The Years the Locust has Eaten...Restored.

"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army which I sent among you." (Joel 2:25, ESV) This is perhaps one of the greatest promises in all of scripture. Joel begins with a plague of locust in four swarms that eliminates anything green from the land--even down to the bark on the trees. For the next number of verses, God tells his people through the prophet Joel to repent of their sins. The plague was sent among the people to illustrate to them their need of spiritual repentance. God wanted them to tear their hearts and not their garments (Joel 2:13).

I have previously written testimony about God changing Jacob into Esau. I was able to relate to it fairly well, though I know that I will never be perfect this side of heaven. I have been learning a new lesson, however. After my roommate Tim Trometer died my junior year of college, I was shocked for a while, but as I meditated upon Job 1:21, I started to see that there was something besides possessions that one had to hold onto. My life's quote became, "When God gives a gift, hold onto the Giver."

Until recently, this quote made sense, because Job had to have been holding onto something besides the blessings God had given him. Yet as I approached Philippians 4 and meditated upon Paul's response to the Philippians' gift, it was clear that this response didn't cut it, because Paul did receive their gift. He didn't need their gift, but was thankful for their giving. Thus, thinking about how to reconcile the almost ascetic holding onto God and the receipt of physical earthly goods, I concluded that God must be held onto, but that there was yet another element. This element is that we are to receive God's blessings with open hands. Then God can freely give and take away as He desires while we look into his loving face.

Meditating upon the joys of heaven has been a particular blessing to me recently. I heard a pastor talking about singleness being like an ocean of grace and marriage being an additional thimble-full. In light of eternity, it doesn't matter what material things are given to us on earth. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether I hold onto the blessings God gives, unless He places them in my hands.

Thus, I have learned that the removal of Verity (my girlfriend) from my life was not really a great loss from an eternal perspective. Yet in the past week, we began to talk again and see if God wanted us to part ways or to remain together. In the course of the week through much prayer, we both concluded that the Lord had been so strongly at work to unite us throughout the time of our separation that we are to remain in a relationship and pursue God's will for our lives, while believing that it includes each other.

Throughout the course of our conversations, it became evident that God had been at work in both of our hearts. He had brought us so far from where we had been that our hearts were overflowing with praises to God for His transforming power in very stubborn areas. It was so joyous to be together. This spiritual blessing of seeing the hand of God at work was like a refreshing river. And to top it off, God seems to have given a thimble full of earthly joy in our continued companionship.

It is very much like God has restored the years the locust has eaten. Three months without a single word of communication would seem to be impossible for a relationship and it would seem like it should take a few weeks at least to rebuild what was there, but there was more godly affection for each other in our relationship than before, and God has done so much that there was no gap in our relational development, except that God had taken away much of our former baggage.

May God's character be praised for His grace in changing two stubborn lives. May He continue to be exalted as we receive with open hands the blessings God gives!

Art Music and Pop Worship

I was sitting through a senior piano recital of one of my best friends musing through the various epochs of music. As he played the Bach Partita, I began to contemplate what it would have been like to be in Bach's family. It was intriguing, actually, because I imagined being surrounded by stringed instruments and harpsichords and improvising on music similar to what was being played. I suppose if I had a wish, I might wish to participate in a Bach "jam-session" of the 1600's. As I sat and contemplated this dream, I imagined further some of the circumstances of that day, how the royal family had hired musicians to compose for them and to play for them. (King George I of England had Handel compose the "Water Music" to help him to clear his mind.) The music played in kings courts was quite noble and classy. This reflected the structure of royalty.

As he played Mozart's Sonata, I laughed while I listened to his playing around with the musical form. I put myself in the concert setting and thought about what it would have been like to hear it with an audience and have everyone else chuckle as Mozart pretended to finish while proceeding to develop the song further.

As he played Brahms, I was struck by the emotions of the song. It brought back so many personal memories of my high-school senior recitals and of the fun of performing. By the end of the Intermezzo, I was almost ready to cry. Debussy's Toccata also evoked quite an emotional response as the music danced in my ears.

There was a huge break in the structure of the music when he started playing Prokofiev, though. No form seemed present; no musical themes went all throughout the song as did through the others; there was more discontinuity than continuity, and other than being a flashy and impressive piece, I could not really understand it.

Yet there was something about the entire recital that struck me as being there. Each one of these pieces was composed as some form of serious art. There was a wide range of emotions, forms, colors, and styles, but the overarching principle was that this art was serious.

You might ask, "What do you mean by 'serious'?" Art as such is quite broad, for it reaches into music, photography, literature, drawing, and painting, as well as many others. There are two kinds of each of these. There is the popular version and the serious version. An illustration of this would be the difference in someone who draws cartoon caricatures on the streets of New York City and the person who paints pictures for art museums. This is no different for any art. There is the kind of literature that ends up in anthologies or textbooks and that which might be published in a child's magazine. This same division goes for music as well. There were the Bach's and Beethoven's and then there were the court jesters and the heralds. Today, there are professional (concert) musicians and composers as well as those who play for dinners and bar rooms.

By no means would I imply that one ought to condemn popular arts. They certainly have their place as did the simple playing of peasants in the feudal system. Yet I walked away with a question in my mind. What type of music is found in the Bible? Is there popular music in the Bible, or is it all art music?

I am not sure that I have a satisfactory answer, but a few seed thoughts are in order. First, God did choose people who were low in social status, such as Peter the Apostle, to be writers of inspired scripture. He also chose scholars, such as many of the minor prophets and even Luke. David, who was the main writer of music in the Old Testament, was first a shepherd--the lowest social rank, but he became a king. Some of his songs are replete with emotion, and some of them pervaded with artful form. The Levites, who led worship, were highly educated and extremely intelligent, resulting in astonishingly magnificent liturgy. These examples provide us with perhaps a common model of how God is worshipped with both a variety of people and a variety of "styles" and yet with an artistic beauty which far surpasses today's standard.

Scripture can certainly not be improved upon. Thus, any work of music that is based upon biblical truth will never attain to the level of excellence that the Bible displays. I wonder, however, if we are using our abilities to their fullest extent when it comes to music. Peter was just a fisherman, but he was able to compose beautiful and poetic literature, such as:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, ⁵ Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5)

This is not music, but theology. It carries not only precious content of our Savior, but a serious poetry that awakens our affections in worship to the God who is to be praised. It causes our minds to contemplate the precious riches of God's grace to us and is in essence...worship!

There is something about serious art that carries the ability to evoke noble and yet rich and heart-felt affections. Popular art can certainly carry emotion, but it does not carry quite the weight or power or timeless endurance that serious art does. I wonder if we really ought to model our worship after the popular styles.

May God richly bless you with all spiritual blessings!
Jeremiah Sandahl
1 Peter 1:3-5

When God Changes a Jacob into an Israel

A series of recent and not-so-recent events have led me to rejoice in God's deliverance from a way of thinking that had pervaded my thought patterns for as long as I can remember. Please allow me to share some of what God can do with a life.

As a child, I was very emotional. I remember frequently that I would be found crying for no apparent reason. My mother probably considered my tears to be "cute" and I was not ashamed to show my emotions. Maybe part of it was due to the fact that I had been the first child and was doted upon by all my relatives and especially my mother. Probably an even larger part that added to the tension was that I was hospitalized at age 9 with cancer. It was very painful and recovery was somewhat slow. Yet the biggest problem was internal. I learned that I could get people to do almost anything for me if I only told them my sob story. My circumstances did not make me to be like that, but because of these circumstances, my internal selfishness was able to emerge through manipulation of circumstances.

The problem I had was masked for many years. My friends learned to love me despite these flaws, and my parents probably just got accustomed to them. Furthermore, I was not a problem child. I was outwardly very obedient and rarely caused people trouble. The other side of that picture is that I almost always got what I wanted from life. I was fairly easy-to-please and didn't demand very much from life, so I was not often disappointed by things such as moves, new friends, or going on long road trips. Yet occasionally, I would find a subtle way to get my way. I remember one time when I went to the store with my uncle because I had forgotten a toothbrush. Somehow we ended up leaving the store with not only a toothbrush, but a new BB-gun. It was one of my subtle ways of being a “Jacob” and manipulating myself into “blessings.”

My selfish rebellion came out fairly strongly after a relationship in high-school which didn't work out. It was the first time when I wasn't able to get my way in a situation. It would be almost two years before I finally overcame the bitterness against the situation. I really was driven into new territory: depression.

So I went to Northland Baptist Bible College. My plans were all set in stone: I was going to get done with school quickly, get a wife, get a seminary education, and return to Germany ASAP to begin a Bible institute. Those goals seemed noble enough, so I thought that nothing could go wrong. Throughout my first year, everything was peachy and all going according to plan. That summer, however, I entered into probably the darkest time of my life. I was constantly depressed. I came back to school that fall very depressed and things got worse when I was told to delay dating a girl I liked. Financially, I was barely making it. To put things in bluntly, I was not getting my way and having pity parties for myself while still trying to manipulate myself into what I wanted for my life.

So I ended up finally getting an OK to date the girl at the end of my sophomore year and things were wonderful. I had a companion whom I could tell my sob stories and she was compassionate enough to listen. Yet she always rubbed me the wrong way. Her life verse was Acts 20:24, and it went against every fiber in my being, because it was the last thing I could honestly say. My circumstances were either controlled or depressing to me. I knew I was to marry her from the first time we met and started to scheme about how to do that—maybe even before I finished college. After my Junior year, I went to Germany (as planned) to do an internship at home. I hardly earned any money while there, and it was a really difficult time for my family. I had planned to propose to my girlfriend, but was turned down by her father—twice!

Things continued to get worse as I entered into debt to go back for my final year of college. My grandpa—who had been my spiritual hero—died, my Dad's oldest brother died, and some other things happened around me that tore my heart. (Maybe at this point I should confess that I had prayed at the beginning of that year that God would bring suffering to my life.) As the year drew to a close, my girlfriend's parents started pushing for us to take some time off. They almost broke off the relationship immediately, but waited for a few weeks. After the day of prayer at NBBC, we both knew that it was time to lay our “Isaac” on the altar. We were originally going to talk once per month, but were asked not to talk at all, and since she did not return to school, we have not talked since January.

During that time, she rebuked me very bluntly, telling me: “You're selfish!” Her words pierced me through, though I didn't know how to fix the problem. I attempted everything in my power to keep her and nothing worked. All of our friends were sympathetic and on our side. It seemed that circumstances should not line up that way.

I have learned how to rely on God to meet my needs, because He is faithful to meet needs—even when circumstances get worse than one could imagine. I was, however, still in bondage to this great foe of depression and manipulation. I tried to manipulate and if it did not work, I became depressed. This was true even of the time after my girlfriend and I were no longer talking. I schemed—in vain—to find a way to convince her parents that we belonged to each other. I was firmly convinced that it was God's will for us to be together (much like it was God's will for Jacob to have a blessing), but it was not through my scheming that he would bring it about. I had read the story of Jacob at the beginning of our separation and I knew that I would have to face God, but I continued running.

Last week was Missions Conference. I was incredibly uneasy during the week, though I forced myself to pay attention. One message about how serving Christ is not a sacrifice. I knew that to be true, but I also saw my “suffering” and wanted to count it as sacrifice, which it was not. Really, Jesus is so much gain that Paul counted everything else as “dung” in comparison. (Philippians 3:8) Another message later in the week was on the story of Jacob wrestling with the Lord. I was astonished to hear a message during missions conference about this topic. It almost didn't happen. The speaker (Hantz Bernard) had his text preached on by the previous speaker and at the last minute decided to preach out of Genesis 32:22-32. As soon as Jacob came up, I knew that it was directed towards me.

I was lifting weights with a friend and told him not to “baby” his shoulder. It wasn't until later that I realized that I had been babying myself. It is that fact that leads me both into manipulation and depression. Thus, it seems as if God has brought me to a place of showing me a deeper root of sin in my life. I cannot obtain the “blessings” of this life by my own means. I have been—like Jacob—further weakened from my flesh. I await with hopeful expectation the blessing of having my name changed from “Jacob” to “Israel.” And as to those whose lives I have hurt with my sin, I trust that God will bring about reconciliation as He did with Jacob and Esau after the wrestling match. Maybe He will lead me into the Promised Land!

As God continues to teach me, I covet your prayers. The weight of change—though not on my shoulders alone—is quite heavy upon me. I desperately need God's help.

On Rhyme as the Unifying Factor in Music

As a child, I grew up reading Dr. Seuss. I managed to be fascinated with page after page of his rhymes about cats, hats, tubs, and clubs. The absurd pictures that were sometimes painted is surely a thing of creativity. It would take someone as creative as Dr. Seuss to think of an elephant sitting on an egg until it hatches, or to spend an entire book dedicated to feet and another to the nose. These unique stories were certainly catalysts that led me to think up creative inventions that were, of course, impossible and useless.

Now, Dr. Seuss certainly communicates his absurdity effectively. The completely random nature of his rhyme allows him to change thoughts capriciously, without giving heed to the sense of the story. Furthermore, Dr. Seuss accentuates his writings with invented words with no apparent purpose other than to fit with the rhyme and rhythm of the story.

A couple of years ago, my roommates and I had a wonderful time late at night with making up senseless rhymes. One of us spoke a line and whoever was the quickest came up with the next line to fit with the meter and rhyme of the last speaker. There was no message being communicated other than the common chit-chat. Nevertheless we rhymed away, laughing until our stomachs ached.

The unifying factor in both of the previous paragraphs is that rhyme induces laughter. Dr. Seuss and our room's jesting had no other purpose than to induce laughter. The content communicated by silly rhymes is subordinated to the entertainment factor. In some ways, a rhyme can actually shift from being an embedded feature of a piece of literature to the focal point. When rhyme is in the background it aids memory, but when it becomes the focus the message is forgotten and only the fun of the moment remains.

I participated in a reader's theater production my sophomore year in college. The opening section was an entire scene of rhyme. In between sections of acting, we would resume the rhyme. In order to keep a serious tone, we were taught to deliberately break up the rhyme. It proved difficult to break up the rhyme, because the parts were so sing-songy. During practices, however, we occasionally made the rhyme stand out. When someone did make the rhyme stand out, the drama moved from being sober to hilarious.

Many songs written in the past century-and-a-half seem to be unified by the element of rhyme. Theological cliché phrases are mixed up and strewn throughout the prose to compose a song. In order not to drag anyone else through the mud, I will share a few lines of the song I wrote:

My heart overflows with your goodness, O Lord/Your grace is sufficient and free/Your mercy endures forever/And your love abounds toward me./I will praise your name, Holy Father/Lift up your name on high/For you are Jehovah Almighty/And the apple of my eye.

Perhaps you will note that there is no direct logical or conceptual connection between lifting up God's name and the apple of my eye, and the connection between Jehovah Almighty and the apple of my eye is based upon the fact that it rhymes--I know, because I wrote it! It was very simple for me to sit down and compose this song, because I had only to merge these cliché phrases together in a way that fit both the rhyme and meter of the poem. To my own taste, there is no aesthetic beauty in this poem, though the words are certainly true and reflected my feelings toward God after I heard of a great number of people's conversions.

I will put a disclaimer on my evaluation, because I have not done thorough enough research to verify my hypotheses. I wonder if there is a connection between entertainment and rhyme and song. That our culture thrives on entertainment is self-evident. Television, amusement parks, and the music industry scream entertainment. Perhaps rhyme. rhythm and meter are part of the fruit of an entertainment-driven society. The combination of these elements in rap music especially can cause even very somber subjects to become objects of jesting. I am sometimes shocked to hear that people will actually laugh at the profanities that, if spoken in everyday speech would cause everyone to shudder, but since they are put to a rhyme, will cause laughter instead. On a less serious level, who does not laugh at Dr. Seuss? I suppose those who have heard the same story repeatedly as well as the ones who detest the very concept to begin with would not.

Perhaps I have just become tired of the rhymes, or perhaps I just lost the taste for repetitious clichés which resemble more of Dr. Seuss than God's Word, but I wonder if our balance is quite right. Is employing rhyme really the best and most effective way to communicate truth? Is it necessary for us to use rhyme to attract the attention of those who seek the world's entertainment with rhyme, or does God's Word really have inherent power? I do not yet have answers, but my question stands: Should rhyme be what ties our music together?

Knowing God

I just finished writing this poem:

Oh that I could contain the whole
Of Thy perfections--rich and full!
For oft and quick my mind is bound
By fetters tight upon the ground.

And should I try to comprehend,
My finite being would not lend
Thy great transcendence rightful place
My puny mind lends hardly space.

Yet this my glorious, treasured prize,
That I behold Thee with mine eyes.
When in Thine arms I take my rest
At last my longing heart is bless'd
To know Thee more—
This—my request.