Month: May 2013

Bring Me a Musician

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks, Music, Photography9 Comments

IMG_9762

 

 Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens.
 Our God is a God who saves;
from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.
 Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins.

 Your procession, God, has come into view,
the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
 In front are the singers, after them the musicians. (Psalm 68:19-21, 24-25)

(Elisha said) But now bring me a musician.” And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him.  And he said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘I will make this dry stream bed full of pools.’ (2 Kings 3:15-16)

Who would place musicians at the front of an army? Who would react to a national threat with the command, “Bring me a musician?”

We were walking from the Mount of Olives, past the Garden of Gethsemane, down through the valley of tombs and back up the hill toward the other side where Caiaphas’ house has been recently excavated and inside the walls where the Roman pavement of the soldiers quarters still exists below a convent. It was very hot -at least to a Canadian who had been driving through a snow storm only a week before.

At the bottom, in the shade of an ancient tomb surrounded by hundreds of graves, literally in the valley of the shadow of death, this young man sat and played his instrument. The others in our group went on to explore more tombs, but I stopped and sat on a low stool by his feet and listened. The music was foreign to my ears. I didn’t understand the structure or the harmony, but it soothed my soul.

I had a dream in which a hotel we were preparing was inundated with new guests. At the front of the crowd, looking for a place to stay, were musicians of every sort. Some of them brought guitars and we put the instruments in gun cabinets while they rested. To me this spoke of the power of music in fighting the evil one.

When our son-in-love was walking through his own valley of the shadow of death on Good Friday, when doctors doubted he would survive, his faithful friends brought their guitars and sat in the waiting room quietly strumming and singing songs of praise to the great healer. Singing seems like an odd activity at such a time, but  they understood the importance of warring with their instruments and with their songs.

There is something about music that by-passes our personal defence systems. It can get by the heart/brain barrier.

I had a singing student whose relationship had just broken up. She assured me, quite calmly, that she was fine, that it was a logical time to end it and she was ready to move on. We happened to be working on the song, “On My Own” from Les Miserables. She didn’t make it two lines into the song before the floodgates of tears opened. Music therapy works on the theory that words delivered via music can get past our intellectual defences and help us heal.

There is something about music that allows us to hear more than just the music. On that day in Jerusalem I felt  jostled by crowds, harassed by vendors, impatiently tolerated by folk in religious garbs of many types, rushed by tour guides, dismayed by the lack of respect warring factions showed for each other and my feet and sun-burned neck hurt. Although our tour director carefully planned our itinerary to avoid the worst crowds there was no getting around this one if we wanted to see where Jesus spent so many critical hours. It was in the shade of a tomb, in the valley of the shadow of death, away from the crowds as I listened to a simple instrument played by a nameless man, that I heard my heavenly Father. He said simply, “Cease striving and know that I am God. It is finished. Rest in my love.”

The psalmist, David, understood. We war from a position of rest, in the valley of the shadow of death. That is where the feast is kept.

In a dream, in a vision of the night

On By Charis PsalloIn Fields4 Comments
Bet El/Bethel
Beit El/Bethel

The Byzantines left a structure to mark the spot in the field where Jacob/Israel is said to have had his dream of an open heaven -or at least somewhere in this area that looks like an ordinary gently sloped hillside. (Dare I say I was somewhat relieved by the absence of a huge edifice or gift shop?)

Dreams are significant enough to be mentioned at least 121 times in the Bible. I’ve learned to pay attention.

Have you had a significant dream that changed your life?

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Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep.  And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold,the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!  And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring.  Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”  And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

 So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it  up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.  He called the name of that place Bethel. (Genesis 28)

The Sun Dial

On By Charis PsalloIn Man made, Photography2 Comments

IMG_1036 dome of rock sundial israel ch - Copy

 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

Love is Louder II

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized7 Comments

mourning to dancing fushiasI stood outside the door of our son-in-love’s room and listened to the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard yesterday.

“Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!”

“I love you, Daddy!”

“Tickle me again, Daddy!”

Then laughter and fake groaning and the sounds of a daddy and his little ones wrestling.

Later I watched as all three little ones cuddled their daddy and watched a movie. The baby was smiling in his lap, the two-year old flopped over daddy’s shoulders and the four-year old leaned her blonde head on his chest and asked her hundreds of  why questions.

I watched mommy and daddy and the three little ones share a dinner of steak and chocolate -except for baby, of course.

I sat and talked with “John” about the journey we have been through since March 23. When I told him the stories of how people who had never prayed much were woken in the night with a burden to pray, of how people who had never seen God heal were following every report on Facebook, of how some were hearing the voice of God for the first time, of how a student’s mother told my daughter-in-law that she was receiving prayer updates from her mother in Vegreville who was receiving them from someone up there who knew the mother-in-law of this guy, of how friends stood by his bed and filled the waiting room day and night , of how his mother and I took turns holding each other up, of how his wonderful, quiet father was a bulwark of faith who said in his delightful German accent, “We will have no negative words here. We will only speak truth,”, of how his father-in-law wept as he cried out to God, of how his wife gave thanks in the middle of the worst days of her life and was a beacon of hope to everyone else herself, of how hospital staff from other wards found excuses to come by ICU to see what was happening, of how my friend told me she had renewed faith to pray for her own sons, of how the church is waking to come together, to pray together for healing of this land….

He cried. He cried tears of sorrow for what his family and friends endured and of joy for the kindness of strangers and for what God has done.

He said, “He didn’t have to do it. I could have died, and I would have been okay to go to be with him, but God healed me. He has given more years to be with my wife and my children. I have always loved Jesus, but now there is something much deeper.”

“Do you know how much of your effort, how many of your outstanding natural talents and abilities God used to do this thing?” I asked him. “Nothing! None. Not a thing. Boy, you were the most helpless a man could be. You couldn’t even breathe on your own. You had no blood pressure without a constant drip of medication. You had no kidney function without a big machine to clean your blood. You couldn’t move without a nurse doing it for you. You couldn’t say one charming, intelligent thing. You couldn’t move a single athletic muscle. You even needed other people to give up their own blood to replace yours. And let me tell you, the handsome thing wasn’t working for you much in those days either -and when you finally opened your eyes they weren’t even going the same direction. God used other people in the process, but none of this came about by a single effort of yours. Not one.”

He cried some more. “There is something much, much deeper about God’s love that I know now that I just can’t explain,”  he said softly.

Then we received a text message from someone who had been speaking to the physician who headed the large skilled team of specialists who treated “John.”

“You know it’s only by a miracle that guy survived,” he told him candidly.  Another physician dropped the f bomb and said, “That guy should be dead.”

We know.

So this is love. This is what a miracle feels like. He still has rehab work to do, but in the meantime, we laugh, we cry, we praise God. Mommy and Daddy and the kids cuddle together and we pass the popcorn while we watch a movie.

The words of an old song taken from Isaiah come to me as I write this in the early morning hours before the baby wakes up:

He has surely borne our sorrow

He has taken the sin debt away

He was bruised for our iniquities

And by His stripes we are healed today.

Love is louder.

Because He First Loved Us
Because He First Loved Us

Related post:

https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/love-is-louder/

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks12 Comments

It’s a commandment.

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

While we were in Israel I was very aware of the presence of guns and the need to be vigilant against sudden violence. In the place where we live a lot of people own hunting rifles which are kept carefully locked up outside of hunting season, but I don’t know anyone who carries a weapon designed to shoot people, other than police. We don’t see many soldiers in these parts, and certainly we don’t see teenagers in shorts and flip-flops patrolling the community with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders like we saw at a kibbutz.

I don’t live in a place with concrete walls and barbed wire or big red signs in three languages that forbid other ethnicities from entering an area with threats to their lives if they use that road. I don’t know what it’s like to find out, like our guide did the day before he showed us around the site of the temple where Samuel was a boy, that my teenage daughter was standing next to a neighbour at the bus stop when someone passing by suddenly turned and stabbed him to death. The unarmed thirty-year old father of five died in front of her simply for his ethnicity. She was seeing a counselor at school the next day while some websites extolled the killer as a hero. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Christian living in Bethlehem, like another one of our guides, caught in the crossfire between warring factions and being worried about how to feed and protect my family. I don’t know what it is like to stand in the hot sun for hours waiting for someone to give approval that will allow me to simply go to my job. I don’t pretend to have any comprehension of the depth of the complexities of the conflict.

All I know is that I am told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. So I do.

So many people say there is no solution. So few are asking God for His solution -and I do believe He has one.  His ways are not our ways and our ways are not His ways. When we come to the end of our own efforts and humbly pray I do believe He will answer. He has a plan for eternal peace. He has a plan to heal the land.

The Time of Singing Has Come

On By Charis PsalloIn Water8 Comments
Dawn on the Sea of Galilee
Dawn on the Sea of Galilee

I woke early and went down to the lake. In the spring, Israel is full of migrating birds who greet the dawn with song. Their singing is like a great chorus in a sky-domed cathedral giving glory to God as the light grows brighter.

My beloved spoke, and said to me:
“Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
 For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
 The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
 The fig tree puts forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grapes
Give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away!

(Song of Solomon 2)

Resting, Resting

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Fields, Just folks, Man made, Mountains, Photography12 Comments
Fleeting
Fleeting

The dream began when my grandmother gave me a sparkly star pin. She brought it back from Bethlehem when I was a teenager and every Christmas when I took it out of my jewelry box I remembered how she talked about her trip to Israel and how much it meant to her. I wanted to go too.

There are so many needs in the world. Frankly, I tend to be the over-responsible big sister type who feels the need to rescue and fix. I also grew up with a fear of not having enough. I justified my ability to pinch a penny so hard it screamed for mercy by giving my reserved squashed coins to charity -widow’s mite and all that.

A couple of years ago someone encouraged a group of us to remember dreams we had relinquished, thinking they were not practical, or were meant for people who needed them more. I realized I had not asked my good heavenly Father for things because I thought, that like my earthly father, he was on a tight budget, and that his resources were limited and had to be carefully meted out to fulfill the great commission of making disciples of all men. It felt selfish to ask Abba if he would give me a trip to Israel like the one my grandmother took. Maybe for someone else, but not for me.

But I dared to ask. And he answered.

The whole time we were in Israel for the past two weeks this song ran through my head:

Jesus, I am resting, resting

in the joy of what Thou art.

I am finding out the goodness

of Thy loving heart.

I know the word in the old hymn is “greatness” and not “goodness”, but that’s the word that kept showing up in that half-sleep time while dawn lightened the skies.

So many things seemed to make the trip look impossible -and up until two days before departure we thought we would have to cancel, but my health improved, our son-in-love came out of his coma and encouraged us to go, and people stepped in to look after things I had assumed were my responsibility alone.

Every day was a gift from a good Father. I thought that nothing could top the feeling of standing on top of Mount Carmel and realizing this was the place where God showed up for Elijah and sent the prophets of the false god, Ba’al, who demanded appeasement, running in ignominy. I thought that would be the highlight, but it just got better.

“Rest,” He said. “Sit down and let others do the running for a while. Rest and let me love you.”

One day, in a lower room below the busy streets of Jerusalem, perhaps on the very pavement where Jesus stood, where the soldiers humiliated him and put a crown of thorns on his head, I sang. I sang with tears and a heart full of gratitude,

I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow.

If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus ’tis now.

Ecce Homo
Ecce Homo

When we came home a couple of days ago, we immediately went to see our son-in-love, who has been on his own journey in the valley of the shadow of death. He is out of ICU, and starting to walk and rebuild his strength in a rehab hospital. The hospital staff are calling him “Miracle Man.”

God is good. So very, very good.

IMG_0946 from herodian toward dead sea ch - Copy