Fragile. Handle With Care

November 8, 2021November 8, 2021 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

I felt it. Every time I opened that big, heavy door to the shed—packed to the rafters with yesterdays—I felt it. The weight. The guilt. The helplessness.

It all started fifteen years ago. I was the proprietor of a reasonably successful music store in our little town. In the course of my work, I received requests for help with a variety of issues on an almost daily basis. Most were easy and painless.

This request was a little more involved, but I had no reason to be concerned. The customer telephoned, asking if I would mind shipping an instrument across the U.S. to one of his organization’s clients. I was involved with many internet transactions at that point and thought it would be easy-peasy. I’d simply box the instrument before weighing it to get a quote on the shipping and, upon receipt of the funds for costs, would send it on its way.

Glibly, I told him to bring it in.

The owner of the instrument (the one across the country, not my customer) seemed not to be interested in easy-peasy. She assured me she would send payment when I notified her of the cost, yet never responded. Again and again, I attempted to communicate with her about it, but to no avail.

I shoved the box, with its fragile markings all over it, into a back room. For ten years.

One more time during those ten years, I attempted to contact the owner but received no response. When we closed the store five years ago, we moved the remaining unsold merchandise and unclaimed items into the storage barn.

I’ve hardly touched any of those items in the years since. And yet, every time I have walked into the barn-shaped building, the sense of guilt, with its accompanying feelings of failure, has weighed heavily on my mind and soul. I didn’t even have to know where it was in the jumble of boxes and storage tubs; I felt it. I knew it was still there—mocking me—taunting me.

Failure isn’t an easy thing for me to admit.

I want my life to be a success story. Having achieved every goal I set out after, without a single black mark against my account, I will be able to die without shame.

It won’t happen.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with the Lovely Lady as we were driving. I shared with her the bold plan I had for resolving the issue once and for all. She wondered why I hadn’t thought of it years ago.

One day last week, I put my plan into action. You’ll laugh at the simplicity. Perhaps, you’ll laugh at how obtuse I have been. Mostly, you should laugh at my pride.

It’s the same pride that has kept me from admitting a small failure for fifteen years, allowing it to take up residence in my spirit and to steal my joy. Pride that stopped me from putting an end to the guilt and fear years ago.

The cure for my dilemma was simple. Digging around in the storage barn for a few moments, I located the shipping box. It was easy to find, with all its fragile stickers. I carried it into my shop and opened it, disposing of the styrofoam peanuts that scattered as I flipped open the end flaps.

Wait. I’m making this sound harder than it was.

What I did was this: I took the instrument back to the organization it came from. The man who brought it to me has long since moved on, but I set it on the counter and, admitting my long-term failure, gave the responsibility back to them. They said they were happy to accept it, promising to find the lady and resolve the situation.

Done. Finished. Out of my life.

Do you know how good that feels? To be free from chains I have felt for a decade and a half? I even sang in the car as I drove home.

Later on though, as I told the Lovely Lady of my action, tears came. I don’t know why; they just came and I couldn’t talk about it for a while.

I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now. Some realities have come into focus for me.

The first reality is that I don’t want to admit any of this to my friends and readers. Somehow though, that’s not the way this works. Catharsis is only as effective as it is complete. I don’t want to carry any part of this with me—except for the lessons learned, that is.

The next reality is that all of us will experience similar situations—times when we have failed, but can’t (or won’t) admit it and move on.

We all have secrets and guilt we carry with us as a constant companion.

I remember reading it in a friend’s feed on social media some time ago: “Today, I ate my emotions,” she said. I know she was talking about food and overeating as compensation for feelings. But I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than just diet.

We stuff emotions down our throats figuratively, too. Swallowing them down, thinking they’ll never be seen again, we hide our past. I’ve learned something through this particular episode in my life. It’s not a new realization, simply a reiteration of truth I may have known most of my life.

We’re not eating our emotions. They’re eating us.

From the inside out, they eat us. Day by day, affecting our relationships, our productivity, our outlook on life. If we let them. And finally, we have no choice left but to recognize the danger, the feelings of guilt, the dread of facing our failures and weaknesses head-on.

I look at the box in the recycle bin, fragile stickers on every surface, and I wonder; how is it that we, hardened and tempered by life’s experiences, have become so very fragile ourselves?

I don’t want that to be true. I don’t want to break at the slightest pressure in the wrong place. I don’t want the tears to flow anymore—don’t want the despair and hopelessness to rise to the surface, uninvited.

And yet, there it is. My throat tightens even as I write this. On that recent afternoon when the years-long matter was settled, my body trembled like an old man’s as I realized that I was finally free of the chains of the obligation. (Yes, I know I am an old man, I just don’t have the shakes on a continuing basis yet.)

But there’s another thing I’m learning as I age. I’m still finding that the capacity of our Heavenly Father to forgive and comfort us in those moments when we recognize and confess our failures and sins is inexhaustible. His love for us, even in our weakness, never ceases.

And I’m remembering my need, as an old-timer once suggested to me, to keep short accounts. Promises made need to be kept as quickly as possible. Mistakes should be rectified and apologies offered without delay.

The Apostle for whom I am named said it clearly:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8, NET)

I could never have imagined that the favor I promised to my customer all those years ago would be impossible for me to deliver on. I certainly didn’t anticipate the mischief it would get up to in my very soul over time.

And yet, I could have admitted defeat many years ago and saved a lot of grief. I’m guessing the Lovely Lady wishes I had done that. Folks in your life might wish the same thing.

I think I’ll try it for a while.

Keeping short accounts.

I wonder who else I owe?

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
(Henry Ward Beecher)

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
(Psalm 103:11-14, NIV)

The Son of a Do-It-Yourselfer

October 26, 2021 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

I did something new last week. Solomon may have thought there was nothing new under the sun, but this was new to me.

You’ll be underwhelmed when you learn what the accomplishment was. It’s not something most folks would trumpet to just anyone whose attention they could snag. Still, for a man well into his sixth decade, the completion of the task for the first time seems to me to be somewhat significant.

The house in which the Lovely Lady and I live has stood for one more decade than have I. For all those years, the front entrance has been a wooden hollow-core door. It has not fared well over a lifetime, providing only a nominal level of security. I would guess that any person so inclined, and equipped with a decent pair of boots, could have kicked it down at any time in the last few years.

So, when a neighbor offered to donate a perfectly good steel entry door she had replaced recently, I thought it might be time to replace the sad old thing on the front of our home. I won’t bore you with the tedious details but, after several hours of labor—and, I’m delighted to report, with no blood being shed—the new/old door functions reasonably well as a barrier to unwanted salesmen and wandering children. Yes, I know it still needs to have the ratty threshold replaced, but that’s a job for another day.

A new thing.

I’ve never hung a door in my life. I’d been led to believe it was an extremely difficult task, one at which seasoned carpenters had been known to blanch and walk off many a job site without a backward glance.

That last may have been a slight exaggeration on my part, but the hyperbole makes it seem more like a worthy accomplishment, does it not?

I don’t mean to sound like I need a pat on the back.

I don’t. Not today.

It’s just that when I was out in the storage shed looking for a replacement part for the deadbolt that needed to be installed on the new door, I noticed something on the workbench that awoke an old realization.

Seeing that red spring sitting there (nearly forty years after I’ve needed one) caused a week full of memories to explode across my tired old brain.

The year was 1984. The Lovely Lady and I, along with a two-year-old toddler (who was going on thirteen) and a nearly one-year-old baby, were traveling back home (for me) to South Texas in a 1965 Chevrolet Biscayne sedan. Sixty miles from our destination, the car’s motor began to act up. For me, the week of vacation was to become a week of tribulation and frustration. And triumph.

I was about to do new things—things I had never done before. I was also about to realize that my image of my father was a little skewed. Or not.

Two days after we arrived at my childhood home, I was elbows deep in two hundred thirty cubic inches of the six-cylinder motor in the crippled Chevy when my dad came out to check on me. The carburetor was on one fender, the valve cover on another, and the oil-covered valve lifters and springs sat exposed on top of the motor in front of me.

“I can’t believe you’ve torn up your car like that!” My dad was incredulous.

I was confused. I was certain my father was a do-it-yourselfer from way back, tackling jobs himself instead of paying to have them done. As a young adult, I believed I had followed his example when trying to do repair and improvement jobs myself rather than spending my hard-earned cash for the expertise of others.

I was baffled. And, I said so to him.

“I don’t know what you remember about me, but I’d never tackle a job like that,” he replied.

I put the valve cover back on and replaced the carburetor. Closing the hood, I called a local mechanic and made an appointment for the next day.

My world was shaken. My dad wasn’t who I thought he was. I needed to consider this. But, over the next two days, as we waited on the mechanic, whose expertise I was relying on, I thought about my memories of my youth at home.

I remembered, years before, the man tearing down an old house to make his just purchased property a safe place for his kids to play. My mind had images of his ancient Ford station wagon straddling an irrigation ditch while he lay under it draining the oil and replacing the filter. And I had only to walk into the living room at the old house to see the louvered room divider between the living and dining room he and Mom had built from pieces of raw lumber and dowels purchased at the local lumberyard.

I breathed a little easier. And I regretted the hundred fifty dollar invoice I paid to the mechanic in a day or two. He had replaced a broken valve spring. That’s all.

A little red spring that sat under the valve lifters. The valve lifters I had been looking at when I abandoned my efforts. I was inches from success when I had surrendered. Inches.

I spent a few more hours during that vacation week reading about the process of replacing valve springs. You know. Just in case.

At the end of that week, we waved and hugged goodbye as we loaded our luggage and kids in the big old boat of a car and headed back north.

Three hours later, we sat at the side of the road with another broken valve spring.

We limped to a garage beside the highway a few miles on, but they couldn’t offer any help except to sell me a couple of used valve springs. That was after they told me it would be three days before the repair could be effected.

But I’m a do-it-yourselfer, the son of a do-it-yourselfer!

Borrowing a bit of rope to keep the pushrod from dropping into the motor’s cylinder, I did the repair myself as the mechanics sat nearby and drank their beer, speculating on how long it would take me to surrender.

I didn’t surrender. They were amazed.

A new thing. That day, I did a new thing.

I have kept the extra valve spring all these years, never believing I’d need it again. I can’t bring myself to dispose of it. Symbols of victories won are precious, however small their monetary value might be.

I’m not advocating that everyone needs to become a DIYer. That’s not wise.

What I do believe is that we should never stop learning. Never.

And never stop doing new things.

What I also believe is that we should pass on our wisdom, the memories of our triumphs—along with our failures, to the generations that come after us. Dads, moms, grandparents, neighbors—we share who we are and what we hope to become with young ones desperately looking for examples. Good examples.

At twenty-seven years old, remembering my roots, I repaired a motor by the side of the road for the first time. Last week, nearly forty years later, I hung a door for the first time.

I wonder what I’ll be doing in twenty years. I hope I’ll still be learning. And doing.

I’d like to think there still are a few young ones who might learn something worth passing on to others yet to be born.

I hope they’ll learn more than just about front doors and old Chevys.

It’s the way our Creator designed things.

Parents, teach your children.

Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.
(Joel 1:3, NKJV)

I Once Was Lost…and Blind

September 30, 2021October 12, 2021 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

It wasn’t that great a day today. One of those Alexander kind of days, in fact. You know—a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Well, it wasn’t all that bad. Except, I lied to a neighbor. I did.

The day actually started well. The heat and air crew came again to finish installing our new central air unit in the utility room, a different location from where the old one had been in the family room/den. The main reason for the move is that my aging ears can no longer hear what Gibbs is saying to McGee on the big screen TV when the A/C is running. I was happy the fellows were here.

But then there was the gas line that couldn’t be moved. (We’re not plumbers, you know.) And the ductwork that wouldn’t go above the ceiling. (Maybe, just build a little box?) And the return air vent has to be situated next to the dining room table now, so my old ears won’t be able to hear what my granddaughter is saying to me across the table.

I told the HVAC tech that none of those things would be a big deal. We could work around them. At least I can hear Gibbs now.

It was the truth.

Later, my son sent a note to ask if I could eat lunch with him. You don’t know how much those times mean to me, the moments when we sit, just the boy (he hasn’t been a boy for many years) and his old dad, across the table from each other and share our lives. I had to tell him not today. The HVAC guys, you know.

I told my son it didn’t matter. We could do it another day.

It was the truth.

Some young friends who have just returned from a few years abroad asked me if I could break away long enough this afternoon to look at a piano they were hoping to buy. I had looked at the photos and the description of the piano they sent and thought it had promise. The HVAC guys were finishing up, so I went with my friends. I just knew this would end up well.

The piano was a complete bust, having a catastrophic defect. I told them to keep looking. They thanked me profusely for helping them avoid a bad purchasing decision.

I told them it was nothing. I was happy to help.

It was the truth.

Sitting in an easy chair at home later, I looked out the window and saw a small dog running along the street. It looked familiar. I was almost certain the dog belonged to one of our neighbors, an older widow a couple of doors down. It never runs loose, so I headed out the door after it.

When it ran into another neighbor’s yard, I called out to that neighbor who was working in her flower garden. She agreed with me about who the critter belonged to, so I jogged to the owner’s house while the other lady tagged after the dog, who would not come to us when called.

By the time the older neighbor and I returned, the shaggy little canine had headed downhill to the bottom of the gully that carries rainwater from our neighborhood to the creek nearby. It was too steep for the dog’s owner to get down to it, but I expected the other younger neighbor would have picked up the little thing and carried it out. The dog is mostly blind and couldn’t see well enough to find the way up itself.

“She didn’t want to be picked up,” was the terse explanation we got when we asked.

I sniffed. Didn’t want to be picked up! I’d pick her up!

I did try. She didn’t want to be picked up. Really.

She might have been blind, but she knew the hand that touched her sides wasn’t a familiar one. Instantly, she nipped at it. I pulled away just in time. Talking calmly and letting her smell my fingers, I tried again. This time, the tips of my fingers right in front of her sightless eyes actually felt the sharp little incisors brush along the skin as she snapped them closed.

I left her on the ground.

The dog’s owner stood and called to her and with the other neighbor and me acting as deterrents to her doubling back, she made her way slowly up to level ground. When the older lady bent down to pick her up, there was no snapping or nipping at all.

As we parted ways, the grateful lady worried about the damage the dog might have done.

“She didn’t hurt you at all, did she?”

I replied that I wasn’t hurt in the slightest.

It was a lie.

To be clear, there was no blood. The dog’s teeth hadn’t caught any flesh. But here’s the thing: Dogs love me!

They do. I’ve petted German Shepherds and Doberman Pinschers, Great Danes and Saint Bernards. Why, there’s even a huge, muscular Pit Bull down at my brother’s that thinks my lap is where he belongs when I sit on the couch there. But this little lost and blind Shih Tzu, heading downward to certain peril, only wanted to hurt me when I was merely trying to help. She rejected my advances altogether.

Of course, I’m hurt.

It was the worst thing that happened to me all day. In a day filled with disappointments, nothing matters more than that this little dog wouldn’t let me be her savior.

Oh.

I think I’m going to stop writing now. Perhaps I’ve said enough.

Well, maybe just this:

There is a Savior. He came to help us—to show us the way. Blind and lost, we lashed out at Him.

And we did draw blood.

I wonder if it still hurts.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
(Matthew 23:37, KJV)

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
(Revelation 3:20, NKJV)

Life needs Structure, After All

September 28, 2021 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

The message arrived at 4:53 yesterday morning. Through the haze of slumber, I heard the chime announcing it and rolled over, assuming it could wait.

It did.

When I had brushed my hair and finished a cup or two of coffee (a few hours later), my brain caught up and I read it again. The message had come from one of the Lovely Lady’s relatives back East.

She wanted a picture or two of a barn. I knew which one she meant without need of explanation. Of course, she meant the barn behind my house.

She had told some friends in the big city of her small-town roots and of chucking rotten potatoes at the old structure when she was a kid. I suppose she needed photographic proof that it was undamaged by her malfeasance and still standing after all these years. She’s no kid anymore.

Back then, her dad would hand her a few potatoes he had dug from the garden. Perhaps they had rotted in the ground or, as likely, they had sat on the shelf in the utility room for too long. Either way, the only thing they were good for was fodder for the cows in the field. As she saw it, she could practice her throwing skills at the same time.

The cows would get the benefit either way. And the thwack of the spuds on the tin roof was so satisfying. It wasn’t as much fun if they only splatted against the pine siding. One way or the other, they ended up on the ground for the cows.

The old barn is a constant in my life. Even though I never saw it until I was nearly two decades old, its presence in my history goes back quite a few years before that. But we’ll get back to that later.

One of my favorite photographs was taken by the Lovely Lady in the mid-nineteen-eighties behind the house where we now live (the same one in which she grew up). My young daughter and I had wandered back to look at Dr. Weaver’s cows, the marvelous creatures being a wonder to the little tyke.

As the sweet little girl and her daddy gazed out at the cows, we couldn’t help but see the old barn back behind. Dr. Weaver’s old tractor was parked in a bay on one side, the hay and feed the cattle would need to see them through the coming winter on the other side.

Tonight, as I contemplate the photo again, I wonder if there could have been just the barest hint, perhaps even a faint aura, of the children who would be born to that little girl decades later hanging in the air that evening, as we gazed unknowingly into the future together.

But no. It was probably just the cows getting a little too close to the barbed-wire fence. No sense in getting all sappy about it.

I’ve been happy to take a photo or two with the little girl’s children beside the old barn in the last year or two. They seem to be as attached to the old thing as I am.

I watched the city crew put in a new utility line underground along the edge of the field over the last week or so. Somehow, to me, it seems a foreshadowing of what is to come. The big machines pound and torture the earth, the vibrations shaking the ground underfoot. The old barn seems just a little more fragile than it was only days ago.

Change comes. We can’t hold it back.

But, not yet. The barn is still standing. Right where it was seventy years ago when my father first set foot in it.

Oh. Didn’t I tell that part yet?

Years before I was born—before my parents had even met—that young man came to this small town to visit his brother and sister-in-law, who were attending the local Christian college. They were simpler times, vegetables shared from nearby gardens, meat from the college farm, and milk coming from a college professor who had a couple of Jersey cows that he milked in his barn.

In the sturdy wood and tin barn—yes, the very one—back behind his native-stone house, the professor of science milked the cows and sold the bounty they provided to the married college students. My father and his brother stood one evening waiting for their share.

Taking the full glass jug Dr. Wills handed them, they turned to make the trip back to the married student housing, their feet carrying them right across the front yard of the house the Lovely Lady and I live in today.

Some things in our lives are constants, even if we haven’t always been able to see them.

The physical, tangible objects change over time, aging and deteriorating as the years and the elements wear on them. Eventually, they will fall. All of them will fall.

Yes, the old barn, too. It has been a bit neglected for some years. The cows are only a memory; the garden in which the potatoes grew has sprouted a beautiful little house in recent years. Time passes and many treasures are lost along the way.

There are other things, not so temporal, we leave to our loved ones. The list is long.

Some items on it are not the kind of things we like to think of; prejudice, bad habits, the inability to control anger come to mind immediately. Others will come to mind as memories take over. These can take a lifetime to erase or, possibly, only to bring under control.

But among the lifelong gifts we give to our children, our families, and our loved ones is one I remember the best from a young age in my own life. It’s one I hope I passed on as a legacy—hope I’m passing on still.

My father and the red-headed lady he loved gave me the gift of knowing their God. They passed on to those who were close to them not only their faith, but also the certainty that theirs was a God who cared for them in a real and personal way.

Beyond the astonishing grace that provided a way to be reconciled with Him, He loves us and wants good things for us. He knows us better than we know ourselves.

They were certain of it and helped us to find it out for ourselves. Our conversations were full of a God who was part of our everyday lives.

I’m no longer surprised by the “coincidences”, the unexplainable, the unseen hand of this God. If you look, the evidence is all around.

You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
(Psalm 139:16, NLT)

I won’t argue free will and predestination with anyone. I don’t know enough about the subject to have a dogma attached to it, save this:

For those who follow Him, there is a path prepared.

I have no great insights into finding His will, except to run hard after Him. That said, even when I have run hard away from Him during a few periods in my life, He has continued to work out His plan.

So when, at age nineteen, inexplicably drawn away from my home in south Texas to a little town in northwest Arkansas that I had never heard of until a year or so before, I packed up everything I owned in my Chevy Nova and took (as Mr. Lewis would have said) the adventure that came to me.

In the shadow of the old barn my father had visited thirty years prior, I wooed and won the Lovely Lady’s hand. Still in its shadow, we began to raise our children and made lifelong friends.

And now, again in its shadow, life slows, the path still before us. God never stops drawing us, one step at a time, until that day we’ll stop wandering.

And we’ll be home.

We need constants.

It turns out that there is, indeed, a thread, a continuous presence in my life.

It’s not the old barn. Much as I enjoy that old structure, it has only been a part of the landscape.

From my father’s steps into the barn seventy years ago, up to today, when I stand at the useless old barbed-wire fence and gaze across the field at the dilapidated old shed, the only true and lasting constant in life has been the hand of God.

Leading, protecting, pushing, but most of all, holding.

Safe.

I want to leave a legacy, something for folks to remember me by.

I hope it’s Him.

Just Him.

And if—at the end of it all— there’s an old barn somewhere nearby, I’ll be just fine with that, too.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
(Matthew 6:33, NLT)

And then, let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent to us.
(C.S. Lewis ~ The Silver Chair)

He leadeth me, O blessed thought!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

He leadeth me, he leadeth me;
By his own hand he leadeth me.
His faithful follower I would be,
For by his hand he leadeth me.
(from He Leadeth Me, by Joseph Gilmore ~ Public Domain)

Benedictus—Sometimes Louder is Better

July 29, 2021 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

Some evenings I sink down in my easy chair and marvel.

Behind closed eyes—and sometimes tear-filled ones—I wonder at the gift of music. Music that quiets. Music that ushers in memories of days long gone. Music that washes away the years, and sadness, and pain.

Some evenings I sink down in my easy chair and do that. On others, I sit in that same chair and expect to do that, but there are different influences at work in the sequence of selections I hear. Perhaps, I should say, another Influence (with a capital I). At least, it seems so to me.

On a recent weekend evening, as I sat, prepared to be calmed and moved, the Influence was at work. I have a group of songs I enjoy. The service I use to bring them up simply would not cooperate that night. Neither the songs nor the artists I have preselected could be found, so I just gave up and clicked the control to play random songs.

I didn’t know the artist. Who is Hauser, anyway? And what was this Benedictus? It was neither a piece nor an artist I’ve ever encountered.

Solo cello with an orchestra.

So simple. So beautiful. So moving.

It began with a statement of the theme by the cello, followed by a restatement or two, and an echo from individual orchestra members (the horn was especially nice). Then with a wave of the conductor’s hand, a chorus—a lovely choir filled with children’s voices—took up the theme.

Quietly, with soft harmonies almost quavering under the pure, clear melody, the soul was lulled to sleep by the haunting music.

The last thing one expected was the pounding of the percussion. And yet, it came.

Instantaneously. Suddenly. Ferociously.

The voices in the choir and the instruments in the orchestra responded as well, leaping to a sudden fortissimo. It was almost frightening. Almost.

The listener in his easy chair—yours truly—was no longer calm or relaxed. The quiet glory of the moment before had become all sound and fury (sorry, Mr. Shakespeare) and there seemed little hope that the previous state would be attained again.

And yet, to my pleasure, it soon was—the bombastic section lasting only a moment before dropping back to the beautiful and simple melody that so enchanted in the beginning.

I was carried away once more. The surprise past, my joy at the beauty was restored. I was comfortable again. Was.

Still, this piece goes in my permanent list to be listened to again and again. I even shared it with my friends on social media. What a singular experience!

I said I was comfortable again, didn’t I? I’m not anymore.

I wish I could leave the matter there. I do wish that. But I never could. The red-headed lady who raised me often reminded me of it.

“Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

Why, indeed?

But I can’t. And this is bothering me.

Why did the composer have to make that section so jarring? After the loveliness of the theme, why assault the unsuspecting listener with an onslaught of noise and activity?

Perhaps the lyrics will help. No, I won’t be violating any copyrights here. The words are straight from The Book. In the choral text, they’re in Latin, so I’ve made it a bit easier for our purposes, quoting the English translation.

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9, NKJV)

Lovely words. They are.

Calming words. Reassuring words. Words of comfort.

Sort of like settling down into that easy chair again, aren’t they? The phrase was originally spoken about our Savior one day, as He entered the city riding on a donkey.

Benedictus.

Blessing.

I write the word multiple times a day, expressing my desire for good things for my friends and loved ones.

Blessings!

May you be blessed.

Like a prayer, the word is, asking for action from our Heavenly Father above. I sit comfortably in my easy chair, and He does the rest.

But there’s more to this, isn’t there?

Life, especially life as a follower of Christ, is not all easy chairs and quiet words. Despite the proclivities of the modern church to be turned inward and feel good about the One who comes in the name of Yahweh and His love toward us personally, our mission—our task—has never changed.

We are to proclaim Him to the world around us. Sometimes, it will be loud. Sometimes, it will be clashing. Sometimes, it will be shocking to the listener.

Always, our intent should be to glorify our Creator and Savior.

The overwhelming drums I heard? The surprising section of music? The words are from the same place in the Gospels.

“Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9, NKJV)

A shout of praise going up to heaven!

It’s difficult to do that from my easy chair. I need to act. I need to stand up. Quiet, peaceful me—I need to shout the news.

Cymbals may crash.

I’m not comfortable with that.

The Followers, those twelve men who trailed Him everywhere, had been invited to a quiet place, a place of rest. Yet, instead of comfort, they found themselves at the lake’s edge surrounded by more than 5000 people. And it was time for supper.

“Send them home, Master,” they pleaded with Him. They were missing their rest, the quiet moments, the harmony of shared hymns.

“Show them My glory,” the Teacher replied. “You feed them.”

And they did.

They did.

I don’t suppose it was a quiet affair; nor could it have been all that comfortable, either.

Can you imagine the shouts? The exclamations? The babble of amazement?

I wonder. When did I decide it was time to sit quietly and listen to the music?

Now is the time to be loud. It’s time to make the trumpet call loud and clear.

Really loud.

Especially clear.

It won’t be all that comfortable.

It will be beautiful.

Benedictus. Blessings.

Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
(Westminster Shorter Catechism)

Sing a new song to the Lord!
Let the whole earth sing to the Lord!
Sing to the Lord; praise his name.
Each day proclaim the good news that he saves.
Publish his glorious deeds among the nations.
Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
(Psalm 96:1-3, NLT)

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