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"Running in Faith" is an electronic devotional guide written by members of Abiding Presence Lutheran Church. Each week, writers use their personal interpretation of scripture to write an inspirational message they hope will help readers take their Sunday faith into weekday lives. Your comments are appreciated and, when related to a particular devotion, passed to the writer. We hope you will share these devotions with friends and coworkers. We are always happy to add new names to our e-mail list. Please contact us if you wish your name to be added. |
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Devotion for the week of December 8, 2003
Bobby Lee Hatfield died November 5th. The 'thang' that so many people think Eminem is, Bobby Lee Hatfield was, in a major way... Bobby Lee Hatfield was majorly righteous. 42 years ago, Bobby Lee, who was a VERY white guy (I kid you not, he was born in a town called Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. You don't get any whiter than being born in Wisconsin, let alone in a place called Beaver Dam) met up with another white guy called Bill Medley. What drew them together was music. Bobby and Bill were in bands out in California and came together to forge a sound, hammered out of Gospel and early Rock that became their distinctive trademark. But they didn't look how they sounded, the soul underpinnings to their music, coupled to the emotional intensity they put into it, made one African-American audience member one evening, at a club gig, say out loud, 'That's Righteous, brothers.' The name Righteous Brothers stuck from then on in. My favorite story about the style-racial disconnect in their sound happened shortly after they first gained fame from a hit single, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." At no time in recorded history did two white guys give such meaning to the pain of lost love, in fact, at no time in recorded history did two white guys sound so Black. So much so that, sight unseen, an African-American social club in Mississippi hired them to play at their big yearly gathering, in a very segregated South. Bobby and Bill, and their band The Paramours, walked out on stage to tumultuous applause that quickly dwindled to stunned silence... until they started to play. It took only one song to bend the long arc of the moral universe inexorably towards our better natures; as in one small community hall in Jim Crow Mississippi the equally inexorable power of music brought together Blacks and Whites, if only for a little while, in one night's semblance of the reality of Martin Luther King's dream. For myself and the friends I grew up with at DeWitt Clinton High School, in The Bronx, the passionate intensity of the Righteous Brothers made the girls from the Mount St. Ursula Academy so much easier to fathom (in fact, so much easier period). In the ready acceptance of their sound, Bobby and Bill also indirectly made the reality of civil rights and Black America a little easier for White America to fathom. For so many of us, they were balm for the harshness and cruelty of our world. 40 years ago when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and on the night of April 4th, 1968, when Martin Luther King was gunned down, days when innocence and hope was murdered in us all, kids like me listened in stunned silence, in the darkness of our rooms, to "(You're my) Soul and Inspiration" and wondered what ever would become of our dreams. Our faith inspires us to make a joyful sound. But some music is just so much more joyful and inspiring than others. Trying not to 'sound' too trite, the music of the Righteous Brothers, a joyful Black sound coming from the unseen faces of two very White young men, represented to us back then, the power of love, the importance of not judging what someone may be capable of just by the inflection in their voice; subtle yet important lessons of faith that would otherwise have been lost in the angst of youth. Martin Luther King once wrote that 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends inexorably towards justice.' As I look back more and more on the road I've traveled, seeking out the bend of that arc, I can't help but remember how their music made the journey so much more bearable. So much more understandable through the subtle subtext of love, inadvertently underpinned by a touch of racial tolerance; music that made the idea of 'Moral Justice' so much easier to comprehend. Thank you for that Bobby, it's been Righteous, brother. (From "Unchained Melody
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Devotion for the week of December 15, 2003
Love Never Fails When divine masters came to teach us, they all said, without exception, love never fails. Just look at this list which paraphrases from various organized religions:
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Devotion for the week of December 22, 2003
Some years ago, my husband taught music in elementary schools. During the Christmas season, his lessons centered on learning traditional Christmas carols. When introducing new carols, he would tell the story of how or why that particular carol was written before teaching the children to sing it. Following the introduction of the new carols, children would be asked to select other carols from their songbooks for the class to sing. During one lesson, a child chose a particular carol and asked my husband to tell the story about how it was written. Jack told the child he was sorry, but he didn't know the story for that carol. Another child immediately went to the back of the room, picked up a copy of the Bible, brought it to my husband and said, "Here, teacher, read." Give yourself an extra special Christmas gift every night this week. At bedtime, for the little child who still lives in you, reread the comforting, familiar Christmas story. (Matthew 1:18 24 and Luke 2:1-20) After finishing the story, put your hand in that of the Christ Child and be gently led to sleep.
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Devotion for the week of December 29, 2003 "And God said, I will be with you." Recently there has been a lot of interest in butterflies. Butterfly houses to demonstrate the beauty of the species; butterfly gardens to attract them to our backyards; and butterfly images in decorative arts. We marvel at their beauty and astounding life cycle. Fragile little creatures that undertake an annual migration of thousands of miles. Monarchs, who spend their winters in Mexico after a rest stop in Cape May, are most familiar to us. We wonder, how do they know how to get there? When to go? When to come back? Do they ever get lost? Do they take the same route every year? Numerous research organizations monitor the migration patterns hoping to answer some of those questions. The answers are slow in coming. There seems to be more to it than the measurable elements of time, light and temperature.
But we know very little about migration of any kind. There are forces there that we hardly understand.
Perhaps the first documentation of a migration was when Moses led his tribe across the desert. It was quite a trip. It took him a long time. He did have some broad directions, but how did he know how to get there? Did he ever get lost? How did he know? The bible tells us it is so, and that he received his guidance from God.
And so it is in our lives. Where are we going? Do we ever get lost? How do we know? Can we actually perceive when our god is leading us? Where to go for answers? How to listen and watch for directions?
Does the same god who leads the butterfly, lead us? It is so. I believe.
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