Roots exist for the wings that propel them into life as we know it, and wings exist to magnify the

What Was--and Is--Holy Week All About?

2011-04-16T18:49:00.009-05:00

Palm Sunday is a good time for pondering. Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, below the surface of it, is filled with implications that many did not see when it first occurred and many more do not fathom even yet.

For one thing, it represented the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah. For another, the humility with which Jesus entered the Holy City--not to mention week-long events following that led to his crucifixion on Good Friday--evidence clearly what kind of Messiah God intended him to be. Not until his divine mission was confirmed by his resurrection on Easter morn did who he truly was begin to break through. And even in all the centuries ever since believers in him have not fully grasped the magnitude of it all.

Rob Bell speaks in his new book on Love Wins (Harper One, 2011) about "the beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith," calling it "a deep, wide, diverse stream that's been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences."

I share his hope to introduce Christians everywhere "to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multivoiced complexity." To let this week go by with no more than ideas already so fixed in our minds that there is no need to ponder further its life-changing implications for each of us would inevitably be to trivialize it and miss out on its promise.

Listen carefully, therefore, for what was really going on in all that then went on. And long for the day when Messiah as he is will use your pondering of his journey through this week to further transform your life.

A Dream That Touched Reality

2011-04-15T05:20:00.018-05:00

It happened overnight, in a dream no less. A new and fresh revelation, a least for me--exciting, and full of implication for the healing of the nations. "Do you realize," I heard a voice say, "that the Lord's Prayer--first offered by Jesus as a model for our praying--would be equally appropriate as a prayer model for a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, and people of every other religious persuasion, tribe, and nation?"

No, I hadn't realized that. It had never entered my mind. Yet the more I thought about it the more excited I became. From the "Our Father"--meant to be inclusive of all people on this earth--through the assigning of ourselves to the coming of his kingdom and the doing of his will to the pleas for daily bread, forgiveness received and offered, and guidance away from temptation, the whole of life is covered for the whole of humanity. And the language used is as neutral to circumstance as it is universal in character.

What mattered to Jesus, it seems, and must matter to us all as children of one Father, is the honoring of his name and will. Prayer, to be meaningful, must enter humbly into mysteries that transcend all the categories into which we have separated ourselves as human beings. Its aim must always be to look to the One who created us and waits always in the wings to bring us back to himself and one another.

At the center of it all for me, of course, is the person and work of Jesus Christ. But all of us who share that faith must be careful not to bind him to categories of our own making or conclusions concerning him we have arrived at on our own. Ours is not to guide him into the dark abysses of our tomorrows. It is rather to follow after him and his Spirit, which can never be captured by us but is always ready to lead us along life's way.

I woke refreshed this morning from my dream, freed once again from the awful burden so many are taking on themselves these days of pretending to know more about God and his will than they do. My most fervent prayer, both for myself and for them, is rather to approach life and all its complications in the spirit of the hymn writer who affirmed what I know to be true, that "God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain" (The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 418).

All These Paul!

2011-04-10T06:22:00.025-05:00

"Dad, Grandpa, Rabbai, Paul" are the signatures he assigns at the end of his weekly reports from his current teaching post in Pingliang, China. With commas in between they are meant to personalize his reflections for each of those to whom he is sending them over time. But it occurs to me that all of them, strung together without commas, might be just as appropriate to us as individuals. Dad Grandpa Rabbai Paul Swanson captures who he is better than any of those first names might in itself.

Teacher Counselor Mentor Friend and Lover of Youth might also be added to get an even fuller picture of the man. See how this retired widower hugs a child from a local orphanage nearby the school where he has taught for some time and is even now teaching. A true professor, equally at home in exploring and explaining C. S Lewis and laying all that sophistication aside for the sake of an orphaned child. Needs are everywhere around us, both to be taught and to be loved. Soon the child will need the professor, but for now she needs a Dad or Grandpa, someone just to embrace and hold her, someone to throw her lonely arms around--someone, anyone who will take the time to pick her up, whose name she does not know and will not likely remember.

That is exactly the one who holds the little orphan girl above! His name? Dad Grandpa Rabbai Paul Teacher Counselor Mentor Friend and Lover of Youth Swanson--to which if truth be told should also be added Cook Baker of Delicious Breads and Host at Tables Spread with Swedish Pancakes. What a man, what a friend, what a servant, what a witness!

Bless you All These Paul, and keep you in pursuit of God's claim on your life and his call to teach, share, and model his grace with people everywhere. Unassuming as you are, you may not recognize yourself in all the above, but take it from me: God does, and so do we!

A Seed Dies, but Its Fruit Lives On

2011-04-05T06:18:00.012-05:00

The Covenant Office building at 5101 N. Francisco in Chicago will soon be no more. The process of its demolition was announced on CovNews this morning, as illustrated above. Offices into the future are now consolidated at 8303 Higgins Road, out close to O'Hare Airport--a necessary move both for the sake of more room and for the gathering in of several departments that for years have had to be housed elsewhere.

Strange, I thought, that the big backhoe should be entering early on through the window that for many years housed the denomination's department of Church Growth and Evangelism. Thus continues the emergence of the Covenant Church on the American scene, one more step in the journey that years ago as I was grwoing up found its headquarters on Belmont Avenue. The move to 5101 came in the latter years of T.W. Anderson's presidency, where it has thrived through all the years since until now. I knew 5101 well, every part of it, spending 28 years there myself as part of its ministry of publications.

Let honor be given to all that was accomplished there, through later presidencies of Clarence Nelson, Milton Engebretson, Paul Larsen, Glenn Palmberg, and Gary Walter, now continuing in new quarters. And, lest we forget, honor to everyone that was part of those rich days in furthering our common mission. Buildings, however inadeqaute in some ways, leave behind them a sense of place far more important to the soul of a movement than mere brick and mortar.

The seed of all that is falling into the earth, and we must let it go--like every place we have ever inhabited together in our pilgrimage over time. No doubt 8303 West Higgins Road will also pass into memory some day, as will all those now leading us from there. Pray only that the soul of 5101 N. Francisco, as well as the earlier soul on which it fed after the move from Belmont Avenue, will continue to infuse and enrich the soul of the new leadership post now established on our journey together.

The divine/human saga continues in us which began when Father Abraham, believing and trusting in God, went out "to a land he knew not where." In every time since then, we remain no less than he and his seed a pilgrim people, still looking ahead to an ageless place and city whose builder and maker is God.

"We Believe," O God. "Help our Unbelief."

2011-04-02T07:57:00.029-05:00

Our small group at Salem is journeying together these days with Paula D'arcy, a therapist, and Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and theologian, through an audio series of lectures on "A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life." In five chapters where each of them speaks for a half hour, we are seeing ourselves and our lives pictured before us.

Life of necessity, they hold, has two halves--each with its importance. The first has to do with all that occupies our minds and wills when young--the passion to acquire, to establish a name for ourselves, to claim our identity. It cannot be avoided and ought not be diminished in importance. The second half begins somewhere in our lives when first half things fail us, when for want of a better word, our pride in ourselves and the patterns we have established to satisfy ourselves are broken and we are reduced to wondering what's next for us. Loss of a job, failures in marriage, family tensions, threatening illnesses--all these and many more that shatter our self-confidence--trigger us into the second half of life. And in the second half of life questions of meaning, purpose, and even survival begin to shatter our faith in ourselves and even sometimes in God--who seems somehow distant, far from who we thought he was and want him to be.

Though it may seem, as our teachers affirm, that first half patterns are upbeat and second half fractures are downers, it is not really so. No truly spiritual life can be experienced apart from either, and in their power to confront us second half queries and struggles are richer with promise--if faced and dealt with--than patterns of life established by us in the first.

We were stopped short recently, part-way through the series, by a statement repeated several times in our hearing by both lecturers that "everything is gift." Could that be true, we wondered? Some of us were--and are-- struggling with major health issues. Others are facing crises in the workplace and tensions with children. Can such be seen as gifts in the same way as the joys we experienced of love, marriage, children, and our vocations in earlier days?

Though still struggling to believe that, we are being encouraged to think so. True spirituality is not something we can generate in ourselves. It's something only God's loved ones know--gifted to us by him on the other side of coming to the end of ourselves. No one wants to be broken, of course. Yet why is it that our yearnings for the Spirit, for God's presence in our lives, are if anything being heightened now by the trials through which we are passing?

The picture above, on my study wall, grasps for me the whole of it. Below are the intricate patterns we have created for ourselves, cemented together by habit over time--all in the first half of life. Just above them are swirling seas where we now find ourselves. Over both of them is God's eternal sky--there all the time, glowing with the warmth of his sun. And in between is a dove coming back to the storm tossed vessels of our lives with an olive branch suggesting a peace and solid ground somewhere in life's storms and the promise of God--no matter what--of his continuing presence and blessing.

The patterned tables of life's first half in our group are now being broken in ways we cannot fully understand--much less piece together. Yet in our admitted brokenness is beginning to emerge a deeper understanding of Scripture's promise that "a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench' (Isaiah 42:3). And though true faith in God still wavers in us at times, wanting life our own way, we are being sensitized by God to share with and pray for each other in ways that are surely helping our unbelief.

Amazing Art!

2011-03-26T06:21:00.043-05:00

He begins, our son Eric, with one single black-on-white pen point in the center of some art paper on a mechanical drawing board. From there, entirely freehand, he lets whatever will eventually end up as the finished piece emerge--line by line, image by image. When finished, again entirely free-hand, he enhances it with colored markers, if indeed he does not decide to leave it as black on white.

What amazes us is both the dexterity of his free hand and the sensitivity to image that evolves in the process. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," an old saying goes, and artists will counsel you to make of their art whatever you will. One of my favorites, shown above, speaks to me of Christ's cross, central in our minds these days as we journey through Lent, following our Lord toward Jerusalem.. From that cross flows love and good will forever, cascading out from its centerpoint in Jesus to all who will simply receive it.

We had no idea as parents through his childhood years what artistic talents were given to Eric. What we do see now, and admire, is his passion for making those gifts a centerpoint in his life, not only for the sake of self-fulfillment but for the joy of sharing with and blessing others. Eric is regularly on facebook. Go for his art offerings there--including Greeting Cards--to "Hawk's Fine Line Art."

Go to it, Eric! You make your mom and me both proud of your gifts and thankful to God for your spirit. May he prosper the work of your hands, amd may you thank him--pen-srtoke by pen-stroke--for the talents that are making it possible.

Where Lies the Power We Long for and Need?

2011-03-25T07:28:00.005-05:00

In the script from a recent lecture on "Pietism: A World We Have Lost," delivered a few days ago at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Baylor University Historian Roger Olson offers one particular insight among others that really caught my eye.

"Pietism aims at the inward transformation of the affections leading to change of the will resulting in acts of compassion. Too often churches try to manipulate congregants into giving and working because there is no inner impulse giving rise gratefully and voluntarily to these practices. A dose of spiritual experience brought about through repentance and faith in response to powerful preaching of the cross just might result in more kingdom building than all the appeals we make in our newsletters and from our pulpits.

Where lies the spiritual power we all long for and know we need? Not in efforts of our own to stir people up or appeal to their sense of guilt. It lies rather in ever fresh experiences of God among the people, as Olson puts it, "the inward transformation of the affections leading to change of the will resulting in acts of compassion."

Thank God that Pietist heritage is alive in so many. I see it daily at work, inspired not by programs designed to make it work as by God himself at work in the hearts of people still being transformed by his Word and Spirit.

Oh to be a better instrument of that Word and Spirit.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.... Then I will teach transgressors thy ways and sinners will be converted unto thee (Psalm 51:10,13).

Blessed Are the Faithful!

2011-03-18T06:35:00.004-05:00

"There goes old faithful," our veteran pastor's wife said on seeing David Alberts walking toward the old funeral chapel on Chicago's south side as we approached by car. And she was right! David and Clara were dynamic saints--not in up front ways we usually associate with that word but simply and continually in their faithfulness. One could count on them to be present whenever and wherever Christ's body gathered--for worship, study, prayer, fellowship, funerals, weddings, baptisms, or whatever else. Faithfulness had become part of their nature.

Scanning a lifetime of ministry--not to mention earlier years as a child growing up in the church--my soul is blessed in remembering them and countless others like them. Hilma Larson in Middletown, Connecticut, John Swanson in Bethany, Chicago, Grandpa Magnuson in Paxton, Illinois, Carl Strom in Hilmar, California--all of them, though uniquely themselves, alike in their faithfulness. Each of these, though dead now, lives on in me--modeling the kind of spirit I long myself to be.

It is not, of course, as if any of them in themselves was worthy of worship. It is only that somehow in their lives they reflected the faithfulness of God, who alone deserves our worship and praise. Think of him now, and his faithfulness in your life. Are you reflecting his faithfulness in your own?

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness,
morning by morning new mercies I see;
all I have needed thy hand hath provided--
great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

On Entering Lent

2011-03-05T06:22:00.007-06:00

Carlo Carretto is a monk, one of the Little Brothers of Jesus. He has divided his time between the order's house in the Sahara and Spello (near Assisi) in the Umbrian Hills, where he has lived as a hermit.

In the book illustrated here he wrote some years ago, "When I think about the state of the world, of the Church which is its conscience, and of myself who am a very small antenna of both world and Church, I feel that we are entering the eye of a cyclone."

What troubles him most, however, is not the cyclone but the fear that has Christians in its grip. What we are experiencing in our time is "the history of Israel all over again," he contends, "the adventure of being exiles and pilgrims on earth....

"We Christians ought henceforth, I think, to consider ourselves as being in a foreign land, as deportees in a modern Babylon, reduced to tiny minorities but witnessing to the Invisible, no longer as bosses but as guests among the nations, offering a message which has the power to save, offering a hope which is in fact the only hope.

"It may be that the Church will have hard times, as Israel had in the time of the Babylonian Captivity." But, he writes, "this doesn't worry me much, since Christ himself has set us free from fear; hence I am no longer in Israel's position, to be terrorized by the Assyrian sword....

"I am full of hope," he concludes. "And it is genuine hope, not hope founded on human optimism.... It is not based on my own strength, nor on the organized resources of the Church, but on the living God alone, on his love for the human race, on his actions throughout history, on his saving will."

Summing up his feelings, Carretto writes, "I could put it very briefly: I have discovered how to be much poorer than I thought I was before. {And] The more you find your poverty, the more it stimulates you to pray." He then lifts up to us all what the Little Brothers of Jesus call the Prayer of Abandonment:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you;
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures;
I wish no more than this.

Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands
without reserve
and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father.

The sign of Corretto's hope lies both in the signature that follows and the place, season, and calendar year when writing:

CARLO CARRETTO,
Spello, Easter, 1975

'Let Hope and Sorrow Now Unite'

2011-03-01T06:13:00.015-06:00

I am grieving this morning, as I often do with others who have lost loved ones and dear friends, over the passing of Lars Hellberg in San Diego, CA and Gordon Ahlquist here in the Twin Cities. I only learned of their deaths yesterday and the sense of loss is therefore intense.

Lars Hellberg was a true and loyal friend of mine since childhood. The bond between us was really fixed in high school days at then North Park Academy, even though we had known each other earlier at Peterson Grade School. A long and gangley guy, 6'7" in maturity, he had a hard time coordinating physically in his youth. But brilliant mentally and warm-hearted personally, he was the kind of friend a person needs--never fair-weather but true, always beside you even when absent, caring and loyal. Vocationally he became a professor of chemistry at San Diego State College in 1956, after earning his PhD at UCLA. Concurrently while serving there for over 40 years, coaching many students on to their own graduate degrees, he also spent 25 of those years over the border in Mexico, teaching part-time at Centro de Graduados, Instituto Technologico in Tijuana. A life-long Lutheran, he devoted his time and effort as well to Christian initiatives and causes all over the world. It is too soon for me to lose him.

It was also a shock to hear of Gordy Ahlquist's passing--a true Covenant Pietist whose real vocation in life--alongside his work as a gifted securities analyst-- was as an equally gifted musician, serving God and the Covenant as organist at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis for over 50 years. What a repository of our story and spirit as a Christian movement he was! I had been pursuing him for some time to do a video interview, but that was delayed due to the illness of his wife. Now, only a few weeks later, he himself was summoned from us by his Master.

I really grieve today the loss of these two colleagues and friends, even if not as others do who are outside Christ and without hope. A hymn in our hymnal eases the grief with its reminder that "... hope and sorrow now unite to consecrate life's ending ... though grief and loss are rending." And I know as a believer that especially on days like these, no matter one's pain, it is important to "Give thanks for all each person gives," because "as faith comes true and Jesus lives, there'll be an end to grieving."

(The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 756)

Blessed Imagination!

2011-02-26T14:45:00.004-06:00

Look at the delight on this child's face in a picture sent me today by a friend. What a blessed imagination little children have--no matter when or where, involving no matter what or whom!

Even inanimate things come to life in their presence, given that imagination. They make things live that are not living, and thus open our eyes to wonders we only pass by. They actually engage things we gaze on regularly, but end up merely storing on film. One wonders how the little girl might have engaged the famous angry infant captured in marble while in a fit of rage by the famous Norwegian sculptor Vigeland in Oslo?

Dance on, little one! Things we adults might deem foolish are full of possibilities for little ones like you with eyes to see. Encourage us by your spontaneity to risk ourselves the foolishness of engaging life in all its forms. Who knows how many around us might then be freed up in their own imaginations?

Glowing Ardor

2011-02-19T11:07:00.027-06:00

The stunning picture is of the south sanctuary windows in my son Peter's church in Winnetka, Illinois (credits to Scott Edwards). What moves me in this Epiphany season of light is the ardor of it, strong rays reflecting rich tones of varied colors on the places where believers gather weekly to worship.

Something in the blending of the colors, every hue contributing to the whole but none dominating, defines the way Christ's body is. Widely diverse in personality, background, and experience, believers gather, as the earliest Christians did, "all together in one place" (Acts 2:1).

The picture also speaks of the prevenience of God, the Lord of life and light, ever present in his sanctuary--even when noone else is. Invoking him as we always do does not mean inviting him to come there--for he is already present. It is he that invokes our presence. Ours is simply to acknowledge him and receive the blessings he alone can supply.

One thing more I see and sense here. A real peril, one might name it. What if all we seek in God's house is the glory of being thus illumined and blessed ourselves? Is that all there is to worship? Can we be said to have been illumined by God in his house if on leaving the sanctuary we fail to share the light we received there with loved ones, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and yes, even our enemies?

God, whose purpose is to kindle, now ignite us with your fire.

While the world awaits your burning, with your passion us inspire.

Overcome our sinful calmness, move us with redemptive shame.

Baptize with your fiery Spirit, crown our lives with tongues of flame.

God, who still a sword delivers rather than a placid peace,

with your sharpened word disturb us, from complacency release!

Save us now from satisfaction, when we privately are free,

yet are undisturbed in spirit by our neighbor's misery.

God, who in your holy Gospel wills that all should truly live,

make us sense our share of failure, our tranquility forgive.

Teach us courage as we struggle in all liberating strife.

Lift the smallness of our vision by your own abundant life.

Elton Trueblood (1900-1993, alt)

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 284

Don't Just Do Something! Stand There!

2011-02-13T05:21:00.003-06:00

The massive peaceful rebellion in Egypt has me wondering if the familiar aphorism, "Don't just stand there, do something!" has spooked us into activity-driven lives bereft of character. The Egyptian people, of course, did something. Yet the key to their action, powerful as it was, emerged from their character as a people--their weariness with despotism and their hunger for freedom.

Ought that be a lesson to us, frenetic as we have become in American social, political, and religious life? Questions of character, one often feels, are being trumped by half-truths spewed out to succeed, to gain advantage and power--often under the guise of defending character!

Were I to be stripped of all my activities for a day--or you, for that matter--what would others see in us just standing there? Is there more to us than our personal accomplishments or the programs and activities that consume our time and social life?

Sometimes it takes crises in our lives to wake us up to who we are created and called to be. Might what is now happening in Egypt represent a call to the renewal of our own character as Christians?

If so, as I believe it does, we would each do well to ponder what it means for us as believers, individually and communally, to be more intently--as John Weborg has put it in his thoughtful book--both, "Alive in Christ" and "Alert to Life" (Covenant Publications, 1985).

Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!

Quietness and Renewal

2011-01-30T18:08:00.011-06:00

It was Sunday evening, and I was sitting by the fireplace in our son's home, quietly listening to old hymn tunes beautifully arranged and recorded on piano recently by a long-time friend and colleague, Roland Tabell. I was not at all surprised by his artistry--a truly gifted musician who was for many years the worship minister at our Pasadena, California Covenant Church. What especially moved me, however, was how his artistry was serving a certain simplicity, drawing one who knows the hymns from memory to be blessed and renewed by the message of their texts.

The medium in Roland's case is not the message. It exists rather to serve the message, to lift up texts God has inspired to encourage and sustain his people. The very nature of his artistry invites quieting down before it--setting aside whatever one is doing and giving time and attention to messages the music is meant to convey.

Quietness is hard to come by in our culture. Noise abounds everywhere, seeking both to entertain and entice us. But somehow its strident sounds never seem to reach the depths of mind and heart within that are so in need of God. It was no waste of time, therefore, to be still on Sunday night--to just sit and listen by my son's fireside. For in the surrounding warmth of burning wood and music arranged to serve texts rich in content and memory my faith was renewed and my hope restored.

Our Choices Matter, Our Motives Even More!

2011-01-26T05:46:00.011-06:00

Though it is abundantly clear that life itself--taken as a whole--is not under our control, we each have been endowed by our Creator with the sovereign right to respond to it as we see fit. No one can take that sovereign right from us. Nor can we take it from others.

This power we all have to choose for ourselves is awesome. It can also be scary, as when we see in others how easily what is chosen is self-serving, little more than the building of fences around themselves to declare their independence and defend their space.

Surely when God endowed each of us with this gift he had more in mind. What matters to him is the whole of life, not just ours but everyone's--indeed, the life of creation itself. Though he honors anyone's choice not to pay attention to him, for example, and seek our neighbor's good, ample warnings abound in Scripture of the deadening affect of such choices, not least on those who make them.

In today's economic, political, and religious climate, the greatest challenge for us as Christians may well be to keep assessing not only what we choose but what lies behind the choices we are making. We cannot command what others choose to think and do. But what we ourselves think and do does matter. And in the long run our motives for choosing may well matter even more to God--not to mention those we are seeking to influence.

'I Will Awake the Dawn' (Psalm 57:8)

2011-01-24T04:29:00.009-06:00

It was just before 4:00 a.m. this morning and for the first time in several weeks I awoke feeling whole. Not just well, I mean--on the brink of recovery from a few physical maladies of late--but whole in spirit and soul as well.

Aware that the sun would soon be rising and I would need to be on my way to an early morning hospital call, a favorite verse in Scripture came to mind: Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! (Psalm 57:8).

Was I foolish enough to think I could do that, at a time and hour that most consider ungodly in the first place? And why, for goodness sake? Why not sleep a bit longer? The answer follows in the psalm: I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to thee among the nations. For thy steadfast love is great to the heavens, thy faithfulness in the clouds. Be exalted. O God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be over all the earth (vss. 9,10).

To "awake the dawn"--or "prevent" it, as another version translates--is not to command it, the power to do which belongs only to God. It is simply to "go before it," get up in advance of it, like our Lord so often did when he was on earth. Why? Simply to pray--to praise God, to honor his majesty, thank him for his goodness, seek his blessing, and pray for his guidance, that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven.

For the first time in a long series of mornings I feel physically well. Ought that not be enough to get up and praise him before the day even dawns? Yes, of course! But even more, I feel whole--blessed in mind and soul, forgiven and received, loved and cared for by God, and called to be about his work in the world.

We sang his praise in concert as a congregation on bringing forward our morning offerings yesterday in church. I sing it again this morning in advance of a whole new day full of grace and the joy of belonging to him.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow; / praise him all creatures here below; / praise him above, all heav'nly hosts; / praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Epiphany on the Way to Lent and Easter

2011-01-20T09:46:00.005-06:00

Shattered shards of clay pots, that’s all we really are. Knowing it deep within and being reminded often—whether in dreams by night or everyday events--there is no hiding from our own brokenness as human beings. Is that why the pervasive anxieties all around are so hard to truly face, much less absorb? The Old Testament Nathan’s prophecy to King David was hardly spent on him. It continues through the ages, coming down on us as well: “You are the man!”

One can, of course, like so many keep doing, run and hide from it all, proudly pretending innocence. We see it all the time in others and know it in ourselves, deep within. Ought we not rather thank God that he persists in calling the likes of Nathan to break through our hidden nature and confront us with our sin?

What’s so amazing about grace is that the God who thus probes our depths does so not to destroy our lives but to recreate them from within. Stay up on your own high hill and you will be brought low. But receive him in the valleys of your life and you will be exalted.

Read the hymn by Joseph Hart (1712-1766) below—even sing it to the Beach Spring tune if you can. Allow it to illumine the darkness within you. And let it awaken the joyous reminder that God sent his Son to make us whole.

Come, you sinners, poor and needy, bruised and broken by the fall;
Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pard’ning grace for all.
He is able, he is able, he is willing, doubt no more;
he is able, he is able, he wis willing, doubt no more.

Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;
all that he requires of sinners is to turn and trust in him.
He will save you, he will save you, ‘tis the Gospel’s constant theme.
He will save you, he will save you, ‘tis the Gospel’s constant theme.

Lo! th’incarnate God, ascended, pleads the merit of his blood;
venture on him, venture wholly, let no other trust intrude:
none but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 324

Laugh a Little--at Yourself!

2011-01-18T15:20:00.006-06:00

I've always felt that one measure of good people is their ability to laugh at themselves! We all know folks, of course, who love to poke fun at others. But play a joke on them, or tell one at their expense, and they are easily offended. Why is that, if not that they are too insecure to face up to their own foibles?

I once heard my father refer to a hymn often sung by the earliest Covenanters that included a phrase something like "tell me my faults." Pietists recognize the wisdom in that, even while resisting the spirit of some who take it too far. What matters in the long run is one's ability both to tell a joke and receive one at his or her own expense. A good rule of thumb in that regard is probably learning the high art of telling jokes occasionally on oneself.

J.J. Daniels (1862-1957), a Covenant pioneer pastor, put it well, balancing his gifts as a story teller with the willingness to be a story receiver as well. His advice, written down by Herbert Palmquist, is full of communal wisdom and well worth pondering: "There is so much bad in the best of us, and so much more in the worst of us, that it behooves all of us to keep our eye on the rest of us."

Wandering and Wondering

2011-01-14T05:43:00.008-06:00

It was late October, last year. My son Peter and I were wandering with a tour group among the ancient pyramids in Egypt. Full of wonder at their magnificence I was already entering into my biblical inheritance as the spiritual son of a wandering Aramean.

How much deeper than my nationalistic roots, so rich in themselves, do my roots in the faith extend? Am I not, like my biblical fathers, still going forth as Abraham did "to a land he knew not where"? Shall I identify myself only as a Swedish American and not an Egyptian? Caucasian only, and not Middle Eastern as well?

Some thought it silly to purchase a Bedouin head covering, but it seemed natural doing it, feeling somehow as at home in their native habitat as in my own. Where is my home after all, I wondered in those moments? Who are truly my father and mother, and who truly my sisters and brothers?

To be thus drawn beyond oneself into the broader stream of life, even if only momentarily, was to be reminded that life in God is so much broader, so much deeper than we tend often to realize. It is also far more satisfying, as was immediately manifest in the shielding from the sun and its heat my new acquisition was providing.

What followed over two weeks on tour were further illustrations of the same awareness, in yet more climes and circumstances. My Lord came out of Egypt--"that Scripture might be fulfilled," the Bible says. He also came out of Bethlehem of Judea, and Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee. And in the city of God that is Jerusalem he so identified even with those who crucified him that he made clear the concern and love of God for everyone.

On one of our last days in Jerusalem before returning home, I bought for my son and me--from a Muslim merchant, no less--two lovely handmade liturgical stoles, each embedded with a series of Jerusalem crosses. "I have Jesus in my heart," that Muslim said with deep emotion, "and you have Jesus in your hearts. Someday when all the foolishness of this life is over, we will meet together with him in eternity."

Surely wearing a Bedouin head dress doesn't make me a Bedouin. Nor does buying a liturgical stole from a Muslim make me a Muslim. But both of them bought will linger in my possession as sacred reminders of my own calling from God to see and regard all humanity in the greater light of his love.

'The People, Yes!'

2011-01-12T09:32:00.008-06:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote in his letters and papers from prison (Prisoner for God, Macmillan, 1959): In the last month or two I have learned for the first time in my life how much comfort and help I get from others.... We often want to do everything ourselves, but that is a mark of false pride. Even what we owe to others belongs to ourselves, and is a part of our own lives. And when we want to calculate just how much we have learnt ourselves and how much we owe to others, it is not only un-Christian but useless. What we are in ourselves and what we owe to others makes us a complete whole (p. 78).

Other greats in human history have witnessed to the same. Carl Sandburg's epic poem ("The People, Yes!") pays similar tribute. And Harry Truman, when asked in leaving the presidency of our nation whether he felt diminished by becoming just another commoner once more, flashed back by declaring that he was "highly honored to be returning to the people."

Covenanter L. Arden Almquist, after a lifetime of service as a missionary doctor and later as head of our world missions program, said in his marvelous book, Debtor Unashamed (Covenant Press, 1993), that he learned more from the African people than he taught them.

In my own life as a human being--not to mention my vocation as a minister--I can witness in my own small way to the same. It is people that matter to God, and all who learn to love and serve them as he does, even in their foibles and imperfections, finds not only the high honor of being named among them but the reward of losing one's life for his sake and the gospel's in service to them.

Ariana Paz has written of Carl Sandberg: "His words are still relevant today and his belief in the power of people to go forward no matter the odds is simply yesteryear's 'Yes We Can.' These are tough times for our country and for all of us individually but his words to me say, 'yes we will prevail.'"

All leaders, religious and secular, would do well to pray daily and earnestly with hymn-writer Fred Kaan:

Teach us, O Lord, your lessons, as in our daily life
we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith.
Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some,
to love them as we find them, or as they may become.

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 589)

'A Capable Wife Who Can Find?'

2011-01-09T06:16:00.009-06:00

"Strength and dignity are her clothing,

and she laughs at the time to come.

She opens her mouth with wisdom,

and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

She looks well to the ways of her household,

and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and call her happy,

her husband too, and he praises her.

'Many women have done excellently,

but you surpass them all.'

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the city gates."

Proverbs 31:25-31

Redemptive Light Sometimes Hurts!

2011-01-05T15:28:00.005-06:00

One sign of a great leader is his or her capacity to accept criticism and learn from it. In our own history as a Covenant Church, C.V. Bowman (1868-1937) was that kind of man. Though one day to become president of our denomination, his autobiography, Son of the People (Covenant Publications, 1988), was not about that but about his childhood years in Sweden and what it was like to emigrate to America as a young lad of 11 in 1879.

A favorite story concerning him is one he himself told on being assigned as a student to preach a sermon in a homiletics class at North Park Seminary. Listen:

I was assigned to make a sermon outline on the text about Jesus feeding the five thousand in a desert place. I had done my work honestly and now was to give my outline in class. As my title I announced, "A Feeding in the Desert."

Responding quickly as usual, [President David] Nyvall said, "Yes, yes, just so, that's good," and with his lovely and unexpected acknowledgement ringing in my ears I continued to give the disposition of the contents: main points, subordinate points, and conclusion. When I had finished, the professor sat quietly looking at his Greek New Testament. Then he said, "Well, that was like being invited to dinner without getting any food." What a crushing moment! But the professor was right. As realized later, I had issued an invitation to dinner but had not put anything substantial on the table."

Redemptive light shed on our work often hurts. We all know how crushed one can feel. What is remarkable in C. V. Bowman's case is the humility with which he received his wise professor's criticism. In truth it was but one of many occasions that made clear to others the character of the man and the qualities of spirit that ennobled him in their sight and caused them later to elect him Covenant President.

Darkness Transformed by Light

2011-01-01T23:14:00.016-06:00

Artur Weiser, in his seminal Old Testament Library Commentary on the Psalms (SCM Press, 1962), writes that spiritual assurance is "the indestructible energy of a life fed by the invisible resources of communion with God." In Psalm 73, for example, which begins with the psalmist's confession of weariness and frustration over the prosperity of the wicked, it is not until he enters the sanctuary of God that he truly perceives their sin and his own.

As long as he was enamored by all the things the wicked seem to have that he didn't have he was filled with nothing but cynicism and anger. He had not yet realized that the life of those people was as filled with as much sorrow as his own. Short of turning to God their way of living was "like a dream" that when one awakens from it "you despise their phantoms."

And not only so. On beholding God's glory he himself was transformed. As if for the first time, he sensed that God had been standing beside him in the company of the faithful, holding his right hand even while his eyes were dimmed and his heart was hardened. Though he himself had forsaken God--acting "like a brute beast" toward him, "stupid" and "ignorant"--God had been standing beside him the whole time, holding his right hand.

The vital energies now transforming him are different from what material pleasures he so long envied in others could ever have provided. His whole life now rests on a new foundation, and "its wealth consists in the inner possession of opportunities of life provided by God."

The life of faith, we learn, is not bound to circumstance. It is an inner thing, lit from within us by the Holy Spirit, sovereign over every darkness known to human beings, "the indestructible energy of a life fed by the invisible resources of communion with God."

A Blessed New Year Reminder

2011-01-01T09:20:00.023-06:00

Prone as we all are this time of year to focus renewed energy on resolutions of our own, I was both braced and blessed by a poetic reminder from Fred Moeckel, an old seminary colleague of mine now home with the Lord, on what really matters looking forward.

From one collection of his poems we published in 1969, now out of print but perhaps still available through sources like Amazon, I came on the following poem he called "Objection." Read it, and re-read it carefully as I am doing, and respond yourself to the Lord's clear intention for all of us--not to project our will onto the future but to accept his, surrendering our souls to the power of his Spirit.

If Jesus had only argued,

we could have answered Him.

If Jesus had only said,

"Don't you think ... ?" instead

of "You must believe ..."

we could have answered Him.

But since He came

with all the authority of eternity

behind His every word,

and since He was Himself the Word,

we have no way to argue,

no way to connive, debate;

no right to speak.

If Jesus had sought an argument,

we might have given one.

But He seeks our souls.

Braced by my brother, and the Lord speaking through him, my resolutions seem vacant and pale indeed. What God wants of me is not my energies first, or my determination to do better in the new year. He wants my soul, that in and through it he may work his will in his world for his people. Have you given him yours?

Treasures Emerging

2010-12-29T08:01:00.017-06:00

How can it be, save by grace? Pure grace, and unalloyed! God's gifts emerging now in grandchildren like Jessica, Charlotte, and Matthew, captured in this Christmas Eve photo on their way to church in the late afternoon and a family celebration at our home that followed.

It was a Christmas celebration this year without little ones--quite different in character for that reason. Time around the table with Judy and Bob Stromberg, Mary and Bob Manning, and these three was festive--with food, of course, all the Christmas goodies, and inviting holiday decorations--but much more as well this time around. Animated conversations moved back and forth between us all, age differences no matter, in the sharing of life stories, memories, and dreams common to us all as family, yet unique to each of us as persons still emerging. What a feast!

Gifts followed, of course, somewhat simpler this year by common consent, and more quietly enjoyed, yet no less rich for all that. We were all wrapped up in more than giving and receiving gifts. We were embracing each other and the goodness of God to us all, and celebrating others in the family far away but close in stories being shared about them.

These remarkable grandchildren of ours--now young people--are African American, born in Sweden, citizens also of America, and integral parts of the Hawkinson tribe who happen to be Mannings. Each on their separate way to futures they have in mind, they all are tied nonetheless by family bonds that have secured and matured them beyond their years.

What a blessing they are in our lives--each a treasure given us by God--as all our grandchildren--"without money and without price." We are grateful for their spirit and life and excited to see them mature.

With Christmas now past and Epiphany upon us--that great season of lights--we pray for the wisdom and love of God to mirror the light he is constantly shedding abroad in our family to all the families of earth.

What Goes Around Comes Around

2010-12-28T07:34:00.004-06:00

A friend at church surprised me recently with the gift of several books and publications from his library at home. Among them were two issues of The Covenant Home Altar, one of which, dating from 1976, carried a meditation of my own for this time of year. Based on Hebrews 2:14-16, it read as follows:

"The incredible wonder of the incarnation is that God's concern is not primarily for himself or his rights but for each of us. His will was to identify in Jesus Christ with us 'in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of his people.'

"If, understanding and accepting this, we might begin more effectively to reflect the same Spirit in our lives, no doubt others would come to know him too.

"Let us remember that as Christians. We are to be like our human brethren 'in every respect,' i.e., we are to experience with them and feel with them the terrible trauma of their lost and hopeless condition, understanding them in the light of God's love and concern even when they are not able to understand themselves.

Why can he help to the uttermost? Because he himself has suffered and been tempted. And because he never grows weary of seeking the lost he came to save.

"Dear Father, thank you for your identifying love. Help me, by your Spirit, to identify with others. Amen."

Thus do the words I wrote 34 years ago now return to address me. I thank God for their reminder that even as his Son laid aside his glory for me, he now calls me to lay aside my privileges for the sake of others.

Pretense and Reality

2010-12-22T07:42:00.009-06:00

I was offended by the silly, tasteless, and often senseless ads that set the stage for a recent Monday night football game on TV. Glitz, glamor, and brazen power, mixed with not a little sexual innuendo--all meant to arouse excitement in us for what was soon to come--actually turned me completely off. What in the world is all this about? Where is it leading? If the media is the message, we're in real trouble.

Samuel Miller, a wise mentor in a former generation, speaks directly to the issue: Advertising has become the religious expression of ... secularity. If manufacturing is about producing more things, then things must be justified, given value, their glory (or glance--the name for superficial glory) revealed. The advertiser becomes the poet in our culture. In his imagination the product becomes the most desirable thing on earth, filled with extraordinary fascination, potent with a magic capable of transforming drabness and dullness to ecstatic heights of success. If such a gadget can be possessed by any means, by painful denials and endless installments, then all the harrowing frustration of being just one more human being lost in the anonymous mass is transcended (Samuel Miller, The Dilemma of Modern Belief, Harper, 1963, p. 9).

More and more, it seems, we as human beings are "lost in the anonymous mass." Rather than truly turning to God, whose image in us lies buried under layers of insecurity caused by our doubts, rebellions, and self-concerns, we become pawns for cynical horse-traders in idolatry that don't give a damn for our souls.

Wretched men and women that we are, who will deliver us finally from this bondage to sin? One thing is for sure. It will not be advertisers for this or that, even so-called religious ones. Our help must come from God himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not limit God's only begotten Son this Advent and Christmas to a manger where you can manage and take care of him--re-creating him in your image and the false images of our culture.

Behold him also crucified on a cross, then buried, only be be raised on the third day and ascended into heaven. See him even now sitting at the right hand of the Father, who has given him all authority in heaven and on earth to re-create you before he comes again to judge the quick and the dead, separating finally his sheep from every false pretender to his glory.

The Song Goes On

2010-12-20T05:32:00.005-06:00

In his book Sing with Understanding (Covenant Press, 1966), James P. Davies writes that "when Martin Luther, under God, defied the exisitng ecclesiastical hierarchy and restored the belief in the universal priesthood of believers, he made available two great tools to insure the practice of this relationship: the Bible and the hymnal.

"He gave his countrymen the Bible in their own tongue," Davies writes, " that God might speak directly to them. He gave them the hymnal that they might answer directly. He said, 'Next to theology. I give the first and highest honor to music'" (pp. 1,2).

Many have said, in fact, that the hymnal is the instrument through which we form our theology in response to hearing the word of God. It belongs next to the Bible in our hearts and homes, addressing as it does not only the rhythms of sacred story in our communal worship year after year but the full range of our human experience as individuals as well.

If the Bible remains the norm--"the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct" as the Covenant Constitution puts it--the hymnal might well be thought of as our tutor, prompting us where and as we are to listen, pay attention, be encouraged, and above all be formed by receiving God's Word.

Yesterday we had two rich Advent and Christmas hymn sings during normal Sunday School hours at Salem. People were invited to choose what they wanted to sing and tell us why. The explanations were rich in both feeling and experience. But the hymns lifted up, bathed in biblical narrative, delivered once again to those gathered the substance of our faith.

There is no substitute for the "faith once delivered by the saints." Fresh joy flows into our hearts and minds every time we enter those streams--lasting joy and forming, the kind that, born of the Spirit, livens faith and increases our desire to spread the good news we have received to others.

'A Little Child Shall Lead Them'

2010-12-16T11:38:00.012-06:00

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like him welcomes me (Matthew 18:4-5).

Johnny’s mother looked out the window and noticed him “playing church” with their cat.

He had the cat sitting quietly and he was preaching to it. She smiled and went about her work. A while later she heard loud meowing and ran back to the open window, only to see Johnny baptizing the cat in a tub of water.

She called out, “Johnny, stop that! The cat is afraid of water!”

Johnny looked up at her and said, “He should have thought about that before he joined my church!”

Are You Listening?

2010-12-16T10:56:00.003-06:00

On Receiving Glory

‘Mild he lays his glory by,
born that we no more may die,
born to raise each child of earth,
born to give us second birth.’

No wonder the angels sang,
‘Glory to the new-born King!’
Why do we forget so soon
such unbelievable news?

It pertains to us, you know,
meant for each to see and hear,
to take to heart and ponder
what Heavenly Hosts announce.

Glory then is Glory still,
even while lesser glories
bereft of lasting promise
compete for our attention.

There is little gain for us.
in momentary glories.
Our eyes must be lifted up
to see the Glory of God.

Veiled in flesh the God-head see,
hail th’incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.

Awake then, soul, and worship,
with bowed knees and open heart
forsake your altar buildings
and focus on God’s Glory!

jrh
12/16/10

'Snow Had Fallen, Snow on Snow'

2010-12-15T14:46:00.010-06:00

It is hardly "Bleak Midwinter" in Minnesota, as some might think who have been spooked by recent recent weather reports. Actually it is very beautiful today, as you can see--with bright blue sky, sunshine, and caverns of snow all around.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," the saying has it. From a distance all this may seem bleak indeed, much too cold and confining. But you should gaze on it as we do, both from without our home and within. Its actually invigorating and beautiful, a true "winter wonderland of snow."

Don't feel sorry for us. The coffee is on. There's milk and coke in the fridge. And Alyce's cookies are even now fresh from the oven. You may not make it up the front walkway, but call ahead and we'll let you in from the garage. You won't believe how blessed you will feel looking out on it all.

Reflections on Reflecting

2010-12-11T10:37:00.009-06:00

"There is life for a look at the Crucified One," an old hymn says. "Not thy tears of repentance or prayers can atone, but the blood which avails for thy soul.... Then come with rejoicing to Jesus today, life eternal he freely will give.... Look! Look! Look and live.... There is life at this moment for thee" (The Covenant Hymnal, 1931, No. 138).

These words came to mind when opening a older volume in my library today I discovered a random scrap of paper on which I had written the following some years ago: "The Christian life in all its aspects is a reflecting life--i.e., its power lies not in man's ability to achieve but, if at all, in his willingness to reflect his experience of God."

It was a wonderful reminder that spiritual power and influence, far from being an achievement of our own, is a gift of God--like life itself. Only as we reflect on and mirror in our daily walk the power of his redemption, his holiness, and his love are we enabled to spread the same abroad.

Absent that mirroring of the Triune God in our lives, all our human strivings for power and influence are but losings. Spiritual power and influence must be generated and given us from above.

Saturation and Inspiration

2010-12-08T08:17:00.003-06:00

On many occasions throughout church history people have tried--even for noble reasons--to defend the Bible, as if somehow its inspiration was under question and it needed to be defended. An early Covenant historian and preacher named Hjalmar Sundquist ( 1869-1949) had his own take on inspiration, more in keeping with a Pietist understanding of the issue. Warmly personal and less argumentative, it never fails to feed my spirit and soul. Hopefully, it may both feed and challenge yours as well. Listen:

What ... is inspiration? It is the Spirit of God taking possession of an upright and devoted soul who listens for the voice of God, using him and all his mental faculties as his messenger. The writers of the Scripture are not like water pipes taking water from a distance to bring it a long way and deposit it for you without you taking the trouble to dig for it or to go and get it. Writers of the Bible are more like the mountainside, saturated with water which pours from its sides in springs for everybody to come and drink. The Bible writers were saturated with Divine truth; then out of that saturation the truth sprang forth into utterance. That is inspiration.

Much in the same spirit, Herbert Palmquist (1896-1981) once wrote:

The more I read the Bible and put faith and trust in it, the more it reveals itself to me to be true.... I do not wave the Bible. I press it to my heart. It is my time table, my light shining in a dark room ... my travel guide. I trust it implicitly and I am never let down. I find that 'all the sages said is in the book my mother read.' And I have no greater desire in all the world than that others shall find such treasures in the Bible as I find every day of my life.

"Take up and read," the unconverted Augustine once heard children chanting nearby. He did just that, was converted, and only then became the saint we name him today. The Bible does not need our defense. It needs our attention, our devotion to reading it, and our trust in its message.

A Yearning Heart

2010-12-05T16:45:00.007-06:00

Advent is a season for yearning. Don't miss it by trying to take it by force--thinking that preparing the way of the Lord requires you to do something for him. All any of us really can do is wait on his coming, allow room in our hearts and minds for what he is coming to do. Only those who yearn for him will receive both the comfort he is coming to give and the power he holds in his hand to save.

"Humankind," Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said, "wishes to remain Lord of the world, the Lord of the future.... [But} without his doing anything this wonderful happening draws near, in the time of God, in the future of God, in his coming on the earth. Here the future becomes for him a living reality, here he lives today under the shadow of the coming, not some kind of threatening misfortuine, a fate, but the righteousness of the coming God, of love, and of peace. Not that he goes self-assured on the path into the future of God; no, he takes the future from God. He knows that he cannot go to God but that God must go to him in his inconceivable grace, otherwise he has waited in vain and will lose his life. He can do nothing else but watch and wait, which means enthusiastically, totally taken up, deaf toward everyone who would make him confused with doubts, blind to every force that comes between him and that future of God. Only one thing is of importance to him. He wants to see God; he wants to hear God; he wants to receive God; he wants to know God; he wants to serve God. He wants inconceivably nothing else, in any case nothing like he wants God" (A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 324).

O God, save us from our prideful heart. Help us not to hide from all our yearnings. but give them full expression as we await your coming to deliver us. Amen.

The Coming of Advent

2010-11-28T16:23:00.013-06:00

Covenant Communications is doing a wonderful thing just now--inviting Covenant photographers to submit photos that relate to each of the four weeks of Advent and the texts for those Sundays. Today's is from Isaiah 2:1-5, prophesying that "in days to come the mountain of the Lord's house will be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it."

I've seen a lot of mountains lately on the tour my son Peter and I took together to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Biblical mountains were everywhere--living witnesses to earthbounds like us of things that once were and are yet to be.

Andrew Larsen's submission this week (above) illuminates for me the place of such mountains--in no way worthy of worship as things in themselves, massive and great as they are. We lift our eyes to them in vain unless we remember with the psalmist that our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth (121:1). In this case the swirling stars above lift one's sights to realms where God himself dwells who waits to "teach us his ways ... that we may walk in his paths" (Isaiah 2:3b).

If Advent does no more for us than help us prepare for our little Christmas celebrations its true purpose will surely escape us. No matter earth's greatness, it will never in itself suffice to satisfy our deepest needs. Only when we lift our eyes beyond ourselves--to mountains, stars, and the galaxies both seen and unseen beyond can we grasp the hope that the God beyond them, our Creator and Redeemer, intends for us all.

Saved by grace we must also be sustained by that hope. God will indeed "judge between the nations ... beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." That is Advent's true vision and it calls each of us, less we miss it, to live and walk not by sight but by faith "in the light of the Lord."

Only a Dream?

2010-11-21T05:53:00.012-06:00

It was only a dream--or was it? Something or Someone was stripping away--destroying actually--the landscape of our lives. All the places and activities that fill our schedules and occupy our time and energies were disappearing, one by one, systematically. It was frightening to watch, almost scary. Commerce and industry, traffic jams, metrodomes and megamalls--our temples for sport and acquisition--were all crumbling before my eyes. So were the walls that divide the rich from the poor, the halves from the have-nots, and sacred institutions from the secular.

All the terror notwithstanding, half-way through the dream (?) a certain calm took over. One could see distant things again, hidden earlier from view. Distractions now being destroyed were bringing perspective to life, freeing one somehow from what earlier seemed so essential to it and now no longer was.

How prone we all are to lose life's essence by missing its meaning. Striving to be winners and make names for ourselves we become only losers until, stripped of our illusions by the God who made us, we open ourselves finally to his love and grace.

Dreaming, clearly, is not only a nighttime activity. Tragically, we often engage in it by wishful thinking when fully awake. Last night's dream (?) stripped away many daytime illusions for me, transforming fear of familiar things being destroyed into the calm that only comes of realizing more fully the essence of life and therein its glory.

Holy Joy!

2010-11-19T19:24:00.012-06:00

When he cometh, when he cometh to make up his jewels,

all his jewels, precious jewels, his loved and his own.

Like the stars of the morning, his bright crown adorning,

they shall shine in their beauty, bright jems for his crown.

He will gather, he will gather the gems for his kingdom,

all the pure ones, all the bright ones, his loved and his own.

Like the stars of the morning, his bright crown adorning,

they shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.

Little children, little children, who love their Redeemer

are the jewels, precious jewels, his loved and his own.

Like the stars of the morning, his bright crown adorning,

they shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.

The Hymnal (1950), No. 536

On the Sea Together

2010-11-15T06:39:00.023-06:00

While still sorting through my impressions and pictures of our recent trip together to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, our tour leader posted this picture of Peter and me on a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee.

In truth we are both crossing seas every day--changing seas. of age, circumstance, the joys and challenges of ministry, and our continual need for personal and communal growth. Somehow, on that day, a calm sea calmed also within us the stresses and strains that daily life at home often create. It was as if the Lord himself were near, in climes where he bore burdens much greater than ours, beyond our imagining.

I was reminded again of T.S. Eliot's description of him as our "still point in a turning world." And a prayer went up that by his grace both of us--not to mention all those to whom we belong in our extended family as well as the larger family of faith--might better portray his calm in the troubled seas through which so many are passing these days.

It is good to be ministers on the sea of life together. And it was especially good to be thus ministered to on the Sea of Galilee.

The Joys of Believing and Challenges of Belonging

2010-11-12T20:02:00.006-06:00

Some of you will recognize the title above as the subtitle of Glad Hearts, the book I gathered and edited over five years with 700 readings from the literature of the Covenant Church. It comes to mind as I begin to reflect on my son Peter's journey and mine to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel recently. The Dome of the Rock pictured above brings focus to a number of things going on in my mind as I seek to absorb all we experienced together.

Diversity was surely one of them--from the temples, churches, and synagogues of three unique and diverse religious cultures to all the peoples engaged along the way. So also, was the range and diversity of people with whom we journeyed--best evidenced in the life stories they shared with us as time and circumstance allowed.

Even more moving for me was the humanity we all share in common, no matter the differences between us in experience and perception. Therein lay both the joy and the challenge of journeying together--affirming our commonalities and seeking to bridge the differences.

It will take some time to give voice to all we experienced together--not to mention record in our memories all the places visited and pictures taken. For now let it simply be said that two weeks in that part of the world not only enlivened for us the whole of biblical narrative but broadened, as it surely should, our awareness of our common need for God in these tenuous and tumultuous times.

My wife Alyce recently came on a letter once written from Vienna by Mozart in September of 1778 that seems appropriate to quote: A fellow of mediocre talent will remain in mediocrity whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent will go to seed if he always remains in the same place,

None of us would dare claim for ourselves the brilliance Mozart not only claimed but exhibited. Yet we do sense even better after traveling together our need for those greater perspectives on life that only come to those who open themselves to the challenge of exploring the broader world beyond their own.

Time Toward Home

2010-10-22T08:56:00.007-05:00

This day marks one more transition in family life from our roots to the wings they were meant to supply. It begins with the sacred reminder that the soil from which we have sprung and the rich nourishment it continually supplies goes far deeper into the rich loam of earth than the Hawkinson name itself. We are more deeply rooted, in fact, in a family of faith that extends all the way back to Father Abraham and even before him to Adam and Eve.

Tomorrow my son Peter and I return to all those yesterdays as we embark on a journey together to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. There for the first time in our lives we will stand and walk together, only one generation apart, on terrain we have each been taught to be our inheritance over thousands of years. Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, all the prophets and kings, Jesus himself--the only-begotten Son of our God-- and the twelve apostles there nurtured and first sent out to proclaim and evidence good news all over the world will no doubt come alive in fresh and new ways. "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name," Jesus once said, " I will come and be with them."

We are both aware, given this extraordinary privilege, that "unto whom much is given, much will be required." So when we leave tomorrow afternoon our thoughts and prayers will range far beyond personal concerns for blessing and safety. They will be gathering rather round a charge my son issued his congregation recently that lingers in my soul as a challenge to us all: "Time to grow deep, that we may grow tall, and shade the lives of those coming after!"

Yesternight

2010-10-15T08:28:00.005-05:00

It was a word
coined by my son
when but a youth,
or so I thought
until I found
that it was real.

A charming word,
referring to
an ev'ning gone
and yet not gone,
full of mem'ries
still lingering.

Nor yet one night,
but yesternights
still much alive
through many years
in many climes
where life has led.

Thank you, dear Lord,
that this morning
finds me looking
not only forward
but backward too,
down mem’ry lane.

If truth be told
life looks better
moving forward
when yesternights
thus remembered
return to bless.

jrh
10/15/10

'Motivation When You're Too Sad to Pray'

2010-10-11T18:56:00.008-05:00

The title above was penned by a dear friend who lost his life partner to ovarian cancer recently and is no doubt often himself "too sad to pray." Imagine the encouragement that came with this wonderful picture of his grandson at bedtime, not alone but with his dog alongside, both with eyes shut as if praying in concert.

"A little child shall lead them," Scripture says. Might not even a loyal dog? Cynics may rationalize all they want about whether dogs actually pray. But surely they sense what is in their little master's mind and heart. And they can certainly also mimic postures and sense emotions being expressed.

Would that we each could be more like these two--bound not only to each other as creatures but to God as Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. Oh for the day when the lion shall lay down with the lamb, when every enmity known to us will be laid aside, and the peace that passes understanding will prevail. Come, Lord Jesus, come--to my bereft friend, to the simple pleas of his grandson no doubt missing his grandmother, and to all God's creatures whose devotion to those who love and care for them is also a witness to your presence and grace.

As that lovely anthem has it, "Stay with us, Lord Jesus, stay with us, it soon is evening and night is falling.... Let your light pierce the darkness and fill your church with its glory."

Amen and Amen.

'Go Get the Keys!'

2010-10-07T12:50:00.012-05:00

Carson Crawling from rooted wings on Vimeo.

Change is a perpetual challenge at every age. Carson Gustaf, our nine-month-old grandson is struggling with it as he emerges in his infancy from simply sitting--waiting for life to come to him--and crawling, venturing out to seek whatever he sees that he wants. "Go get the keys." his mother challenges him. And so he does, only by stages at first, bumping and grinding along the way, even falling on his nose and face as he seeks control of his body. Yet he proceeds nonetheless until he finally gets the keys, after which he rolls over, giggles, and shakes his legs in delight.

Aren't we older types often bumping and grinding too--trying to grasp keys to the exponential change all around us? And aren't we often just as awkward in that process? Stumbling our way along, often hesitant and complaining, almost ready to give up, ought we not at least be as determined to get to "the keys"? Maybe, as Carson Gustaf demonstrates on arriving at his goal, we will turn over too if we persevere in engaging change. Maybe we will even end up kicking our legs in similar delight and ourselves that we finally got hold of something that earlier seemed unattainable.

The lesson is clear. To "Go get the keys" to whatever, we just have to mobilize ourselves and our whole being. Better to try, however difficult, than sit forever waiting for life to come to us.

A Longing for Balance

2010-09-30T19:37:00.007-05:00

Often in the life we share as human beings one longs for a renewed sense of balance--socially and politically to be sure, yet perhaps even more in religious interchange. Threats to clear thinking, not to mention creative and lasting solutions, seem ever to be increasing--fed by misinformation from parties bent more on securing power and privilege than serving the common good.

Charges and counter-charges are made without concern for verification. Insinuation replaces truth in the stirring up of mistrust, some of it in the broadcast media and some through anonymous emails forwarded over the internet.

No doubt parties on all sides have legitimate concerns needing to be voiced and heard. The problem rises when, in voicing them, the old Machiavellian principle that "the end justifies the means" takes charge. Minds made up before the voicing, motivated both by pride and fear, see no need to listen. Hate for one's opponents trumps civility. Winning over others becomes the ultimate goal, and diminishing them the means.

"If the foundations are destroyed," the psalmist asks, "what can the righteous do? (11:3). Clearly very little if they themselves forsake righteousness. Have I done that? Have you? We religious types have a special obligation in the public arena, which is to seek truth on the way to understanding and lend balance to human interchange on every level.

Well might we remind ourselves and others that all interchange based simply on winning power and influence is short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating. Ours is an enormous responsibility to both evidence and witness to the fact that in all life's relationships a third party must be recognized and honored. Job's witness to his would be comforters can serve us well as a model: "As long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.... For he [God] said to man, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding (27:3,4; 28:28).

Vain Labor and Real

2010-09-28T05:41:00.005-05:00

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? The Lord once asked his people that question through his prophet Isaiah (55:2). Why, indeed? Might he not be asking the same question of us today?

The question is probing and timeless. raised by a Sovereign God whose gracious invitation both precedes and follows the probing: Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price (55:1). ...Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David (55:3).

There is nothing wrong with labor. We are all called to it by the Lord. The harvest he so much desires to reap in his world is plentiful, his Son later said, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest (Luke 10:2).

But real labor, Scripture reminds us, is never for its own sake. To have meaning and lasting purpose, all our labors must be tied to our reason for being as Christians, to glorify God no matter where we labor or at what. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep (127:1,2).

How better to start every new day, then, than ascribe ourselves and all our labors to him, as my brother-in-law Dusty Larson did so habitually that on what was to be his last day in this world, on entering surgery, he said quite naturally, This is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24).

Who Speaks for God?

2010-09-26T16:42:00.005-05:00

It is Sunday afternoon, and I have been reading The Christian Century for September 7. Coming to the reading with some uneasyness over the triumphalism of so many in religious life today, over-confident in themselves and their spirituality, I was especially refreshed by an article on writing titled, "Taking Pen in Hand." Its author, Parker Palmer. the founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage and Renewal, is also a well-known and widely heralded author of many books, who reflects from a Christian point of view on a life-time of writing himself.

What I found especially engaging in this article was a refreshing sense of humility, one could almost say of passion not for success but for faithfulness in pursuing his craft. "When people of any religion insist that the treasure cannot be carried except in their earthen vessels," Palmer writes, "they get into serious trouble--with themselves, with others, with the world and, I suspect, with God."

There is a great paradox between the treasure we seek to illuminate in our writing and the earthen vessels we remain as supposed illuninators. Palmer writes: "If we become attached to the vessel in ways that obscure the treasure, we must discard the vessel and create one that reveals more than it conceals.

"If we fail or refuse to do that, we are failing to respect the treasure, which is not our possession to have and to hold; it is the love and the power that has and holds us" (italincs mine).

"Why believe in God," he concludes, "if the God we believe in is so small as to be contained and controlled within our finite words and forms? The aim of our writing about faith, and of our living in faith, is to let God be God: original, wild, and free, a creative impulse that drives our living and our writing but can never be contained within the limits of who we are or what we think and say and do."

A good lesson in humility for all of us who dare to write, as well as for anyone who dares to speak for God.

Then and Now

2010-09-23T21:03:00.007-05:00

We sang then, in days long gone with Augustana’s College choir,
J. S. Bach’s What Can Life be but a Shadow upon Earth,
a motet arranged for a double choir, performing in Carnegie Hall
to an audience of aristocrats come simply for an evening concert.

We were in the bloom of life ourselves, and led by a saint
who reminded us before coming on stage
that this was to be more than a performance,
indeed, a witness to the things that remain.

Then followed Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Dwelling Place,
a double choir setting of Psalm 90 by Ralph Vaughn Williams,
calling forth the glorious majesty of the Lord our God,
and invoking him to prosper his handiwork among us.

We were ourselves reminded that night how fleeting life is,
and witnessed nonetheless to how freeing it can be
to own up to our mortality, confess our faith,
and glory in the power and promises of our God.

That was then but now, soon sixty years later, is now,
and we, no longer the choir, have become the audience.
We sense the shadows lengthening over our own lives,
yet breathe from deep within the same prayer of faith.

God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform,
he plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
You fearful saints fresh courage take, the clouds you so much dread
are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace,
behind a frowning providence is veiled a smiling face…
Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain,
God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.

(The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 418, stanzas 1,2,3,5)

Faith and Imagination

2010-09-19T06:33:00.011-05:00

Carlo Caretto, in I, Francis (Orbis Books, 1982), his imaginative attempt to let St. Francis of Assisi come alive again in him, has that saint speaking powerfully to the anomalies of our time--the painful dislocations that mark life for so many today, feeding the chaos around us rather than healing it. I quote him, speaking for St Francis:

Just think what would happen one day if you became non-violent, and took the huge sums of money you spend to defend yourselves against fear and used it to help the people you fear.

When your young people, wasting away today in dejection, unemployment, and drugs, find their joy and their calling in the task of running hither and thither in the countries of the Third World, not only will you have solved the problems of others, you will have solved your own.

You will know peace then.

Is it too much to hope?

Perhaps someone is listening to me!

I, Francis, tell him or her: Courage!

Remember nine years ago when Senator Bob Dole offered an alternate solution to bombing and invading Iraq? "I think," he said, "that we would do better to shower food and other resources for living from our bombers to witness our good will and concern for the people there."

Thankful and sensitive as we must remain to the terrific sacrifices our soldiers and others have made and are continuing to make in the Middle East--not to mention the justified need to confront tyrannic realities in this world--have we as Christians the will to imagine and give ourselves to alternative incentives more in keeping with new life in Christ?

Scripture itself declares that the foolishness of faith is wiser than the wisdom of this world. Do I believe that? Do you? And are we encouraging each other as much as we ought to be imaginative in manifesting that faith, no matter the cost?

Pure Joy!

2010-09-17T07:14:00.011-05:00

How's this as a picture to start your day--or end it? Grandson Carson Gustaf greets you with his wonderful smile and laughing eyes under that crown of unruly hair--glad at nine months just to be alive, surrounded by love as he is in this new world of sight and sound.

What a lad and what a picture! Both renew my sense of joy. May looking on him renew yours as well!

Enough of Contempt!

2010-09-16T06:05:00.004-05:00

In what is called "A Song of Ascents" (Psalm 123), the psalmist pleads for God's mercy "upon us" (note the plural), "for we have had more than enough of contempt." The plea, no doubt, is deeply personal, perhaps with reference to those who were seeking to do him and his people ill. Yet there seems almost to be a double entendre here as well. Is the psalmist equally weary of "the scorn of those who are at ease" and "the contempt of the proud" among his people?

I awoke this morning to a wonderful Covenant Newswire article referencing the Christian/Muslim impasse occupying so many on every side these days. Andrew Larsen, one of our Covenant ministers "who helps congregations foster interfaith dialogue, says that vitriol aimed at Muslims betrays the love of Christ." Take note, everyone who participates in such, either in person or by forwarding emails that breathe such vitriol.

"Why is it so important to mimic Jesus as we relate to Muslims today?" Larson asks. "My simple answer: the alternatives have not worked.... We betray the Jesus we claim to know and follow over and over again by our action or inaction, by not engaging Muslims in friendship or by acting as if they were the scourge of the earth."

Larsen is practicing reconciliation, both in constant contact with Muslims locally and by offering eight-week seminars on "Extending Hospitality to Muslim Neighbors" in surrounding churches. His local Imam "constantly denounces terrorism and wants me to be sure I know it has nothing to do with legitimate Islamic teaching." Taking texts from the Koran out of context," Larsen says, renders one as unbalanced in judgment as one would be in pointing to the imprecatory psalms "as evidence that Jews and Christians must be violent."

Especially refreshing to me is his insistence with many others now reaching out to Muslims that conciliatory efforts need not--and do not in fact--preclude sharing the gospel.

Enough of contempt! Better to begin all the days of our lives and all the challenges therein as the Psalm itself begins: To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy on us.

Lord, teach us your way!

Which Way Ahead?

2010-09-11T19:44:00.010-05:00

It is a wistful summer evening at home, the kind one loves to spend reflecting--especially on this historic day. All seems peaceful here--even if not entirely quiet. A slight breeze moves the white bear weathervane on our back deck westward.

The sounds of traffic on a nearby Interstate are heard in the distance, as are those of occasional airplanes moving in and out from the Twin Cities where we live. Pieces of blue sky are laced with white clouds passing by as the sun begins to set.

Often what appears to be, of course, as the old song has it, "when you are come to the end of a perfect day," is by many measures far from perfect. For in this viewer's mind linger memories of how two stately twin towers in New York crumbled to the ground nine years ago today and a seemingly impregnable symbol of American power in Washington DC was also compromised by terrorists. To the west even of these tragedies was another in the making, aimed at the White House itself, thankfully averted by a few brave souls who conquered its terrorists only to lose their own lives near Pittsburgh in the process.

Even on this very day in 2010 a thoughtless pastor almost brought off a terrorist attack of his own, threatening in reprisal to burn copies of the Koran in Florida. Thankfully the whole nation rose to that occasion and stopped him in his tracks, though the effect of his plan lingered to further anger Muslims all over the world.

What shall we make of it all? Which are the roads forward on this earth that common folk of every tribe and nation long to find--the roads that lead to reconciliation and peace? How shall the angers so close to the surface in all of us be calmed under the common skies of the earth we share?

Most Christian know in their heart of hearts. So do most Jews and Muslims, whether in North or South, East or West. Only a few are out to stir those masses. May God show the latter how to calm the former, each lending perspectives beyond themselves and their faith traditions that the God they confess is waiting to supply.

Food for the Body and Food for the Soul

2010-09-08T05:45:00.035-05:00

Few things delight our son Peter more than time on the dock fishing, More is involved than the casting, time after time. More, too, than the catching, all of which is more for celebrating than eating. Though I cannot speak for him, it seems like the essence of it lies in gathering food for his soul in the process.

Watching him fish and being alongside this summer when he cooked on the grill was food for my soul and body as well. Just as our Lord once told his disciples in Samaria that he had food they knew not of, so has it often been with me. Much as we all need regularly to eat from nature's store, our souls require even richer fare, in ready supplies God offers to those with ears to hear and eyes to see.

Peter is now on a well-deserved sabbatical until Advent. Next week he will be with us in White Bear Lake, eating at table with us and extended family. He will also be fishing through many of the personal effects of his grandfather and grandmother Hawkinson--gathering food for his soul from memories of his forebears, just as Jesus drew it from Jacob's well as he sat down, weary, in Samaria. Later next month and early into November he and I will travel together to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel--a first-time experience for both of us. No doubt there will be plenty of food for our bodies. Yet what we anticipate most is experiencing together first hand the food for our souls that surely awaits us there to satisfy our deepest needs and renew our ministries.

Wandering and Wonder

2010-09-05T07:34:00.006-05:00

Last night was special. We were treated, with many others, to a trial run presentation of “Mr. Wonder Boy” by Bob Stromberg, our son-in-law. Written and performed by him, and re-crafted over time, this unique one-man theater show is essentially a personal narrative, centered on the keen sense of wonder over life that has captivated him since childhood.

All too many of us as human beings are wandering aimlessly these days--void of that sense, lonely and without meaning or purpose. We are "amusing ourselves to death," as Neil Postman once said in his book by that title. as if life had little meaning apart from entertaining ourselves and being entertained by others. Bob uses his skills as an entertainer to ride that crest, inviting us now into a sensitive, thoughtful world of wonder he has always known life to be. And, in his own two-hour narrative, one is captivated and challenged to open mind and heart to the wonder of both ordinary and extraordinary experiences in one’s own pilgrimage.

Soon to be premiered in an East Coast setting over several weeks, it will be interesting to see how “Mr. Wonder Boy” is received. Surely it will provide ample reasons for belly laughs, even as it did last night. Call it comic relief, which we are all in need of these days. But to be true to itself and its deepest appeal, critics and audiences alike will need to hear and heed the serious call within it to re-discover and nurture their own sense of wonder.

Isn’t that what good theater is really all about? Performance is for more than entertaining. Absent the meaning it is meant to convey, it will soon be forgotten. Bob is giving us here a gift of perception, brimful of good reasons to experience wonder in our own lives. Hopefully, we will not miss opening the gift again and again, in whatever future we are allotted.

Spanning the Years!

2010-08-24T18:49:00.026-05:00

Under the same sky, fishing as boys love to do, we see here my grandson Michael (left) as a boy and years later his son Peyton (right), this year at Hembygden, our cabin in Wisconsin.

Who could have thought it years ago, when Michael was a curly-headed blond, that his son Peyton would be standing in nearly the same place, olive-skinned with trim, black hair? Thus does God work over time and generations to enrich our lives, ever watching our comings and goings and infusing them with grace and surprise. Only he remains the same, endlessly creative, always present, and forever loving--even when, for one reason or another, we lag in paying attention.

An old Swedish hymn that neither Michael nor Peyton know, one I grew up with and hope yet to teach them, comes to mind and streams from my lips and heart:

Thanks to God for my Redeemer, thanks for all thou dost provide!
Thanks for time now but a mem'ry, thanks for Jesus by my side!
Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime, thanks for dark and dreary fall!
Thanks for tears by now forgotten, thanks for peace within my soul!

Thanks for prayers that thou hast answered, thanks for what thou dost deny!
Thanks for storms that I have weathered, thanks for all thou dost supply!
Thanks for pain and thanks for pleasure, thanks for comfort in despair!
Thanks for grace that none can measure, thanks for love beyond compare!

Thanks for roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain!
Thanks for home and thanks for fireside, thanks for hope, that sweet refrain!
Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow, thanks for heav'nly peace with thee!
Thanks for hope in the tomorrow, thanks through all eternity!

Which Way Ahead?

2010-08-22T06:36:00.003-05:00

A recent series of satellite pictures on patterned life as seen from a distance are really fascinating. This one deserves commentary on a Sunday morning. Imagine a church in the center--surrounded, indeed almost fenced in by a circle of homes whose inhabitants it is seeking to reach. Prescribed place, well-ordered--with the church at the center. Mission well defined.

But what of the randomness outside the circle--of homes no less, plus commerce and industry, some clearly randomly placed, with most not observable at all, lost in the surrounding shadows. No less needy, perhaps even more so. Random life, rootless, undefined, outside the circle.

The picture came to mind this morning as I read John Notehelfer's "Sunday Musings" for today, lifting up images he has been getting from his summer reading. In one of those books, authored by Covenant pastor Tim Morey and titled "Embodying Our Faith: Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church" (IVP), the author cites a comment by Howard Snyder in his book on "Liberating the Church" that is very telling and worth our pondering:

"Church People think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world may change the church; kingdom people work to see the church change the world."

It may be an over-simplification, but there is food for thought in it nonetheless. Which of the two are you and am I on our way to worship this morning?

"Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers"?

2010-08-19T04:32:00.012-05:00

The quiet surrounding as this "time away" nears an end is redemptive in more ways than one. While it is comforting to be thus un-engaged, it is also shaping, requiring one to face things in oneself that one pays little attention to when busy with other things.

On waking early this morning the familiar saying quoted above came to mind. Why, after the quote, the question mark? Because I wonder if is really true. In one sense it is, of course, as any child finding a penny on the sidewalk knows. When I was a boy, you didn't ask questions about whose it really was. You just rejoiced in the penny candy it would provide for you.

But a boy is a boy is a boy. And now that I am older I realize how tempting it is to be thus self-occupied, as if life consists in providing for us, even at the expense of others. More often than not, when you hear "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers" used, the tone in the users voice is pretty revealing.

I wonder how God feels about my own spirit this morning. Of his love I have no doubt. Yet I confess to a certain pain I feel in having less of his mind than I ought by now to have. And without detailing that all out, I am certain that God is speaking to me this morning about it.

I feel broken and contrite, with far more to condemn in me than commend. Yet having in the stillness to admit that I am also being healed. How can it be? Well, Scripture reminds me that "a bruised reed he will not break," and one of our hymnwriters adds, "Ne'er a sin but he'll forgive it, nor a sorrow he cannot heal."

God has a way as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of confronting us--upsetting our prideful towers and neat little apple carts, if only to bring us back again to ground zero in him. And that is good, for therein--and only therein--lies also his forgiveness and healing, even empowering. Could it be that the self-serving common wisdom of "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers" also needs to be turned on its end?

I'm finding it so this morning, that losers like me, when they confess and admit it, are the keepers in God's sight. It's the self-absorbed finders, less in touch with their need of him or others, that are the real losers.

Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy!

Bridge Over (and Under) Troubled Waters

2010-08-17T16:10:00.015-05:00

Sad news today, of a young family friend who took his life and left us bereft. All who knew him are grieving today, not least because while we sensed his depression--recently retired at an early age to care for his widowed mother--we knew he felt alone. Contacts from a number of us made clear that loneliness--having lost not only a number of loved ones but wondering if in light of so many things needing attention he had retired too early. Missing co-workers and friends, each with their own needs but surrounded by family, he clearly felt isolated.

His mother, even at her advanced age, wanted him to return with her to Sweden, her roots there and family-owned land. He wasn't sure, and the burden of seeking visas with all that entailed--in short taking charge when not ready to commit--no doubt added to his sense of isolation. Thus do many deal in life with mountains that seem immovable.

I was reminded of the bridge that has so often captivated me--spanning the waters between the city of Kalmar in southern Sweden and the island of Oland--a bridge in full daylight that descends before arriving on the island into the dark sea below. What might we have done to be such a bridge for him, from the sunlight and fresh breezes of so much in our lives these days to the subterranean depths so real in his? How might we have reminded him that no matter the darkness he was going through there was loveliness and sunshine on the other side of the bridge?

We know. We have been to Oland's island, a charming place, which the bridge now renders more easily accessible. Lord, forgive our insensitivity to the burdens of others. Waken us to gifts you have given us to carry them with us to a wholesome, warm harbor that you have created for all who feel alone. Help us going forward to journey better with them through the agonies they experience when light seems to have disappeared from view.

Open our hearts and homes to the bereft, and help us set before them the clear hope that comes from caring friends whose doors are always open and tables set with fresh bread and good food.

Above all, Lord, take our family friend into your open arms and bring him to rest in you. We trust in your mercy and commend him to your grace.

Adiaphora

2010-08-15T07:31:00.008-05:00

Sometimes little things
consume our minds
that other times
do not matter.

We are offered
new perspectives;
a sense moves in
of greater weight.

The sweep of life
captures your mind,
perhaps only
for a moment.

“Stop your fretting,”
it seems to say;
“Untie your soul
and let it breathe.”

“Is not life more
than breath, clothing,
and all the things
occupying you?”

Indeed it is!
Thank God it is!
Let truth sink in
to bless your day!

JRH
8/15/10

Still Life

2010-08-14T08:21:00.005-05:00

What does one do when there is ample time for doing nothing? On the other side, now, of being with family at our cabin in Wisconsin and enjoying thoroughly all that entailed, we find ourselves alone with each other. Nothing is entirely still in the forest, of course, yet with time on our hands to observe it apart from any distractions, we seem to be almost in limbo. Reflection, reading, and rest are not the whole order of every day. There is golf to watch, there are games to play, meals to be served, and garage sales to search out. Yet in the midst of all that life now seems almost to be standing still.

One evening as the sun was setting in the west, the above caught my eye--a still life picture of light streaming through our kitchen window, capturing on the wall beyond our table, chairs, and an ever-present kerosene lamp--engraving them on our sight and memory.

I wonder as I look on that picture again: is not reflecting on such as symbols of life given and received what time away is all about? Activities come and go in ever rapid succession, but the gathering places around which they have occurred are ever in need of further reflection. Time needs to stand still in order to see it more fully in perspective.

My nephew Timothy Hawkinson preach a wonderful sermon in Boulder Junction some years ago now on "Jesus at Table," exploring texts throughout the gospels illustrating how often his ministry went on in such settings. It should not surprise us that he ministers there still, in our homes as well. And we do well in reflecting back on our lives to rejoice in the many memories of his doing just that at our table in this place.

Time away is never time wasted on those with eyes to see and ears to hear. One doesn't always need to be doing something to make time worthwhile. Sometimes our lives are best seen in perspective when time stands still. To disengage, as we are now doing in the last weeks of our time away may well prepare us better to reengage if we have the patience--and courage--not to run away from the quietness that true renewal requires.

There's an old saying that goes, "Don't just stand there, do something!" I'm finding in my own spirit that there are valid times and reasons for reversing the order. Might I encourage you to do the same? Wherever you are as you read this, try it: "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Ah, Strawberries!

2010-08-07T07:26:00.009-05:00

We have been feasting a lot on strawberries this year, rich and juicy fare. The picture, taken by my granddaughter Stina on her mother's camera, celebrates that richness, inviting one to take a bite of some cut up morsels.

Don't let the richness and juiciness of them fool you into believing they just descended from heaven. The Swedes have captured their essence in naming them jordgubber, "old men of the earth." No earth, no aging of plant in the soil, no waiting for the fruit to appear and there are no strawberries. The same can be said for all fruit--blueberries, peaches, pears, tomatoes, or whatever.

There are parallels here to all of life. In what Elton Trueblood once called our "cut flower culture," we are forever being tempted to forget that. "Just give me the fruit," many say. "Forget the soil, the rich nutrients and time frames in nature that are behind its appearing. Strawberries can be had without all that. We know. We bought some this morning."

It's like saying, forget history and the cycles of life that have worked over time to produce life in all its forms. Can anyone have a baby without a time of pregnancy? No thing and no one, John Donne reminds us, "is an island entire of itself." Though everyone "is somewhere," as my mother used to say, they are never there wholly apart from all that brought them there.

The lesson is clear. To forget your own history and pay no attention to nature's is to lose the true richness of life. Sugar and cream may be used to add taste to strawberries--as nice clothes and other accoutements to adorn our bodies--but by themselves they have little to contribute. The real essence of stawberries lies in their being jordgubber. So does ours! We are of the earth, earthy. As graveside commttals keep reminding us: from dust you have come and to dust you shall return.

VideoSlides-Hembygden2010

2010-08-02T19:00:00.007-05:00

PeteandBonHembygden2010 from rooted wings on Vimeo.

Family time at Hembygden in Late July, pix taken by Bonnie (Peter's wife) and her daughters. Present also briefly were Charlotte Manning (Mary's youngest), just returned to US with Hannah from a Winnetka Covenant Church Mission Trip to Mexica, and Ken and Bonnie Fenton (Bonnie's aunt), who were with us briefly for two days.

Peter, Bonnie and their girls--Hannah, Sarah, and Stina--stayed through last week. We had a wonderful time.

Paul, Kristin and their kids--Annika, Colin, Kajsa, and Carson were with us briefly earlier in mid-July, taking and bringing home their kids from camp at Covenant Point in Iron River, MI.

And Eric, Patty and some of their family--Carrie, the newly weds Michael and Abby--wrere here for eight days before we came, returning to California by way of the Twin Cities to celebrate with all our kids my 80th birthday.

So it goes, two full weeks now for us into time away! God is good!

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

2010-08-01T06:31:00.012-05:00

God is ever watching over his creation and his creatures, all in light of his will as Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. Another view of one of Yosemite's waterfalls, illumined from above, was for me last month and is for me yet a living reminder.

It is Day 16 of Time Away and the sun is already up in the east. The daily cycle of God's faithfulness in lighting our way--the sun by day and the moon by night--continues unabated. Later this month, on the 27th at 12:30 a.m. I am told, we will actually see two moons, as the Planet Mars comes to within 34.65 million miles of the earth and appears next to the moon, a phenomenon not to be reapeated until the year 2287.

Brother Sun ansd Sister Moon daily offer the perspective we need to see our lives in the larger contexts of cosmic time and eternity. One more assurance this Sabbath morning of God's sovereignty and love. One more reminder that we are never alone in time and space, ouside the orbit of his providential care. Anxieties often fill our minds and hearts, but they are no match for the promises of God.

Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory (Psalm 24:7,10).

A Wise and Warning Word!

2010-07-29T05:48:00.002-05:00

John Notehelfer's most recent "Sunday Musings," which he distributes by email weekly, is worth passing on and pondering by anyone reading my blog. Society has a right to expect of us as Christians a sense of balance that is sadly missing these days. At the very least it is much in need of civility in our common discourse, and who living by God's grace should be more dedicated to that than disciples of Christ? John's quote from C. S. Lewis might well be a litmus test for us all. Could it be describing you--or me--more so than the Spirit of our Lord?

"Greetings to all of you on the front lines of kingdom work abroad and at home.

"This Sunday musing is premature because we are leaving on summer vacation(s) in August. But this one I had to get off my chest -- digest it next Sunday afternoon or whenever.

"An editorial in our local paper is headed, “How a good woman was thrown to the wolves.” It was triggered by the overreaction of both the press and government to some blogger’s edited video of what Shirley Sherrod, an African-American USDA worker, said some years ago – she was wrongfully fired on the spot for those remarks about race which had been taken completely out of context. The immediate result: all the ugly finger-pointing about racial hatred consuming our talk-shows and blogs.

"The writer of the editorial is as puzzled as I am about the current trend of knee-jerk overreactions. I caught his words, 'This sorry episode shows the extent to which we’ve lost sight of the most basic elements of fair play, responsible reporting, and common decency in this society.'

"So I find myself reading this week in A Year with C.S. Lewis (July 27) his excerpt from Mere Christianity entitled -- The Real Test!!

“'Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible?

'If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.

'Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.'”

Thank God for C.S. Lewis!!! Take his cautions and his test to heart, my friends."

Stop, Come, Sit

2010-07-24T09:18:00.008-05:00

A dog is
man’s best friend
it is said.
Could it be

that dogs are
mentors too?

Say come to
Gunther and
he does come.
Say stop and
Gunther stops,
also sits.

Would that we,
told to stop,
would do so.
Or told to
come and sit,
also mind!

Gunther is
as a dog
a living
reminder
of my need
to obey.

When God calls,
asks me to
stop, come, and
sit by him,
am I as
obedient?

God’s will is
illumined
when we see
parallels
in nature
and take note.

JRH
7/24/10

The Passing of a Saint!

2010-07-20T16:24:00.004-05:00

On April 12 (see My Blog on that date) those who knew and loved Donald Frisk were celebrating his 99th birthday. Glen Wiberg and I, two of his students, admirers, and colleagues in Covenant ministry, even sang the Swedish Birthday song to him from Salem, his home church!

Today we are grieving his loss, together not only with his grandchildren here pictured again but with the whole family of faith that is the Covenant Church--and, as God alone knows, all those around the world who have been influenced by his life and thought.

Donald Frisk as preacher, teacher, and writer remains one of the foremost theologians in Covenant history. His clarity of mind, great heart, and devoted spirit have rendered him among the first both clergy and laity have turned to for help in understanding and promoting their faith. And they never turned to him in vain.

About a year ago now I called him with a theological question and was amazed at the quickness with which he responded in dialogue--offering insights from a wide range of sources with which he was recently in touch in spite of being almost blind. Listening to talking books, his mind was as fresh and precise as ever.

When Glen Wiberg and I were last at Batavia remembering the life and spirit of Dr. Paul Carlson, I saw the servant side of the man I had valued so much as teacher. Before and after each session he was wheeling the infirm in and out so that they could participate. I shall not soon forget how moved I was as I watched him doing that.

We have lost another giant in the earth--a man of great mind and range who, like so many before him, was not bent on using those gifts to his own advantage but one who gladly accepted the call of his faith community to serve it in Christ's name, small and seemingly insignificant in the larger scheme of things that the Covenant has seemed to many others.

May we have the grace to follow in his train, blooming where we are planted and trusting God to work his larger will through each of us, wherever and however we are called to live out the rest of our days.

Peace to the memory of Donald C. Frisk! Heaven and earth are joined this day is praising God for the life he lived and the legacy he has left us in its wake.

Time Apart - Day 3

2010-07-17T06:00:00.005-05:00

A psalmist's declaration wakens me very early this morning, looking out our cabin windows on a serene forest outside, full of life yet to come--even today--but for the moment still, as if waiting on God.

The psalmist said "I will awake the dawn," a strange claim if indeed he thought he had the power. Another translation has it, "I will prevent the dawn," an even stranger claim if taken literally. What he meant, of course, was not that he had the power to awaken or prevent a new day. He knew by faith and experience that only God can do that. His intention simply was to get up before dawn and his daily round to honor God's faithfulness and seek his presence.

Ought I do any less this day? Restlessness abounds in me--all the things I long for in my own soul and the life of my family--not to mention the whole human race. Who but God, if only we acknowledge him, can calm that restlessness and render life whole?

I am deeply conscious this morning of my need to wait on him--to honor his sovereignty, to seek his wisdom, to rest in his love. What better time than now, when all is still in the household, loved ones each with their own yearnings and need still sleeping, as well as neighbors all around?

Another of the psalmist's prayers flows out of memory, giving wings to all I feel: O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like a weaned child that is within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore (131).

Time Apart - Day 1

2010-07-15T16:23:00.016-05:00

Day 1 of our six-week leave of absence from Salem and our duties there has proven itself to be pristine. After a long night of heavy rain it is in the low 70s under clear blue skies with a warm wind out of the west. The sign welcomes you as it welcomed us yesterday and will welcome our son Paul and his family yet again about 1:00 a.m. tomorrow.

It has been a good day, shopping to fill the larder for days with family, planting flowers to regale the deck and dock, and a sumptuous nap followed by coffee with an ever-remarkable Paul Bunyan sugared donut. "Valkommen till Hembygden and Nybygden," the old (1949) and newer (1987) cabins joined now into one. History abounds here, as years of guest registers will attest, and sacred memories flow through every year of that history, not only to bless and refresh us but--as all things sacred should--to prepare us for life and duties that await us at home.

Not far off to the left as you drive in up on the hill is a tree planted as a seedling a few years ago by our grandson, Matthew--then a grade schooler in the south of Minneapolis, soon a sophomore at De Paul University in Chicago. Every year taller, it is one more living reminder of God's grace to us, as well as our responsibilities to him for nature, our own loved ones, and the whole human family. Unto whom much is given, much will also be required.

This evening we will dip warm chicken egg rolls in sweet and sour sauce, and mix it all with rice, feasting on yet more of God's good provisions. And we will remember as we always do to give thanks--to bless the Lord with all our souls and forget not all his benefits. Then we will go down and spend the evening at lakeside, taking in what will likely be a wonderful sunset as we await the coming of our family's first wave to sweep in for a few days.

The Dutch door that Grandpa Eric made years ago in old Hembygden, hand-painted by his beloved Lydia, sums it all up--past, present, and future. Quoting Eric Gustaf Geijer, the Swedish hsitorian, he wrote of Hembygden in his childhood tongue: Ma dess minne vara som ett solsken i mitt brost, which being interpreted says: May its memory be as a sunshine in my breast. It was for both of them and is still for us, as well as our offspring and guests.

Only God Is Worthy of Worship

2010-07-13T09:00:00.009-05:00

Standing on a beautiful day last month before Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, one could hardly imagine a better ending to a weekend celebration with family, marking the wedding of one of our grandsons.

Having last seen it from below with my sons several years ago, while together for a few days of golfing in California--and decades before from greater distance when pastoring the Hilmar Covenant Church two hours away--this was my first gaze on it from above. The experience from whatever point of view is truly awesome, however different in intervals of time and space. God’s grandeur puts everything in perspective—sheer heights, massive breadth, and solid depths beyond believing. One cannot fully capture it with a camera. Nor can one fully even in one’s soul. To behold it is simply to worship the Creator--to be drawn by his grandeur and creative power in whatever moment of beholding, from whatever distance or angle.

My late brother Zenos once commented on my pathetic attempts at capturing the Grand Canyon in a slide show. “Jim, there are some things you just have to hold in your heart.” How right he was! Captured by it, as I surely was, it was beyond my capturing.

So it is with all God’s creation, from its farthest reaches in space to its smallest detail on earth. Every part of creation expresses his sovereignty over us. Mountains and hills, flowers and snowflakes are purely of his doing, even as we are ourselves. Eugene Peterson puts it well in his paraphrase of Romans 12: The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and what he does for us, not by what we are and do for him.

I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth (Psalm 121: 1,2).

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits (Psalm 103:1).

'Be Still ... and Know'

2010-07-08T11:39:00.007-05:00

It was a Staff Retreat, right? In July, thinking ahead to fall and our common work at Salem. “Bring your Bible, a pencil, and a note pad.” Thus far predictable. “We’ll meet at church at 9:00 and go together to Silverwood Park for a couple of hours.” Why there, I wondered, away from all the ministry surroundings so central to our work at Salem? We were soon to find out.

Arriving on a lovely, warm, and breezy day at our destination nearby, we walked a bit to a sheltered area on a hill overlooking lovely Silver Lake surrounding us on several sides. Our pastor lead us in a morning prayer, after which we read several psalms, each reading a verse out loud from whatever version we had brought. It was all about how God is to be praised in all of his creation, by all of his creatures.

Salem’s theme over the last several years has centered on Drawing, Developing, and Deploying Disciples Devoted to Jesus Christ. Setting before us the scene in Acts 2:42-47, our pastor then offered a few random thoughts on what that looked like in the early church, asking us to reflect a bit also on how it might impact what we are seeking to do at Salem.

Then he asked us to go off by ourselves for an hour or so to observe our surroundings and reflect on the following: one thing in nature that brings glory to God and why; one thing in ourself that does the same;, and one thing about Salem that makes God smile as it too brings glory to him.

Before returning we were to ask ourselves what our observing might mean personally for us in our life as a human being, as well as what its implications might be for our specific role in ministry this year at Salem.

I was not prepared for this kind of retreat, fully agended as most such staff meetings have been in my experience. But gathering my thermos of coffee and a water bottle I had also brought along I took off to a shadowed tree nearby, looking for something on which to fix my gaze as I sat down to reflect. What I saw was the tree before you now, and what I wrote about that tree and about myself and about Salem and our common ministry follows.

I see a tree, all bent out of shape, leaning every which way. trunk and limb somewhat directionless, hardly thriving, yet bearing green leaves nonetheless--obviously still being fed from nourishing roots in watered soil.

The tree is not growing straight like most trees, partly because it is too close to flowing water, i.e. it is being shaped by the flow surrounding rather than by how it was meant to be shaped as a thing in itself.

At the same time I hear a wind blowing and feel its gentle influence on my body and brow. It is a warm wind, as if sent from God, yearning to bless the tree and heal its brokenness, if not in fact its stance.

I too am a tree, alive yet and green, even at my advanced age. For all my brokenness, bent out of shape but not out of mind, I too am sprouting green, feeling the warmth of God’s gentle wind and enjoying his presence.

Could it be that in my weakness is my strength? Is this tree a living reminder that it is to brokenness and disarray in people’s lives that I am called, those who for whatever reason have not yet felt the presence of God in the warm breeze, nor even sensed their need of him?

Salem, like the tree and like me, is not uniform either. Its branches and leaves are in many ways random too, like all of humanity save for the warm winds of God over time that have gathered it as a community of faith and gather it still.

Lord, open us all to embrace our humanity, our essential brokenness in sin and need, and heal us of all our efforts to save and justify ourselves. Ride toward us on the gentle, warm winds of your Spirit and do a new thing among us.

Make me to be an instrument in the hands of that wind, a shaping tool in your mighty hand to sustain life in its brokenness, bloom where I am planted, and bring glory to your name.

On rising to return to the shelter I noticed that our pastor was nestled on a limb of the same tree reaching out over the water. As he descended from his perch we reflected together on how that tree had drawn both of us to itself. And faces aglow, we were reminded--as were others of our staff in their own later reflections--that God is indeed everywhere, and that ministering for him must always proceed first from the glow of his presence in us and ministry to us.

How Do You Hold a Moonbeam in Your Hand?

2010-06-30T15:49:00.005-05:00

Her name is Greta, and given her penchant for style, she is likely to clothe herself in many outfits daily, even in some cases hourly.

She is full of energy, and fiercely independent, making one wonder what might be forthcoming in her teenage years. She is also full of fun and joy, as the broad smile illustrates.

She and I have had a very special relationship, ever since I shared in dedicating her to the Lord a few years ago.

In spite of Greta's exuberance, she can be shy of people, as was evidenced at a wedding recently. Prepared well in advance by her parents to be the flower girl, when the doors finally opened on a large waiting congregation, she turned aside to her father and handing him her basket of flower petals she said, "Hold this awhile. I'll be right back!"
Then she proceeded down the aisle, head bowed in covering hands until, peeking through her fingers near the front she spotted her grandmother, who had been planted there "just in case."

"All's well that ends well," the saying goes, and she did finally go forward when prompted to stand in the place assigned her for the ceremony. But by then, having asserted her independence, she seemed docile and content.

Could anyone wish for a funnier, more feisty great-granddaughter? Hardly. But if you think she is something you should meet her older brother Benny, and hear the stories gathering around him. Makes you wonder where all that comes from. Surely not from docile people like us!

Life Together Under the Cross

2010-06-27T22:21:00.012-05:00

My heart this night rejoices after an incredibly rich experience at the 125th Annual Meeting of the Covenant in St. Paul. It is also heavy with concern for the sufferings of so many in this world who need from Christians the illumining comfort and hope of the cross and empty tomb that have shed their light on us.

Clearly God is doing a new thing in the Covenant. In multiplying numbers and converging cultures the joys of believing and challenges of belonging our forebears knew in their time are now cascading among us into whole new joys in believing and challenges in belonging. Thankfully it is all happening under the shadow of the cross, on which Christ died to forgive our sins, only to rise again after three days to secure our redemption.

His is a work once for all done. It needs never to be repeated, and in that lies the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. Yet clearly to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, his whole work needs no less to be continually announced in this world and thus extended, for shadows remain in which many--both inside and outside the church--feel lonely and bereft.

My wrist tonight bears the wrapping of a string round it, tied by a missionary brother of many years--meant to bless and prosper me. But in with and under the blessing came, as I tied another on his wrist, a clear sense of his personal pain in losing recently his life-long companion in Christian service. Lord, stay by David!

Two Ukrainean brothers encounted outside the hotel one day are battling those shadows where they live, in their case ministering to orphan children. And a bright young brother whose ordination transfer from another part of Christ's body was finalized today, told me before morning worship of his passion to confront the human trafficing so prevalent where he is ministering in Arizona.

Mercy needing to be shown and justice needing to be served, all in the name of our compassionate heavenly Father who through his Son and Holy Spirit has commanded us to minister to every human need under the shadow of the cross.

I suffer especially tonight in my joy for a young couple on the brink of divide, with a lovely child in between, innocent of it all and so far as I know largely unaware. "Lord," I cry, "have mercy upon us." And I cry once more, "Christ have mercy."

Fill us, Lord, with your grace and power. Fill my hurting brother with your consolation. And give my Covenant brothers in the Ukraine and Arizona the wisdom and influence that comes only to those who dare to live in the shadow on the cross. And help me, Lord, to bring my young friends to you and your cross, where hope remains for them as much as me.

Shine on us all, that we may illumine the way for others as you continue to illumine it for us.

Are You an Oak of Righteousness?

2010-06-13T19:31:00.004-05:00

My son, Peter, the pastor at Winnetka, Illinois, Covenant Church, wrote a pastoral tribute recently in that church's newsletter to four saints who, though recently expired, have left an indelible legacy in the minds and hearts of all who knew them.

"Together they fell like tall trees
Deep their roots and far their reach,
These mighty oaks among us ....

"How we miss them, among us no more,
Or are they? Could it be that
the acorns of their long lives and deep faith

"are coming to life in us? Is there not yet
more of God's glory still to shine?
Maybe now we are God's planting,

"Spiritual offspring of those who have
shaded our lives with grace and love,
and they brought to life from the faith of others before!"

The tribute glorifies God, the giver for the likes of Doris, Dulcye, Darline, and Wayne. And with it, as God used them, Peter issues a memorable challenge to his people appropriate for us all:

"Time to grow deep, so that we can grow tall,
and shade life coming after
with God's glory."

Lord, waken us all to that challenge, that in our living now and passing soon we may cause those behind us to both glorify God and keep amending their ways. Amen.

Delicate Fragrance

2010-06-09T20:55:00.006-05:00

What is there, after all, like the creative genius of God in nature? Just one blossom taken from a neighbor's tree resplendent with multiple others--actually crowned with them.

The tree was years in bearing fruit--somewhat to the dismay of our neighbor brother who sometimes complained about that, even while carefully nurturing it in hope.

He did not live to see it blossom, and his widow, now in a nearby senior nursing facility, will only see it once we get a picture of the whole tree to her where she is.

But we see it, and rejoice in both the lace-like delicacy of its blooms and their marvelous fragrance. Thus do our neighbors, no longer next door, bless us yet with the fruits of their labor finally realized. And we bless them both in our beholding--George for whom we once knew him to be and Virginia yet nearby, though no longer next door.

To God ultimately belongs the glory, as the Apostle Paul once put it. One plants, as did our neighbor, and others have watered and trimmed when he no longer could, but God has brought the increase. All is of him and to him all will ultimately return. Each of us has a role to play in the cycles of natural wonders, and if faithful to that role as our neighbor was, we need not doubt that others will be blessed by the fruits of our labors as well.

A Covenant Sub Commander Who Became a Rear Admiral and More

2010-06-05T18:31:00.010-05:00

Stan Anderson lives with his lovely Russian wife Lora at Covenant Village in Golden Valley, MN. Both are long-time Covenanters. He grew up at Salem and met her through the old First Covenant Church in San Francisco. Through a lifetime together, mainly in military service, they both have served and led in remarkable ways. Stan's story, captured live in our home this very day, as well as his spirit and character, have been and continue to be deeply influenced by the Pietism out of which the Covenant emerged in 1885, the profound stamp of which continues remarkably to this day.

Careful listening to his story will impress you not only with his spirit and Christian commitment but with his native intelligence and considerable achievements as well. And with a tinge of humor supported by deep respect and feeling he credits Lora with both the love and much-needed support that has followed his every move up the scale in vocational service.

We have so much to learn from so many, and we need to be gathering these stories for posterity. Listen and be blessed by this brilliant, mild-mannered man of faith. Then take my cue and go out to interview someone you don't yet know yourself. You'll be amazed, as I constantly am, by the fascinating life stories that are out there.

Stan AndersonFinal from rooted wings on Vimeo.

Colleagues and Friends in Ministry

2010-06-03T17:20:00.015-05:00

Few things bring greater joy to me than being with long-time colleagues and friends in pastoral ministry--ordinary, humble, and loving servants who have faithfully served God's people, often in little known places and--save for the Lord's awareness--little known ways.

The picture above was taken some years ago now at our annual CRIM (Covenanters Retired in Ministry) Retreat at Covenant Pines in McGregor, Minnesota. Just after Labor day every year we gather to study, worship, pray, tell stories, and fellowship at table. The fare is incredibly rich. One or two share their life story with us. Crafts also are shared. And one evening of music involves us all in hymn-singing, choral music, and listening to vocal and instrumental soloists. It ends, as it should each time we gather, with Holy Communion at the Lord's table.

I came upon the picture a day or two ago, just after reading our superintendent's notes on a meeting he and other superintendents had recently with Eugene Peterson, whose life work has centered on ministering to the likes of us. Ponder with me some of the things Jim Freitheim took as quotes from Peterson's presentations, and as you do thank God with me for the whole company of those who have pastored and shepherded you through life:

* We are poets, we live with people who fight demons and are thrown into the lion's den on a regular basis.
* The work of the poet is to get you to participate.
* It is a privilege to be a pastor.
* One of the first things we should ask our leaders, "How is your prayer life?"
* You can't keep the sabbath by yourself.
* There are two words in our culture that people respond to: "Help me!"
* Pastors need to develop a hermeneutic of Scripture through which all of Scripture must be treated.
* People in our churches don't need advice. They need a pastor.

God bless all those above who have answered God's call. And bless too the many coming after us who are answering it still, day by day and year after year.

'Bloomstertid!

2010-05-30T19:15:00.007-05:00

The title is actually a Swedish tune name given to a text sung by children all over Sweden every spring as school terms end for the summer. The English text, translated by my late brother Zenos under the title Now Comes the Time for Flowers, is included with the tune in The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook (Covenant Publications, 1996), No. 646.

The rebirth of nature is celebrated throughout the hymn--flower'd meadows, tilled fields' noble seed. rich herbs laid out in windrows, green pastures sedately treed, etc.--all wonderful reminders of God's good Kingdom strong ... that spans the whole year long.

...The bird song ringing a many-throated laud queries our own need to be singing God's praises as well, and ends with a prayer to Jesus well worth repeating out loud, even as it is set before you: You gentle Jesu, Christus, our radiant sun, our shield, your light, your arm protect us, to you cold senses yield. Bring fires of love internal, but dump the heats of lust, prevent all hurt infernal, teach us your hand to trust.

The many-splendored flowers displayed above on our back deck in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, hanging under a beautiful ceramic bell hand crafted in Guatemala, signal the fact that every tribe and nation is both blessed by God and called to honor him as Creator. Spring and summer may come at different times in different climes and flowers may vary, but they all come nonetheless, as do fall and winter. To the only true God who was and is and will ever be we owe our lives, all things bright and beautiful surrounding, our own creative powers, and consequently our heart-felt praise.

May he save us from ever imagining that life can be as fulfilling without him as it is when we recognize and thank him for his presence beside us and within.

Stopped Short!

2010-05-24T07:58:00.006-05:00

Can you imagine
how mesmerized and
inspir’d over time
this human being
renders her grandpa?

How can it now be,
at seven years and
an added six months,
with but half a heart?
She is an ath’lete!

At shortstop no less,
eagerly waiting
and ready to grasp
whatever may come
toward her domain.

Bless all the children
she here represents,
whose vitalities
are not diminished
by limitations.

And bless us, O Lord,
far less limited,
who all too often
are full of complaints
and much less hearty.

Place us at shortstop
and ready us there
to grasp eagerly
whatever may come
toward our domain.

jrh
05/24/10

A Veteran Covenant Missionary's Story

2010-05-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

This is the latest in my video interviews of various Covenant leaders and lay people whose stories not only have impacted my life but the lives of many others as well. More and more as I ask people to tell their stories, I realize how little we really know about each other, even those we go to church with in our local congregations, not to mention colleagues over years in ministry.

Listen to this veteran Covenant missionary David Dolan's story, and join with me in prayer for him, his lovely wife Judy, and their extended family, as health issues are requiring him to step aside from being Regional Coordinator of Covenant Missions in China.

Perhaps someone listening will sense God's call to ministry or missionary service as the Dolans both did years ago, while hosting an elder missionary themselves. In any case, let their story inspire you as it has me to renew your commitment to God and his will for your life.

Dave Dolan from rooted wings on Vimeo.

A veteran Covenant Missionary shares his life story.

Blessed Charity!

2010-05-16T06:02:00.008-05:00

Eugene Peterson tells a wonderful story about "a plump, bold, cute, and highly verbal five-year-old" friend of his named Charity and her two grandmothers, both devoted Christians, who recently paid consecutive visits to her home in the Midwest.

The first grandmother, a devout Christian who took her spiritual grandmothering duties very seriously, evidently offered little Charity a lot of spiritual advice over an extended visit. The first morning after her other grandmother arrived, Charity crawled into bed with her at five a.m., cuddled up, and said, "Grandmother, let's not have any godtalk while you are here, okay? I believe God is everywhere. Let's just get on with life."

Knowing Charity personally, having been in her home, Peterson was sure the five-year-old's plea was not to dismiss God out of hand. It was only, believing he is everywhere, to subvert too much talk about him and "just get on with life," which at that point for her meant getting on with her grandmother, also a devout Christian.

Telling that story at the conclusion of an Ex Auditu conference on spiritual formation at North Park Theological Seminary in 2002, Peterson's parting word to theologians and pastors gathered from around the world was this: all they had been discussing from various points of view and disciplines cannot be done in a hurry, forced into a schedule, accomplished by spiritual sound bites, i.e. godtalk. It requires the recovery of classic Christian contemplative traditions that have languished far too long among evangelicals, of listening together and waiting before God in the midst of life, attending and adoring more than speaking and advising.

Charity was right, Peterson avers. "Our great evangelical heritage is becoming more superficial by the decade, shallow and trivialized, noisy and glitzy with godtalk." People are hungering for something deeper, more substantive, more lasting from us. It's God they need, not our godtalk.

"All through the church and culture," Peterson concludes, "there are prepared and listening ears for every word we write, every lecture we give, every sermon we deliver, ready to ... join us as we walk, loiter, stroll, wander, and meander in the Spirit and with Jesus in the land of the living."

Ouch, and Amen!

'Magnificence in Solemnity, Obedience in Acendancy'

2010-05-10T07:52:00.003-05:00

The phrase is from a Florence Johnson poem on "Transfiguration," set in anthem form by Robert Berglund and sung last night in the St. Paul, Minnesota Cathedral by the Northwestern College Choir.

Everything about the event was magnificent--the cathedral setting itself, the gathering in and filling of that setting by Protestant Christians, the disciplined merging of musical technique with an amazing range of offerings in several languages, and at the heart of it all the obvious devotion of the singers and instrumentalists themselves.

The concert both addressed our human condition and offered hope. It drew together strands that tend too much these days to be separated and fragmented. Quiet tender harmonies and loud burts of song were continually multiplied by their echoes in the cathedral nave and dome.

Thank God for musicians--composers, conductors, and performers alike--who bridge in faith the gaps within and between us that only divide. Florence Johnson's poem quoted above carries within it a sacred reminder for Christians everywhere in this world to embody the legacy we have been given within the church of Christ and spread its glory throughout the world.

Out of the scars of wretchedness languid boughs turn again upward. / Tracing the careful intention of a beauty emended by love / A life meant to reach heavenward, a monument of creation / Rising o'er earth's constriction to freedom and splendor above.

Oh to Be a Child Again!

2010-05-05T06:33:00.003-05:00

Life is full of wonder--and joy. No matter the news that shakes and concerns us, seen in larger perspective life is good.

Our latest grandson, Carson Gustaf, looks out on me as if from realms on high. I wonder as I gaze on him what he is wondering. Can you tell?

He is a good baby, I am told. Incredibly good. He just is. That's all. Present. Content. At peace. Himself.

How refreshing and delightful, given all the convolutions of life swirling around him and us. Does he know something we don't know?
Has he come to remind us, perhaps, of things we have either forgotten or tend not to notice?

His gaze is pure and he seems almost ready to speak. No words yet. Just coos--ohs and ahs, the natural language of little ones newly born.

May the Lord bless you this morning, Carson Gustaf, as you are blessing me. May he also make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may he lift up the light of his countenence upon you always, and give you peace.

Public Good and Private Shame

2010-05-01T08:04:00.000-05:00

I learned something this week that deeply disturbed me about public life and our personal responsibility within it. The lesson came in the context of a certain car company's attempt to better serve their customers by holding their sales forces accountable to the general public.

The company's policy--which is good because it aims at protecting customers from unethical manipulation by their sales people--centers on follow-up surveys by phone and internet to rate a customer's sense of the service they render. All to the good, given the less than favorable reptuation that some sales people have left in their wake for others who have been transparent and fair.

What shocked me was how unfairly a good sales person might be treated by a customer--and in turn by the company--in light of a single thoughtless response to the surveys. In one instance, based on a customer's unhappiness with a local agency's hours for service, the sales agent was charged a penalty fee for not putting the customer first, i.e. for a dealership policy over which he/she had no control.

Rightfully disturbed over how we as the public are sometimes treated as customers by pushy sales people, we surely ought be equally as concerned about our own attitudes in the negotiating process--not to mention company policies that punish good employees for customer concerns for which they, not their sales personnel, are responsible.

Here one sees in bold relief the sad things that emerge out of our failures individually and communally to heed a basic biblical principle, i.e. to "do unto others" at every level "as you would have them do unto you."

Blessed to Be a Blessing

2010-04-20T14:02:00.011-05:00

Prone as we are to trivialize life,
to measure it by nameless scatter'd things,
I long for moments with more permanence.
One such was offered me just last Sunday
when Salem's choir accompanied by
a soloist and instrumentalists
peformed Bradley Ellingboe's Requiem.

The stage was set for me to receive it
by a single phrase in the opening hymn,
Robert Baxter's "O Holy Angels Bright."
Souls at rest and saints who now serve below
were urged in time and space to sing God's praise
"with angels bright who wait at God's right hand,"
each "taking our part with a well-tuned heart."

And what was the phrase that moved my spirit?
"Take what he gives and praise...through good and ill."
How better prepare one's mind and spirit
to enter wholly into what followed?
Requiem--life and death merged in the Light
of divine creation and end-time hope,
what God has prepared for those who love him.

People went away diff'rent than they came.
The Spirit had led us to deeper realms
both within ourselves and outside ourselves.
Our God who was and is and is to be
moved through his Spirit to sanctify us,
blessing our Requiem worship of him
and preparing us to be a blessing.

Open Our Eyes, Lord

2010-04-16T10:43:00.004-05:00

Abounding Grace

Flowers are,
like the snow
and the rain,
reminders
of divine
love and grace:

Always there
to be seen
and enjoyed
if one gives
time and space
to notice.

Multiform
in shape and
colored hues
they amaze
one’s senses,
even soul.

Capture them
in your heart
and feed on
them in mind,
that God be
glorified.

There are no
places void
of divine
influence.
God’s grace is
ev’rywhere.

JRH
4/16/10

Happy Birthday, Don Frisk!

2010-04-14T06:21:00.005-05:00

Professor Donald C. Frisk celebrates his 99th birthday today. I was reminded of that when I received this picture of him yesterday with his three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, taken where he now lives at The Holmstad, a Covenant Retirement Community in Batavia, Illinois.

Few individuals in the 125 year history of the Covenant Church have influenced our common life and thought more than he has through life-long preaching, teaching, and writing. His earlier New Life in Christ was especially helpful among the many that could be mentioned. And hie book on Covenant Affirmations amplifying earlier tract and booklet publications on the same themes is a classic exposition of Covenant life and thought.

Clarity of mind and precision in language have always marked his work. So has his disciplined focus on the things that remain in the classic Christian tradition our forebears received from the Protestant Reformation, the later advent of Pietism, and the revival movements that swept them up together in the joys of believing and belonging.

Thirty-eight entrees are listed under his name in Glad Hearts, coming either from his pen alone or in cooperative ventures deeply influenced by him. “There is only one ministry,” he used to tell us in seminary, “and that is the ministry of Jesus Christ." The implications for us were clear. Ours is simply given to enter into Christ's ministry, no matter how or where we serve.” I invite you to re-visit today whatever you may have of his writing. It will both challenge you to think theologically and inspire in you Christ's call to personal, communal, and missional action.

Listen, in tribute, to but one entry addressing church life today and the often neglected power of the Holy Spirit available to us:

Often one hears the complaint that the Christian church lacks power. But in the Holy Spirit unlimited power is available–power which is released through prayer and through action. Power, however, is a precious gift which God does not bestow indiscriminately. He gives as much as is needed for a specific task. Too often we lack power because we do not accept tasks and responsibilities big enough to merit such strengthening from above. The mediocre lives which multitudes of Christians love do not require great strengthening and hence there is little evidence of its presence, but let a Christian seriously attempt the demands of the Lord in the church and community and strength would be given in proportion to the task. What world-shaking things the church could accomplish if we prayerfully accepted the full responsibilities that now confront us!
What Christians Believe (1951), pp. 19,20.

Happy Birthday, Don! Pray for us that we may remain as faithful to Christ and each other as you have proven yourself to be--a companion, like your forebears, of all those who fear God and love his appearing.

Thank God for My Brother Efrem!

2010-04-10T07:25:00.015-05:00

What richness has come into the life of the Covenant Church in recent years through those of different ethnic backgrounds who have become such an integral part of its common life and ministry.

Let this interview of Efrem Smith, well-known nationally as founding pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis and soon to become superintendent of the Pacific Southwest Conference, serve as but one example of that richness.

What could possibly have pleased our forebears more that listening to Efrem's life story and witness, his passion for being a churchman in ministry, and his manifest desire to be what they first set out to be--"a companion of all those who fear God" (Psalm 119:63).

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.... For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:3-36).

Efrem Smith from rooted wings on Vimeo.

See the Similarity?

2010-04-07T06:34:00.002-05:00

"It takes onw to recognize one," they say. I've long felt that my generation needs some characters like those in former generations I either knew personally or have heard of in the oral tradition that has framed my life. Not to worry, I guess. Some say I fit the bill myself, as having fun in the Como Park Zoo shop recently attests. Though completely unaware as yet, could it be that my newest grandson Carson, aided and abetted by his father and mother's generation, is already become a character in his? Must be in the gene pool. Why else would he be graced with the same middle name as I bear, "Gustaf"?

Sometime back I asked Carson's folks one day, mostly in jest, what they would do with me when I get loopy and.... Before I could finish the sentence his mother finished it for me. "You really mean loopier, don't you. You are already loopy."

Perhaps so, in which case stories about me are already flowing from mouth to mouth, much as they did about others in my experience. So be it. It is no sin to have a sense of humor. Laugh a little, first always at yourself, and you'll learn as I have--and still am learning--a lot about life.

What Glen Wiberg said abour preaching in my recent video interview of him (see Interviews:Media, May 8, 2009) surely applies here as well: "It is no sin to be interesting!"

What Will Become of Good Friday and Easter Next Monday?

2010-04-02T16:22:00.006-05:00

Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, is on a mission to restore in the Christian community "matters of maturity, of spiritual formation, of theological aesthetics, of growing up in Christ 'healthy in God, robust in love.'"

"Not long ago," he writes in Practice Resurrection, his latest book, "a pastor who has made an art form of pole vaulting from church to church told me I was wasting my time on this, there was no challenge to it, it was about as exciting as standing around watching paint dry."

When Peterson suggested to him that "most of our ancestors in both Israel and church have spent most of their time watching the paint dry, that the persevering, patient, unhurried work of growing up in Christ has occupied the center of the church's life for centuries, and that this American marginalization is, well, American ... he dismissed me. He needed, he said, a challenge. I took it from his tone and manner that a challenge was by definition something that could be met and accomplished in forty days. That's all the time, after all, that it took Jesus."

Peterson wonders if we are not prostituting new birth by failing to draw the new born into new life, the forming of our character after conversion around the mystery of Christ's continuing presence in us, which cannot be accomplished on the fly but requires "growing up strong in God, growing to maturity, to the staure of Christ." He does not find pastors and professors, for the most part, "very interested in matters of formation in holiness. They have higher profile things to do."

And not only so. "The American church [itself] is uneasy in these conditions. Typically, in the name of 'relevance,' it adapts itself to the prevailing American culture and is soon indistinguishable from that culture: talkative, noisy, busy, controlling, image-conscious."

Have I myself lost the wonder of standing quietly before the cross, simply absorbing Christ's spirit in agonizing and dying for all humanity there? How long has it been since the wonder of the open tomb brought me to my knees in silent wonder, love, and praise--not to mention renewed hope? Has faith to me become no more than mental ascent--the personal acceptance of the story of Jesus so that when I die I can go to heaven? Will the living dynamic of Good Friday and Easter be shunted aside next Monday--dissapated, even lost in the commerce and industry of routine daily life?

The church in its wisdom has always seen Advent as a season of waiting on and for Christ's coming. Ought Lent end no less as the season of waiting on his living presence among us and his claim on all our living the rest of our days?

Lord, have mercy! Christ have mercy!

The Day of Resurrection! Earth, Tell It Out Abroad!

2010-03-28T16:33:00.004-05:00

We are just home from three days in New York City, where Times Square and two concerts by the San Franscisco Symphony in Carnegie Hall served as bookends for a marvelous experience.

Times Square represented, for us, the hustle and bustle of that great city--unbelievably energetic and diverse. People of every tribe and nation, it seemed, moved by us in our hotel, on our many walks, and at breakfast every morning. Our waitress yesterday was Georgian (the nation formerly tied to Russia). Parisians, Germans, and Poles were everywhere. Our cab dribers were from Bangladesh. While waiting for our shuttle to return to the airport, Alyce sat down next to a Swede waiting with his family to be picked up by a relative from Jersey. Jews, Serbs, Moslems were well also in evidence--as were blacks and whites and Asians and Hispanics. It was a feast and we loved it.

The capstone came, though, the final night at Carnegie Hall where we were treated to a really stellar rendition of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, with full orchestra and a chorus of about 120 voices. The sound was enormous and the stillness of the concert-goers amazing. You could hear a pin drop in the pauses and pianissimos Mahler had structured into the music. Faces everywhere were totally intent on what was going on below. Some were even trying to direct the orchestra themselves as hands moved back and forth and sighs were shared among strangers now become neighbors.

I sat there thinking--deeply moved myself--how the life we all so much hunger for needs to be experienced in our engagements with one another as human beings, no matter when and no matter where. But when all is said and done, it is only when real majesty moves in that the walls between us are broken down and our spirits joined into one.

Today is the beginning once more of such a season--Palm Sunday leading through Holy Week to Easter and the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. To behold it is to be moved, not least because in the beholding we are all reduced to our humanity by God's incredible love and sustaining power. No one wanted to leave on Friday night when the concert was finally over, for great music and inspired musicians had filled us with joy and given us hope. Ought Holy Week do anything less among us?

Two things linger in our minds. The first is how good it was to be in New York and experience what we did in that sea of humanity. The second is how important it now becomes to witness in our humanity to all we felt there, and share it in such a way as to help bring healing and wholeness to the otherwise scattered and fractious world all around us these days.

An Artist at Work

2010-03-24T08:08:00.002-05:00

To Alyce

Your calling in life

is clearly to be

an accompanist.

Always joining notes

in harmonic form

you serve the message

In home and at church,

as well as retreats,

you offer yourself.

And that gift extends

to every thing

in which you engage.

Whether at keyboard

or the kitchen sink,

it is no diff'rent.

Present and ready

in countless ways,

you demonstrate grace.

Thanks for being you,

and bless all your kind

who thus serve in love.

JRH

03/24/10

(Photo Credit - Dick Lundgren)

How Goes Your Walk?

2010-03-20T09:54:00.010-05:00

Preparing now for some responsibilities in connection with the 125th Annual meeting of the Covenant in June, my thoughts are centering both on the roots out of which we have grown, and the relevance of those roots to our forward movement as part of the body of Christ.

We all know that changing times require ever new incentives and responses. What matter most in the long run, however, are not our programs and procedures but the spirit that underlies and informs them. Can one point to what remains essential in a life movement like our own, and are its essences as central to our own forward movement as they were in the common life of our forebears?

One can and one must if we are to faithful to all we have inherited. God's gift to us of faith and new life springs not only or primarily from our roots in Pietism and the early Mission Covenant but in larger perspective from his dealings with his people throughout history.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain (Psalm 127:1). Only when we are set free by him, new-born in him, steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58) can we be assured that our labors are not in vain.

Have I been set free by God? And have you? Are we sure? Mathilda Foy wondered when she wrote the following somewhere between 1850 and 1851. Have you experienced the same assurance she found in the midst of her wonderings? Listen to her witness, and let the spirit it reveals be a powerful reminder of the life we too must receive from God if his will is to be accomplished through us:

I longed for assurance, but I could not accept it.... [Then one day when home alone recovering from an illness] the thought struck me like lightning, “You are saved and blessed--it is done, it is finished, it has long been your experience but you have not seen it. Christ is your Savior--you have the forgiveness of your sins--you don't have to pray any more to be forgiven: you can rejoice, for you are saved, blessed for time and eternity. All your doing, all your striving, all your praying is nothing–[Christ] is all.” I flew up from the sofa and got hold of a Bible. The Holy Spirit led me to look up Romans, and I read it through without stopping. He himself explained the contents to me. Everything fell into place.... The snare was broken and the bird was free.
Quoted in Karl Olsson, By One Spirit (1962), p. 65.

Divine Favor

2010-03-12T05:56:00.016-06:00

And the dove came back to [Noah] in the evening,
and lo, in her mouth, a freshly plucked olive leaf,
so Noah knew that the waters had subdued from the earth.

The artist's rendering hangs on the wall above my desk, the gift of my daughter and a daily reminder of divine favor. Time stands still when I ponder the Noah saga in Scripture alongside our own as contemporary Christians in turbulent times. Saved temporarily in the Ark from the destruction that wasted at noonday in Noah’s time, he knew that unless the Lord further intervened he and all its inhabitants could not long sustain themselves. Dwelling in hope, trusting God, he had to wait nonetheless until the dove sent out from the Ark returned one evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak.

In spite of God's eternal promise never to flood the whole earth again, to which we may be thankful he is true, there is much in the scene that relates to our own circumstance. The seas are swelling around us as well, and our sight extends often no further than the next threatening wave. Life in the Ark is safe for the time being, but it is constricted at best and beset with crowding and foul odors one cannot escape. One hopes against hope until God decides to act.

Next to the art piece on my wall, to its left, is a harvest scene on good old earth, with stalks of harvested corn painted by Lydia Pohl against barn buildings and a tree in the distance--all signs of the favor of the same God who sent a dove back to Noah with a freshly cut olive branch. Next to the art piece on the right is another artist's rendering of richly hued autumn leaves on a clump of birches--again the gift of my daughter, inscribed in her own hand with the text of a song alongside, written by her husband from Psalm 131, a life-long favorite of mine.

Do the contexts matter in which we study and write and wait on the Lord? You bet they do. A wall is only a wall until it comes alive before you with the gifts loved ones and treasured friends bring over time, no less to us than the dove brought to Noah. Psalm 131 ends where every new day ought to begin and end, no matter where we are or what we may be facing--the sense in little things of God's continuing favor.

O Israel, hope in the Lord, from time forth and for evermore.

Standing in Awe

2010-03-05T18:07:00.005-06:00

Today Alyce and I take our grandson Nathan out to lunch. honoring the recent receiving of his Master of Art degree from the prodigious Art Institute of Boston.

Currently head of the art department at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis, Nathan (pictured here beside a display of some of the work he did for his degree), is an amazing young man, deep into not only his gift of representation but to all the intellectual, historical, and cultural influences surrounding, without which any paint on canvas would be sterile, not to mention lifeless.

Mild-mannered as he is, one has to search Nathan out in places like his blog (http://natestromberg.blogspot.com) to explore the range of his art to date. There is a wonderful 16-minute video there in which he offers his own interpretation of the process that has brought him to this point, including his reflections on other artists whose work has shaped his own understanding and craft.

I reproduce that video below, and warmly recommend the blogsite mentioned above from which it is taken with permission. There, in many blogs over time, you can see a wider range of his artwork and read extensive notes on why and how he has arrived at creating it.

We're standing in awe as we look on and listen. For the one we loved from his earliest childhood and saw as gifted in the visual arts is now, having matured and disciplined those gifts, re-introducing us to the era in which we ourselves grew up and married and had children. Surely it is God's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Nathan Stromberg Artist Talk from rooted wings on Vimeo.

Thank God for His Church!

2010-02-28T06:06:00.006-06:00

"I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.' Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem" (122:1). My feet have been standing there too, as well as our family's on both sides. Some are in and out for various reasons, but the pattern is established and I am glad to this very morning that once again I am going to the house of the Lord.

What would my life have been--indeed what would it be even now--apart from God's house? Those who disregard that house only end up diminishing themselves. The sadness is not that they rail against it so much--though some do that as well--but that they see it somehow as irrelevant. The Lord's day is no longer his. It has become theirs--to sleep in, lolly gag around the house, go shopping, or whatever else.

When asked why he was always going to church one of our forebears said simply, "Because I'm afraid of what I might miss if I don't!" One could do without some of church life, of course, especially when clergy or lay folk try to superintend it as if it were theirs to rule. But that would be to miss the fact that the church is the house of the Lord, a place he inhabits by his grace--where his Word is proclaimed, however feebly at times, and the blessed sacraments shared. Those who come to it with the same gladness of heart as the psalmist seldom leave without feeling blessed.

Thus it has been for me since childhood. So may it continue to be for me and mine--and you and yours--until the Lord himself comes in person to gather the faithful and establish his kingdom on earth.

Prayer and Perspective

2010-02-19T09:17:00.007-06:00

Early this morning I rose to one of my monthly tasks these days, praying through the psalms for next month, and preparing to publish them under the "Prayers" link on the home page of my website at www.rootedwings.com.

I never cease to be amazed and blessed by this process, soon two years running, using the psalms designated for each Sunday of the Church Year. No matter where I find myself month by month, both in circumstance and mood, I am lifted out of myself to see life in greater perspective--just by reflecting with the psalmist on God's glory, faithfulness, and grace.

Well into the season of Lent by the end of next month, the themes center on opening one's soul in confession both of our sinfulness in God's presence and our faith in his redeeming grace. To confess either without also confessing the other is to miss the blessing of both. How can grace be experienced, for example, by anyone who hides from his or her great need of it? And what if one, confessing that need, is left only in the somber shadows with no relief?

Thus does God's word deliver us, not by efforts of our own to deserve his deliverance but by simply recalling and receiving again the deliverance he alone offers the penitent. What is required in prayer is not our effort so much as our willingness to open ourselves up as we are to him as he is. The hymnwriter said it well: Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, unuttered or expressed; the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast (The Covenant Hymnal, 1973, No. 345).

The days of Lent this year will be different for me, having prayed through these psalms. Pray with me through those already posted for this month as Epiphany came to its end and Lent has begun. And after March 1, look for more to lend you the same blessed perspective they have offered me in praying through them.

Ever Feel Left Out?

2010-02-08T09:58:00.010-06:00

Few things bless me more in ministry than the children of the church. From my earliest days as a pastor, through all those years as an editor and publisher and in every place I have served since, they have both warmed my heart and challenged my faith. Even when they do not speak, they speak just by being who and what they are. No wonder Jesus rebuked those who wanted in his presence to shunt them aside.

Stories abound in my relationships with children and youth over generations--some funny, some sad, and some memorable for other reasons that need not be shared here. What has seemed remarkable to me in all of them--or mostly all--is that they have never shunted me aside when and if I have come to them with love and respect for them as God's children.

Before preaching from the Epiphany text in Luke 4 on Jesus' return to his home town in Nazareth, I asked them if they ever felt "left out" as he soon did. I wanted them to know that all too often even in our lives "Jesus Stands Outside the Door" (Hymnal, No. 327). The look on their faces confirmed what I have come to know about each of them. In their childlike way there is room in their heart for him. Will their continuing presence in our lives cause us to be as childlike in our faith and love for the Lord? Watch their faces and be blessed as I was--and challenged.

Cildren's Moment - 1/31/10 - Jesus in Nazareth from rooted wings on Vimeo.

In Praise of Providence

2010-01-26T19:52:00.004-06:00

In the waning days of Epiphany, the season of light, we do well to hear the story of a wonderful Christian woman whose life-long journey toward and in that light has not been easy.

Aware as we all are that life has a dark side, few of us have likely experienced it as personally as Sarmita Peterson and her family. As a child she and her mother and brother had to flee for their lives from Nazi and Communist oppression in their native Latvia. For years following they moved from one Displaced Person's Camp to another, having next to nothing and uncertain of their future. Yet for all that and more they have clearly been led and sustained by a light that no darkness has the power to overcome.

"In thy light,' Scripture says of God, 'we see light.' So also, no matter how sombre life may seem at times, do we see that light evidenced in his people. Listen to the patterns of God's providential care in Sarmita Peterson's early and ongoing experience, and let your own faith in that providence be both awakened and renewed.

Sarmita Peterson's Story from rooted wings on Vimeo.

Don't Worry, but Be Advised!

2010-01-20T19:34:00.009-06:00

The last Sunday of this month we will be asked once again to ponder God's call to Jeremiah. A hesitant young man, the soon to be prophet protested vigorously God's summons ("Ah, Lord God, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy," 1:6), only to be simply told, gazing on the branch of an almond tree (shaqed) "you shall speak whatever I command you" (1:7b). In other words, don't worry and fret over whatever you aren't yet. Just be who you are, and the Lord will provide.

In the interesting play on words that follows he was also told, no less clearly by God, "I am watching (shoqed) over my word to perform it." In other words, just as the Lord God will be there to give him what to say (shaqed), so the Lord will be watching (shoqed) to make sure that what he says what the Lord tells him to say. No more, no less.

I have no doubt that in ways appropriate to us in our time and place God calls each of us in a similar way. We are not to worry about ourselves and our inadequacies when he calls. He will supply whatever we need and guard us in all our ways. But be advised that he will also be watching those he calls, to make sure that what we do and say in his name is what he gives us to do and say. No more, no less.

In other words, just trust and obey. That's all there is to it, everything required. Be both assured of his presence and advised of his presence. It's not about you or me. It's all about him, his word, and his will. Nothing can stand in the way of the Lord's anointed when he or she is true to the Anointing One. But the Lord himself remains sovereign in the process. "I will be with you," (shaqed), "and I will also be watching (shoqed). Don't worry, therefore, but don't run off on your own either.

We will be tempted, as Jeremiah himself was, to protest on occasion, sometimes out of frustration and sometimes out of sheer weariness. But he who calls will sustain us, re-stoking the the fires he first kindled in us until what he wants done is accomplished.

Welcome to ministry 101, the core course on responding to God's call that needs continually to be revisited.

Identity and Mission

2010-01-13T16:42:00.011-06:00

The Christian Century for January 12 carries an interesting book review on The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations Develop a Missional Ministry (Eerdmans, 288 pp). The reviewer, Anthony B. Robinson, president of an organization called "Congregational Leadership Northwest," catalogues what others have pointed out and most people surmised, that denominations generally are not doing well missionally these days.

The obvious challenge as he and the book see it, is "to refocus their lives and resources on joining God's mission in the world rather than simply promoting or maintaining themselves."

At the end of his review of the book, Robinson writes, "One denomination that has found resources for innovation is The Evangelical Covenant Church. Historically a church of Swedish immigrants, it has in recent decades caught the wave of the new immigration. New church starts for immigrants from many countries have transformed the denomination and made it to grow."

Especially worth noting and pondering, I believe, is Robinson's concluding query: "Will other denominations prove capable of arriving at the clear sense of identity and purpose that fosters flexibility and innovation. Time will tell."

Many in our time are convinced that growing requires one to abandon the traditions from which we have come. Strip the church of all its churchiness. Free your imagination from bondage to questions of identity. How refreshing to have someone recognize that in our case as Covenanters, it is the strong sense of identity we have inherited from our forebears that has in fact freed us to welcome and receive others so different and diverse. And, for their part, trying to find their way in this new time and land often prejudiced against them and fearful of them, they are grateful for an open and safe-enough community of faith that provides them with a sense of family and common identity in Christ.

Clearly Christ's body must always be missional. But only when each part of it continues to affirm and celebrate its own experience in that body will it be free enough to keep opening its doors to others and serious enough to commend without apology what it has been given by God to be and do.

A Treasured Colleague and Friend

2010-01-06T05:48:00.006-06:00

Keith Fullerton, here pictured with his wife Viola, died suddenly Sunday evening, just after their moving from Surrey, British Columbia to Norquay, Saskatchewan December 30.

A Facebook note this morning from Andy Sebanc, senior pastor at Surrey, indicates that they are creating a weblink to the Memorial Service Friday at 2:00 p.m. in Norquay. Though absent in person, many will want to be attending via the Green Timbers weblink in Surrey, details of which are posted at: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=237301333100&mid=1ae1ea4G4ca85d82Gbcf956G7.

The Fullerton family, not unlike the Petersons, Ericsons, Wendell Andersons, Josephsons, and so many others before them are legend in Canada and the broader Covenant. Their devoted ministries and spirit have perpetuated Covenant life, thought, and spirit in places all over the denomination, and we are in great debt to each of them.

Keith was a unique leader among us, at local church, conference-wide, and denominational levels throughout his considerable lifetime in ministry. What drew me espacially to him was a certain sense of reserve, an intuition that there was always more to him than appeared in any given moment, waiting in the wings to further bless and resource you . Gentle and thoughtful in presenting himself, he was no less firm in his convictions for all that, and fiercely loyal to our family of faith.

May God bless and hallow his memory among us, and may he give special comfort to his grieving wife and family in the sure knowledge that we will see and be with him again. May he also surround them with our love and the prayers rising now from the many to whom they have minsitered in Christ's name.