Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 10 (final)

A twitter feed I follow posted a link yesterday to a blog with the following quote from a book entitled The Church that Never Sleeps:

Sometimes God will allow tough times to come at you immediately when you're following a dream because He wants to find out up front if you can withstand them.

That makes sense only if you don’t think about it.  If God is omniscient (all-knowing), then what in the world does He need to find out?  He already knows!  Unbound by time, He already knows the outcome of every big endeavor every believer who will ever walk the face of the earth will undertake … and whether they can withstand the tough times.  It’s a nice thought, but it unintentionally denies God one of His key attributes.

There may be some who are wondering how long I will continue just parroting the words of others rather than coming up with something original to share in my Musings.  I sometimes wonder that myself.  (The above thought was original, by the way.)  Solomon was right, though, when he wrote in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun.  To think that a profound thought that comes to me has never come to anyone else is a bit arrogant.  But that doesn’t keep me from trying to think deeply.  Reading the deep thoughts of others helps.

Today’s entry will be the last that I will share from Peter Scazzero’s devotional book The Daily Office.  This one was written by Lynn Baab in her book Sabbath Keeping:  Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest:

The Sabbath teaches us grace because it connects us experientially to the basic truth that nothing we do will earn God’s love.  As long as we are working hard, using our gifts to serve others, experiencing joy in our work along with the toil, we are always in danger of believing that our actions trigger God’s love for us.  Only in stopping, really stopping, do we teach our hearts and souls that we are loved apart from what we do.

During a day of rest, we have the chance to take a deep breath and look at our lives.  God is at work every minute of our days, yet we seldom notice.  Noticing requires intentional stopping and the Sabbath provides that opportunity.  On the Sabbath we can take a moment to see the beauty of a maple leaf, created with great care by our loving Creator …

Without time to stop, we cannot notice God’s hand in our lives, practice thankfulness, step outside our culture’s values or explore our deepest longings.  Without time to rest, we will seriously undermine our ability to experience God’s unconditional love and acceptance.  The Sabbath is a gift whose blessings cannot be found anywhere else.

That’s enough to think about for now.  The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 9

From my rehearsal notes:  Wednesday, October 19 -- we're almost caught up and current!  Woohoo!

As we loaded the CHS Band equipment up after they played their show in Chesnee last Saturday, we discovered that one of my tires was not completely flat, but it was dangerously low. We successfully pumped the tire back up and it held all the way back to Clinton (thanks be to God), but further examination revealed that all four tires were suffering from a case of dry-rot. First thing Monday morning my horse got new shoes.

The old tires still had a good deal of tread wear left in them, but they were 9 years old and the truck was never kept in a garage or carport. Constant exposure to the UV rays of sunlight with no shelter breaks down the structural integrity of the tires. There’s a parallel in our lives. Our souls were created with a need for Sabbath rest (shelter) on a weekly basis. When I don’t observe Sabbath (and I usually don’t do so very successfully), I abuse my soul and run the risk of spiritual dry-rot.

As was last week’s quote, this week’s quote is from a book by Wayne Mueller – Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives.

Sabbath is not dependent upon our readiness to stop. We do not stop when we are finished. We do not stop when we complete our phone calls, finish our project, get through this stack of messages, or get out this report that is due tomorrow. We stop because it is time to stop.

Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop – because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility. If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die. Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

We stop because there are forces larger than we that take care of the universe, and while our efforts are important, necessary, and useful, they are not (nor are we) indispensable. The galaxy will somehow manage without us for this hour, this day, and so we are invited –nay, commanded – to relax, and enjoy our relative unimportance, our humble place at the table in a very large world.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus said again and again. Let the work of this day be sufficient.

Sabbath says, be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished.

As I wrote last week, I share this stuff with you because I need it as desperately as anyone.


That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 8

Blogger's note: This entry is from my rehearsal notes from October 12. Enjoy!

As you know, your church staff spent last Thursday and Friday at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. What started in 2001 as a conference to equip and inspire young leaders (about 1500 attended the first one) has grown to a massive scale over the past 11 years. There were 13,000 in attendance in Atlanta this year – and there are additional conferences in the Catalyst “brand” across the US now as well. I’m not one who really enjoys huge crowds and high-adrenaline atmospheres (which has been a large part of the Catalyst experience, especially in recent years), but to learn from the teachers they bring in is worth the personal inconvenience and discomfort.

This year, however, there was a deliberate effort not to try to blow the top off the adrenaline meter with the music in the main sessions (there was still enough of that outside the venue … you’d have to go to one in order to understand). My adrenaline-bruised soul found it a welcome change. Wayne Mueller put it this way:

… we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms that govern how life grows … seasons and sunsets and great movements of seas and stars … We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.

To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself.

Many scientists believe we are “hard-wired” like this, to live in rhythmic awareness, to be in and then step out, to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. It follows then that the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity – “You ought, you’d better, you must” – but rather a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature. It is a reminder of how things really are, the rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong.

As I write this, it is approaching 3:00pm on Wednesday … my busiest day of the week. My soul is compressed by the must-get-done-before-this-evening-ness of life. I don’t share this stuff with you because I think I have a handle on it. I share it with you because I need it as desperately as any of you. God is not honored by my frantic pace; His work in my life is diminished by it. And I am not alone.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 7

I have returned to the ongoing discussion thread of the past few weeks. Week 6 of the Daily Office study focuses on helping us to establish a pattern of stopping during our day to remind ourselves of the presence of God in our lives and in the goings on around us. If I had been writing the book, I probably would have put this first … but I think it is very effective coming where it does in the pattern of recovery of spiritual health. Sabbath-taking (talking about brief sabbaths throughout the day as well as taking a Sabbath rest during the week) is a lost art in this day and age. We just don’t know how to do it … and I mean myself when I say “we.”

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Trappist Monk and theologian Thomas Merton wrote:

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.

This is no new idea. Christ in the parable of the sower long ago told us that “the seed is the word of God.” We often think this applies only to the word of the Gospel as formally preached in churches on Sundays. But every expression of the will of God is in some sense a “word” of God and therefore a “seed” of new life. The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God.

We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good.

As I read that back on July 21, I was blown away by the fact that God seeks me in EVERY situation … even the ones that feel totally devoid of the presence of God. God is not limited by our perception of His presence. He is always there. In the words of Carl Jung: “Bidden or unbidden, God is here.” Another way of saying it might be this: “God is here whether I want Him here or not.” Or maybe this (and I really take comfort in this):

“Even if I forget to invite Him, God comes anyway.”

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 6

Still sharing gems from Peter Scazzero’s The Daily Office. I would have found the following prayer meaningful even if I didn’t have an Irish Catholic brother-in-law named Patrick.

Prayer of St. Patrick

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a multitude.


Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every mane who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me,


I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the creator of creation.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from THE DAILY OFFICE - part 5

Blogger's note:  Still catching up on posting.  This entry is from my rehearsal handout from Wednesday, August 31.

I find it interesting (though not at all welcome) that today finds us with two choir members out of town to look after parents with age-related health issues. We will be careful to lift them up in our prayers not only now, but in the days to come. Your prayers for me and my family in a similar situation were life-blood to us.

Even though it has taken me more than 8 weeks to go through Peter Scazzero’s 8-week spiritual journey, The Daily Office, it may be about time to let this be the final Musings in the series … next week’s Musings will tell you whether I decided to end it here or not. Here are some of the things I found noteworthy enough to copy into my journal:

We want to follow Jesus into the abundant life of resurrection. But we are less than enthusiastic about following him into the Garden of Gethsemane. ~ Peter Scazzero.

Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past. … It is not therefore true that we become less through loss – unless we allow the loss to make us less, grinding our soul down until there is nothing left. … Loss can also make us more. I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life … until it became part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it. … One learns the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul. … However painful, sorrow is good for the soul … the soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering. ~ Gerald Sittser

Getting off our thrones and joining the rest of humanity is a must for spiritual maturity. We are not the center of the universe. The universe does not revolve around us.

Yet a part of us hates limits. We won’t accept them. This is one of the primary reasons grieving our loss biblically is such an indispensable part of spiritual maturity.
Embracing our limits humbles us like little else. ~ Peter Scazzero

We should bring to God what is in us, not what ought to be in us. The “oughts” will keep us from telling the truth. They will also keep us from feeling the truth. Especially the truth about our pain. ~ C. S. Lewis

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Oh, to Be a Fly on the Wall This Evening!

As you read this, Larry and I will be driving together to a conference in Atlanta. You will be led in rehearsal this evening by two of the finest musicians I have ever known: Dawn Driggers and Dr. Charles Gaines.

Dr. Gaines is professor emeritus of music at Presbyterian College. He holds the Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music degrees from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, and the Doctor of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary. He is the founder and former conductor of the Laurens County Chorale, and is the founder and conductor of the Greenwood Festival Chorale. Since Dawn began accompanying the Laurens County Chorale, and a couple of years later, the Greenwood Festival Chorale, Chuck and his wife Jean have become dear, dear friends of ours; but it took me a couple of years before I was comfortable calling him “Chuck” instead of “Dr. Gaines.”

Dawn holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree (cum laude) from Samford University in Birmingham, AL. Music Ed was typically a 5-year degree program at Samford, but Dawn finished it in 4 (and added 16 hours of foreign language). Although she is best known locally as a pianist and accompanist, her undergraduate degree was not in piano but in voice.


At Samford there were three ways to cover the requirement of a senior vocal recital:

1. Studio Recital (performed before faculty and invited guests)
2. Degree with Recital (aka DWR – a 30-minute public Senior Recital)
3. Samford Performing Arts Program (aka SPAP – a 30-minute public Junior Recital and a 60-minute public Senior Recital)

Only the best vocal students were allowed to do DWR or SPAP. I hated the way I sang in college (and so did most of the voice faculty), so I just did a studio recital. Dawn, on the other hand, was a SPAP student. Looking back, she sometimes wonders if she had been in her right mind to try to do all that she did. The fact that she also fell in love with and agreed to marry me confirms that she was … indeed … crazy. In addition to accompanying the Laurens County Choral and the Greenwood Festival Chorale, Dawn also teaches piano and voice privately in our home, and accompanies and teaches voice to music minors and secondaries at Newberry College.

So why would I like to be a fly on the wall this evening? The shoe is on the other foot. Dawn is conducting … with Chuck accompanying. You’re in for an interesting (and productive) rehearsal.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 4

Readers of my blog may be aware that I try to write a half-page column every week for my Wednesday evening rehearsal(s).  I'm aware that only a small percentage of my choir actually reads them.  Their available time is as limited as anyone's.  Most of the month of August I was in my hometown at my Dad's bedside in the hospital as he traveled the last few days of his journey through life.  I was blessed to have people filling in for me at church giving me the freedom to receive the blessing of having that time with Dad.  I was able to plan the rehearsal and write the column for the second Wednesday that I was away.  This entry is from that rehearsal on August 10.  I'm gradually catching up with getting them uploaded to the blog.  I could do them all in about 10 minutes, but I like the idea of something new every few days better.  That's how I would want to read it if I were following the blog.  To my one blog follower:  I don't even know you, but thanks.

The past few days have been anything but boring for me. I can’t tell you how much your prayers and words of encouragement that have been passed along to me mean. Long story short with Dad … nothing is headed in any direction quickly, and his condition keeps sending very mixed messages concerning prognosis. A setback in one area will have us concerned that the end might be near, then 10 minutes later he will respond better to physical therapy than he has the two previous days (that’s just a for instance from this morning). As far as prognosis, it’s anybody’s guess. He could last weeks to months like this, or he could take a turn suddenly and be gone in a few hours. What we do know is that he will not again be healthy enough for anything other than a full nursing care facility.

Mom and the sisters have mentioned concern that all this weight is on me, but I am holding up fine (except for a little loneliness at the house between supper and bedtime). One thing that I think is going on is that the discipline of following Peter Scazzero’s The Daily Office has given me a grounding that has enabled me to bear up under the load. It really doesn’t feel like a burden at all. It’s just what I need to do right now.
In addition to the above, I am deeply blessed with a wife and sons who have taken up the slack at home (and some at church) in order to enable me to be here looking after Mom and Dad. Added to that blessing is a church family that has blessed my presence here in such wonderful way. Words fail to express how deeply moved I am to be the recipient of such grace.

From The Daily Office, a quote from Chaim Potok:

“One learns of the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, by turning inside oneself, buy finding one’s own soul. And it is important to know of pain. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, and our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.”

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.