I was thinking through some songs that we haven’t sung for a while in church, and this issue came to mind, so I thought I’d share it here. One of my main criterion when selecting songs for the church to sing (and I plan the music for almost every week) is that they be theologically sound. This manages to disqualify a substantive number of modern praise songs, and a suprising number of older hymns from our hymnal. I might go so far as to say that this is my primary criterion. Certainly there are others; singability is right up there. But theological correctness has got to be at the top of the list.
So we come to today’s topic: the old chorus “Create In Me A Clean Heart”. The text is pretty much straight from Psalm 51:
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.And cast me not away from Thy presence oh Lord,
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,
And renew a right spirit within me.
My theological nit is with the fifth and sixth lines. When David penned these words some 1500 years before Christ, the threat of having the Holy Spirit taken from him was quite a real one; he had seen a similar thing happen to Saul when Saul rebelled against God. At that time the Holy Spirit didn’t indwell all those who believed in God, but God specifically directed the Spirit to rest on certain people at certain times. But now we’re after Pentecost, and so those that believe are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit remains as a seal of our salvation. We’re not in danger of having God take it away.
So on to my theological question. While I love the submissive attitude of the first part of this chorus, I have real questions about singing those two lines, because I think they represent a fear or concern that we shouldn’t have. Is this an appropriate distinction to make? Or am I being overly picky? Your thoughts are appreciated.
I thought I’d feel different by now.
I remember sitting in a recliner in the living room of a quiet house after the boys I was babysitting had been sent to bed. I remember thinking what a nice scenario it was: a house, a wife, children, stability. I remember being that high-schooler sitting there, leaning back and trying to imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be in that position someday. I remember thinking that it would be a great quiet confident feeling to sit back, survey my domain, and relax in the peace that came from such stability. I remember thinking how wonderful it would feel to be that different person.
That was 1993, nearly half a life ago. I’m married to a wonderful woman. I own my own home. (No recliner yet.) I have a daughter that is the sweetest little girl that has ever walked the earth. Another child on the way. I have a job that I like, and that likes me. All those things I had wished for, I now find I have. But I still feel like I’m the same person. I still have internal conflicts, fears, and doubts. I’m still imperfect. (Why did I think that would ever change?) I still worry. I still feel guilt, frustration, and anger. I still wonder about the future. There are still times when I am happy to just crank up my iPod and let the music block the world out for a while.
This is probably my biggest suprise about growing up: that while everything around me has changed, and I undoubtedly have changed, I don’t feel like I’ve changed. Maybe I lack perspective. Maybe if I compared snapshots instead of the continuum, I’d see the differences more starkly. Maybe I’m just forgotten what it felt like to be a teenager. But maybe not.
A person twice my age will read this, shake their head, and think I could’ve told him that, and it’s likely that 20 years from now I’ll say the same thing. But today I’m not willing to write it off quite that quickly. It means something that the desires of a dozen years ago are still wandering around in me today. There’s something to be learned from the knowledge that home, wife, and child haven’t fully satisfied them. I know some of the answers, but for today I think I’d rather just sit back and ponder the questions. Maybe I need to go find a recliner…
I’ve kinda been waiting for this one… Thanks Stephanie for tagging me!
Four jobs I’ve had
- roofer during a hot Texas summer
- Waiter at “Hennington’s” in Granbury, TX
- fixer-upper of messed-up data for the BNSF railroad
- resident computer geek for JW Operating of Longview TX
Four movies I could watch over and over
- Lost in Translation
- The Princess Bride
- Fiddler on the Roof
- The Thomas Crowne Affair
Four books I could read over and over
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
- the Manifold series (Stephen Baxter)
Four places I have lived
- Fremont, NE
- Granbury, TX
- Longview, TX
- Hiawatha, IA
Four TV shows I watch
- House
- MI-5 (Spooks for you British types)
- Hustle (a new show on AMC, also by the BBC)
- pretty much any sports
Four places I have been on vacation (ok, so I haven’t traveled much)
- Destin, FL
- Estes Park, CO
- Chicago, IL
- Los Angeles, CA
Four websites I visit daily other than email
- The Drudge Report
- CNN
- National Review Online
- Opinion Journal
Four favorite foods
- Enchiladas
- Sesame Chicken
- Pizza
- a good steak
Four places I’d like to be right now
- not at work
- at home with Becky and Laura
- at my favorite coffeehouse with a good book and my laptop
- on vacation someplace warm and slow-paced
I’ve kinda been waiting for this one… Thanks Stephanie for tagging me!
Four jobs I’ve had
- roofer during a hot Texas summer
- Waiter at “Hennington’s” in Granbury, TX
- fixer-upper of messed-up data for the BNSF railroad
- resident computer geek for JW Operating of Longview TX
Four movies I could watch over and over
- Lost in Translation
- The Princess Bride
- Fiddler on the Roof
- The Thomas Crowne Affair
Four books I could read over and over
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
- the Manifold series (Stephen Baxter)
Four places I have lived
- Fremont, NE
- Granbury, TX
- Longview, TX
- Hiawatha, IA
Four TV shows I watch
- House
- MI-5 (Spooks for you British types)
- Hustle (a new show on AMC, also by the BBC)
- pretty much any sports
Four places I have been on vacation (ok, so I haven’t traveled much)
- Destin, FL
- Estes Park, CO
- Chicago, IL
- Los Angeles, CA
Four websites I visit daily other than email
- The Drudge Report
- CNN
- National Review Online
- Opinion Journal
Four favorite foods
- Enchiladas
- Sesame Chicken
- Pizza
- a good steak
Four places I’d like to be right now
- not at work
- at home with Becky and Laura
- at my favorite coffeehouse with a good book and my laptop
- on vacation someplace warm and slow-paced
I’ve kinda been waiting for this one… Thanks Stephanie for tagging me!
Four jobs I’ve had
- roofer during a hot Texas summer
- Waiter at “Hennington’s” in Granbury, TX
- fixer-upper of messed-up data for the BNSF railroad
- resident computer geek for JW Operating of Longview TX
Four movies I could watch over and over
- Lost in Translation
- The Princess Bride
- Fiddler on the Roof
- The Thomas Crowne Affair
Four books I could read over and over
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
- the Manifold series (Stephen Baxter)
Four places I have lived
- Fremont, NE
- Granbury, TX
- Longview, TX
- Hiawatha, IA
Four TV shows I watch
- House
- MI-5 (Spooks for you British types)
- Hustle (a new show on AMC, also by the BBC)
- pretty much any sports
Four places I have been on vacation (ok, so I haven’t traveled much)
- Destin, FL
- Estes Park, CO
- Chicago, IL
- Los Angeles, CA
Four websites I visit daily other than email
- The Drudge Report
- CNN
- National Review Online
- Opinion Journal
Four favorite foods
- Enchiladas
- Sesame Chicken
- Pizza
- a good steak
Four places I’d like to be right now
- not at work
- at home with Becky and Laura
- at my favorite coffeehouse with a good book and my laptop
- on vacation someplace warm and slow-paced
Geof did this, and it looked like fun.
Open iTunes to answer the following:
Total number of tracks: 4,336.
Sort by song title:
- First Song: ” ‘Round Midnight”, Miles Davis, Best of Miles Davis
- Last Song: “Zoo Station”, U2, Achtung Baby
scary note: these are the same two songs (save for the artist on ‘Round Midnight) as Geof had…
Sort by time:
- Shortest Song: “One Last ‘Woo-Hoo!’ for the Pullman”, 0:06, Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
- Longest Song: “Hansel And Gretel And Ted And Alice/An opera in one unnatural act”, 24:40, P.D.Q. Bach, The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach
Sort by album:
- First Song: “Concerto in D-Minor for Two Violins: 1 – Vivace”, Itzhak Perlman & Isaac Stern, “Double” Concerto for Two Violins
- Last Song: “Happiness”, 1999 Broadway Revival Recording, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
Top 10 Most Played Songs:
1. “The Far Country”, 20 plays, Andrew Peterson, The Far Country
2. “The Havens Grey”, 18 plays, ibid.
T3. “Canaan Bound”, 17 plays, Andrew Peterson, Love and Thunder
T3. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, 17 plays, Bob Dylan, The Essential Bob Dylan
T3. “Say”, 17 plays, Sleeping At Last, Ghosts
6. “Lay Me Down”, 16 plays, Andrew Peterson, The Far Country
7. “The Queen of Iowa”, 14 plays, ibid.
8. “Fields Of Gold”, 13 plays, Eva Cassidy, Live at Blues Alley
T8. “I Get a Kick out of You”, 13 plays, Jamie Cullum, Twentysomething.
T8. “Lonely People”, 13 plays, Jars Of Clay, Who We Are Instead.
First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle:
This doesn’t really work since Party Shuffle doesn’t pick up the stuff on my iPod, and I don’t have much of anything left stored in my library.
Search for:
“sex”, how many songs come up?: zero.
“love”, how many songs come up?: 336.
“you”, how many songs come up?: 564.
“death”, how many songs come up?: Six.
“hate”, how many songs come up?: Two.
“wish” how many songs come up?: Eleven.
Occasionally when I walk through our building here at work to get to the cafeteria, I walk past some work areas where we have people making things. They probably have a fancy word for it, fabrication or some such. But it is cool. This one little work area I walk past, they have 4 or 5 pegboards full of some sort of little tool bits. I don’t know what they are – they may be cutting bits or burning bits or something I’ve never seen before. But there’s hundreds of them, all hanging there neatly organized and ready to use. And there on the benches are pieces of plastic and metal that people are working on. Cutting, shaping, joining.
My job is much more abstract. I write software. That means I sit and type things into a computer, and trust the computer to translate those words into more abstract code. When you get down to it, this stuff is just little 0s and 1s encoded as magnetic fields on a computer disk. Then I go down to the lab, and squirt those little magnetic fields into a very expensive piece of computing equipment, which causes pictures to come up on a screen once we squirt some more data (electrical impulses) into the back of the equipment. It’s fantastic. It’s complex. At times, it’s very cool – we can accomplish very complicated things very quickly and efficiently. But at times, it feels a bit empty; there’s nothing real solid I can point to at the end of the day and say “I made that”. The constant abstraction makes it that much more meaningful for me to walk the halls and see real things being made.
I don’t know what it is about the way we’re wired, but I, for one, occasionally need to see, feel, hold real stuff. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m a big geek, I love technology, I could explain our flight displays to you from the processor and hardware all the way up through the application software, and every level in between. But there are times when I just need to get my hands on something real. We bought a new washing machine last night, and I need to build a pedestal for it. Maybe this weekend I can go out and do some building myself.
No, Geof, I haven’t read the book, and this isn’t about the book. However, it has been nice lately to get some things done.
I’ve had the Noelridge Park Church website sitting incomplete for several months now. I just needed to get some photos taken, but had never gotten it done. I got the pictures taken and sent them in on Monday. Soon we will be updated and ready to go. Phew!
In addition, tonight I will be getting things scheduled such that I have the first of what will be regular weeks off from leading the worship team. I need the break. I’m very thankful to the Lord for bringing in other musicians who can share the load.
There have been a bunch of other little things recently that haven’t been big notable items, but just things that have been on the waiting list for a while and now are getting completed. It’s a good feeling. It’s also probably timely; come the beginning of March I’ll have other things to keep me busy. 
We had our first WT practice in about a month on Wednesday night. It was good to get back to it. I don’t know what was up on Wednesday, whether I turned the monitors up higher than usual, or what, but we sounded really good vocally. Harmonies were tight. Everybody sounded nice and even and balanced. What a nice sound. I’m looking forward to Sunday… hopefully we accomplish something similar then. Hate to leave your best stuff on the bullpen mound in warmups. But the glory goes to God either way.
One of the good things that’s come out of my sickness over Christmas and my efforts to weed out my schedule has been several people coming forward to help out with leading the worship team. For much of the six years I’ve led the team, it’s been hard to line someone up for just the occasional Sunday I had to be gone. (Just a few times a year!) But things are changing. One woman who has attended for a long while and has led worship other places in the past wanted to start participating. So we got her involved. Now the gal who volunteered at a moment’s notice when I was sick back in December has indicated she’d like to be available to fill in from time to time. And then earlier this week our bass player (a phenomenal all-around musician) said he’d really like to lead some services and he could do that playing either the bass or the piano. Praise God for his supply!
I distributed a WT schedule for the next two months that includes me having one Sunday off each month and another Sunday where we are more informal and don’t have a WT. (That was the pastor’s idea, not mine… but I don’t mind it.) We’ll see how it plays out, but I think this is the start of some easing off of my WT load… and that will be very nice.
I’m already a day late on this – it’s January 2nd, not the first. I’ll probably come up a (metaphorical) dollar short, too… you won’t find any deep New Year’s resolutions here. Somehow I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. Not that I’m against them – I just never put too much effort into them. This year is no different.
I could write a lot about the year gone by, but if you want to read about it I have blog archives that cover the year. I could write about the year upcoming, but seeing as I lack the ability to see the future, my predictions will be at best haphazard in accuracy. Much will change; much will remain the same. I don’t want to sound too nonchalant about my life, but in a sense, I am; I am confident that the God who has directed and guided me through my first 28 years will continue to guide me through my 29th. He will continue to provide the conviction that drives change; blessedly, He is also the provider of the ability to make that change.
So welcome to the year of our Lord 2006. May He bless you richly this year as He continues His good work in you.