Flash Mobs and the Everlasting Song

The other evening my husband wanted to show me a flash mob on YouTube. We ended up watching at least twenty in different cities around the globe, including tango dancers in Budapest and swing and Charleston dancers…somewhere else.

Dancin' in Denver, November 2011

This is a great one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU. My sketchy research suggests "Ode to Joy" is the favorite of flash mobs globally.

In Minneapolis in November 2015

One symphonic performance started with a young girl playing a phrase on a simple wooden flute to a man who echoed her notes on a bass. Slowly, casually, other instrumentalists wandered over until a full orchestra shared Beethoven’s joy.

When the music ended, performers dispersed as if nothing special had happened.

Meanwhile, a line from a hymn kept tapping my shoulder and whispering in my ear, a line from “All Hall the Power of Jesus’ Name.”

O that with yonder sacred throng
we at His feet may fall!
We'll join the everlasting song,
and crown Him Lord of all.
We'll join the everlasting song,
and crown Him Lord of all.

It turns out there are several more verses to the hymn that I’ve never sung, and alternate wording to verses I have sung. For example, one version substitutes “all the sacred throng” for “yonder sacred throng.” No way! I will never give up “yonder” to sing “all the.” How boring! I will continue to honor the ancient, venerable words.

But anyway, as I delighted in the flash mobs, and my husband and I wistfully agreed we wished to participate in one, I thought about Heaven and the everlasting song. When I get to Heaven, I expect to find yonder sacred throng of people already singing songs of praise to Jesus, like a flash mob at a huge mall. And I’m going to run—not slowly or casually—to join them. Will I have my ukulele? I don’t know. Will I have learned to play Ray’s accordion? I don’t know. Will I wait for the next verse to start before finding the Alto I part? I don’t know. Will my soprano range be restored? I don’t know. I can only imagine.

The crowd singing the everlasting song will never disperse, if another old hymn tells the truth.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

And another hymn exclaims,

What a day that will be,
When my Jesus I shall see,
And I look upon His face,
The One who saved me by His grace;
When He takes me by the hand,
And leads me through the Promised Land,
What a day, glorious day that will be.

Yes! What. A. Day.

Until that day, I’ll keep singing with my church family. And with my school family. And with Don and Dave in the morning on the car radio. And with the Mad Dog Baptist Choir. And often with only my ukulele and God.

And if you’re organizing a flash mob, text me.

If there are ukuleles in Heaven, they will always be in tune.

“S” is for Song

Yesterday was rough, even for a Monday. Rotten days result from problems, people, or my perception of problems and people. 

I realize what I consider a bad day would be a dream-come-true for someone else. I experienced my bad day as an employed person in a climate controlled workplace with free coffee. A purple PT Cruiser that I don’t have to share with anyone else transported me to different locations on my bad day. My closet is overstuffed with stylish clothing I can wear while I’m in turmoil. (Yes, you’re supposed to laugh if you’ve seen my wardrobe.)

Legal, non-prescription drugs

Having said all that, yesterday was rough, even for a Monday. I would have cried, had I had the energy to do so. When I got home, I prayed and read my Bible and the study book I’m using. I asked my praying friends to pray for me. Later on, I texted a request for chocolate to my son who was shopping at the Lycoming Mall. He brought three bars of Gertrude Hawk home, and I self-medicated with the peanut butter filled dark chocolate before falling asleep watching Castle.

As I left for work this morning, I wondered if a miserable Monday would birth a terrible Tuesday. I often listen to Fox & Friends on Sirius XM as I drive to school; it makes up for having to turn off my TV and get dressed in the morning. But today I figured I probably needed some encouragement from Christian radio, hoping they wouldn’t discuss the Appalachian Trail for ten minutes. 

Thanks, guys!

And that is why “S” is for song, though it took a long time for me to get here. I heard two songs during my commute which were exactly what I needed to hear. Being of declining memory, I can only write about one of them. I believe it was performed by Finding Favour (who must be British since they don’t know how to spell favor). The other one had a lot of “w” words in it; sorry, that’s all I got.

A few weeks ago, a college and FB friend shared an article by a worship leader explaining why he no longer cares for contemporary Christian music. One of his criticisms was the endless repetition of lyrics in the songs. I immediately thought of Psalm 136, where the phrase “his love endures forever” appears sixteen times. Written about 3000 years ago, it's not exactly contemporary…

“Cast My Cares” almost reaches biblical proportions by repeating “I will cast my cares on you” fifteen times. I needed to hear every one of them. I needed to sing along to affirm my faith and respond to the apostle’s words, “Cast all your care upon Him, because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 

The feared terrible Tuesday never materialized. I thank God, his Word, my praying friends, my son, Gertrude Hawk, WGRC, Finding Favour, and St. Peter. I suspect I’ll have other bad days, and when I do, I hope to remember God cares for me in the midst of the muddle.

A tasty alternative to CVS

Ramblings on being a messenger

“Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger
greater than the one who sent him.” (Emphasis mine)
Jesus to his disciples, recorded in John 13:16

The Message is in the ___________________.

If you live in central Pennsylvania and listen to Christian radio, you easily fill in the blank with the word “Music.” I hear that phrase—The Message is in the Music—multiple times each day as I drive to and from my job with my radio tuned to FM 91.3, WGRC. That makes the radio station a messenger and those mysterious, invisible radio waves its chosen medium.

My sister, Taffy Spaloss, designs and constructs quilts which she calls Message Quilts. She explains, “Each quilt is birthed with either a person in mind, or a message that I want to express, or both. Each step of the quilt is then performed with that thought in mind. I get excited when the blocks are sewn together and I begin to see what the finished quilt will look like. And the delivery of that quilt is the grand finale, the delivery of the blessing to the one God desires to bless.” (Emphasis mine) My sister is a messenger and fabric is her chosen medium.

I don’t have to build a radio tower or sew a quilt to be a messenger. If I understand Jesus’ words correctly, I already am a messenger, even on those days I feel more like a mess than a messenger. If I’ve accepted the terms of John 13:13, calling Jesus “Teacher and Lord,” the messenger part logically follows.

(Sorry to keep repeating the word “messenger.” My writers critique group will be horrified.)

For me, sometimes the message has been in the puppetry or the lesson or the writing or the ukelele. In all of these, I have to be careful I’m delivering God's message and not just enjoying the media I’ve chosen to get it across. After all, teaching Bible to high school students is enjoyable (most days) and occasionally hilarious, and I’m easily entertained by the sound of my own voice. 

I occasionally joke about starting my own cult, but seriously, isn’t that how cults get started? By teachers enamored of their own voices and viewpoints and the admiration of their students? At the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. it was frightening to see how Satan's message was delivered to the German nation by an evil, charismatic messenger.

As a messenger, I need to know God's message through and through and admit when I don’t. I need to know the Sender of the message and what media will best reach the intended recipients. Finally, I need to know when to get out of God's way.

            How about you? Which media do you use to deliver God’s message? I’d love to hear about it.

Taffy's Tree of Life Design
See her quilts at https://www.etsy.com/shop/MessageQuiltsbyTaffy