A Silence Broken

^{by Greg Finch on the 1st Anniversary:}
An old Selmer tenor sax cuts the thick air along the river behind Cafe DuMonde with a melody from deep in the heart of Coleman Hawkins. The Canal Street Ferry blows a low tone as she returns from Algiers, and the big engines of the river boats fill out the bottom of the harmony that is the French Quarter. The rhythm is tapped out by the metal shoes of the carriage horses that escort visitors down Toulouse past Royal and Bourbon Street. The Quarter has a song unique in all the world.

The piercing cry of a baby, curled up hungry and alone, lofts above the roar of the bus that takes her young mother to work. The audible and enveloping drone of hopelessness moves through the Desire Street Projects. The rhythm cuts deep as the rapid report of a Glock 9mm drops another grandson to the blood stained ground of the 5-4. The Lower 9th Ward has a song unique in all the world.

New Orleans is a bitter sweet symphony where carefree and hopelessness awaits a tragic crescendo. Katrina, long anticipated, always feared, shattered this tension filled orchestration. Her deafening wail so out of tune. When her excruciating solo was over the band was gone and a global audience sat numb and confused. New Orleans had a silence unique in all the world.

The distinct tone that is New Orleans has resonated across the land. A season has passed and the chorus builds one voice at a time. The horns are muted, the baby’s cry faint, but the silence is broken. The leader of the band stands ready to arrange, to harmonize. The Great I am is our Conductor. While the Composer sits in a place of silence, He is the one who forms a collection of monotone elements into a masterpiece of meter and harmony.

New Orleans we must trust our song to the skillful hand of the Almighty Maestro.

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his Temple; praise him in his mighty heaven. Praise him for his strength; praise him for his greatness. Praise him with trumpet blasts; praise him with harps and lyres. Praise him with tambourines and dancing; praise him with stringed instruments and flutes. Praise him with loud cymbals; praise him with crashing cymbals. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. (Psalm 150)

Church in the home has its challenges. One of those, for some, is the challenge of involving and engaging the children. I personally see the teaching of the faith to my children as primarily my responsibility as their parent. Sure, I welcome the help of others who share our faith, but most of my children’s religious education should and will come from me. So, house church works well for us since I am their primary source of teaching about the faith anyway.

This leads to what I’m about to tell you. The joys of involving children, in my opinion, far outweigh the challenges. Case in point was last Wednesday at our church:

We are still learning the hymn “How Firm a Foundation.” We were discussin the verse text: “The flames shall not hurt thee, I only design/Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”

So I ask the children: “Do you know what ‘dross’ is?”
Levi replies: “Yeah! You mean like ‘draws’ right?” (gesturing to his pants.)

I then realize he is referring to “drawers,” often pronounced in our city “drawwws” as in “Pull up yo’ drawws, baby.”

Of course, I cracked up!! We all did!! After which I high-fived my Levi. He’s awesome!

I LOVE these moments! This experience (especially with my children) is priceless.

And yes, I did eventually explain the REAL definition of “dross.”

Wednesday during our discussion on guilt, we continued with a hymn we are currently learning, “How Firm A Foundation.” The first verse is:

“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said?
To you who, for refuge, to Jesus have fled.”

I found the words appropriate to our topic, particularly “What more can He say than to you He hath said?”

Often when wrestling with feelings of guilt (this is an activity I engage in often) I allow myself to be overwhelmed with a sense of guilt over something that wasn’t my fault, was out of my control, or that has already been forgiven by Jesus. As the words to that hymn echoed through my living room, I realized: God has already said everything I need Him to say. In His Word I know He has loved me, forgiven me, and accepted me. He has borne my guilt for me. It’s done. Enough said.

So I call for an end, in my own heart, to the wrestling matches with guilt. No more analyzing, agonizing, over-thinking and obsessing. What a waste of time and energy. He has already made His statement about my guilt. He needs not say any more. And I need not continue to question, especially since He has already answered.

In the kids corner: It was interesting to attempt to explain guilt to Levi (8) and Cameron (6). Some words we used to help them understand: “Sometimes we feel bad about something bad we’ve done. And sometimes we feel bad about something that’s not our fault, but we feel like it’s our fault anyway. How do you tell when a feeling of guilt is God trying to tell you He doesn’t want you to continue to do a bad thing, and when it’s just us feeling bad for something even though we can’t help that thing or it really isn’t our fault?” Again, we pointed to the hymn. Our foundation is laid in His excellent Word, which the boys enthusiastically knew was “the Bible!” So we talked about looking in the Bible to know if what we are doing is right or wrong, and we talked about not letting ourselves feel guilty for things that aren’t our fault. We even talked a little about Hurricane Katrina and how we felt guilty to only lose part of our things when some of our neighbors lost all of theirs. We discussed how this type of guilt over something we couldn’t help is not what God wants for us.

Levi had this story to tell: “It’s like when you see someone fall down at school and it looks like they hurt themselves but you have to keep staying in line with your class and so you feel bad.”
I’m still pondering on this one… That kid always makes me think.