced percussion and harmonic accents. Then "Snow Part 3" brings it way down (perhaps too much), into a sloow, hazy jazzy feel. But don't get too relaxed; "Chasing the Sun" gets us back to a run, with a compelling beat and refrain.

Track 8 is "West Green," with a very Reggae feel, and some complex layering and changes. (At one point, the  one-man Reggae band evidently heads for outer space.) The final track ("Echo") is mellow and pleasant, featuring what I now see as Stevens' fondness for change-ups.

Ah, there it is. Now I see one reason I like him, why the songs stay with me. Early Chicago attracted me by the complexity and changes in its first albums. Though his music is nothing like Chicago, Stevens has that same sensibility: most of these songs go over various landscapes, involving several mid-course alterations.

I recommend it, and will be looking forward to his second album, due this summer.

I have often said that one of the most tantalizing things about ministering on the internet, including blogging, is that one literally never knows who is dropping by. I know I have maybe 800 visitors a day, up or down. Who are they? What are they going through? What is their life-situation? Are they atheists, pantheists, Mormons, Moslems, Roman Catholics, Hindus?

I get enough email feedback that stokes the curiosity and rewards the hope... such as the woman in a difficult marriage who was challenged and helped by the article addressed to wives, the pastor who needed a last-minute sermon aid when caught by surprise, the fellow finding his way back to Christ.

Only eternity will tell. That's the tantalizing element.

I got the tiniest (but sweetest) foretaste at the last Together for the Gospel, when again and again complete strangers stopped me, thanked me for the ministry of the blogs, had a kind or encouraging word... then went their way.

You pastors, who support missions: do you see the missionary potential of a blog. If you found that someone in your congregation regularly bore witness of Christ to people from all the continents except Antarctica would you want to be involved, at least make that ministry an item for prayer? Wellsir, that's this ministry, by the grace of God.

Look at the map of visits from 3/7/2009 - 3/7/2010:

There are dots from left to right, and from up to down.

I can't detail all the specifics; there are too many. But they include: Singapore (1460), Phillippines (1048), Soughh Africa (650), India (640), Indonesia (398), Hong Kong (365), Republic of Korea (337), Israel (150), and other countries such as Romania, Japan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Greece, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, and literally dozens of others. Places my feet will almost surely never go, but my fingertips have borne a witness there, praise God.

It is a fruit of a search I've been on for literally decades: the most fruitful way to give what the Lord's given me. I still look for other ways, particularly for a way to be able to do it fulltime. But what I've got, these blogs and the web site give me the opportunity to disseminate. And they in turn have birthed other opportunities such as conferences and guest preaching and books.

Now, this blog is far more eclectic in content than Pyro. I wish I could find the quotation from a commenter who absolutely nailed the designed difference between the two: Pyro is like listening to a pastor preach or teach, BibChr is like hanging around with a pastor, hearing about what interests him and what he thinks about things. Who knows who clicks on a movie review (we get many visits from IMDB's movie reviews), and ends up with a witness to Christ? Or who comes because of a silly article, but reads further, or checks out How Can I Know God? or Pyro?

That map will change shortly. They archive it and start over after a year, so it doesn't turn into a big red smear. But Lord willing, the flow of visits will continue.

Pray for them, and me.

And thank you for being part of the flow.

And now to you I say, don't underestimate the impact of your labors! You will never know who might stumble across your blog, or your comments here; and your words will be just what the Holy Spirit uses to do a good work in their hearts!


Sow well, sow generously, pray, trust the harvest to God.