Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, 25 who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, 26 who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins’…
(Isaiah 44:24-26)
Here’s more Isaiah to propel us into the weekend. I daresay we can all use it.
We are heading to Jefferson City today and the boy and his family are heading out to the beach on Sunday so traveling mercies to all who are on the road. We also wish the boy and daughter #3 a happy 12th anniversary on Sunday! Mazel tov!
I think I mentioned that I fell behind in my daily Bible reading over the past two weeks, but I am catching up. Yesterday I was rewarded with Isaiah 40-43, which covers a lot of familiar territory.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
(Isaiah 40:28-31)
I was also reminded of last year’s VBS where the kids memorized the following:
Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
(Isaiah 41:10)
And these verses were important in Pilgrim’s Progress:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
(Isaiah 43:1-3)
These are all great verses, especially when we are in need of hope and comfort.
This article gives solid advice for when your mind gets stuck in unproductive places.
And I really liked this one about prayer postures in the Bible. I need all the help I can get in increasing my prayer time. I tend to “remember [God] upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.” (Psalm 63:6) My wandering mind betrays me during the day when I try to focus. I can do better.
Meanwhile I am rearranging my office and I moved a small bookcase. The question arises: how many copies of the BCP do I really need?
We had a lot of rain early on July 4th, but the sun came out and “America’s Birthday Parade” went forward although there were not a whole lot of people in downtown St. Louis. I watched from home.
Daughter #1 and Mr. Smith and the boy and his family came over in the afternoon and we celebrated in our traditional way.
Why mess with a good thing? Daughter #2 and her family celebrated with their own backyard BBQ along with some new friends. The prairie girls were dressed appropriately!
The local town fireworks display was postponed until tonight because of dire weather predictions (note the blue, nearly cloudless sky in above photos), so we’ll probably go over to our usual spot in the high school parking lot to watch. But I have to say there were a lot of local, unofficial firework displays in our own neighborhood last night. More than I remember in previous years.
Well, I’ll wrap up with some wise words from Calvin Coolidge:
About the Declaration [of Independence] there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
–President Calvin Coolidge, from a speech given on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926
We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall;- Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
The noble craftsmen we promote, Disown the knave and fool; Each honest man shall have his vote, Each child shall have his school. A union then of honest men, Or union nevermore again.
Today in St. Louis we are also celebrating the 150th anniversary of the opening of Eads Bridge, a true architectural marvel. It was the first bridge in St. Louis, the first in the world to use steel and the first in the U.S. to use caissons for its piers.
At the time there were many doubters who were concerned about the safety of the structure, but people were reassured two weeks before the grand opening by the sight of an elephant lumbering across the wagon deck. It was an unscientific test, but in the 19th century many people believed elephants knew instinctively not to set foot on unsound structures. (This made me think of that famous scene in Gunga Din (1939) when the elephant is willing to step onto the rickety bridge to follow Cary Grant…)
Needless to say, Eads bridge was sound…
Well then, exactly at daybreak on July 4, 1874 on a clear and sunny day, a thirteen-gun salute was fired to honor the original colonies of the United States. At 9 a.m. 100 guns were fired, fifty on each side of the the Mississippi River, to signal the beginning of a huge parade.
“A link of steel unites the East and West” was painted on one side of the bridge’s main arch. On the other side, decorated with evergreens, appeared a fifty-foot-high portrait of the man of the hour, James B. Eads. A display of fireworks completed the evening festivities.
I hope you all have fun plans to celebrate Independence Day with friends and family. If not, read some Emerson or Whitman, watch an old movie like Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) or Alleghany Uprising (1939)…
What is the meaning of this intrusion?
…Read Esther Forbes’ fine book Paul Revere and the World He Lived In or Eric Metaxas’ If You Can Keep It: the Forgotten Promise of American Liberty or David McCullough’s 1776.
“The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.”
Be proud. Be loud. Open the windows and blast your neighbors! That’s what we did when I was growing up. We had this LP and this was one of my favorite pieces:
On this day in 1844 the Missouri and Mississippi rivers reached the most devastating flood stages in history. The Mississippi River swelled to nearly 12 miles wide during the the flood. Crowds gathered on rooftops in St. Louis to watch the houses and trees of Illinoistown (now East St. Louis) being carried away. Steamboats that were still running on the river reported crashing into chimneys and mill machinery hidden below the water’s surface. River pirates took small boats back into the flooded, abandoned towns, looting the upper stories of homes.
The 1844 flood and 1993 flood square off as St. Louis’s “biggest”—the 1844 flood carried 21 percent more water, but the 1993 flood crested more than 8 feet higher. Had the 1993 flood carried the 1844 flood’s volume, it would have almost certainly crested St. Louis’s floodwall (the 1993 flood came within three feet of crest).
To give you an idea, here’s a photo of high water–flooded levee with buildings on one side and boats on the other–at St. Louis during the 1858 flood. (Missouri Historical Society Collections.)
Not until June 28 did the waters begin to recede. By the middle of July the river was back to normal.
After the flood, Congress passed the Swamp Act in 1849 providing land grants to build stronger levees.
“A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, ‘God will take care of me.’ A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, ‘God will take care of me.’ A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof—his entire home flooded—a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and as he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: ‘You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.’ God replied, ‘I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.’ God helps those who help themselves.”
Christmas has a large and colorful cast of characters including not only the three principals themselves, but the angel Gabriel, the innkeeper, the shepherds, the heavenly host, the three Wise Men, Herod, the star of Bethlehem, and even the animals kneeling in the straw. In one form or another we have seen them represented so often that we would recognize them anywhere. We know about the birth in all its detail as well as we know about the births of ourselves or our children, maybe more so. The manger is as familiar as home. We have made a major production of it, and as minor attractions we have added the carols, the tree, the presents, the cards. Santa Claus, Ebenezer Scrooge, and so on. With Easter it is entirely different.
The Gospels are far from clear as to just what happened. It began in the dark. The stone had been rolled aside. Matthew alone speaks of an earthquake. In the tomb there were two white-clad figures or possibly just one. Mary Magdalen seems to have gotten there before anybody else. There was a man she thought at first was the gardener. Perhaps Mary the mother of James was with her and another woman named Joanna. One account says Peter came too with one of the other disciples. Elsewhere the suggestion is that there were only the women and that the disciples, who were somewhere else, didn’t believe the women’s story when they heard it. There was the sound of people running, of voices. Matthew speaks of “fear and great joy.” Confusion was everywhere. There is no agreement even as to the role of Jesus himself. Did he appear at the tomb or only later? Where? To whom did he appear? What did he say? What did he do?
It is not a major production at all, and the minor attractions we have created around it — the bunnies and baskets and bonnets, the dyed eggs — have so little to do with what it’s all about that they neither add much nor subtract much. It’s not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it. It doesn’t have the ring of great drama. It has the ring of truth. I f the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus indeed rose from the dead, they would presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster. Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was. The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself. When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty. That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.
The symbol of Easter is the empty tomb. You can’t depict or domesticate emptiness. You can’t make it into pageants and string it with lights. It doesn’t move people to give presents to each other or sing old songs. It ebbs and flows all around us, the Eastertide. Even the great choruses of Handel’s Messiah sound a little like a handful of crickets chirping under the moon.
He rose. A few saw him briefly and talked to him. If it is true, there is nothing left to say. If it is not true, there is nothing left to say. For believers and unbelievers both, life has never been the same again. For some, neither has death. What is left now is the emptiness. There are those who, like Magdalen, will never stop searching it till they find his face.
~Frederick Buechner, originally published in Whistling in the Dark
Hallelujah! Sure, we’ll get dressed up and go to church and cook a big brunch and set the table with the good china. But let’s just take a moment, shall we?
And this is interesting–C.S. Lewis admired this play by Dorothy Sayers so much that he re-read it every year during Holy Week. (He re-read things too.) I have never read it, but I think I will.
God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own…by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.
–Dorothy Sayers
Happy Easter. Christ is risen indeed.
(The painting is The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection by the Swiss artist Eugène Burnand, 1898.)
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”
–A Christmas Carol by Charles DIckens
Are you feeling a little like our friend Mr. Scrooge? Here’s a good message from the late, great R.C. Sproul: “Every generation has its abundance of Scrooges. The church is full of them. We hear endless complaints of commercialism. We are constantly told to put Christ back into Christmas. We hear that the tradition of Santa Claus is a sacrilege. We listen to those acquainted with history murmur that Christmas isn’t biblical…All this carping is but a modern dose of Scroogeism, our own sanctimonious profanation of the holy.”
So lighten up. Enjoy the season! Spread some cheer! Write some end-of-the-year checks to the Shriners and the Salvation Army and your local Christian radio station. Put some paper money in the red kettle at the grocery store. You’ll be glad you did.
And I hope you enjoy this rendition of God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, which is one of the oldest Christmas carols, originating in 16th-century England. The earliest known printed edition was published in 1760.
God rest ye merry gentlemen Let nothing you dismay For Jesus Christ our Saviour Was born on Christmas Day To save us all from Satan’s pow’r When we were gone astray O tidings of comfort and joy Comfort and joy O tidings of comfort and joy
From God our Heavenly Father A blessed Angel came; And unto certain shepherds Brought tidings of the same, How that in Bethlehem was born The Son of God by Name. O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy O tidings of comfort and joy
The shepherds at those tidings Rejoiced much in mind, And left their flocks a-feeding In tempest, storm and wind, And went to Bethlehem straightway The Son of God to find. O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy O tidings of comfort and joy
But when to Bethlehem they came, Whereat this infant lay, They found Him in a manger, Where oxen feed on hay; His Mother Mary kneeling down, Unto the Lord did pray. O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy O tidings of comfort and joy
Now to the Lord sing praises, All you within this place, And with true love and brotherhood Each other now embrace; This holy tide of Christmas All other doth efface. O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy O tidings of comfort and joy.
Well, as Emerson said, “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
This is sage advice indeed. I am an old lady so I have slowed down considerably and I do not think that is a bad thing.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
A few weeks ago, after I watched the movie 42 (2013), I started reading up a bit about Jackie Robinson and I came across the book The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn.
It was a bestseller when it was published in 1971. I bought a used copy online and started reading. It is really good! I was a big fan in the mid-sixties when I was a little girl, and although I am not a big baseball fan anymore, I have always contended that it is the best sport. This is because everyone, from little children to old ladies, can understand it. It is not an overly violent game and finesse wins over brute force. Indeed, it is a majestic and heroic game where one man stands up alone against nine players of the other team–sometimes in front of thousands of people.
You may recall that the famous 20th century poet Marianne Moore was a huge fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and wrote poems about them.
Anyway, Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, a hop, skip and a jump from Ebbets Field where the Dodgers played. He lived and breathed the game. After college he went to work as a night copyboy at the New York Herald Tribune. His descriptions of growing up and of being a fledgling newspaper writer are funny, moving and detailed. I am really enjoying it.
As you know, our grandfather, ANC Jr., was a newspaperman who worked on the New York Times as well as the Herald Tribune, so this is especially interesting as a window into mid century journalism, which bears absolutely no similarity to today’s digital scribbling. These writers worked hard and took pride in their work. They were good writers.
So if you are so inclined, I highly recommend The Boys of Summer.
I should mention that Brooks Robinson, the Hall of Famer who played all 23 years of his professional baseball career with the Baltimore Orioles, died last week. He was my favorite non-Cardinal back in the day. He had class. Also Adam Wainwright retired last weekend after quite a career in St. Louis. He has class too. (And look at that wingspan.)
Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and forty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields, he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments.
(Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer)
In other news, bears are causing problems in of all places Japan! Indeed, the Japanese have deployed giant robot wolves to intimidate marauding bears. This is not science fiction.
“I dare not neglect prayer and thanksgiving if I am to enjoy God’s transcendent peace and overcome my worries. I must abhor thankless bitterness and eschew sulkiness. My worries must be enumerated before the Father, along with thoughtful requests framed in accordance with his will. These requests must be offered to the accompaniment of sincere gratitude for the many undeserved blessings already received, and for the privilege of stretching my faith by exposure to this new and improved hardship. Thus the follower of Jesus learns really to trust the all-wise and all-gracious sovereignty of God (Rom. 8:28), as he begins to experience the profundity of Peter’s injunction: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6f.), (D.A. Carson).
Anne reviewed Kevin DeYoung’s new book in Christianity Today. Five stars!
And, wow, this is really something. “[T]hese two people are in a lot of trouble.”
So feel the sun on your back, wear pink pants, pray without ceasing, and remember that God’s mercies are new every morning.
dual personalities 