Someday Soon

Last September, before preaching on the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Kay Sorvik read the Gospel lesson from Matthew 25 after which she asked me to sing a verse of the pulpit hymn she had chosen and lead the congregation in singing stanzas 2 and 3. The text and tune for "Someday Soon" (The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 748) were largely written by my son-in-law Bob Stromberg. Rick Carlson did the musical arrangement.

Arriving at our cabin in the late 1980s Bob asked if I would help him complete the text. Full of the imagery we enjoy each year at the cabin--"whispering pines," "your eagle soaring o'er us," "the spring after winter's snow," and "the seedling's hint of harvest"--all of which heighten our love for God and our longing to be home with him--the song fits well with the theme on which Kay then movingly preached.

Here follows a brief video of our singing together in hopes that it might encourage many to learn the hymn and sing it often as one more way of preparing for Christ's coming. Believers have no need to dread that Day. They have every reason rather to anticipate and even glory in it.

Ministry: Whoever Said It Would Be Easy?

There's a lot of talk these days about how hard it is to be a minister. I would not make light of that, but I do think it is probably no more true today than it has ever been. Times change, of course, and the scenery of life. But who that follows Christ's call to ministry has any right to assume that pursuing that call will ever be easy?

If truth be told, we are all, after Christ, sacrifical lambs, and in that role we have to learn to suffer for God's sake and others. His claim on us is sovereign over every circumstance we may encounter along the way. And his call to serve in his name by his Spirit allows no protest on our part and offers no room for complaint.

Many of my colleagues have understood this and modeled it in ways I have not had to endure. Don Krause, a seminary classmate, later to become a much-loved and very effective chaplain in hospitals and retirement homes, and now a fellow member at Salem is only one such. Look at what "the Call" required of him and his family, returning in 1952 from extended internships in Randall and Alexandria, MN to finish his seminary training.

One child. No financiial resources, even to rent a truck or trailer. More furniture than would fit in their old car. Headed for very limited housing space. Hard days ahead, not to mention just the logistical maneuvering now required to get this moving monstrosity to Chicago!

In Don's own words, the extended internship--given among other things only out-house bathroom facilities for 15 months of it-- had been "a test of my dedication to 'the Call.'" No wonder! Yet he trusted the One who had called him, and bears witness now to the fact that "God's grace and many subsequent years of ministry have proven the validity of that Call."

The Krauses, like their Father Abraham, are still traveling on by stages--now through Don's recent surgery following retirement and various other family health issues. From a merely human point of view one might expect more complaint. But that is not in Don's nature. His focus is not on the hardships he and Betty and their family have endured. "Thinking of God's faithful promises," he wrote me recently, "the little Gospel chorus comes to mind: 'He knows the way through the wilderness. All you have to do is follow.'"

That's it, my brothers and sisters in ministry. As D.T. Niles once put it in shaping up a young minister who kept moaning about his people, "Don't complain so much about your church. That's why you're there!" Indeed! After all, it is Christ who called us, and Christ knows what he is doing. All we need to do is follow.

'The Lord Is Your Keeper' (Psalm 121:5)

This "Song of Ascents" is also often called "The Traveler's Psalm," which meshes well both with life itself as a pilgrimage from beginning to end and with every stage along life's way. The promise is that "The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore."

Part of that keeping for me--especially as I get older--lies in realizing that God's promise is communal as well as personal. It extends to family--not only one's individual family but also to God's larger family of people all over the world.

God has kept my own going out and coming in all these years, and now he is keeping the lives of my children and grandchildren--like grandson Matthew Manning in his going out to serve orphans in Ghana this summer and his coming home tomorrow to pursue his education and calling.

Matthew is a wonderful young man, just graduated from high school last spring and soon to be on his way to De Paul University, Chicago, in the fall. He has often spoken of his interest in architecture, which for those who know and love him seems very fitting, given the architecture of his own life. Handsome, talented, and energetic, he could well have become self-centered in the living out of his days until now, as so many teenagers are these days. But the Lord has kept him from all that, nurturing him along the way in the greatest art of all. God has already made him an architect, gathering around him a coterie of family and friends and forming with them a building not made with hands, extending beyond itself to include Ghanian orphans and who knows how many more.

Thank you, Lord, for being Matthew's keeper as well as ours. Thank you, too, for the generous heart you have given him for others. You are teaching us your way through him now even as we have sought to teach him your way through us since childhood. And faithful as you are, we know you will keep all our goings out and comings in from this time on and forvermore. Hallelujah!

Blessed Nap!

Returing home late last night from a hurried trip to Northbrook, IL for the funeral of Bernice Brandel--a lovely trip by car both ways!--we were happy to wake up at Hembygden, our cabin in Wisconsin, this morning.

Through the early hours of the day we were putsing, which we love to do--Alyce in the kitchen preparing for Judy and Bob coming in tomorrow and me fixing the railing on the walkway down to the lake. Then we went grocery shopping in town.

After lunch it was nap time for me, a delicious two-hour siesta on the living room sofa--a blessed waste of time, as a historic Christian saint once spoke of prayer itself. We are forever short of time, it seems, in the living of our lives. And part of the reason may well be that our spirits are slaves to calendars and clocks. So, consequently, are our bodies.

When given time to be free of all that for awhile there is no reason not to nap. With nothing ahead demanding (or inviting?) my attention, why not? It was indeed delicious--and rewarding. I'm already looking forward to another one tomorrow.

Take the hint, friend, whoever and wherever you are. Wasteful or even impossible as you might think it to be, give your brain and body a rest. The world around you not only can wait. It will, too, and you'll feel better when you face it refreshed.