Why ‘lifting every voice and singing’ ignites situational awareness

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise my God to my last breath! May all my thoughts be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth; let the wicked disappear forever. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. – Psalm 104:33-35 (NLT)

The celebration of Black History is acknowledged in the month of February each year. It serves as a reminder of the struggles of African Americans against the institution of racism, which was given birth to the horrors of slavery. “Situational awareness” serves first of all to identify the ongoing positive responses of people everywhere giving attention to those [still] suffering after a 7.0 earthquake hit the capital of Haiti, Port-Au-Prince. 150,000 lives were snuffed out and hundreds more were left homeless with out shelter, water, food, clothing, and medicine. Great appreciation is given to those humanitarian-relief agencies; one most noticeable is our own United Methodist Church that contributed over 11 million dollars, to aid those in need.

Secondly, “situational awareness” on the other hand allow us to question the claims of some that think they have the right answers for the disaster of Haiti. A celebrated TV evangelist made it a point of view that in the early 18th century, the Haitian leaders made a pact with Satan to the extent that if he helped them to defeat the French, they would serve him. So, the Haitian government and its people literally started its downfall of becoming one of the poorest nations on the Western Hemisphere. Witchcraft and sorcery became dominant features of satanic worship. Perhaps there is some validity to this, but certainly there is room for further investigation, which leads to the third observation of “situational awareness” that deals with a bit of history.

1791 was the year well remembered as the beginning of the largest and most successful slave rebellion initiated by slaves. By 1803, the Haitian Slave Revolution ended not just slavery but French control over the colony. In what was known as sporadic outbreak confrontations, the seed for change began with French revolution in 1789 that witnessed a new concept of human rights, universal citizenship, and participation in government. Actually, France had gotten hold of a good thing in Saint Dominique, the early name for Haiti, in such commodities as: sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force. It became a wealthy French overseas colony.

Pitted against each other were five sets of interest groups in the colony: two sets were white planters (owning slaves) – numbering 40,000 in all, and the remaining three were of African descent – yielding a total slave population of 500,000. Many of the whites had begun to support an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony. The planters were extremely disenchanted with France because they were forbidden to trade with any other nation. Furthermore, the white population of Saint-Dominique did not have any representation in France.

Despite their calls for independence, the two white groups remained committed to keeping blacks enslaved. You could imagine the outcome. Being in bondage was always an incentive to rebel; in fact, the slaves were never willing to submit to their status and with their strength in numbers (10 to 1) colonial officials and planters did all that was possible to control them. There was some help initiated in Paris, as the French General Assembly devised new legislation aimed at giving some autonomy to the various colonies at the local level. Yet it allowed free citizens of color [who were substantial property owners] to participate, but instead of offering a solution, it generated a further division. Anyway, as time would have it, the bottom would fall out.

Led by a former black slave named L’Overture, the enslaved would act first, rebelling against the planters from 1791-1792. In a time frame of two years, they controlled a third of the island. Despite reinforcements from France, the area of the colony held by the rebels grew as did the violence on both sides. Before the fighting ended, blacks and whites were killed by the thousands. Nonetheless, the former slaves managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by L'Overture’s forces.

From1801-1803, L’Overture would conquer Haiti and surrounding colonies abolishing slavery and elevating himself to Governor-General for life. With a change in leadership in France [along with fresh incentives for battle strategies], L’Overture would be captured and both French rule and slavery would be restored. L’Overture was taken and sent to France where he died in prison in 1803. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of L’Overture’s generals and himself a former slave, led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 where the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti. France became the first nation to recognize its independence. Haiti thus emerged as the first black republic in the world, and the second nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States) to win its independence from a European power.

Lift Every Voice and Sing, by James Weldon Johnson, is the thematic mantra {used in prayer and incantation} of African Americans. Yet is cherished by those not only of African heritage but by those that believe God has always been active in lives of the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. God has always been active all the times really. The first stanza of the song goes like this:

Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmony of liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise as the listening skies.
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Now compare once more Psalm 104: 33-35:

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise my God to my last breath! May all my thoughts be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth; let the wicked disappear forever. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

In both James Weldon Johnson’s first stanza of his famous song and Psalm 104:33-35, there is a need to cry out with singing praises and adoration to God who is worthy to be praised. Because there is a sense in 1) knowing that God has provided eternal liberty, 2) knowing that rejoicing is a form of praise, 3) knowing that the choice to think pleasant thoughts honors God, and 5) knowing that sin and wickedness hinders praise to a Holy God. Selah

God’s touch in a snowflake

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend. For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth’; and the shower of rain, his heavy shower of rain, serves as a sign on everyone’s hand, so that all whom he has made may know it.–Job 37: 5-7 (NRSV)

When the snowflakes began to fall very lightly a few days ago, there was a trickle here and a trickle there; before long, the white stuff was every where! The muted greenish-brown earth colors became a magnificent match for the white snow that fell like drops of rain. The touch of God, as Creator, was at work! Solid evidence of his existence!

I’ve heard it said that no two-snow crystals are exactly alike. No doubt, modern science has given proof with high-resolution photomicrographic equipment in sophisticated laboratories just about anywhere around the globe. In an attempt to discover the formation of ice crystals on a regular basis, scientific research has so far proved that ice crystals or snowflakes are composed of simple, repeated internal patterns that produce beautiful, external shapes. And built into the laws that govern ice crystal growth patterns are temperature dependencies that produce various forms such as: column shapes, needle shapes, plate shapes, stellar shapes, and a myriad of possible combinations of millions of individual molecules that make up a single ice crystal. Even though there are distinctive differences, each of the crystals appear to formulate a hexagonal pattern with six corners.

In a simpler fashion, snowflakes are relatively small designs that would hardly cover the size of a peanut or the diameter of a fingernail. On the other hand, check this out!
Since God knows that since every snowflake /crystal is uniquely different, then each one has a name! Wouldn’t you agree? Now, think for a moment about the accumulation of snow that has fallen simultaneously at specific times and places all over the world. Let me ask you, how many individual snowflakes could you name? Let me tell you, it would be humanly impossible – but not with God. You see, He already knows. Isn’t that amazing? How wonderful it is to know that God knows you and I by name.

Job 37: 5-7 is actually a series of speeches [Job 32 through Job 37]of a young man’s perspective to an older one’s view regarding God’s divine control over humans as well as the natural world. Elihu is speaking to Job who had experienced some tremendous setbacks – the lost of family members and personal property. A cadre of three friends gathers to console and advise him. They supposedly had all the right answers for his condition. Elihus enters the picture and expands on God’s power in nature without abandoning his theme of divine instruction. He insisted that Job is far inferior to a powerful God. Elihu asks questions in the same way, as would Yahweh [Job 38 through Job 41]: “Have you visited the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of hail?”(38:22) From this particular question, God is to be seen to have all the forces of nature at his command and that he can unleash or restrain them at will. No one completely understands such common occurrences as snow or rain, and no one can command them- only God who created them has that power. God’s point of view was that if Job could not explain such common events in nature, how could he possibly explain or question God?

The Message/Remix version of Job 37:5-7 gives a slightly different look from the NRSV: He lets out all the stops. He holds nothing back. No one can mistake his voice- his word thundering so wondrously, his mighty acts staggering our understanding. He orders the snow, ‘Blanket the earth’ and the rain, ’Soak the countryside!’ No one can escape the weather- it’s there. “His mighty acts staggering our understanding” just might serve as a way to appreciate the mysteries of nature as a whole but specifically God’s touch in a snowflake. Selah.

Permission Granted

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. – Psalm 115:15 (NRSV)

If “Sweetie” could talk, I wonder what he would say? Well! Sweetie is a 2-year-old tomcat. The household pet of the Shipp family that behaved in a bizarre {strange; odd} way when the Rev. Ralph A. Shipp, Pastor of Morrow’s Chapel United Methodist Church, the Lake Norman District; died on this past Thursday February 4, 2010. Upon visiting the family shortly after the news, Mrs. Edith Shipp shared with us [my wife and I] an interesting chain of events prior to and after her husband’s death. Here is what I gleaned from her comments.

On the previous day Wednesday [February 3, 2010], Sweetie had done something that was highly unusual. He showed up in the bedroom where Rev. Shipp was lying on the bed recuperating from his recent dialysis treatment at the hospital. Sweetie just stared at him with the intent to find out what was going on. Many times before, he would know when Pastor Shipp would be gone from the house but this time Sweetie knew a change was about to take place. He looked and looked into his master’s eyes as if to send a message. “Edith,” “what’s the matter with the cat? It has never been in the room before!” “I don’t know,” she replied. Rev. Shipp’s impression was that the cat didn’t want to be bothered with him at all but rather to be close to his wife who would feed it and give it special attention. Sweetie would always curl up on her lap at times.

It was customarily for Mrs. Shipp to sit just opposite her husband {always positioned in the rocker recliner} in a chair just a few feet away as they talked about the affairs of the day. Sweetie would play nearby. As the last hours of his life would play out, Rev. Shipp had to be rushed to the hospital on Wednesday. Late Thursday evening, he died. Strangely enough, Sweetie had stopped eating the very day he left the house for the last time.

The cat somehow knew early on that death was knocking at the door, so, he just stared first – no doubt to grab attention. In order to vent his frustration on the next day, Sweetie leaped onto the window drapes in the living room and torn them down. In thinking about this, several things come to mind. Did Pastor Shipp know that he was going die? How relative was Sweetie’s role in the whole matter? Since animals don’t speak verbally as do human beings, can we rely on their instinctive behavior to alert us to a spiritual concern?

In the Old Testament, there is situation where God allows an animal to speak orally to one of his servants in order to get an important point across. In what was called the Balaam cycle, God entreats his servant on three important instances. The first meeting recorded in Numbers 22:1-14 relates to the mission of Balak’s messengers as they try to convince Balaam to come with them. God told him not to go to Balak whose intent was for the prophet to curse Israel. Balaam’s strict obedience was to speak only what God would tell him. In Balaam’s second meeting with God (22:15-20), God reverses the earlier decision and this time commands Balaam to comply with the messenger’s request and go to Balak (Verse 20). Balaam saddles his donkey and begins the journey. Now, in what rises to be the third confrontation, God seems again to reverse the decision to allow Balaam to go. An angel of God stands in the road to blocks the way. Only the donkey sees the angel. Balaam is blind to God’s emissary and so angrily beats his animal that has turned off the road to avoid the angel (22:24-25).

As they continue on the journey, the donkey sees the angel a third time and simply lies down in the road since there is no way to go around the angel. Balaam angrily beats the donkey, and the donkey opens its mouth and says: “Have I ever done anything like this before in my entire life?” the donkey asked. “No,” he admitted. – (22:30). Then God opened Balaam’s eyes, and Balaam sees the angel of God. The angel chastises Balaam for beating his animal so harshly, since it was the donkey that saved him from being killed. Balaam begs for forgiveness, and the angel instructs him to go ahead with his mission to Balak. Balaam is to speak, however, only what God commands him to speak (22:31-35). What is the hidden message? Simply that the experience of Balaam and his donkey is parallel to he experience of Balaam and Balak. The donkey was caught three times between the angel’s sword and Balaam’s stick. Balaam is likewise caught three times between Balak’s demand to curse Israel and God prohibitions. Moreover, in each of the three incidents with the donkey and the angel, the intensity rises at each stage toward a climax. Balaam becomes increasingly frustrated. In the same way, the anger of Balak grows with each of the three oracles of blessing that Balaam pronounces upon Israel.

As in the incident with Balaam and his donkey, God as the apparent arbitrator (one having the power or ability to make authoritative decisions) is simply evidence of his control of Balaam and Balak and his resolve to bless Israel in face of all outside pressures to the contrary. In much the same way that God presented himself as an arbitrator between the prophet Balaam and the Israelites, He allowed the describable movements of a housecat to serve as a reminder of his ultimate control over all living things.

Isaiah 55:8,9 puts like this: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I particularly like verse 11, “so shall my word be that goes from my mouth; it shall not return until me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” It is certain that God manifested himself to Pastor Shipp and alerted him to his home going. I believe strongly that Sweetie acted, as the voiceless witness to God’s numerous ways to bring glory and honor to himself. In the upcoming days, Mrs. Shipp will no doubt call to memory the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her husband’s last hours in this physical world. Through it all, she and her family will cherish God’s word when he said through the Psalmist: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. The following words came to mind as I reflected on the matter. In my spirit I envisioned Rev. Ralph A. Shipp as he instantly saw Jesus on that Thursday evening as he was shown the results of faithful service. This is Rev. Shipp's response.

Hallelujah!

The victory is truly mine! I see it totally at last!
Victory future; victory present; victory past!
In the struggles of life that you said would come,

I bring presently the rewards of some; deeds and acts

spelled out just as in the name, character after character, the same.
With the Holy Spirit’s guide, I was destined to change, the lives
of a precious few you would bring my way. Faith secured I held to the task,
I saw then the rewards they would envision someday.
Oh! How great the privilege; to you the praise is due even now and back when,
I see now I was working for you, my savior and friend.
Let me see once again, my life’s span - the gifts and graces bestowed,

Precious Lord, everything to you I owe.
Ah! Yes! R-resilient, A-Amiable, L-Learning, P-Perseverance, H-Humility,
A-Admirable, S-Sensitivity, H-Honorable, I-Intercession, P-Patient, and
P-Persistent linked to spell the character and the trait.

Praise you Lord for keeping me straight.

Ralph A. Shipp is the name; on earth it was former;

yet in heaven it is in domain.

Hallelujah! Praise you Lord! Oh! Sweet victory is mine!
Written in blood, my life was a sign. Lord, do me a favor!
Remember that my family is one of a kind. I love them you see.

Keep them always at the knee; never unswerving from their predetermined

deeds, for the rewards will last for all eternity.

Amen

Signed: Ralph A. Shipp, Thursday evening, February 4, 2010.

... "Ralph, my beloved child…I know you and will reveal your plea;

it they will, like you, serve only me.”

Selah

Say the right thing at the right time

Everyone enjoys a fitting reply; it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time!
– Proverbs 15:23 (TLB)


You’re familiar with such phrases as “Oops! I shouldn’t have said that,” “You’ll have to excuse me, but I just had a senior moment,” or “That’s not what I meant!” Well, these common errors can be listed under what is known as Freudian slip(s), which is defined as an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted occurring due to the interference of some unconscious (dynamically repressed) wish, conflict, or train of thought. The concept is thus part of classical psychoanalysis that was founded by the neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who proposed the idea from his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life [published in 1901]. Through research, he wanted to confirm that slips might be due to cognitive underspecification that could take a variety of forms - inattention, incomplete sense data or insufficient knowledge. This condition may be due to the existence of some locally appropriate response pattern that is strongly primed by its prior usage, recent activation or emotional change. Anyway, here is a typical example of a Freudian slip: a young man sends a postcard to his girl friend that read ‘I wish you were her’ (rather than ‘here’– get it?). You can imagine what her reactions would have been. In the case of the boyfriend whose intent was to share his loneliness for a distant lover, simply left out a simple character – the “e” in the word here.

But the question may be, can an individual plan his or her words on a daily basis? Should the same person pour out his thoughts without being considerate of their impact? Here is what I’ve been leading up to as a result of reading an article from the Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, January 20, 2010. In the Today’s Talk section, there was a short article entitled New England loses a big tree and a little history. Since I’ve always been fascinated with trees, I wanted to catch the writer’s approach to the subject. The story line revealed that “Herbie, a massive elm tree that stretched 110 feet into the sky, had to be cut down after a long battle with Dutch elm disease. The tree was originally estimated to be 240 years old, but a preliminary count of growth rings [by a Yarmouth, Maine Forest Service expert] indicated it was 212. Based on the revised age, it was believed that Herbie sprouted around 1798, not long after the 13 original colonies gained their independence.” Other than the age of the tree and its relevant history, several other things grabbed my attention. Firstly, there was the term Dutch elm disease that had been so progressively destructive until the tree’s life had to be cut short. The second thing had to do with Herbie’s caretaker who was alive at 101 years old. Frank K, the town’s former tree warden, had cared for the beloved American elm for half a century. He was among those witnessing the tree’s historic passing. And finally, the statement that Frank K gave to the reporters:

It’s been a beautiful tree. I’m sorry to see it go. But nothing is forever. It’s pretty near my turn. And it’s just a fact of life that life is going to end. And that’s for people, for trees, for everything!

I reviewed this response over and over again in an attempt to read between the lines [that is to determine the metaphorical implications versus the spiritual reality as it relates to human life being compared to a tree and that life is going to end]. My rationale is based on Frank K’s 101 years of existence and perhaps the kind of life he lived. In my mind, I felt that this aged gentleman should have mentioned that although there is an end to physical life, but not spiritually because Christ Jesus promised that his followers are promised to inherit eternal life. So, could it be assumed that Frank spoke, for one thing, out of sadness that Herbie would be gone and the common belief {from a worldly perspective} that everything has to die and that’s it? Did he leave an open door to belief or unbelief with the note that “It’s pretty near my turn?” Did he have a conversation with God who told him that his time on earth was limited and that death was just around the corner? Can you speak what you don’t know? Or vice versa?

I believe that Frank had a senior moment not a Freudian slip. God blessed the man to live for a very long time and that’s proof for the rewards of living a disciplined life that honors the creator. God gave him wisdom and it’s easy to conclude that Frank K knew about Dutch elm disease that was observed in Ohio during the summer of 1930. {Frank was around 80 years old then} He had to have known that this disease was caused by the fungus Ophisostroma and it spreaded from tree to tree primarily by insects. In the United States, the smaller European bark beetle (scolytus multistriatus) and the native bark beetle (Hylurgopinus rufipes) are most common vectors. Adults of these insects construct galleries in or under the bark of dead or dying trees affected by the disease, and lay eggs along the side of the galleries.

It is during the feeding process that the fungus is introduced into the tree. After feeding in healthy trees, the beetles then move to weakened, dying or deal elm trees, or to logs, for breeding, and the cycle is repeated. I found it interesting that systematic-preventive measures can control the elm beetle, but what about the words that we speak to a fellow human being? Proverbs 15: 23 provides insight. It teaches us that a wise person weighs his/her answers, but the unwise don’t think before speaking because they don’t care about the effects of their words. The lesson to be learned is that it is important to have something to say, but it is equally important to think about it first. Whenever there is concern for the impact of a spoken word, there is above all love – which comes from God and him alone. Selah