Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Once a week I grab up my guitar and head for the local nursing home to sing the old songs the folks love so well.  Songs like: Billy Boy, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain. 

 The folks like all the old familiar songs, but Let Me Call You Sweetheart is the song that brings the greatest response. A dreamy look comes over each person's face along with a big smile. The song seems to bring back to everyone the memory of a certain special someone from the past. Faces that are droopy and not responsive to much around them become lively, and eyes twinkle.  If you sit down with the nursing home folks, right then, and ask them "Tell me how you met your sweetheart", years fade away as people begin to tell of long ago when the felt their first bloom of love.   

It seems impossible to believe that the residents of a nursing home ever experienced intense passion, the same kind of intense, hormonal feelings which young people are dealing with in this day and age.  However, we know that the emotions of young men and young women were just as powerful in the past.  Watching the faces and listening to the old folks relating their stories of how they first fell in love proves that!  I recently came across the photo up above for the first time.  It's my mother-in-law and father-in-law in the early 1930's as they were dating. The look they are sharing and their nearness to one another speaks volumes.

Falling in love is a robust and profound mystery.  The Bible puts it this way:
There are three things which are too wonderful for me; yes, four which I do not understand:  The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.  Proverbs 30:18,19

For this reason, I need to remember to pray for the young adults that I know- that they would be wise in who they date and that they would honor Jesus Christ with their bodies, to be chaste, until the day they wed.  I need to remember that when I pray for my young grandchildren, I should also pray for the nuturing and spiritual upbringing of their future spouses. 

Since every generation experiences afresh the strong emotions of romantic love, I would encourage any of you reading this blog to pray in a similiar manner for the young people you care about.  It may be now or very soon that the ones you know will be looking into someone's eyes and saying, "Let me call you sweetheart.  I'm in love with you!  Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too!"  We all remember what it was like.   As a result, you know why it's important to pray in this regard for the future of those you love.

Frozen Stiff

Years ago, on wintery days like the picture above, my mother wasn't able to hang the family wash outside to dry.  Instead, after running our bedding and clothing through the wringer washer and wash tubs every Monday morning, she hung the wet clothes on lines my dad had strung up in the woodshed.  Since there was no heat in that building, Monday evening my mom brought the laundry back into the house to finish drying it over a rack of wooden bars in the dining room.  What I remember best was my mom's attempt to bring my dad's long johns back into the house.  They were frozen stiff!   My mom tried as best as she could to manuver the freezing-cold, flat garments with stiff outstretched arms and legs through the doorway, but it was wasn't easy.

I thought of those frozen long johns the other day when I read a selection from one of J. I. Packer's books called Knowing God.  Packer writes  "Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on past disappointments and present heartbreaks, which we frequently do.  The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the 'joy unspeakable and full of glory' (1 Peter 1:8) that Peter took for granted his readers were displaying."  Since it was on a nasty, freezing, and snowy day that I read this selection from J. I. Packer, I imagined that "dried-up stoicism" was about the same as "frozen, stiff long johns".

I don't know about others, but I find that I slip into bitterness and apathy and gloom at times.  I wouldn't be surprised that during this Christmas season, there are many others who, when reflecting on past disappointments and present heartbreaks, also slip into bitterness and apathy and gloom.  Somehow we manage to function outwardly when we are around others celebrating the season's festivities, but inwardly our emotions and spirits are stiff and cold, and we know it!  We can fool others, but we can't fool ourselves or God. 

There is a request made of God in Psalm 51 that seems appropriate for me and other Christian's to pray when they feel overwhelmed and emotionally frozen at this time of the year.  In Psalm 51 David, the Psalmist, confesses his sin and asks God to have mercy upon him according to His steadfast love.  David also makes this request of God: Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:12).

That sounds like a good prayer for this harried, frantic time of year.  What do you think?

Heavy Burden

All too frequently we hear of mass murders. The most recent was only a few hours away from here where new immigrants were learning English. We shake our heads and say, "None of this makes any sense! How can man do this to one another?" We wonder where God is in all of this.

Yesterday I ran across a song that was sung at a memorial after sixteen school children and their teacher were killed by a gunman in Scotland in 1996. In speaking to God, the song lyrics went: We cannot measure how You heal or answer every sufferer's prayer, yet we believe Your grace responds where faith and doubt unite. (We Cannot Measure How You Heal- by John Bell)

Indeed there are times when we have to put one foot in front of the other and keep functioning even when life has become a terribly confusing weight. It's at those times that we wonder how we can go on. The burden seems too heavy to carry by ourselves. It's at these times that although we can't understand how God is working, even in all our doubt, we can still call out to God in faith. We need His help. We call out to Him for grace in order to make it through the day, or the hour, or the next few minutes of suffering.

How does God's grace come to us? What is one of the most common ways for His grace to come? I think it's when a friend comes alongside us and lets us talk. A friend who does not judge us or try to fix things. Just simply a friend with a listening heart and time to spare to be with us. The Bible says: Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2 I believe a true friend does this for us and is the evidence of God's grace.

Just like in the picture above where a heavy slab of concrete is being carried by two people, in the same way a burden of the soul is halved when someone helps us carry it. To bear one another's burden is the supreme imitation of Jesus, the ultimate burden bearer, the one who bore all our sins and hurts on the cross.

I pray that God will always bring someone to come alongside of me when I need a friend, and likewise, I pray that I will be sensitive to others and listen with a caring heart when others are in need. As a follower of Jesus, doing the will of God is not a mysterious, unfathomable pilgrimage. Serving Him is as practical and simple as listening to others in their need.