Empty CD Cases [Music Monday]

[Note: Facebookers - you'll need to look at the original post if you want to click the links.]

So the wife and I went on a cleaning spree Saturday. Actually, she was cleaning and I went on an organizing rampage. My cd collection has been destroyed, manhandled, scratched and mutilated since kids came along.

I'm pretty sad about the empty cd cases. Does anyone have any of these cds? I'll give them back, I promise.

- Audio Adrenaline, Worldwide

- Bryan Duncan, The Last Time I Was Here.

- Cedarmont Worship For Kids, Volume 1

- Steven Curtis Chapman, The Great Adventure

- Steven Curtis Chapman, Signs of Life

- Michael W. Smith, This Was Your Time

- Michael W. Smith, i 2 (Eye)

- Michael Card, The Life, Disc 2

- Third Day, Offerings, A Worship Album

Sadder than a caseless cd, or a cd-less case, is the thought that there are cds I have purchased and lost case and all, and fail to remember. Oh well. We live here for a time, and we do not take anything with us when we go. Why cry over that which is lost and cannot be brought to mind or reclaimed?

Instead, we ought to enjoy what God has given us in the now, delight in it for His Glory and our joy. I got to listen to Tormato by Yes yesterday for the first time in a long time. Brilliant, in a 'care for the creation' kind of way, and also the 'what were they thinking' kind of way. The boldly beautiful and piercingly painful keyboarding of Rick Wakemen is my favorite.

Just a sample for your listening delight:

Music Monday: What If His People Prayed?

What if? What if we trusted Him? What if we did what He calls us to do?

A pastor friend (actually, a brother in Christ I've never met) posted this quote:
“Faith is transferring your trust from your own efforts to the efforts of Christ. You were relying on other things to make you acceptable, but now you consciously begin relying on what Jesus did for your acceptance with God. All you need is nothing. If you think, ‘God owes me something for all my efforts,’ you are still on the outside.”
- Timothy Keller, How Can I Know God?

That applies to salvation, and the life of faith, but it also applies to ministry and the Church. We can try to perfect the music, sharpen the preaching, focus on programs, curriculum... and still fail if we fail to ask God to stir the hearts of His people, to call His elect to Himself, to call upon the Spirit to move hearts to repentance.

If true faith is to engage the heart of God as He has revealed Himself in His word, then we should pray more, and pray in continuity with His word. What would happen if we prayed?

PS - don't give up on serving, and doing. Be strong in the strength of the Lord and His might (Eph 6:10-12). Pray and Do.

Music Monday: Graverobber

It's Monday, and I'm off. But I thought I might try an automated post to celebrate some of the great music written by believers to communicate their hope and faith.

When we lost our little girl in 1998, I bitterly realized the reality that we will all expire, one day. Like milk in the fridge, we have a date stamped on us that no one can revoke. This week I spoke to a friend about her dying father, I prayed with a woman who has cancer and is one chemo, and I heard about the death of Michael Crichton, an author whose works challenge me intellectually while being compelling and readable.

I heard this song a few years ago... and it expresses the futility and hopelessness we all feel in the face of our loved one's coming death, and in the inevitability of our own. I can respect this artist's grappling with his own sense of tragedy and struggle with the reality of accidents, wrongful death, and the knowledge that we all have our time. (Mild content warning: some scenes may be mildly disturbing. Nothing more violent or tragic than you would see on TV after 8. Still... be warned.) Gravedigger, by Dave Matthews Band.

But the hope which the Christian has in the face of death is not in supernatural healing, or the prolonging of life beyond 'our time.' The bible tells us we are flowers quickly fading, grass in the sun, fog being burned away by the dawn (James 4:14). The hope (Titus 2:13) that we have is in the coming of our great God and King, the Lord Jesus Christ to collect us from our graves and take us to be with Him (1 Thess 4:13-18). In one of the darkest hours of my life, this song by the band Petra reminded me of that hope. It's a treasure.



I'd welcome you to reflect on this with me in the comments. Where is your hope? What hope do you have in the face of death?