Dear Friends,
Let’s jump right in to today’s podcast. I hope you can listen to it—I couldn’t resist singing on it.
Joyously, “Leave It There” is sent your way for consideration.
Prayers Abound!
D. Paul
LEAVE IT THERE
Forgoing my writer’s aesthetic of shying away from things too personal, ten days ago I came down with a nasty “gastric issue.” Suffice it to say, “something wicked” had come my way and I thought I was going to die. When it peaked the third day, I wanted to die! Once the prospect of Covid was eliminated (some sources say 18% or more of Covid cases begin with gastric symptoms), there was little to do but stay hydrated, watch some banal TV, and sleep. I saw a doctor yesterday, declining days earlier the triage nurse’s invitation to visit the ER waiting room for three or four hours prior to being seen. Thank you but no thank you. The doctor yesterday told me I was doing fine, so all’s well that end’s well, thanks be to God.
The weekend before I took ill, we had company here at the house with with a dear Christian couple, the wife whom I and my wife went to junior-high and high school with. While the ladies were laughing over their juvenile ventures, my friend told me he’d recently been waking up around 4 am and was unable to go back to sleep. In a variation on “counting your sheep” or “… your blessings,” he soon found himself praying for others by name, many who were going through extreme physical challenges. In so doing, he told me, he would eventually fall back to sleep. I’d been experiencing for months a similar pattern—awake/pray/go back to sleep—and found the cycle exacerbated in the twilight hours by whatever bug or food poisoning had targeted me as its temporary base of operations.
Being led to put aside this week’s planned essay on the mandatory DEI training sweeping through our Christian universities, what has been on my mind, dear reader, are the number of acquaintances and friends of mine who are going through serious medical issues: a young man, just recently married and preparing to go on his honeymoon, stricken with a malignant brain tumor; an old family friend, in the hospital for weeks with sepsis; a young mother of two diagnosed with breast cancer; a close relative with an aggressive and rare form of skin cancer; an extended family member who takes a nasty fall and ends up having emergency brain surgery; a beloved husband who, after years, surrenders to a insatiable cancer. The list goes on and on, with many more juggling multiple maladies to body and mind. It would seem pain and death are, indeed, humanity’s great common denominator.
But there is a greater, spiritual denominator: God’s great care for us as found in the love of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Shuffling up the winding staircase of our hundred-year-old Gatehouse the other morning, pausing mid-way to catch my breath and take another sip of coffee, I found myself recalling the words and melody of that old song, “Leave It There,” a song that I had not thought of in decades, if memory serves:
Leave it there, leave it there,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there;
If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. (Words & Music by Charles Tindley, 1916)
The song transcends the passive directive to “Let It Be,” for the talented Rev. Charles Tindley, the son of a slave, self-taught, and eventually the pastor of the 10,000-member-strong East Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia* (where he had served as janitor!), clearly understood the suffering of his people and the pain of humanity, and with his plain-spoken pen gave the world a prescription of hope and encouragement:
If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold,
And you have to get along with meager fare,
Just remember, in His Word, how He feeds the little bird—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
Though he received neither the accolades nor the residuals that Paul McCartney’s famous song did for the Beatles, the good Rev. Tindley’s song has been sung by millions over the past hundred years, with a “who’s who” of Gospel groups giving it their distinctive interpretation: an early “gospel-blues” recording in 1927 was done by Washington Phillips, accompanying himself on the zither and released on the Columbia label; this was followed by the Pace Jubilee Singers in 1928 on the Victor label; then recorded again on the Columbia label by Blind Willie Johnson. Over the years it has been performed by blind Joe Taggart, under the title “Take Your Burden to the Lord;” the Golden Gate Quartet; Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes; Kid Thomas Valentine on his album, The Three Kings; the Famous Ward Singers on the Savoy label; the fabulous James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir on Savoy Records; the Eureka Brass Band on the Jazz at Preservation Hall, Vol 1 album; The Statesmen Quartet with Hobie Lister; the Sensational Nightingales; The Fairfield Four (featured in the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?); The Georgia Mass Choir; and the ever popular (my dad’s favorite) Bill and Gloria Gaither on their album, Moments to Remember, recorded later in 2003 by the Gaither Vocal Band. I mention this partial list of God’s joyful choristers in homage to their great ministry over the decades in keeping this sweet, simple song of encouragement alive.
A SIDE BAR! Now I couldn’t make this up, folks, if I wanted too: I was humming and softly singing to myself “Leave It There” in the doctor’s office yesterday as I prepared to leave. The elderly nurse, who was checking me out, turned around and said she knew the song and used to sing the hymn down South where she was from, adding, as I prepared to leave, “They don’t write ‘em like that any more.”
A recent “country” version of “Leave It There” was done by the Nashville duo, “Joey & Rory,” in 2013, with over two million views on YouTube. Even if like me you are more of a Bach devotee than a country aficionado, I’d encourage you to give it a listen: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=%22Leave+It+There+%22on+Youtube&mid=22203DBCE718978A314F22203DBCE718978A314F&FORM=VIRE
Shortly after that recording by Joey and her husband Rory, Joey gave birth to a beautiful Down’s daughter (“Indy”), and Joey was then soon diagnosed in 2014 with stage-4 cervical cancer, and passed away on March 4, 2016 at the age of 40. The words of Tindley’s 2nd verse, sung so simply and elegantly by Joey & Rory in 2013, must have meant more than ever to her:
If your body suffers pain and your health you can’t regain,
And your soul is almost sinking in despair,
Jesus knows the pain you feel, He can save and He can heal—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
No passive resignation here; it is a pro-active directive: Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I often wonder what pain, loss, or heartache some of you may be going through right now—what personal, heavy burden you may be carrying around. None of us really know the degree of emotional and physical pain the other one bears, more so than ever, it seems, in this “age of anxiety.” But, as believers, of this we can be certain: we have a great Comforter in the Holy Spirit who will never fail nor forsake us. In Jesus, we have “a friend who sticketh closer than a brother.” Ha! Move over Clarence Darrow, Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, and Perry Mason! We have the ultimate Advocate—our Lord Jesus Christ—whose Word promises us “…was raised to life—is at the right hand of God…interceding for us” (Romans 8:34), an Advocate who “empathizes with our weakness,” and upon whom we we may “cast all our burdens and anxiety, knowing that he cares for us!” (I Peter 5:7 NIV; author’s paraphrase). Hallelujah! What a savior, what a friend!
Truth is, dear friends, as I enter my 79th year tomorrow with all “…the thousand-and- one shocks that flesh is heir to,” and that can accompany these so-called “halcyon” years, the Rev. Tindley’s 4th verse are comforting words:
When your youthful days are gone and old age is stealing on,
And your body bends beneath the weight of care;
He will never leave you then, He’ll go with you to the end—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
Leave it there, leave it there,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there;
If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out—
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
Amen.
The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!
Podcast #33: "Leave It There"