"Divine Appointments"

Dear Friends,

A blessed Lent season to you! Whether you give something up or take something on, may it be forty days of “blessing upon blessing” as you prepare for a great Easter celebration.

I know I’ve referenced this before, but my wife thinks I may be entering a second childhood, my remembering, as never before, the old Gospel choruses and hymns of my youth, going around the house singing songs (at the top of my lungs!) I’ve not sung in decades.*

So, here’s an old-fashioned message/homily for you, drawing freely on three of those old hymns: Showers Of Blessing, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and The Meeting In The Air.

I trust you'll enjoy! And thanks for passing the podcast along to a friend and for joining me on The Church’s One Foundation!

Keep Singing!

D. Paul

*I’ve sung the more traditional, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, throughout my life.

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Divine Appointments

There is a wonderful promise given to the children of Israel found in Ezekiel 34:26: “And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing” (KJV). For a parched earth and a parched soul—what a promise! Doubtless, that verse served as an inspiration to Major D. W. Whittle, who in 1883 wrote the Gospel hymn, “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing,” which my mother would occasionally play on her beloved Hammond organ in the parlor:

There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above.

Refrain: Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead. (lyrics by D. W. Whittle; music by James McGranahan/Public Domain).

A few weeks ago, I experienced one of those “showers of blessing” while making a “Safeway run” for some groceries. As I returned to the car with my shopping cart, without thinking, I broke into the chorus of Great Is Thy Faithfulness, softly singing those words that have been sung in churches around the world.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

As I was putting my groceries in the trunk, a woman (who obviously had heard my soft but audible singing) pulled up in her car and began singing that chorus again, the tears rolling down her cheeks. A few shoppers passed by, looking at us slightly askance as we finished our spontaneous songfest, ending on a dramatically elongated “Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!” My “partner in song” started to leave when she abruptly stopped the car and told me about the recent death of her forty-four-year-old son who had died from a massive heart attack.

“When on life support,” she said, “I was sure, just sure that God was going to resurrect him … but … but … he died. Before leaving the hospital, I thanked the nurses, and all I could really manage to say to them was, “Great … great …. great … is His faithfulness.” Then, “fools for Christ” that this surprise visitor and I were, we broke into song again, our voices eventually trailing off as she drove away. I closed the trunk and slid into the front seat, thanking God for His “compassions that fail not,” for His “own dear presence to cheer and to guide,” for His “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,” and, yes, thanking God for this divine appointment, for this “shower of blessing” with its many “mercy drops falling around me.”

Prior to her leaving, we spoke of another great promise given to every believer: “…I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also” (Matthew 6: NIV). With a hand raised to the heavens, she told me that her son was a devout believer, and we paused to rejoice over the certainty of Christ’s return, and over “that home beyond the sky” that is the promised inheritance of every child of God.

Odd, don’t you think dear listener and reader, how rarely heaven is addressed in our churches today, and the very mention of hell even rarer. Perhaps the denial of one (hell) has created an underlying doubt of the other. And perhaps it was my cynical generation of the “Sixties” that helped to stimulate this theological shift—from the eternal to the temporal—accusing, as we did, Christians from earlier generations of being so “heavenly minded” that they were of “no earthly good.” We have moved away from a “personal” salvation to a “collective” one, with our nearly exclusive emphasis on community, social justice, and the “kingdom of heaven” in the here and now. In the process, we have lost sight of the grand prize that every saint through the ages has eagerly awaited: “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8 NIV). Is the Church today longing for His appearance? Or have we become so “earthly minded” that we are of little “heavenly good,” missing God’s divine appointments that celebrate his great promise—Yes, I am coming soon—and bear witness to that penultimate plea found at the end of revelation, Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20 NIV).

The handsome, stately stranger who affectionately called me “…brother D. Paul” as she waved goodbye, attends the Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Assembly Church in Indianapolis. It was founded in 1908 and is considered the “Mother Church” of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. God bless the Pentecostals! I hope to be visiting her church soon, and I’m staying in touch via “instant messaging” with my new sister in Christ—Diane Creighton.

But if, per chance, we don’t reconnect here on terra firma, I know that our divine appointment in the Safeway parking lot was only a precursor to our divine appointment in that “home beyond the sky.”

Amen

The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!