Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
We start our prayer with the stability of the Father in a place of authority in heaven, and then we praise Him and give Him due reverence. We affirm who He is. He is the Holy One. “There is none beside Thee.”
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and Mighty
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity
Our Father, who art in heaven…
We’re going to spend the next few days going over how Jesus taught us to pray. This is foundational — it is bedrock to our faith — and we need that right now. When so much seems to be flying apart, we need something solid to hold onto.
These are tense times for our country. Everyone is on pins and needles. You can see it in their eyes. There’s a little sliver of fear right behind the eye causing the eye to dart when a sound interrupts whatever is going on. Would that we all had Secret Service protection around the clock.
Our election is right around the corner and we’ve already had an assassination attempt on one of the candidates and a geriatric attempt on the other. This is a time when there are simply no guarantees anywhere. And all this in a time when the polarization in this country has never been more pronounced.
What to do?
It’s easy to think any one of us is too insignificant to do anything about this, but that is simply not true. We can live differently. And whether it effects any change on those around us, it will definitely change us. We can offer the opposite of what is being dished out in large portions on the internet and other forms of the media. We could start by answering hate with love, returning good for evil, combat judgment with forgiveness, mercy for revenge, grace over a grudge, prayer instead of power, and gratitude for greed. Each one of these is nothing short of a major transformation. In every case, one of these choices comes easy because it is natural, fleshly, of the earth, while the other is spiritual, faith-driven, and of heaven. These are profound changes and none of them are possible without a radical change of heart that can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit in us.
I’m trying to focus on these changes, even with attitudes I keep to myself. Who does it help if I condemn someone in my heart, but don’t tell anyone. I am only hurting myself, and keeping my heart from being soft. Besides, we become what we think in our heart. “For as he thinks within himself, so he is” (Proverbs 23:7). Change starts with us.
Love Him in the morning when you see the sun a-rising
Love Him in the evening ‘cause He took you through the day
And in the in-between time when you feel the pressure coming
Remember that He loves you and He promises to stay
Yesterday, I no sooner saw the sun a-rising than I found myself immediately thrust into the pressure of the in-between time. No time to feel it coming; it was already there. Marti was forced to endure two emergency dentist appointments and the pain of a two-hour root canal surgery made more difficult by multiple complications. I, in the meantime, was forced to endure the pain of trying to figure out how we were going to pay for all this pain. We got home with barely enough time to acknowledge the Lord for taking us through the day, but you know, He did.
Looking at earthly dilemmas through the eyes of the Lord, makes problems shrink down to a size where they become more manageable. My anxiety pales when compared to the eternal weight of glory that God is building into all our lives. (2 Corinthians 4:17) “For our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.”
So what this little song does is keep us in communion with God throughout our days, however difficult or mundane, and in being in communion with God, we are tied to a perspective that goes far beyond our small earthly existence. So you see, this song was never a little ditty; it is an ethereal anthem that opens the gateway to heaven and life beyond this planet. It puts us in our place — in our eternal place.
This morning, in our weekly Vanguard zoom call, I had four grown men standing up and doing the hand motions to the “All Day Song.” (Mike High was outside on his property fixing a leak in his irrigation system when he stopped and did the hand motions with us. I wonder what his neighbors thought if they caught him waving his arm back and forth while standing next to a hole in the ground. I love that thought.) And then, one by one, each one of us told a story about a morning, and an evening, and an in-between time of our experience this week. Suddenly, in the telling, nothing was mundane anymore; it was all twice the size of anyone’s memory. For there, standing in our rooms or in some field, speaking not out of some principle or doctrine, or creed, but just out of God interacting in the stories of our lives, we found ourselves suddenly standing at the gateway to heaven.
“Love Him in the morning…”
Love Him in the morning when you see the sun arising
Love Him in the evening ‘cause He took you through the day
And in the in-between time when you feel the pressure coming
Remember that He loves you and He promises to stay
– from the “All Day Song” by John Fischer
My most well-known song has gotten a bad rap all of it’s life … from none other than me. I have always said it was too simple, a little ditty, and it was never finished. After all, it only has one verse. I always intended to write another one, but never got around to it. I boast about carrying it around for months in my back pocket until I pulled it out spontaneously for a Sunday night church audience and the rest is history. It soon met the fate of other John Fischer songs that don’t die, they just go to camp.
by Marti Fischer
Here at the Catch, our continuing study of the Word provides us with the opportunity to examine the challenges we face in living together respectfully and joyfully on this small planet while recognizing the role we play as Christians in the marketplace.
We could put a light on in the driveway and a kettle on the stove
And if it’s not too cold we’ll bundle up and walk along the cove
We’ll talk ’til there’s nothin’ left to talk about
And then we’ll love by the fire ’til the fire goes out
So goes the chorus to the song, “Between the Answers,” on my 1985 album by the same name. I co-wrote this song with my friend Dan Cunningham at a time when we were both experiencing struggles in our marriages that we wanted to capture somehow in a transparent way in a song.
I’m ending our series on spiritual warfare where we started, with the same woodcut print by the 15th century German artist, Albrecht Durer. I’m using it again so that you have it firmly planted in your mind, because what you see pictured here is an everyday reality for all of us, everywhere in the world. The placid, idyllic scene at the bottom of the picture is our reality, and the violent warfare going on above is in another dimension, but no less real. “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
Three weeks ago I wrote about the Northern Mockingbird. I called it the “Thank you bird” because the one that lives near me has, as part of his vast repertoire, a song that sounds just like, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” What I didn’t expect was that I would go on to hear this bird and this song every day since without fail. Sometimes three and four times a day.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with me if I said these were the last days. And I also think most people would agree that in the last days there will be increased activity coming from the devil and his minions. That makes it all the more important that we take seriously spiritual warfare and do whatever is necessary to prepare ourselves for it.
So let’s review what we’ve gone through concerning the amor of God in that regard. So far we have:
John Fischer The Catch 