Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” And the word of the Lord came to him: “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. And after a while the brook dried up,
because there was no rain in the land.Then the word of the Lord came to him, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days.
The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty,
according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.—1 Kings 17:1-16 (ESV)Obviously, that was a different economic crisis for a different reason, but still, it’s a reminder: even in such times, God is still at work providing for his people.Artwork: “Elijah and the Ravens,” by He Qi
Category Archives: Music and art
Focus groups are for sissies
So says Andrew Stanton (writer/director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E), anyway—and if you’re any kind of Pixar fan, you know Stanton’s one of the best things the American movie industry has going for it. During the course of a wide-ranging (and fascinating) interview with Dominic von Riedemann, he made this comment:
I don’t mean this in a negative way, but I don’t think of the audience at all, because I don’t go to see a movie hoping the filmmaker’s second-guessed what I want. I go to see what he wants, because I like his taste and style, and I want to see what he’s going to do next.The day we start thinking about what the audience wants, we’re going to make bad choices. We’ve always holed ourselves up in a building for 4 years and ignored the rest of the world, because nobody are bigger movie geeks than we are, so we know exactly what we are dying to see with our family and kids. We don’t need other people to tell us that. We trust the audience member in ourselves.
From a different corner of the entertainment industry, Ragnar Tørnquist (the driving creative force behind the adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall) agrees:
You can worry yourself green about what players will and won’t like, you can do focus testing on concepts and characters, you can survey the market and conduct polls, you can identify and follow every new trend, but in the end the only opinion you can truly trust is your own and the opinions of those around you—the people who will spend three, four, five years of their lives working on a project. We’re all gamers, we all want to make—and play—the best game possible, and that’s what directs our decisions every single day.
I’m hard pressed to think of an instance in which anyone—writer, composer, preacher, politician, whatever—achieved greatness by giving people what they already know they want. You might get rich and famous that way, you might achieve some definition of success that way, but you aren’t going to make the world a better place that way.
Thought on faith in trying times
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
—James 1:5-8 (ESV)
[Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
—Ephesians 4:11-15 (ESV)
I’ll be honest, I’m rather discouraged today; there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of good news out there. Of course, that’s hardly unusual—looking for good news from the world is rather like looking for your next rent payment on the roulette wheel—but it’s still got me down. In matters big (a financial crisis created by partisan stupidity that no one on either side of the aisle seems to have any real clue how to fix, but which may yet be exacerbated by yet more partisan stupidity) and small (the Seahawks are off to a bad start this season, both in their play and in their front office’s overreaction to it), things just seem to be going wrong all over the place. (Granted, the Red Sox did knock the Yankees out of the playoffs, but that only counts for so much when my own team is on the verge of 100 losses.) Throw in a bad night of sleep, and it’s a recipe for a funk.
But God is at work in these times as in any other, and last night when I was up into the wee hours and really starting to get low, he sent me a message, in the form of this YouTube video of one of my favorite groups, the defunct (and much-missed) Jacob’s Trouble:
Wind and Wave
(Lyrics are below; the Scriptures, of course, are above.) It was this morning, and is now, an important reminder to me: when I let circumstances get to me, when I let what seems to be an aura of bad news get me down, when I let myself get pessimistic, I’m falling back into allowing myself to be tossed around, buffeted about, and driven this way and that by the winds and waves of circumstances; I’m letting “human cunning” and “craftiness in deceitful schemes” wash me off my foundation and blow me out into the sea of doubt, rather than trusting in God. Granted, the circumstances right now aren’t pretty in a lot of respects, and it feels natural to me to expect the worst and then start glooming over it; but I have reason to stand on faith in God, rather than giving myself over to the wind and the wave, because I’ve seen other bad times (on a personal level, worse times) and he’s always brought me and my family through. Our country has seen other bad times, and he’s always brought the nation through; God has allowed this “almost-chosen people” to suffer many things, but he’s never failed us yet. The worries of the moment do not outweigh the testimony of the past; our hopes and fears for tomorrow are affected by this morning’s news, to be sure, but they are not at its mercy, for God by his providence continues to be at work, even through the bad news.
I don’t usually repost videos, but this song was another one God used this morning, just to remind me that even when the wind blows hard, he is with us on the road, and his mercy is always for us:
Kyrie
I have reason to trust in God; I have reason to be confident that the struggles of the present moment aren’t permanent. I just need to remember that, and to ask him for the wisdom and, yes, the faith I need to rise above those struggles, rather than allowing them to overcome me. And in doing so . . . I feel better already.
Wind and Wave
I needed wisdom on a matter of faith,
So I sought the Lord at his dwelling place—
Hello? Is there anyone home?
He said, “Let him who comes to me ask believing,
‘Cause faith is revealing but doubt is deceiving,
You know? Don’t you know?”
But I couldn’t seem to stand my ground—
I floundered, flailed, and almost drowned;
And as I sank, I thought I heard a sound.Chorus:
Wind and wave, to and fro, back and forth, stop and go,
Lost in doubt. Am I out or am I safe?
Fire and ice, land and sea. It’s up to you, it’s down to me.
Will I be eternally weak in faith
On the wind and the wave?A voice inside me said, “You’re on your own!
You blew it once too often, now He’s left you alone!”
Oh, no! Please say it isn’t so!
So I clung to my feelings, forgot the facts,
‘Til I heard the voice of Jesus telling me to relax,
“Let go. I’ll take control.”
Well, it was tough at first but I obeyed.
I just went limp and then I prayed,
“Please, Jesus, save me from this open grave.”Chorus
Now, I’m not saying that I will never doubt again,
‘Cause after all I’m just a man, yeah, yeah.
All I know is if I should doubt again
He’ll understand. He understands.“I will never leave you nor forsake you;
I will always be with you.
I will never leave you nor forsake you;
I will always be with you.”Chorus
Words and music: Steve Atwell, Mark Blackburn, and Jerry Davison
© 1989 Broken Songs
From the album Door into Summer, by Jacob’s Trouble
Something to brighten up your Monday morning
Just because.
Another collapse is looming
According to a story on the Times website,
Four years after it was last cleaned and repaired Michelangelo’s statue of David in Florence is “at risk of collapse”, according to a restoration expert.
Apparently, the problem is partly the result of vibrations from traffic, both car traffic outside the Galleria dell Accademia and foot traffic within, and partly the consequence of Michelangelo’s decision to make a really big statue out of really bad marble. Here’s hoping they can figure out some way to keep David intact.
Song of the Week
I’d never heard of Brandon Heath before he asked my wife’s cousin Curt and his kids to be among the cast of extras for his new video. The video is now out (my thanks to my dear wife for posting it), and it’s a great song; I’m not ashamed to say it made me weep. We fall so short of loving others the way God calls us to love; certainly, I do. Dear God, this is my prayer too.
Give Me Your Eyes
Looked down from a broken sky
Traced out by the city lights;
My world from a mile high—
Best seat in the house tonight.
Touch down on the cold blacktop—
Hold on for the sudden stop;
Breathe in the familiar shock
Of confusion and chaos.
All those people going somewhere—
Why have I never cared?
Chorus:
Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing;
Give me your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted,
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten;
Give me your eyes so I can see, yeah.
Step out on a busy street,
See a girl and our eyes meet;
Does her best to smile at me,
To hide what’s underneath.
There’s a man just to her right,
Black suit and a bright red tie,
To ashamed to tell his wife
He’s out of work, he’s buying time.
All those people going somewhere—
Why have I never cared?
Chorus
I’ve been here a million times;
A couple of million eyes,
Just move and pass me by—
I swear I never thought that I was wrong.
Well, I want a second glance,
So give me a second chance
To see the way you’ve seen the people all along.
Chorus
Give me your eyes,
Lord, give me your eyes,
For everything that I keep missing.
Give me your heart for the broken-hearted;
Give me your eyes,
Lord, give me your eyes.
Words and music: Brandon Heath and Jason Ingram
©2008 Sitka6 Music/Peertunes, Ltd./Grange Hill Music/Windsor Way Music
From the album What If We, by Brandon Heath
The Risen Lord
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.—2 Corinthians 5:14-21, ESVA print of this painting, with a caption taken from this passage, hangs in my office, behind my desk (on the side wall, so I can see it). The artist, one of my favorite contemporary painters, is Dr. He Qi, a painter and philosopher of religious art who has taught at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and Nanjing University (in the philosophy department). His website describes his art this way:
He has been committed to the artistic creation of modern Chinese Christian Art since 1983. He hopes to help change the “foreign image” of Christianity in China by using artistic language, and at the same time, to supplement Chinese Art the way Buddhist art did in ancient times. In his works, He Qi has blended together Chinese folk customs and traditional Chinese painting techniques with the western art of the Middle and Modern Ages, and has created an artistic style of color-on-paper painting.
If the piece above interests you, I encourage you to explore his website—he’s done some truly brilliant work. (You can also find an inexpensive set of prints—taken from the PC(USA)’s 2004-05 planning calendar, which used his artwork—here.)
The things we leave behind
The road which the church is called to walk as we follow Jesus Christ toward the kingdom of God is a road rather like the Oregon Trail: it leads to someplace better, but it isn’t an easy road. Back in the days of the Oregon Trail, families heading west often started off with far too much baggage; when they hit the Rockies, they found they had to leave many of their things behind, or else they wouldn’t make it across the mountains, and so along the trail one could find tables, beds, dressers, and other pieces of furniture abandoned by families who needed to lighten the load. The road behind Jesus is similarly littered. Matthew and Zacchaeus left behind their tax booths, and the fortunes they had stolen. Simon and Andrew, James and John, left behind their boats, and the family business. St. Francis of Assisi left behind a rich inheritance. John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” left behind the slave trade. Sundar Singh left behind his religion and his family.
Some of the things God calls us to give up if we are to follow him are sinful, some aren’t; some are easy to give up, while others are bitterly difficult to let go. Some are harmful in themselves, while others merely absorb time and energy to no real gain. But all of them are things which compete with his will in our lives, and so they are things which we need to lay aside if we want to follow Jesus on his road. The work of discipleship is, ultimately, the work of aligning ourselves with the grain of God’s will, and against the grain of everything that competes with his will—including many of our own desires, and many of the world’s expectations. The good news is, as Michael Card and Scott Roley wrote a couple decades ago, that there is freedom to be found if we leave all these things behind to follow our Lord.
Things We Leave Behind
There sits Simon, foolish and wise;
Proudly he’s tending his nets.
Then Jesus calls, and the boats drift away,
And all that he owns he forgets.
More than the nets he abandoned that day,
He found that his pride was soon drifting away.It’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Matthew was mindful of taking the tax,
And pressing the people to pay.
Hearing the call, he responded in faith
And followed the Light and the Way.
Leaving the people so puzzled, he found
The greed in his heart was no longer around.It’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Bridge
Every heart needs to be set free from possessions that hold it so tight
‘Cause freedom’s not found in the things that we own—
It’s the power to do what is right.
With Jesus our only possession, then giving becomes our delight,
And we can’t imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.We show a love for the world in our lives
By worshipping goods we possess;
Jesus said, “Lay all your treasures aside,
And love God above all the rest.”
‘Cause when we say “No” to the things of the world,
We open our hearts to the love of the Lord, andIt’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.
Oh, and it’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Words and music: Michael Card and Scott Roley
© 1986 Whole Armour Publishing
Exercise in cultural theology: “Kyrie”
I guess it’s ’80s pop week here—more than a little odd for someone who never listened to the stuff at the time. Still, there were a few songs from that era I really liked anyway; “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was one of them, and this was another one.
For those who don’t know, kyrie eleison means “Lord, have mercy.” Many don’t; I’ve seen people write that it means “God go with me,” and I’d always assumed that the songwriter thought that’s what it meant. In fact, though, John Lang (who wrote the lyrics) grew up singing the Kyrie in an Episcopal church in Phoenix, and knew the meaning of the words. In a lot of ways, that makes the song more interesting, I think; it’s still a prayer for God’s presence as we go through life, but Lang knew when he wrote it that it’s also a prayer for his mercy on that road, which we certainly need, both in the bright days and when our path leads us through “the darkness of the night.”
I appreciate Lang’s almost mystical sense of life in this song; in the context of an ancient Christian prayer, with the imagery of wind and fire which has been used of the Spirit of God going all the way back to the time of Moses, one can certainly understand it to refer to the work of the Spirit in our hearts, and the song as a prayer for his mercy as we seek to follow where he leads us.
My one quarrel here is the third line of the chorus: “Kyrie eleison—where I’m going will you follow?” I don’t think that really fits with the first line (“Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel”), and taken by itself it gets matters exactly backwards; actually, when we start looking at things that way—”God, I’m going this way; are you coming?”—tends to be when we get into trouble (and thus need his mercy the most, of course). I suspect it was most likely meant to ask, “Are you going with me down this road you’re sending me on?” but that misses the fact that God doesn’t send us, he leads us. There have been times when I’ve sung this song, privately, as a prayer, but when I do, I reverse that third line: “where you lead me, I will follow.”That’s the orientation we need to have if we’re seeking to live under the mercy of God; his mercy isn’t simply something to which we appeal when we go wrong, but is in fact the light that guides us to go right.
Kyrie
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie . . .The wind blows hard against this mountainside,
Across the sea into my soul;
It reaches into where I cannot hide,
Setting my feet upon the road.My heart is old, it holds my memories;
My body burns, a gemlike flame.
Somewhere between the soul and soft machine
Is where I find myself again.Chorus:
Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel;
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night.
Kyrie eleison—where I’m going will you follow?
Kyrie eleison on a highway in the light.When I was young I thought of growing old—
Of what my life would mean to me;
Would I have followed down my chosen road,
Or only waste what I could be?Chorus out
Words: John Lang; music: Richard Page and Steve George
© 1985 Ali-Aja Music/Indolent Sloth Music/Panola Park Music/WB Music Corp.
From the album Welcome to the Real World, by Mr. Mister
Three chords and a history book
Courtesy of JibJab, I’ve had this tune stuck in my head for days now; so I decided to post an annotated version. Note: most of the links are Wikipedia, but not all.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television,
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe,Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjeom,
Brando, The King and I, and The Catcher In The Rye,
Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen,
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye . . .Chorus:
We didn’t start the fire—
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire—
No, we didn’t light it,
But we tried to fight it.Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser, and Prokofiev,
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Perón, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock,Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev,
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, trouble in the Suez . . .Chorus
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, Bridge On The River Kwai,
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide,Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo . . .Chorus
Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?!Chorus
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz,
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law,
Rock-and-roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore!We didn’t start the fire—
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire—
But when we are gone,
It will still go on, and on, and on, and on, and on . . .Words and music: Billy Joel
© 1989 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
From the album Storm Front, by Billy Joel
