April 7: Waiting with a Purpose
♫ Music:
Day 42 - Tuesday, April 7
Hymn for Holy Tuesday: Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night, and blessed is the servant whom He finds watching, but unworthy is the one whom He finds in slothfulness. Beware, therefore, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep; less you be given over to death, and shut out from the kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy, Holy, Holy are You, O God!
Scriptures: Matthew 24:42; Luke 17:26, 27, 30; Matthew 25:13
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord will come. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Even so shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. Watch therefore.
Poetry:
Patrolling Barnegat
by Walt Whitman
Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spurts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.
WAITING WITH A PURPOSE
Recently our city was surprised by several tornadoes. They touched down, uprooting trees, destroying property, and causing major power outages. Ignoring multiple warnings on her telephone, my wife proceeded to attend her meeting and attempted to drive home from Uptown Charlotte. Assuming that warnings would be false alarms, she took them with a grain of salt. She demonstrated what many of us are guilty of doing with the warnings in today’s Scripture passage.
Jesus remonstrated with the Pharisees and consistently taught the disciples that his Kingdom was coming and compared it to the days of Noah when warnings of the flood were ignored by the people. His coming would be as lightning flashes—sudden, swift and comprehensive. We must always be ready.
Jesus warned all who listened then and he warns us today: We are to stand guard, to stay awake, “for you do not know when the time of his return will come.” (Mark 13:33) Instead of heeding his warning, we go through our normal routines of life with the intellectual knowledge of the Lord’s return. But, we are drawn towards slothfulness and often lulled to sleep. It is a self-induced hypnosis. We must choose to be alert, to confront our laziness and lack of interest. We must also recognize the inoculation our culture entices us to accept and instead attend to the things of God. Jesus’ warnings startle us out of our stupor. He arouses us to inform us there is coming a day when God will send the Son to gather the church and reclaim his creation.
Today’s art piece and poem contrasts the pictures Jesus paints of two kinds of people. As he says, “one will be taken, the other left.” Some will be awake and always ready. The others are characterized by cavalier and callous neglect. Walt Whitman’s “Patrolling Barnegat” leaves us with a visceral reaction to the impending doom for anyone remaining when Christ comes. His warnings are clear in phrases such as “firm advancing, never remitting.” The inevitable disaster careers undeterred toward us, to consume us.
What is the antidote to our self-induced coma? Grace Carol Bomer’s art piece is the antithesis of Whitman as it displays the repentant heart. In a numinous experience with the Lord, the heart of the girl is tenderized by self-examination and renewed commitment. Note the gold leaf emanating as though it is a window with light shining forth and the appearance of what could be Jesus coming from that light. These spiritual disciplines are set in the context of perseverance, honed over time—the result of living in the safety of God’s presence.
We are called to always be faithful, as illustrated by Chrysostum (late 4th century), “If ordinary persons knew when they were going to die, they would surely be striving earnestly at that hour. In order therefore, that they may strive not at the hour only, he does not tell them the hour or the day. He wants to keep them on their toes looking for it, that they be always striving.”
Heeding such a warning is our daily challenge. If my wife had heeded the warnings of the impending disaster, she could have avoided the harrowing drive of dodging falling trees and flooded streets. We too do not need to fear the coming of the Lord, but we are challenged to heed the warnings to always be ready. We are constantly moving towards our destination of eternity. The challenge is to remember our objective and vigilantly stay awake.
Prayer:
Oh faithful triune God. You have called us into your story, giving us the promise to redeem us fully and delivering us into eternity to dwell with us forever. Our tendency until that day is to live as though we are unaware. Arrest our attention. Enable us to ascend to an eternal perspective. May we be cognizant that our citizenship is in heaven. We want to walk circumspectly in this world anticipating the day you consummate the history of mankind.
Amen
Dr. Glenn T. Collard
Founder/Director of Coram Deo International
Charlotte, North Carolina
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab
About the Art:
On Holy Ground - These Years of My Pilgrimage
Grace Carol Bomer
2018
Oil and wax and gold leaf on panel
12 x 12 in.
The small format of this painting has an intimacy appropriate to an icon or personal devotional object. A small kneeling figure curls over with its head touching the ground in a dark murky space mysteriously illuminated by a gilded light, which reveals the silhouetted form of a cross with twisted thorny brambles encircled at its base, resembling a crown. The rough marred ground beneath the crouched figure reveals hash marks in groups of five, recording time. It is a powerful image of waiting on the Lord, which frequently involves devotion in the face of hardship and loneliness. The artist writes: “My paintings combine abstraction and realism, because both the visible and the invisible world are real. I incorporate images, a line of poetry, embedded papers, or wax and paint to create metaphors that point to this invisible reality! The Incarnation made visible the invisible. God became a man. Spirit and flesh were brought together, as were the invisible and the visible.”
About the Artist:
Grace Carol Bomer was born in Alberta, Canada, and pursued a career in teaching before she became a professional painter. Moving to North Carolina to study art at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Carol established her Soli Deo Gloria Studio there. As an abstract expressionist whose work is characterized by sumptuous colors, textures and palpable light, Bomer seeks to explore themes that center around “the human condition surprised by the grace of God.” She is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions for her art. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and juried exhibitions and is held in many public, private, and corporate collections including Wachovia Bank, Westinghouse, Holiday Inns, Inc., and Cessna Corp.
gracecarolbomer.com
About the Music:
“Water to Wine” from the album Oak and Apple
The Lyrics:
Wintertime, I’ve waited so long
All the earth’s beginning to thaw
The water is turning to wine
He’s coming again for his bride
Mountain stream has started to flow
Oak and apple shed off their snow
and all of the creatures arise
the sun is beginning to shine
In the grass the lilies have grown
Just to see him when he comes home
When all of his children will sing
praises for the glorious King
Wintertime I’ve waited so long
All the earth’s beginning to thaw
The water is turning to wine
He’s coming again for his bride
About the Composer/Performer/Lyricist:
Wilder Adkins’ songwriting gleans as much from the earthy poetry of Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver as it does from the works of folk luminaries Richard Thompson and Bruce Cockburn. The guitarist and vocalist hails from Marietta, GA, but now lives and writes in Birmingham, AL. He grew up listening to his dad play renditions of Neil Young and Van Morrison songs on an old Guild Jumbo Acoustic. Some time spent in India helped to expand his melodic sense and also provided a chance to learn Hindi. Adkins’ songs, steeped in natural imagery, frequently touch upon the subjects of faith, doubt, hope and sorrow.
https://wilderadkins.com/about
About the Poet:
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the “Father of Free Verse.” In his major work, Leaves of Grass, he explored democracy, nature, love, and friendship. He continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. Two of his well known poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” were written on the death of Abraham Lincoln. While his poetry failed to garner popular attention from American readership during his lifetime, Whitman is regarded as one of America’s most significant 19th-century poets and would later influence many poets including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Simon Ortiz, C.K. Williams, and Martín Espada.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/walt-whitman
About the Devotion Writer:
Dr. Glenn T. Collard
Director of Coram Deo International
Charlotte, North Carolina
Dr. Glenn T. Collard is the Director of Coram Deo International (Before the Face of God), in Charlotte, North Carolina, a ministry encouraging a resurgence of historic, authentic worship in today’s church. He writes, “The central concept of Coram Deo International is to live every day before the face of God. I believe this is the key to both the spiritual formation of the individual and of the resurgence of the church. The unifying principle is to anchor our current praxis to the ancient church fathers.” Glenn and his wife Dianne are the parents of three children. Their oldest son, Tim, is with the Lord. They have two other grown children, who are married and serving the Lord. They are the proud grandparents of five granddaughters.
https://www.coramdeointernational.com/