My Song

The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation Psalm 118:14 NKJV

What I miss most about childhood is baseball.  I loved the summer memories of trying to catch, pitch and the challenge trying to hit the ball. Only once can I remember hitting a home run and it happened while wildly swinging with both eyes closed!

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But this story isn’t about baseball; it’s about music and while the thing I loved most was baseball, the thing I loved least was daily music lessons. I hated not being able to play with my friends till my clarinet lessons were done. I hated sitting trying to remember that every good boy does fine (EGBDF). I hated split and bleeding lips from the clarinet reed. I dreaded sitting Saturday mornings with my music teacher squeaking and squawking through my lesson. But gradually music grew to be less like an unwelcome intruder and more like a family member. Clarinet blended into piano and then guitar. One summer I learned to sing and then music which had always been a part of my life became my song.

 

It is the same way in our relationship with the Lord. Every day we squeak and squawk through the notes to His song. Sometimes it seems like it would be fun to just run off to do our own thing. But if we commit to Him a little every day we will find that slowly we are being changed. Little by little, note by note He begins to teach us the musical score which He has created just for our life. Learning that melody by heart changes His music into our daily strength and song.

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The Sound of the Shofar!

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet…  Psalm 150:3

In Bible days what they called trumpets were actually made of ram’s horns which they called a shofar. Specially chosen priests blew the shofars during the reading of certain Psalms. Priests blew their shofars before Jericho’s walls fell down. Shofars blew when the priests called the people to a meeting. The prophets were told to warn the people about sin by blowing a shofar.

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There was a shofar of praise, a shofar of meeting, a shofar of battle and a shofar of warning. God links all these with the sound that one day every man, woman and child will hear.

The Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the arch angel and with the trumpet call of God. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Imagine when not a priest or even an angel will blow the shofar. The day is coming when God takes Heaven’s shofar, puts it to His lips and blows. The clouds will tear apart, Jesus will come down and we will be caught up to meet Him. That resounding note will be played. In the blink of an eye God’s final shofar will sound and we will meet Him and be with Him forever!

Cast Your Bread on the Water

When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.  Exodus 2:3-6

When we read the story of Jochebed, Moses’ mother we see a woman trapped between two agonizing decisions. If she kept Moses for herself any longer he would be discovered and killed. If she threw him into the Nile River according to the king’s command he would drown. Lovingly in faith she chose to do all she could as she worked into the night forming a basket for her child. She wove together the bulrushes and covered them with tar, then fearfully placed the basket into the river and prayed. If ever anyone cast their bread upon the waters it was she. Her heart floated down the river in the basket with little Moses inside. She trusted God with what was beyond her control. Then as Moses cried, Pharaoh’s daughter heard him and chose to save his life.  You and I may not be forced to put our child in a basket and send it down a river but we each face choices that seem like the end of own hopes and longings. There are times when it feels like everything good and beautiful in our lives is being torn away. We hold on to them as long as we can but the time comes when we have to release them to God’s grace. We must trust our loving God. He sees beyond the bend in the river to a plan that is greater than anything we can imagine. God will never abandon us. God will always watch over our fragile dreams. One day He will put back into our arms what we have let go of and trusted into His mighty hands.

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Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Ecclesiastes 11:1