Whistling An Old Tune

I now know why one of my best friends has been struggling with the idea of sorting through his library of fifty or more years, giving or selling most of those oldie but goodie copies or volumes. Why should I keep this voluminous collection?  I have taken from the shelves in my home study to the shelves at Quiet Rest, only to remember I have box upon box of books in an air controlled storage space over the past twenty years.  I don’t recommend that process to anyone.  I estimate the cost over four thousand dollars to only keep. 

It is taking me hours to sort through each copy, trying to determine whether I will need it for future reference.  It is impossible to count the thousands of paragraphs, phrases, and lines I have highlighted or underscored (prior to markers that didn’t bled through the page). I carried couple of containers of books down to a local ministry in hope the students there might mine the same veins I had so many years ago. Finding gems of mental and spiritual gain.  Within ten minutes I was carrying those books back to my car.  I was told that the students were assigned relevant literature that would enhance ministry in the current culture. If the student needed to refer to these older writing they were able to do so by going on line. Apparently they had never needed to reference C.S. Lewis who once noted that if we had to choose between reading old books and new books, it should be the old books we choose. "Not because they are better," he wrote, "but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful." Lewis was well aware that there were truths spoken through other worldviews that he was blinded from simply because he existed in his own.

My worldview is no exception. Every thought and experience, every book and idea that crosses my path, has been shaped within a very particular worldview. In fact, my life is so oriented by this unconscious beliefs, ideas and spirit of this culture that blindness is often a difficult concept to accept.

But that doesn't make it less real. I’ve discovered blindness to be as natural to humankind as the desire to understand. Years ago, during the time of pastoral and professional counseling, I learned that I am often blinded to my own faults. Bettyann hit a home run when she said to me; “Bill Prather, how is it you can help save everyone else's marriage and ours is going to hell in and handbasket.” I still catch myself because I have a tendency to be blind to the truths I don’t want to hear.

But it’s the cure to such blindness that is important. My personal antidote in seeing authentically, protecting myself from walking blindly down paths shaped by dangerous ideas, and paved with misleading promises, seeing what is real and not what is just culturally programmed is worship. 

It is worship that opens my eyes and God’s Word that illumines my path.  A story is told of a man in a country far from his own. The man walked along, his coat buttoned up tightly on a frigid, windy day. As he walked through the crowded street noticing the somber faces that passed him, he was suddenly taken aback by a stranger who plainly stood out. As if in his own world, a man walked by contentedly whistling a tune. Wondering at first how he could even manage to whistle in the cold, the foreigner then noticed the tune that was hitting his ears. It was a fairly uncommon Christian hymn, yet a hymn that happened to be of great comfort to him personally. The words rushed into his mind as if a message from God personally: The Great Physician now is here, the sympathizing Jesus. 

Catching up with the man, the foreigner joined in the whistling. Immediately, the man's eyes lit up and they finished the hymn together. Each man spoke excitedly in a language unknown to the other, as they pointed to the heavens, touched their hearts with their hands, and embraced. Waving goodbye, the two men went their separate ways whistling, having experienced the transcending hope of the sympathizing Jesus and the illumining presence of God in a dark and lonely world.    

It is a simple and true story that conveys the profound mystery of worship and its ability to present a worldview and kingdom beyond my own. Without a word spoken, two worlds were bridged because a tune resounded of a Spirit both hearts knew deeply. If a whistled hymn and a heart for God can unite strangers, it is difficult to imagine what will be when every tribe and nation cries out for God together. I believe every born again believer knows Jesus as the transformational hope, the eternal one who stepped into history to transform all of those in time. I know the living God is able to bring sight to my blindness and meaning to my life's story because God is the author of all things. Like the prophet Isaiah, eyes are opened in worship because I am suddenly before something bigger than my eye can imagine.

Father, God, may I receive Your grace to stand accordingly with the hymn writer who asked in the illumining presence of God, "Open my eyes that I may see. Open my eyes—illumine me, Spirit Divine!" Amen