After posting the updates yesterday I spent a good bit of time at Valda’s piano. What a ministering gift it is to read through songs written by people in various times of trial. I wept over There Is a Balm in Gilead and of course I thought of Rod singing it (so I can never hear it without misting up). And I read the words of Be Still, My Soul in a totally new light. I always liked the tune, but I guess never really saw the words. The Hymnal for worship and celebration that we use at church only has verses 1,2, and 4 of what the Cyber Hymnal has:
Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.
Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all He takes away.
Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.
Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise
On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;
Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,
So shall He view thee with a well pleased eye.
Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine
Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.
I also discovered a new song, which is probably old, but I don’t remember hearing it before. We sang it in church and it is an excellent one to sing when you don’t feel like it. The problem with most praise songs for me is that the words require me to actually be feeling love or happiness or whatnot in order to sing them. That is usually not a problem, but I do get depressed at times and singing a song like this is good medicine.
I Will Enter His Gates
I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart
I will enter his courts with praise
I will say this is the day That the lord has made
I will rejoice for he has made me glad
Chorus:
He has made me glad
He has made me glad
I will rejoice for he has made me glad, glad, glad
He has made me glad
He has made me glad
I will rejoice for he has made me glad
The important thing to me is that the “I will” is a choice, not a feeling. I feel dark and moody, but I WILL enter his gates with thanksgiving. I feel sad, but HE has made me glad. It’s most important to sing this way when you’re not feeling it. It is empty otherwise! Praise God this morning when I woke up I realized he had made me glad. Why he does what he does, I do not know, but he is faithful and “all now mysterious will be bright at last” and “through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.”
Just to highlight how irrational our emotions are sometimes, I must be sure to point out that I have everything to be thankful for and to be happy about. Valda has and old bike she’s letting me borrow and this morning Veronika gave me a massage that helped my left shoulder quite a bit. The plumber came and I followed quite a bit of the Swiss German, and a chance meeting with a Schola friend on the tram lead to an invitation to a birthday party tonight where I can get to know some students better.
I still wouldn’t choose not to feel emotions. They are a great responsibility, because I must not let them rule me. I must decide what is appropriate when and fight them if they’re not appropriate, but they are surely a gift from God and when used to His glory a wonderful blessing to myself and to others (I hope).
I love and miss you all. By now everyone should have gotten my “Christmas” letter. If you did not and would like one, please send me your address. (Friends in Switzerland note that I didn’t send any to you all for various reasons but I can send an electronic copy now and put you on the list for next year). Note again that the address has a typo, the street name should have an ‘r’ not an ‘n.’
Peace, love, and happiness!
Ah, just thinking about Be Still, My Soul makes me misty-eyed. I remember LC playing that as a prelude or an offertory during the dark times of mysterious, unwanted change.
I've already heard two people comment on your Christmas letter. To quote one, "[It] was hilarious (as was last year's)."
Love you!
You're right, it is an older song, but you shouldn't be expected to know it if you have no worship connections to the Jesus Movement. :) There's another, very similar, that says: "We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord....And we offer up to you the sacrifices of thanksgiving..." You made me think of that, because this song is the one that taught me the lesson you mentioned, about what part our will has to play in worship.
Worship is not inspired by feeling. What a strange surprise to find something so uplifting isn't born of how we feel. Worship is inspired by God. It is by his spirit and the command of his pleasure that we draw near by lifting him on high. And, for some great and mysterious reason, when we sacrifice our cares and our selves on the altar of praise, worship takes on this amazing dimension of truth that blows aside guilt and fills our hearts with conviction. When the emotion of it is out of our hands, then the emotion of worship becomes HIS emotion, for us and through us. And so he draws us near.
Praise him on high. May the name of the Lord be glorified throughout the earth. May our hearts burn to tell of your wonders, that your glory be made known.
Actually, I know the song well, and if I have any connections with the Jesus Movement, I don't know about them. (Since I actually don't know what the Jesus Movement is, that's possible.) I think it comes from being a college student in the 70's, but I could be wrong. I know we sang it at at least one church in our distant past, but that would be before Janet was aware, or even around. We might have had it on a children's record -- Heather, do you recognize it?
Oh man, both those references take me back. It's outside my area of expertise, but my impression is that the Jesus Movement basically means being a college student (and a Christian) in the 70s. At any rate, both songs were still going strong in the charismatic Episcopal church (you read that right) I was at ca. 1985.
Amen to everything in Brenda's comment.
And yeah, there are so many levels of coolness in "he has made me glad." It's not:
"I am rejoicing for I am glad!",
"I rejoice for I have made myself glad!"—it's tremendously freeing to know that it isn't even our job, but his work. But it's not even...
"I will rejoice for he will make me glad"!
There's a powerful habit some passages have of expressing such a surety that it speaks of the future in the past tense. I like to pray this way, when I can remember—not, "Lord, please do this!" but "Thank you in advance, Lord, that you've already done this."
Oops. Sorry. I'm always forgetting sufficient explanations. The Jesus Movement was a hippie outreach/response to the unstructured, unhealthy experimental nature of their culture. Not everyone involved necessarily ever were hippies - some normal people just reached out with compassion and grace. It strongly emphasized the need for a relationship with Jesus and the freedom from sin and bondage that unconditional love provides. It wasn't charismatic per se, but a significant percentage of people directly involved leaned heavily in that direction.
In any event, a lot of new worship music and styles came out of the newly freed hippies and the people who ministered to them. Simpler, generally, than hymns but still scripturally accurate. Anything that came out of the Hosanna, Maranatha, and/or Brooklyn Tabernacle music ministries ties back to that.
Yes, I do know He Has Made Me Glad. I would have said I knew it "forever" but it would be strange that Janet didn't know it.
It wouldn't be strange if it were from one of our records. There were some we listened to in Rochester but not so much after we moved, for some reason.
I know this song but to the best of my knowledge I've never been a hippie and I don't think I attended a college in the 70s.
