As one of the older folks in our church, I have lived long enough to see an enormous change as decades have passed. From disputes over using hymn books versus displaying lyrics on the wall, to whether drums should be allowed inside the church, it sometimes feels as if we have been in a running battle over the subject of worship. Lines have been drawn, verbal weapons stockpiled, and strategies devised to prove that others hold inferior opinions and worship styles to ours. It is certainly easy to find something wrong. In fact, the secular press has done a bang-up job at pointing out the failures of Christians. And without dispute, there have been instances of compromise, worldliness and confusion that have crept into our corporate worship experience. But that is nothing new. Every generation has had its failures, including my own. But our hope is not in styles, talents, or personalities. Our hope lies in the Spirit of the Living God who has never left. He has remained with His church, generation after generation for the twenty centuries since His outpouring on the Day of Pentecost. He has always been at work renewing, restoring and remodeling as pleases Him best. Despite those things that annoy and irritate we older saints, about contemporary worship, our energies might be better employed in discovering what is good, lovely and of good report among those newest offering today. I will be delighted to hear others weigh in with their ideas, song suggestions and even disagreements this week as I endeavor to share a few songs that I have found to be a blessing. So, I thought, “Why not begin this series of the newest and best with a new version of the oldest hymn that we know of. ” Here is Chris Tomlin’s rendition of the ancient text of what has come to be called, “The First Hymn.” Have a blessed day everybody!
Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power. Psalm 145:4 NLT
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Luke 15:20 ESV
After the war, my dad ran a beauty shop for most of his adult life. In those days, shops were open from Tuesday through Saturday. Of course that did not mean he only worked five days. Oh no! Monday was the day when dad would clean the chairs, hairdryers, floor and the bathroom. Then, just when you might think that we were done, dad came home and took out an old fashioned accounting ledger, and balanced his books for the week. Now my dad was pretty special, but in those days one thing he did made me very uncomfortable. That one thing was his Italian manner of kissing me on both cheeks on occasion. Maybe when the prodigal son first came home he felt a little like me. He was stumbling home in rags after having wasted all that his father had given to him and the real embarrassment was not his father’s love, but his lack of any idea of how to love him in return. In my own case, when I frustrated my dad with teenage behavior, was ungrateful and rarely acknowledged that he was ever right, he just kept on loving me. That is not to say dad ever liked, accepted or encouraged my mistakes, but no matter how often I rejected his values or hurt his feelings, he kept on loving and caring about me.
That love of my dad, was great, but it was only a pale shadow of the love and grace of Jesus Christ. The baffling thing about that kind of grace is that when God sits down to His ledger book, there is no accounting practice that can explain why He should want to balance our debt of sin against the price of our redemption. But like the prodigal’s father, God runs and embraces us while we are still on the way home to Him, and then kisses us on both cheeks. The first kiss, was planted as Jesus suffered in agony on the cross for the sins we committed. The second kiss was given outside the empty tomb on Sunday morning, when He comforted Mary while she wept, and then appeared saying, “Don’t be afraid!” to the eleven disciples while they hid behind locked doors. How can we answer such prodigal grace? His answer is an invitation us to come home to Him, receive the cleansing of His blood, be filled with His Spirit and yield to the embrace of His amazing love!
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