Behind the Music Stand

     Often when we walk through valleys we become angry with God.   We ask—no, we angrily demand, “WHY?!”   Hopefully, if you are emotionally in this place, this will encourage you to use that anger constructively.   Just know that the anger and sadness you are feeling are temporary!   We walk through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps 23).   We do not “Stop and rest” there!   The hard times in our lives are roads we must travel.   They are NOT places where our traveling breaks down!      There are many, MANY verses in the Bible full of encouragement.   Bearing in mind that God is big enough to handle anything we throw at Him—any question, and all our anger at Him—let me take a wild liberty and paraphrase some Bible verses for you.   Words that are all capitals are ones I have substituted in for similar phrases—I pray this will fire up your tenacity!   (Pardon my grammatical/editorial errors and omissions.   I’m trying to make this quick so I can get back to [other!] work!)

       Reading some updates on Facebook made me think of several sweet friends of mine who have lost loved-ones recently.   Having a cross-referencing brain, and thinking of how special these friends of mine are, I was reminded of the Bible verse that says, “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” (Rom 12:10)        Now I know many of us, as Christians, have been taught to believe we should love everyone , and while I won’t disagree with that nor digress (too much!) about exactly how that universal love should be practiced, I will point out, as wiser folk than I have done previously, that we are called to add an extra-heaping measure of love on to our fellow Christians. 1        Remember the old song, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love—by our love…?”   Perhaps the composer thought about it, but we can extrapolate that the love sung about in that song refers to both our love for “The World” and our love for one another.   Think of another