The hymn for today is finding and praising the Father of Creation.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Monday, December 28, 2015
New Hymn, "The Praises of the King!"
The hymn for today is about the coming of Heaven's own Light, Jesus Christ.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
New Hymn, "Unto the Land"
The hymn for today is an intercessory prayer for the place of your residence.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Better Than I Deserve
A
while ago, in my reading, I came across something—a
detail, but an important one, really—that
I had never noticed before.
It was something that got me thinking, and that got me praying—and
that got me pondering.
It
got me praying and then pondering because it immediately struck me as
a detail that hides an essential truth.
If
you make a daily habit of reading the Bible, then over the years you
tend to come to notice certain qualities of composition that crop up
in the efforts of the Biblical authors. One of those qualities is
that even the smallest details can be very, very important.
As
I was reading in the 11th chapter of Matthew’s account
(in the NASB) I noted a list:
The
blind receive their sight,
the
lame walk,
the
lepers are cleansed,
the
deaf hear,
the
dead are raised, and
the
poor have good news preached to them.1
Did
you notice that the first item gives us more detail than the others
do? Are you, perhaps, wondering why? I
know I was.
That’s
what got me praying—and
then pondering. Why, I wondered, is it that the writer, here, treats
sight as somehow different from the rest? Why is it that sight gets
treated as a personal possession?
I
have rarely relied on a particular translation to bring a lesson in
the Scriptures, preferring to dig into the original languages
instead, but there are times when translation can also be inspired.
In
this case, the translators had some options. They could have kept all
of the items in the same sense, bringing a consistency to the
passage, thus: the
blind look, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers cleansed, the
dead rise, the poor evangelized.1
Or
they could have put all of them in the sense of receiving. They made
a different choice, though. They chose to make one passive and
possessive, thus separating it from the rest.
I
think that was inspired translation, bringing it into accord with
John 21:22, where Jesus rebukes Peter, saying (according to the NCV),
“If I want him to remain until I come, that is not your
business. You follow me.”
Many
are those who forget to focus on the Shepherd rather than on other
sheep. This busybody attitude can leave a person feeling superior to
the others around them. And that is a danger, for all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God.2
The
other day, in Bible study, I noted that, in the passage we were
studying, the Mosaic Law is referred to in the singular, rather than
the plural, meaning, of course, that it is all one law—not a
collection of many laws, but just one law.
In
the garden, Adam and Eve had but one law: do not eat of the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—one law. Just one. And
even though they had only one very simple law they could not even
obey that, but rebelled against God’s command. God’s Law is one
law, and if you break any one part of it, you have broken all of it.
The
details of what you did are irrelevant to the fact that you are a law
breaker. The one who thoughtlessly squashes a grape that is not
theirs to take is equivalent to the one who takes the life that is
not theirs to take. Both are law breakers.
Therefore,
the one who thinks themselves not as wicked as some other person—any
other person—is sinning by testifying falsely to themselves about
themselves. They are, in fact, lying about themselves.
The
fact that it is about themselves does not make it any less a
rebellion against God. It is, therefore, a thing of wickedness and
evil and must be confessed and repented of. God
is no less offended by your simple thoughtlessness than by
planned wickedness and evil.
Recall,
if you will, Jesus’ assessment of the second most important command
in all of Scripture. What does He say? You must love your
neighbor as yourself.3
Taking it directly from the
version of Scripture they would have had, love your
neighbor as yourself would be
αγαπησεις τον πλησιον σου ως σεαυτον.
Αγαπησεις,
being a form of the word αγαπαω,
means to sacrifice yourself
for the sake of another. Considering yourself above another is a
direct slap in the face of the command to consider that other to be
above yourself, and is, therefore, a direct slap in the face of God.
It is rebelliousness, it is
wickedness, it is evil, and it is sin.
Sin
must be repented of, or it will cast you into hell.
Do
you, now, see the abject—indeed
mortal—danger
to your eternal soul of seeing yourself as some sort of self-ordained
overseer of the Christian walk of those around you? Can you walk more
obediently to John 21:22?
The
blind receive their sight.1
They are not given the sight of others, but their own—and
they do not earn it, but it is given to them. It
is given to them by God, though they do not deserve it.
When
I took the photograph you see in the masthead4
(with the native version
below) and showed it to one
of my ministry fellows before adding the
self-silhouette and
Visions of Love that
allow it to be used in a masthead for this newsletter, their
exclamation was, “That’s a postcard!” And in a certain sense,
it is a thing of beauty, but it is also a warning.
Do
you remember the old admonition, “red
sky at morning, sailor take warning”
advising
sailors when it is not wise to sail? That
sky is nothing if not a brilliant, gaudy, indeed angry red.
Look
closely, and notice that civilization is in darkness
with the heavens on fire above. Indeed,
it looks as though angry red flames are shooting across the sky over
that place that holds itself in such high esteem over those who
struggle in their midst.
Before
I go further I must make certain that you recognize something about
me: I am not better than you. I am no paragon, and today I have been
getting reminded of that unalterable fact. There is a standard reply
that I like to use whenever anyone asks how I’m doing. Today, for
some reason, I got away from that habit. Let me, therefore, address
its logic with you.
There
are some truths about real life that even the most ardent Christians
can be loath to face and address. Rather, they prefer to skip merrily
to the cross, thumbing their nose at what is very likely the most
powerful created being that God has ever created, and giving that
being no respect whatsoever. The arrogant impudence of such behavior
should be shocking to us. Alas, it is all too common a thing.
Just
who do we think we are that we should behave toward one so powerful
as though they were nothing more than an object of derision and
laughter and scorn. When we do such things we are thinking too highly
of ourselves—far too highly.
As
I wrote earlier, the
one who thoughtlessly squashes a grape that is not theirs to take is
equivalent to the one who takes the life that is not theirs to take.
Considering yourself above another is a direct slap in the face of
the command to consider that other to be above yourself, and is,
therefore, a direct slap in the face of God. It
is rebelliousness, it is wickedness, it is evil, and it is sin.
Paul
addresses this fact when, in his letter to the Romans,
he writes,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.2
He further addresses it when he
writes, the wages of sin is death.5
We
are not better than the most fallen of the fallen.
Like
them, we, too, have rebelled against God. Far more, we are the more
responsible, for we have received grace, if indeed we have not
falsely believed.
There
are hearts that I long for—souls
that I would see—but I do
not deserve them. If I am to have them, it shall be by grace, for I
have no merit of my own.
Indeed,
“How many bridges I have burned! Oh! All the pain that I have
earned!” We are the more responsible because we know God.
Yet,
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,2
and, the wages of sin
is death.5
So, how, logically, shall we
properly respond when being
inquired with
regarding
the condition of our soul?
“Better
than I deserve!”
1Matthew
11:5
2Romans
3:23
3Leviticus
19:18
4In
the PDF tri-fold, this article has a masthead different than the one
on this web page. Download the PDF version to see that masthead.
5Romans
6:23
Saturday, December 26, 2015
New Hymn, "Oh, Lord, Forgive Those Souls"
The hymn for today is a plea, both for yourself, and intercessory, that righteousness be seen by grace.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Friday, December 25, 2015
New Hymn, "Jesus Has Come to Earth This Day"
The hymn for today is about looking to our salvation. See how many different Scripture references you can find.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
New Hymn, "Heaven Opens for Thee!"
The hymn for today is a hymn of humble repentance and salvation.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
New Hymn, "King of Peace"
The hymn for today is a prayer of humble repentance and intercession.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, December 21, 2015
New Hymn, "The King of Heaven Has Come!"
The hymn for today is a celebration of the coming of the Christ.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
New Hymn, "A Thousand Years" — ONE THOUSAND DAYS!!!!
The hymn for today counsels patience.
This hymn marks a thousand consecutive days that I have written at least a hymn a day. This could only have happened by the power and grace of God, for I have not the strength, the ability, nor the righteousness.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
This hymn marks a thousand consecutive days that I have written at least a hymn a day. This could only have happened by the power and grace of God, for I have not the strength, the ability, nor the righteousness.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
New Hymn, "The Battlefield"
The hymn for today is an exhortation to do battle for the Lord.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
New Hymn, "Hallelujah, Bethlehem!"
The hymn for today is a celebration of the coming of the Christ.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
New Hymn, "This Sinner's Stand"
The hymn for today presents a turning from sin and to righteousness.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
New Hymn, "From the Dawning of Time"
The hymn for today is a treatise on the person and purpose of Jesus Christ.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Homeless Rights; New Hymn, "Praise to Jesus Christ, the Lord!"
The hymn for today is, most obviously, a baptismal hymn, but also a hymn
of deliverance (play it on MuseScore for a limited time).
In
my own spirit, I am taking this as a message from the Lord (regarding
our ongoing difficulties with the city) to not worry; He’s got
this! And it is in complete keeping with what I was told, by God, at
the beginning of all this: That we would lose the battle in order to
win the war.
It
is as Scott Egan stated in the news conference held, filmed, and
shown yesterday (and to be shown again tonight, tomorrow and Sunday),
the Federal government is getting sick of the government of this
metropolitan area, and of the treatment being leveled at the homeless
by haters and governments nationwide. The Justice Department has
already called it a violation of the Constitutional Rights of those
who are homeless as embodied in the Fourth and Eighth Amendments:
freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom from cruel
and unusual punishment.
When it became known that the United States
was using sleep deprivation techniques against their prisoners in the
war on terrorism, the world went ballistic. How, then, can it be seen
as right to use those same techniques against their own citizens who
have not even been accused of crimes and misdemeanors?
LET THEM
SLEEP! LEAVE THEM ALONE! HELP THEM!
Help,
Lord! Shine Your Light of Righteousness into that despicable place
where men are treated like dogs and dogs like men! Amen!
Thursday, December 10, 2015
New Hymn, "As the Light of Heaven Shines"
The hymn for today is an exhortation to live in peace whenever possible.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
New Hymn, "Heaven's Light"
The hymn for today is a hymn of exhortation away from sin and to the Light.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
New Hymn, "All is Well"
The hymn for today is a hymn of encouragement and exhortation.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, December 7, 2015
On the Celebration of Perditious Events: New Hymn, “Thou, Immanuel!”
74
years ago, today, the nation in which I live was wickedly attacked by
a cowardly enemy—an
attack which was not deserved.
Today,
this nation is, once again, under attack, and the enemy is, again, a
cowardly one, but today, those attacks are fully and completely
deserved, for materialistic profligacies and perversions rule the
nation as never before—and
God is ridiculed, vilified, slandered, and hated in the public
square—and the nation levels
no rebuke.
Thinking
themselves wise, they have become fools, staggering drunkenly in the
filths of their profligacies toward their own destruction.
God
would level forgiveness, but they hate God and everything to do with
Him, and they refuse to turn from their ways.
But
those who do turn, God will forgive and bring them into the Light of
His mercy and grace and peace, shining His Truth into the darkness of
their formerly wicked lives.
For
it is by grace you are saved, through faith (and that not of
yourselves—it
is the gift of God) so that no one should boast.
Amen!
Come,
Lord Jesus!
Come
quickly!
Amen!
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
New Hymn, "The God of Israel"
The hymn for today is about the advent of the God of Israel.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
New Hymn, "The Son of Man"
The hymn for today is about the heralding of the coming King.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, November 30, 2015
New Hymn, "Sails of Victory"
Yeah! 983 and counting!
The hymn for today is about the victory of the righteous.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
The hymn for today is about the victory of the righteous.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
A Remarkable Thing
Those of you who have been following my composing, here (and especially on MuseScore), have
witnessed a remarkable thing. For 982 consecutive days you have seen me
post hymn after hymn after hymn. This morning, though, when I turned my
laptop on (the only place I have available to me to compose), the screen
stayed dark.
Just yesterday I told Chris, in the comments thread of my most recent hymn, that “the screen on my laptop is dying, and I do not have the money to replace it.” This morning it did not turn on at all. While I could, quite dimly, see that changes were occurring on the display, it was far, far, far too dark to do anything with.
Pray for me, gentle readers. God knows a way.
Know this: the music is still in me, unabated, but I have no way, for now, to finish it out.
Just yesterday I told Chris, in the comments thread of my most recent hymn, that “the screen on my laptop is dying, and I do not have the money to replace it.” This morning it did not turn on at all. While I could, quite dimly, see that changes were occurring on the display, it was far, far, far too dark to do anything with.
Pray for me, gentle readers. God knows a way.
Know this: the music is still in me, unabated, but I have no way, for now, to finish it out.
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Friday, November 27, 2015
Thursday, November 26, 2015
New Hymn, "Battle Hymn of the Saints"
Happy Thanksgiving, folks!
The hymn for today is an anthem of praise.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
The hymn for today is an anthem of praise.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
New Hymn, "Misunderstood"
The hymn for today speaks of the heart of God toward those He came to save.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
New Hymn, "Lord of Glory and Compassion"
The hymn for today is a prayer to be made a messenger for the Lord.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, November 23, 2015
December Issue, St. Louis Amigan: The Opening of the Mind
The
other day I made the frequent mistake of venturing into the comments
thread of an article on a conservative web site.
It is not a mistake of going to
the wrong sort of web site. After all, I am
a conservative.
It is not a mistake because of that. No. It is a mistake because such
places are invariably invaded by those who hate conservative ideals,
whose only motivation
and
desire
is to shut—and
shout—those
ideals down.
Their
tools are slander, vituperation, vilification, hatred, and a twisted
“logic” that is unique to those who want what they want and the
Truth—and
the rights of others—be
damned. Among other things, they
fail—or,
rather, refuse—to
recognize the simple,
common
sense logic that the presence of the government
established by the Constitution of the United States of America
does not constitute a Constitution-free zone.
In
other words, no person surrenders their Constitutional Rights by
being a member of the government established
by
the Constitution that recognizes, and was formulated
for the protection of, those rights. When you enter a government
establishment you do not leave your rights at the door.
The
very basis of the foundation of our government
is alluded to—if
not actually established—in
the Declaration
of Independence: “We hold these Truths
to
be self-evident: That all men are created equal,
that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.”
Note
that you are not guaranteed happiness, but only the pursuit of it. If
happiness itself were a
creator-endowed, unalienable right, then I would,
by now, be a grandfather with a quiver full of children
and a yard full of grandchildren. Happiness,
though,
is not guaranteed, so I have the life I have,
my
own happiness ruined, bull-rushed, and trampled
upon
by those in the head-long, greedy blitz toward
their own chosen profligacies, it seemingly never entering their
wicked little—and,
yes, I do
mean little—minds
that they are not Constitutionally guaranteed the right to pursue
their own twisted perversion of happiness at the expense of my
happiness. That they have no right to force me to participate in the
celebration of what I see as evil, wicked, twisted, perversion and
sin seems to be an alien concept to them.
There
are even those who insist that two of our founding fathers, Hamilton
and Jefferson, hated religion and were trying to free Americans from
its grasp. They seem blissfully unaware of the fact that Jefferson
made certain that churches
would be allowed to use the House of Representatives
chamber as their place of worship,
and that, according to Dr. Robert P. George, the McCormick
Professor of Jurisprudence, and Director
of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at
Princeton University, there
is reason to believe that, “Let us with caution
indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without
religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined
education on
minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience
both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in
exclusion of religious principle” were
drafted—not
by Washington, in whose farewell address
they appear—but
by Hamilton. So
history
calls a liar the person who would assert that Hamilton and Jefferson
were at war with religion, because such an assertion is simply not
true.
The
Truth, though, never withstands in the minds
of these miscreants of mindful malediction, these purveyors of
prurient putrefaction, these simpering sycophants of slanderous
surveyal, these hate-filled halogens
of
hyper-critical histrionics. They care nothing
at
all for the Truth. The only thing that matters to them is that
their own accepted views prevail—and
the Truth—and,
therefore, the actual facts of the matter—be
damned. They
care only that their agenda go forth. If
the
rights of others get trampled in the process, so be it; they care
not, so long as their own supremacy
be established in that same process.
They are Hitler and his dogs, Caesar and his lions, Nero and his
torches. If you
stand athwart their goals, to the flames with
you—and
may your sky
fairy
help you if they
can.
Our
God can!
You
see, the whole reason that they engage in
such
childish pursuits as hyper-critical histrionics
and
the like is to shout down what they cannot
countenance,
and thereby maintain the delusion
that what they cannot countenance does not actually exist. But there
is a problem there.
No
more than it would be sensible to claim
that the various moons of Pluto popped into existence upon NASA’s
observations of them, would it be sane to assume that our personal
preferences
effect the existence of
those without
whom we would find life more tolerable. I am not able, by sheer force
of will, to relegate Nealy Tamminga and her PCA ilk to the outer
realms of delusional fantasy (no matter the plenitude of gain that
would accrue to the world in such an event), and the God and Creator
of all that begins to exist is neither subject to such preferences at
the hands of those who would wish Him out of existence.
God
is real, and it is He that rules over reality, not us. No amount of
profligate hand wringing will ever have a single sliver of an iota of
an effect upon that.
God
is real.
There
are those who, seeking to appear reasonable, will cry out for
evidence of God to be presented—and
then a priori
reject any evidence that you bring. Their crying out for evidence is
actually a cover, a subterfuge that is
designed to make them seem to have the high
ground over those poor, deluded fools who depend upon a god of some
sort or other to make their meaningless existence tolerable. Poor
things. They forget that it is they who lack
the evidence to support their stance—not
those
who accept the evidence of their own eyes,
but those who insistently reject that evidence, preferring their own
preferences
over reality.
No
one in possession of a sound mind would, upon
seeing a print-out of this newsletter, genuinely
assume that it is simply a product of physics and chemistry with
nothing more involved. While it is exceedingly
likely that they would not appreciate the ideas being brought forth,
they would nevertheless
concede that there are, indeed, ideas being brought forth—in
other words, that there is mind involved.
How
much more, then, the far more sophisticated
concepts involved in the machinery of life! If the simple concepts
presented here are guaranteed to be the product of mind, then how
much more-so the
multi-dimensionally arrayed concepts that allow
for
an immensely long coded sequence of characters
to be decoded and read in eight different ways at the same time in
the same code space, yielding functional results with every reading,
those results varying according to the decoding method used! If
my simplistic scribblings here are certainly the product of mind,
then so are the immensely more sophisticated
encodings that instruct the construction,
maintenance, and replication of the machinery that allows for the
thriving of life itself. That
Mind is necessarily the Designer, and it is the Designer that rules
over His design, and not the design that rules over its Designer.
This
is what the profligates cannot countenance and what triggers their
childish use of the “LALALALA I can’t hear
you!”
defense that they unceasingly employ in an effort to shout you down.
Take
heart, though, because evidence is never obliterated by its denial.
Neither is God effected by such childish foolishness. The evidence
for God is all around, suffused throughout all existence. The
steadfast refusal of some to countenance what their sober senses
would tell them, is not evidence against God, but rather, is evidence
against them, prosecutable in the Court of the Final Judgment, in
which
the only possibility for acquittal only requires
the opening of the mind.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
A Short Thanksgiving Message
Recorded about a week or so ago, this is a very brief message on thanksgiving in the midst of trials and tribulations.
Friday, November 20, 2015
New Hymn, "To the Life!"
The hymn for today is a guiding light to the Lord of Light.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
New Hymn, "God of Mercy and Compassion"
The hymn for today is a cry of the wounded heart, praying for those who have committed the wounding.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
New Hymn, "The One-in-Three!"
This hymn is a prayer for those who, through their hatred and dismissal of God, oppose, also, you.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
New Hymn, "Who Will Always be There"
The hymn for today is an anthem for those who, in Christ, have been used and abused and thrown aside by those who pretend Christ, as has been my history. Truly, I have lived Genesis 39, with the Lord even calling me Joseph, before.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Sunday, November 15, 2015
New Hymn, "A Prayer for the Wicked Heart"
The hymn for today is also exceedingly personal, following on yesterday's hymn, but dealing more broadly with all those who, claiming Jesus' name, have slandered, betrayed, used, abused, sought to entrap me; as you can see from the chosen Scripture passage, these were not known enemies, but people who had claimed to be my friend, who had shared communion with me under the noses of elders who should have known better.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
New Hymn, "Wounded Hearts"
The hymn for today is exceedingly personal, an intercessory prayer for a dear, sweet friend.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
New Hymn, "Our Lord Jesus Christ"
The hymn for today is a depiction of the qualities of Christ.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Monday, November 9, 2015
New Hymn, "Savior, over us Forever"
The hymn for today is a celebration of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
Play it on MuseScore for a limited time.
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