So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36 ESV
Besides when we get to sing with our family in church, my personal favorite times are on Thursday mornings with my friends in memory care. Some people don’t come and visit, because they think that having a normal conversation is hopeless. While that may be true for some, a great many of the residents really enjoy my little stories laced in between the songs. It did my heart good today to hear their laughter as I related a memory of times when I was asked to pick up men who were being released from prison. I told them that whether these fellows had just spent a night cooling off after a fight, or had finished serving a lengthy sentence, none of them ever asked me to take them back! Their gleeful enjoyment of those first hours of freedom reminded me of today’s verse and the freedom that God gives us when He unlocks the jail cell of sin and opens the door into a life of true freedom through the grace of Jesus Christ. I hope you will enjoy our little rendition of the old hymn, He Set Me Free!
And I said, ‘what shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ Acts 22:10 ESV
In the 1960’s, one of my favorite songs was the Simon and Garfunkel tune, “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Their song eerily reminds me of when in 1983 a one-hundred-foot section of a highway bridge over the Mianus River in Connecticut, collapsed at midnight. The first car that come upon it was able to stop in time and the driver jumped out and frantically tried to wave down the other vehicles. Tragically in the dark and confusion of the moment 2 cars and 2 trucks ignored the driver’s warnings and tumbled off into the river. An interstate highway is a road on which we normally feel sure that all is safe, but that night it was deadly.
In all of our lives there are times when we take some roads that we think are right, but in reality, we are driving off a spiritual bridge in the night. Just like Paul we think we know what to do but are radically missing what God has planned for us. Thankfully there are times when God’s grace comes and knocks us to the ground, but we need to pay attention. He has put that roadblock across our path because He sees ahead that the road we are on leads to destruction. God stops us in our tracks, because we have been speeding down life’s highway in the wrong direction. We must remind ourselves that God can never teach us anything, as long as we are sure that we already know all the answers. But when we cry out in astonishment with Paul, “What shall I do?” God is delighted to come and show us what He has had in mind and through Jesus Christ He really does become our “Bridge Over Troubled Water”!
For the younger folks among my readers who have no idea of who Simon and Garfunkel were, I have posted a link to their song.
All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”Daniel 4:35 ESV
If we turn were to on television this morning, we might wonder if this really is God’s world. Daily we hear reports of terrible things being done in our own country, and wars and atrocities in abundance abroad. When Maltie Babcock wrote “This is My Father’s World”, in 1901, his own little part of the world really was at peace and his lyrics are simply a hymn of praise for the beauty he saw on his long walks in the countryside. But by the time music had been set to his words, in a Presbyterian Hymnal in 1915, Europe was at war. and then a German submarine sank the ocean liner, The Lusitania. Twelve hundred innocent passengers drowned, and America entered a war in which millions were killed, including more than 116,000 American soldiers. Where was God in the middle of all the mess? He was right where He had been all along, calling out to us from the cross of Jesus Christ, to come and yield our hearts to Him! He is not an elected official. His term never expires, He cannot be impeached or overthrown. And in the words of this precious hymn, “Though the wrong seems oft so strong; God is the ruler yet!” I hope you will find hope and comfort in the words of this hymn and that you will be encouraged to trust Him through whatever battle you are personally facing today.
This is My Father’s World
This is my Father’s world
and to my list’ning ears
All nature sings and round me rings
the music of the spheres
This is my Father’s world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas
His hand these wonders wrought
This is my Father’s world
The birds their carols raise
The morning light, the lily white
declare their Maker’s praise
This is my Father’s world
He shines in all that’s fair
In the rustling grass I hear him pass
He speaks to me everywhere
This is my Father’s world
Oh, let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world
The battle is not done
Jesus who died shall be glorified
And earth and heav’n be one
Maltbie Babcock 1901
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