God's benediction on this memorable weekend came in the form of a 4:00 o'clock sacred concert by the Northwestern College Choir, sponsored by our Salem Music Academy, which offers year-long music lessons to young people in our area who otherwise would not be able to afford them.The program was, for me, another Pietist experience, melding together young voices under superb direction, with equally superb accompaniment, to serve as wide a range of music and text as would please a Pietist Covenanter like me, who longs with the psalmist to be "a companion of all those who fear God" (Psalm 119:63) and are looking for his appearing.
Bach and Mendelssohn were joined with contemporary composers, all the way from Dominick Argento to lesser known contemporaries like Getty, Townsend, Haugen, Berglund, Courtney, Fritschel, Berger, and Hampton. Arrangers like Ferguson, Helvey, Parker, Berkey, and Caracciolo crafted fresh presentations of pieces from many traditions, and poets all the way from St. Aquinas and Luther to John Newton were feted.
Who is a Pietist, after all, but one who longs for the gathering up of all things in Jesus Christ--past, present, and future? Will not "every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father" one day? And ought not that be our deepest longing as it surely is his? I was especially moved and blest by what was for me a new text from Martin Luther, titled "In Peace and Joy I Now Depart." I'd love it read at my own departing some day, perhaps even engraved on a stone that marks where I am laid to await Christ's appearing:
In peace and joy I now depart / At God's disposing; / For full of comfort is my heart, / Soft reposing. / For the Lord hath promised me, / And death is but a slumber.
The weekend is now over, and tomorrow the daily round begins again. But my heart as a result of these last few days is full to overflowing. For I know in whom I have believed, and the sharing of that in so many diverse ways with so many diverse people has quickened once more that faith in my mind and heart. It has also stirred in my soul a whole new passion to proclaim in every way I can the wonderful deeds of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9b).
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