I Sing Because I’m Happy (or Because I’m Not)

Alama Kante is a thirty-one year old professional singer from Guinea. A couple of months ago she underwent surgery in France to remove her thyroid gland, a procedure that is ordinarily done under anesthesia. Because of the possibility of damage during the surgery to her vocal chords and vital nerves, the procedure was done while she was under hypnosis rather than under anesthesia so that she was able to respond to instructions to sing. That way the doctors could be sure they were not harming her vocal chords and thus damaging her singing voice.

That’s right—she sang during her surgery!

There’s something to be said for singing no matter what you’re going through.

Over the Father’s Day weekend I was remembering how my father, the late great Champ Ruffin (1921-1979), long-time non-music reading song leader of the Midway Baptist Church (located several miles outside of Barnesville, Georgia on City Pond Road) often sang the chorus to the gospel song “On the Jericho Road” as he was going about his daily routines:

On the Jericho Road there's room for just two
No more and no less just Jesus and you
Each burden he'll bear each sorrow he'll share
There's never a care for Jesus is there.

I can remember him singing that song in good times and bad, in happy times and sad; I suspect it was helpful to him to remind himself that Jesus was always there for him.

There’s something to be said for singing no matter what is going on in your life. As the great Neil Diamond sang,

Song sung blue, everybody knows one.
Song sung blue, every garden grows one.
Me and you are subject to the blues now and then;
but when you take the blues and make a song,
you sing ‘em out again …

Read the Psalms and you’ll find that there are more laments—the Hebrew version of the blues—than any other type of psalm. In their laments the Hebrews sang out their pain to God and sang out their trust in God. If it was good enough for them, it’s bound to be good enough for us.

A while back I was going through a low time in my life. One day, my Good Wife said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.” “Thanks,” I said, “but how did you know?” “Because you’re whistling again,” she replied. Maybe if I had kept on whistling I would have felt better sooner.

As the old hymn reminds us,

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

Yes, keep singing (or whistling) no matter what you’re going through. Sing like you’re happy even when you feel sad; sing like you’re free even you feel captive. It’s how you get the blues out of you. And it’s how you keep your voice, which people need to keep hearing …

Wedding (and Worship) Gnats

I’m writing these words on June 10, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the wedding ceremony that marked the beginning of the marriage of Debra Kay Johnson and me, an occasion that reminds me of how blessed I am and of how gracious she is.

Many members of both of our families were present at the ceremony that took place at 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in Debra’s home church, the Leary Baptist Church. Leary, as some of you know, is located about twenty-five miles southwest of Albany, and is thus embedded deep among the peanut fields of southwest Georgia.

It is also well below the gnat line. Our wedding being a June South Georgia wedding, the gnats were uninvited but not unexpected guests.

I mention that fact because while all of my family members who attended the wedding lived in Georgia, they lived above the gnat line. (For the inexperienced and uninformed, the gnat line runs more or less from Columbus in the west to Savannah in the east; the part of Georgia above that line is sparsely populated with gnats, that part below the line is densely populated with them. I don’t how they know where the line is.) Now, thirty-six years later, if the subject of our wedding ever comes up in a conversation with some members of my family, I still hear “I will never forget those gnats!” One of my aunts, the first time I saw her after the wedding, didn’t say “What a nice ceremony!” or “I hope you will be so happy!”; no, she said, “I couldn’t believe those gnats!” “But it was a nice ceremony,” I responded. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, “all I remember is those gnats!”

It was, in fact, a very nice ceremony. It’s too bad that so many of my folks can’t remember it because all they could pay attention to was the gnats.

The funny thing is that I didn’t notice a single gnat that day and have no memory of any gnats being present in the sanctuary. And while I had spent some time below the gnat line since I started going home with Debra, I certainly wasn’t a native and had not become acclimated to the little pests. It’s hard to believe that the gnats were just polite and so chose not to bother the bride and groom.

The difference in my experience and that of my family members, I think, was that I had more invested in the ceremony than they did and, being so invested, I noticed nothing other than the experience of marrying Debra. I’m not sure I would have noticed if the roof had caved in. I was there to marry Debra and nothing was going to distract me from that experience.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here about the ways in which we do or don’t experience God when we come to a worship service and about the ways in which we are or aren’t distracted by whatever little irritants circumstances or people or life send to visit us …

Banana Pudding Discipleship

Occasionally I am brought up short by the realization that some people have never had real banana pudding. If you are wondering what I’m talking about, you are one of those people.

My heart breaks for you.

Real banana pudding is made following the recipe on the Nilla Vanilla Wafers box. As a public service, I present it here:

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Dash salt
3 eggs, separated
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
45 NILLA Wafers, divided
5 ripe bananas, sliced (about 3 1/2 cups), divided
Additional NILLA Wafers and banana slices, for garnish

Instructions
1. Mix 1/2 cup sugar, flour and salt in top of double boiler. Blend in 3 egg yolks and milk. Cook, uncovered, over boiling water, stirring constantly for 10 to 12 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla.
2. Reserve 10 wafers for garnish. Spread small amount of custard on bottom of 1 1/2-quart casserole; cover with a layer of wafers and a layer of sliced bananas. Pour about 1/3 of custard over bananas. Continue to layer wafers, bananas and custard to make a total of 3 layers of each, ending with custard.
3. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form; gradually add remaining 1/4 cup sugar and beat until stiff but not dry. Spoon on top of pudding, spreading evenly to cover entire surface and sealing well to edges.
4. Bake at 350°F in top half of oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until browned. Cool slightly or refrigerate. Garnish with additional wafers and banana slices just before serving.

There are other banana pudding recipes that require less time, less preparation, and less love to prepare, but they are pale imitations of the real thing. One gets out of a banana pudding what one (or, in my case, one’s Good Wife) is willing to put into it. Quality ingredients, dedicated effort, use of a double boiler and an oven, and meringue make for a wonderful banana pudding-eating experience.

Oh, you can take short-cuts, even to the point of using a boxed pudding mix, in making “banana pudding” (I use quotation marks in the sense of “so-called”), but you will not have the full and true banana pudding experience.

When it comes to discipleship, to our following of Jesus, we have choices as to what recipe we will use. We can settle for short-cuts and pre-packaged approaches and the result will be, so far as it goes, “discipleship.” But we also have the option of going all in; we can take the time, make the effort, and use the quality ingredients (prayer, silence, Bible study, worship, and service) that will result in real deal discipleship.

I’ve had all kinds of banana pudding and I’ve seen all kinds of discipleship.

In both cases, once you’ve experienced the real thing, you won’t want the other stuff …

The “No All-Star Ballot B4 June 1” Movement

Voting for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is underway, which is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because each team has played only about twenty-five games so far this season and so there is simply not enough evidence on which to judge the players’ performance. That is why I will not fill out an All-Star ballot until June 1. I hope, if you care about this issue as much as I do—and I realize that there is a very, very slim chance that you do—that you will join me in the “No MLB All-Star Ballot B4 June 1” Movement.

To vote at this early date is to participate in a popularity contest rather than in a merit-based selection process. That voting for the Mid-Summer Classic has deteriorated into a popularity poll is underscored by the way that the teams encourage their fans to vote for the home team’s players. While I understand the desire of fans to support their favorite team’s players, to deem someone All-Star worthy because of the uniform he wears is silly.

I’m a Braves fan and there are some Braves who will deserve serious consideration from me or from somebody in Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine. If Andrelton Simmons is not the starting National League shortstop then they ought to cancel the game. Freddie Freeman, Evan Gattis, and Justin Upton should get a lot of votes. But no one who is paying any attention at all should vote for Dan Uggla, Chris Johnson, B. J. Upton, or Jayson Heyward. And, while fans (thankfully) don’t select the pitching staffs, National League Manager Mike Matheney might, the way things are going, have to give serious consideration to the Braves’ entire starting rotation.

While I recognize that without the fans there would be no Major League baseball, I still believe that the entire roster of the two teams, including the starting lineups, should be selected by the managers and players of each respective league, since they are the ones who see all the players play and who know their true contributions to their teams. It’s a good thing that the on-line fan ballot gives each player’s up-to-date batting statistics, but those stats tell only a part of the story. What about each player’s defensive play? Or base running? Or hustle? Or leadership? I say let professional baseball people pick the All-Star teams so that the best teams made up of the most deserving players will be on the field.

The bottom line for me is that players should be judged on as large a portion as possible of their body of work and by people who are truly qualified to know whether they are of All-Star quality.

So join the movement! Show your support! On Twitter use #NoMLBAllStarBallotB4June1. Go to Facebook and like the No MLB All-Star Ballot B4 June 1 page. But whatever you do, please don’t cast your ballot(s) until June 1.

By the way, having the outcome of the All-Star Game determine home field advantage for the World Series is ridiculous, too, but we’ll save that movement for another year …

Dem Bones

Does any Baptist out there besides me remember “M” Night? The “M” stood for “Mobilization” and the annual “M” Night held in each Baptist Association was a program designed to inspire the churches to ever greater discipleship heights through the program known as Baptist Young People’s Union, then as Training Union, then as Church Training, and then (and finally, so far as I know), as Discipleship Training. The rally was typically held on a Monday night in mid-autumn.

Once when I was a young pastor I was invited to bring the “inspirational message” for a neighboring association. I chose as my text Ezekiel 37:1-14, the story of Ezekiel’s vision of a valley filled with dry bones. In that vision God shows Ezekiel a valley filled with dry bones. The prophet is told to preach to the dry bones (here I resist the temptation to insert the silly line I have often used about this being every preacher’s experience at one time or another) and the dry bones come together to form skeletons (you know, the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone and all that). Then sinews and flesh and skin come onto the skeletons so that now Ezekiel sees a valley full of nice, fully formed cadavers.

It is only when Ezekiel preaches to the breath/wind/spirit (the same Hebrew word means all of that) so that the breath/wind/spirit comes into those bodies that the bodies come to life. The Lord told Ezekiel what the vision was about: God was going to “resurrect” the people from the graves of their Babylonian captivity and give them new life back in their own land; “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and will act, says the LORD” (v. 14).

In my sermon I pointed out that while the bones looked much better when they came together and became covered with flesh and skin, the bodies were still dead until the Spirit of God came into them. I went on to make the (very valid, I thought) point that in our churches, we could have all the fine-looking ministry programs we could manage but, unless the church and its ministries were filled with the Spirit of God, our programs and our churches were still dead.

After the service, this one fellow came up to me, shook my hand, and said, “I liked that if nobody else did.” Story of my preaching life …

I thought about that night because Ezekiel 37 was one of my scripture readings this morning (Tuesday). Sometimes in our churches we find ourselves in search of some new life and to that end we try some new things. Some, and hopefully all, of those new things will go real well and we’ll be rightly excited about it. Let me say, though, what I said at that “M” Night some twenty-five years ago: we can look real good but we are only truly alive when we are enlivened and empowered by the Spirit of God; that Spirit is a gift of God and so the real life that we experience comes to us only by God’s grace.

There is a difference between looking alive and being alive—and that difference is the Spirit of God. We can make ourselves look vital but only the Spirit of God can cause us to be vital.

We can manage resuscitation with our own breath but only God can bring about resurrection through God’s Spirit.

So is there anything we can do to become more open to the Spirit of God? Yes—we can move toward praying regularly and constantly; we can read our Bibles with an ever-increasing prayerful attitude in which we seek to know and do God’s will; we can worship God along with our sisters and brothers; we can enjoy the communion of Christian fellowship; and we can gladly and sacrificially serve God by serving others. Such practices make us more open and available to the Spirit of God who is with us, wanting to give us new life.

Can I get an “Amen”?

Or at least an “I like that if nobody else does!”?

Lessons from a Jar

I wrote some of my deepest secrets on a piece of notebook paper, carefully folded the sheet, placed it in an empty Mason jar, and screwed the lid on tight. I then dug a hole about a foot deep out behind my father’s utility house, placed the jar in the hole, and filled the hole with dirt. My plan was to return to it at some unspecified time in the future to see if my fears had come to pass and if my dreams had come true.

Being ten years old and having homework to do, baseball games to play, clover to lie in, a creek to play in, books to read, baseball cards to collect, Braves games to listen to, a dog to pass the time with, and a bike to ride, I soon forgot all about the jar that was buried in our backyard.

Until one day some months (maybe even a couple of years) later the memory of the jar hit me out of nowhere and I rushed outside, retrieved a shovel—and walked around the yard trying to remember exactly where I had hidden my treasure, since the falling pine straw had made one spot indistinguishable from another. After a few false starts, I finally found the spot—I knew it was the spot when the shovel broke the glass jar.

I knelt down and pulled the broken jar from the hole and retrieved the carefully folded piece of paper that held all the hopes and fears that had been in me just a few months before, only to find that it was damp, that the layers were stuck together, and that the blue ink in which I had written my precious words had run and faded. When I tried to unfold the paper, it came apart in my hands; I was not able to read a single word that I had written.

I was disappointed. But the thing that really struck me was that I could not remember a single thing I had written on that piece of paper. Just months before I had committed my greatest fears and my fondest hopes to that blue-lined sheet—all the things on which my young world seemed on that day to hinge—and now I had no idea what those fears and dreams had been. I had, of course, moved on to new ones or perhaps to more highly developed versions of the old ones. I had put away childish things and moved on to slightly more mature childish things.

There were things I could have done to preserve the record of my dreams and fears; I could have, for example, wrapped the jar in layers of aluminum foil before burying it. We make such efforts sometimes; we take every possible step to preserve and to hold on to what was and to what might have been. Maybe we are better off if we let them go; the truth is that even had I been able to read what I had written I would have thrown it away and would soon have forgotten it all anyway.

Such forgetting is a gift of the childhood experience. It’s harder for adults.

It’s bad math, but here is how I’ve come to look at it: we should spend 5% of our time and energy looking backward (because that’s where we came from), 95% of our time and energy looking forward (because that’s where we’re going), and 100% of our time and energy living in the moment (because that’s where we are). That’s the way, I believe, that God would have us live because God is the God of our past and of our future, but it is in this moment that we experience God and that we live the life that God has given us to live.

After all, the lesson I learned from the jar I learned not in the retrospective and prospective thoughts I placed in it but rather in the act of digging it up…

The Headwaters of the Tobesofkee

I recently spent a day with Wade Rooks, an old friend from my hometown; at the end of the day we realized that we had spent more time together in that one day than we had in the previous thirty-five years combined. It was a good day.

We were driving on a short bypass north of town that connects Highway 41 to Highway 341 and that, compared to most roads in Barnesville, has not been there very long; on the side of the road was a sign telling us that we were crossing Tobesofkee Creek. I said, “You know, until they built this road I had no idea that Tobesofkee Creek ran through Lamar County. I cross it all the time on I-75 and I-475 south of Macon but I didn’t know it came this far.” “If I’m not mistaken,” my friend said, “the headwaters of Tobesofkee Creek are here. Do you remember that creek we used to go to? I think the headwaters are around there.”

I was dumbfounded. I’ve crossed Tobesofkee Creek in Bibb County hundreds of times but didn’t know that the stream originated in my home county. So, to all you folks who live around Lake Tobesofkee and who boat, swim, and fish in the lake, I say “You’re welcome.”

And just like that, the Tobesofkee became for me a metaphor for the way life goes.

Wade has lived in Lamar County for all of his life; he stayed near our headwaters, near the source of everything for both of us—faith, friendship, family, and a fair amount of foolishness. He has made his life there; it is there that he has found his career, his interests, his gains, his losses, his struggles, his relationships, and—most importantly, he would say—his daughter and his grandchildren.

I, on the other hand, left home to go to college and, except for visits, have never (at least, not yet) moved back. Interestingly enough, my life in its outline has followed the course of the Tobesofkee. I first went to Macon, where at Mercer University I was blessed with an education, a worldview, a mentor, and a partner that together proved to be the most formative realities in my life. I got my start, like the creek, in Lamar County but it was in Bibb County where I, like the creek, got dammed up and built up and developed; it was in Macon that I became a little more useful. And the Tobesofkee empties into the Ocmulgee River which runs through Ben Hill County where I now live and work. It is in those places that I have made my life; there I found my career, my interests, my gains, my losses, my struggles, and—most importantly, I would say—my wife and my children.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I have along the way wandered off the Tobesofkee path and sojourned in lands where other rivers flow: Louisville, Kentucky and the Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee and the Cumberland; Augusta, Georgia and the Savannah; and Adel, Georgia and the Little, the New, and the Withlacoochee.)

When we got together the other day, though, Wade and I found ourselves catching each other up on what’s been happening over the past three and a half decades while at the same time celebrating our mutual roots. We spoke of how our faith has developed in different ways, largely because of the different paths we’ve taken, but also of how our faith was birthed, nurtured, and blessed by our families and by our older sisters and brothers at the Midway Baptist Church.

Wade and I easily fell back into our friendship; that was largely because of the project on which we had gotten together to work, a project that involves something we both love, though his love has been life-long while mine has been of more recent origin. (As to the nature of that project, let me just say “Watch out, Nashville!”) At a deeper level, though, we fell easily back into our friendship because, while he stayed there and I left there, we are both from there. While lots of things have changed, that is one thing that has not and will not—because it cannot.

Spending the day with my old friend Wade reminded me of the importance both of our roots and of our journey. We start where we start and we go where we go; our beginnings define us but so do the paths we choose to take and the circumstances that are thrust upon us. Wade and I have both done a lot of living and we’ve both in our own ways gone a long way from where we started.

Yes, we’re both a long way downstream now. But it was good—it is good—to return to the headwaters …