I just finished recording and uploading O Come O Come Emmanuel/Hope is Born. This song pairs the ancient prayers of O Come O Come Emmanuel with words I penned in 2012.

You can listen here

O Come O Come Emmanuel/Hope is born

O come O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Is - rael
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel

Shine into this darkened corner
With the light from Eden’s morn
You who are the world’s former
By your touch a hope is born

O come Thou Dayspring come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel

Interrupt the mindless chatter
Of a world that turned from you
Speak the only Word that matters
Word made flesh, the Word that’s true

O come Thou Wisdom from on high
And order all things far and nigh
To us the path of knowledge show
And cause us in her ways to go

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel

Break into my moment’s sadness
Solitary, lonely, then
Suddenly angelic gladness
Peace on earth! Good will to men!

O come Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of hell thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel

Hallelujah! I will join them
Praising Father, praising Son
Let us hurry then to see him
Jesus is the promised one

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee O Israel
John Mason Neale | Thomas Helmore Public Domain
© 2012 Willing Captive Mark Stenson CCLI License Number 105784

Relaunching recording projects

I was looking at folders of songs that I wrote some time ago, and I encountered songs I had forgotten about. Worse yet, I don’t have them recorded. I had started recording years ago using my desktop computer running Windows 95 (so you can guess how long ago that was!) When the computer was retired, the recording project was also put on hold. Running across the folders of forgotten music made me realize I needed to get back to recording. I needed a solution for recording. I decided to try the Tascam dp-008ex. I have recorded the first project, and I’m pretty happy with the results. So now onward!

The Voice of the Lord

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

- from Psalm 29

What does the voice of the Lord sound like to you? Does God's voice thunder? Is his voice loud and clear? Or does his voice sound muffled? Do you wonder if what you heard was him speaking or whether it was just some other background noise?

Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord clearly in the garden. They heard his voice until they started to listen to the whispers of the serpent. Then they began to question the voice that used to be so familiar and unmistakable. The voice of the Lord grew dim, muffled, frightening, unintelligible.

As years passed Adam and Eve's children and grandchildren, if they perceived the voice of the Lord at all, failed to hear God's voice loudly and clearly.

Occasionally there would be one, a prophet, who would hear the voice of the Lord like a rumbling in the distance, or a whispered voice while waking from sleep. And they shared what they could hear. But the voice of God was garbled to most of the people.

The Father longed for his children to hear his voice loud and clear, to know his heart of love. So he  sent Jesus, the Word made flesh, to speak again with a voice that could be heard.

On the cross, as Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "It is finished", the veil was torn in two. The voice of the Lord thundered. The voice of the Lord shook the tombs open.

May the voice of the Lord still all other voices. May the voice of the Lord be loud and clear in our ears. May we too cry, "Glory!"

Out of the boat

This is one of the devotions that was intended to be shared on a recent short-term mission trip...a devotion which I finally relocated after I was back home from the trip.

Out of the Boat

Jesus Walks on the Water

²² Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³ And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴ but the boat by this time was a long way^[b] from the land,^[c] beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. ²⁵ And in the fourth watch of the night^[d] he came to them, walking on the sea. ²⁶ But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. ²⁷ But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

²⁸ And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹ He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. ³⁰ But when he saw the wind,^[e] he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” ³¹ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³² And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³ And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Questions to discuss:

·         Who do you most identify with in this story?

·         Boats were familiar and comfortable to Peter. At least most of the time. Was the boat a comfortable place in this story?

·         Has Jesus called you out of your comfort zone? Share about that.

·         Pray for each other about the call of Jesus to you to “get out of the boat” and come to Him on the water.

You give them something to eat

Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

¹³ Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴ When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. ¹⁵ Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶ But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷ They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” ¹⁸ And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹ Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰ And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. ²¹ And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Questions to discuss

Jesus keeps stretching the disciples as he calls them to new faith adventures.

·         What are some of the challenging elements in the story above?

·         How would you have felt if you had been one of the disciples there that day?

·         At what point do you think the loaves and fish were multiplied? In the hand of Jesus? In the hands of the disciples? Other?

·         How has Jesus called you to take the little you have and distribute it?

·         Have you seen Jesus multiply the “loaves and fish” you have placed in His hands? What are the loaves and fish in your life?

·         Pray for one another that Jesus would bless and multiply what we place in His hands.

Idols

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:21

This is the last verse in 1 John. It has always struck me as an abrupt ending to the book. And this is a book that, at first blush, is not focused on idolatry. So why does John seemingly shift gears in the last sentence of his letter?

Isaiah, now there is a book that hits the topic of idols. Just take a look at Isaiah 41. The idols are made by craftsmen from the materials he has chosen. See Isaiah 40:18-25.  The idols are strengthened by nailing them down, held together by the skill of the craftsman's soldering.but the idol has no power to speak, either in providing insight into the past or declaring what is to come. the idol has no power to act.

Idols are not always so blatant as a craved piece of wood overlaid with gold. Our culture has more idols of the mind. A person's ideas about God, unless they have the foundation of God's revelation of Himself, are idols, false gods, the work of a thought craftsman. The person may craft their own concept of God, or they may buy into the ideas of someone they know, or someone they heard on the radio, or someone who has written a book.

But God, the true God, reveals Himself in His Word. See Isaiah 40:6-17. All flesh is like grass. Man's ideas too - they fade and fail. But the word of our God stands. His revelation of Himself is faithful and sure. It doesn't, like the idols, need nails to hold it firm in place. The nails that pierced the Word made flesh demonstrate how firm God's revelation of His love and His atoning sacrifice are. They do not fade like grass. They endure.

Here is where I now begin to see why John ends his letter as he does. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." The contrast between the idols of thought constructs of mortal men and God revealed in the word of life that John introduces in 1 John 1 is the contrast between God and idols.

John's exhortation to keep ourselves from idols makes sense alongside the life from the Father that was made manifest in His Son Jesus, in the Light that overpowers the darkness, in the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from sin. It makes sense alongside the false claims that we have not sinned. "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

It is an appropriate exhortation from one who cares with the love of God himself for those to whom he is writing.

Keep yourselves from idols.

Thorns

A crown of thorns. Menacing. Malicious. Mocking. Piercing. Painful.

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
How pale Thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish, which once was bright as morn!

See Adam in the garden.  It was a garden without thorns. It was a garden marked with harmony, beauty, and bounty. It was a garden of open communion and conversation between creation and Creator, between man and his Maker.

But into the harmony comes dissonance and discord. Not content to exercise dominion over creation in the context of loving submission to the Creator, the poisonous seed of rebellion sprouts and invades the beautiful garden. Its fruit is death and brokenness. Thorns.

Casting aside their crowns as royal offspring, Adam and Eve grasp dust and sweat and thorns.

But from eternity past God planned an interposition of life into this spinning vortex of death. The hand of God reaches in rescue.  He reaches into this broken world to ransom, to redeem each of us who have sold ourselves as slaves to destruction. His hand does not hold gold or silver as the redemption price. Rather his hands are scarred by nails. And on his head, a crown. But this is not the royal diadem of power. It is thorns: menacing, malicious and mocking. It is the thorns that invaded and spoiled the garden, now twisted into a crown and roughly, violently pushed onto the head of Jesus. It is the crown that we grasped with Adam in the garden. Our crown, our punishment on his head.

Surely he has borne our griefs

    and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

    smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

    he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

    and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

    we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all.