Auld Lang Syne

As a part of my weekly routine I make several visits to a nursing home where my mother is a resident.  It is a depressing place, not because people are dying but because these people are not really given help to live (other than a bed, a stable room temperature, and something the establishment calls food) until they die.  The ‘residents’ have largely given up hope because they feel (and largely are) abandoned. Their emotional and spiritual needs are not being met.  There are few visits from clergy or family members and the staff provides little but custodial care.

It is a rare ‘resident’ who ever believed that they would one day be in such a place. 

So, what do we the visitors do?  We can be a friend and we can bring a gift. What kind of gift?  A gift of song, of a listening ear, of holding a hand, of being a reader, of giving some spiritual insight or message or hope for something they know they will not receive there.  In short, we minister to them. 

I have found that most of these folks have not really learned of or internalized or are regularly reinforced in their belief of an afterlife.  That can be our greatest gift. People, like me, who visit the elderly or incapacitated need to bring that hope to these people.  Since they cannot do things any longer for themselves it is our finest gift to let them share with us their former life; then we editorially select the wheat from the chaff and remind them of the positive parts they shared and then give to them a vision of a positive afterlife—something to look forward to.  Try to give to them a change of heart. Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these [people] . . . , ye have done it unto me” ( Matt. 25:40-45). 

Victory over death and achieving eternal life is the theme of true religion and a theme expressed by thoughtful poets and sculptors for centuries. 

Here are two favorite poems that express the issue—Longfellow’s that can help our perspective and clarify our place as a helper, and Donne’s that can help us get a grip on death as but a transition not to be feared. 

 

A Psalm of Life-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. 

Death Be Not Proud by John Donne (spelling modernized)

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better then thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

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Finally, lets do as the poet Robert Burns suggested:

And we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Christmas—the Third Time

The Christmas that the Christian world celebrates, the first Christmas in Bethlehem of Judea, among the little family and the shepherds was just the prelude.  We do not know what Mary and Joseph felt; surely it was relief and gratitude, as at all births, when the mother and child survived the ordeal and were found healthy.  The heavenly hosts were demonstrably jubilant for they knew something that hadn’t penetrated the minds and hearts of those yet mortal. The shepherds were ‘sore afraid’ and then curious, and then, finally, worshipful.  But the people?  The people who received the report of the shepherds, the record tells us, just ‘wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.’

And later as the years wore on and the land was still occupied by the Romans and the people were still not delivered and the messiah, as they perceived he would be, had not made an appearance as they thought, I suspect they ‘wondered’ even less. 

Of course there were those who had witnessed, for themselves, for a period of about three years the power of healing and spirituality by this itinerate preacher, this man named Jesus of Nazareth.  Surely some were changed forever by their experience.  But what of the others—those who had not seen the light, who had not been touched by this man’s hand or had felt the power of his word sink deep into their hearts or who had rejected the witnesses?  They went on in darkness, largely as before, perhaps hearing of some strange happenings among a small group of ‘disciples’ of this man Jesus, but in practice discounting the reports and thus sinking further into ennui and apostasy and even despair. 

But then, in the springtime of about the year 30 an event happened that could not be ignored.  In addition to the Passover which was being ritualistically celebrated came news, and then the frightening geo-physical phenomena of earthquake and thunder, that this man Jesus had been apprehended, ‘tried’ for sedition (what else could it be—He had rejected their whole way of life!) and was crucified. 

When the ground stopped shaking, and the ‘storm’ passed and the ‘passover’ passed over and people returned to their homes, it was over, so they thought. 

 

But then came the third day—the ‘Second Christmas,’ as it were, the day we call Easter. It started with the first resurrection in the history of mankind.  Indeed, it started again with Jesus. Instead of coming to a grotto in Bethlehem, He came from another grotto, a tomb in Jerusalem.  This 'Second Christmas' season continued with the little band of disciples;  it continued for the next 40 days. It was a time of great rejoicing—among a few.

The evidence was incontrovertible but there were still those “foolish people . . . without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not . . . [and who] hath a revolting and a rebellious heart”  (Jeremiah 5:19-25).

The groundwork had been completed!  But still the darkened world of the minds and hearts of the generality of men would not comprehend the message, the invitation, and the reality. They rejected even this.

Graves were opened and a resurrection had begun on this earth (still among a relative few) as a second prelude to the greater celebration which was begun in heaven.  For there the captives had been liberated, their Savior had returned home, and their resurrection, so long looked forward to, could now come to fruition. 

But with this victory over death, this victory of victories, came the great division.  ‘For (as the song says) hate is strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth—good will toward men.’ 

That ‘peace on earth—good will toward men,’ unfortunately, will not commence (neither was it promised) until the ‘third Christmas,’ as it were, comes as the great Millennial Day dawns and Jesus comes, this time, with the hosts of heaven as the veritable Messiah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 

And this time the world will take notice. 

Hallelujah!  Come Jesus!

Christmas -- the Rest of the Story (part 1)

My last posting, Christmas Story, was a prose-poem outlining the basic elements –the persons and places—of the Christmas story as the gospel writers Matthew and Luke recorded it.  A little more background adds meaning to this great event. 

 

Foremost is the doctrine taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that there is a ‘pre-existence,’ or better, a pre-mortal existence (a heaven, if you will) –a place of our spirits who reside in the presence of God, our Father.  That would explain where the angel (a spirit person with divine authority) in the person of Gabriel came from and from where came the angelic host who appeared to the ‘shepherds, abiding in their fields by night’ . . . ‘praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest , and on earth peace, good will toward men.’

The superlative message of Gabriel to Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zacharias, as well as to the angelic choir came by way of assignment from God the Father.

The timing of the birth event, as the Latter-day Saints believe, occurred  in the springtime, not in the cold of winter. (Celebration of Christ’s birth in the winter is a vestige of an earlier pagan worship of Mithra, ‘god’ of light, and later by the Romans of Sol, their sun ‘god.’)  That is why the shepherds were so attentive to their sheep—even at night.  It was birthing time.  They were watching for the firstborn of each pair of twins (the sheep frequently had twins), and if it was an unblemished male it would be chosen for the Passover sacrifice which was also at that time of year.  It was, indeed, Jesus, the unblemished male, of whom the lambs were but symbols, who would be the real sacrifice for Israel and all mankind thirty-three years later.

Crowds of faithful Jews came to the Holy City of Jerusalem, in the purlieu of the temple, to celebrate the Passover at this time of year.  Bethlehem, the ancient City of David, the king from long before, was only six miles from Jerusalem and so tried to accommodate the overflow crowds.  And Bethlehem (house of bread—from which would come Jesus, the ‘bread of life’) was the place of ancestry of both Mary and Joseph (who were both of the royal Davidic line) to which they would travel to register for their census taking.

And the wise men from the east?  They came months later in response to the star they followed and the ancient prophesies that they had read and believed in.  Prophets of much earlier times, on both hemispheres, had prophesied of the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem of Judea.  The costly gifts they brought the new-born king probably supplied means for the little family to escape jealous Herod’s wrath by a sojourn in Egypt until they could safely return to Nazareth, in the north, from which Mary and Joseph had come. 

 

But all the drama and pathos of this story of nativity is only prelude to the transcendent  reason the babe of Bethlehem came to this earth a little over 2000 years ago.  This story of Jesus thirty-three years later eclipses even the miracles surrounding  His birth, the first Christmas.

We will speak of this on my next posting; we will pick up yet more golden threads of the tapestry of ‘the rest of the story.’

May Christmas have more meaning to you this year than ever before as Christ is restored to the center of your celebration.

Christmas Story

Some Christians at Christmas

Follow custom, 
          and I am one,

Accede to gifts and Christmas cheer.

But deep inside my true devotion

Thinks most of Jesus, my Redeemer

And thanks God our Father

For the present of His Firstborn
          Savior-Son.

Luke and Matthew tell the story

Of Mary, Joseph, Gabriel,

Of donkey, journey, star and manger,

Anthems from the heavenly host

And  functions of the Holy Ghost.

Of witness of some watchful shepherds

Of Jesus Christ’s most humble birth.

Nazareth and Bethlehem are in the story

As are wise men from the east,

A Jewish priest named Zacharias

With his good wife Elizabeth.

Jealous Herod, death of infants,

Simeon, Anna at the Temple 
          Service for Messiah give,

Naming  John and infant Jesus

Rounding out the Christmas story

Of stirring events in old Judea

            Begun that all mankind might live.