Daily Lesson for October 10, 2016

Daily Lesson for October 10, 2016:

Yesterday evening our church hosted an "Ole Time Religion" Potluck and Hymn Sing. Our promotion for the service said, "We'll bring the hymns; you bring the pot."  I don't know if that was a mistake, but I did note that there was a very good crowd and brownies did show up.

We sang all the old favorites: "Amazing Grace", "How Great Thou Art", "Blessed Assurance" and even had a four hand special selection of "Ole Time Religion".  Those old hymns warm the heart and we were having such a good time that halfway through my crazy friend Vicki turns to me and says, "I may get saved tonight."  LORD knows she needs to be saved at least one more time.

At the end I was asked to say a prayer and because I am a preacher I couldn't help but say something about God before I said something to God. What I said was that it is amazing how God has equipped the saints with musicians who could write songs with such lyric and melody. These are the songs that are truly God-inspired.

I told the congregation that I go around to nursing homes all over town and visit many of our members and other residents. And I see that though they may be literally losing their minds, with all sense of  memory being eroded away with each passing wave of a disease like dementia, yet someone sits down at a piano bench and starts playing "Blessed Assurance" and old people who haven't spoken in months or maybe even years suddenly start moving their lips and patting their feet. They grew up on these hymns, on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and probably Wednesday night also. The hymns got inside them and they are still inside them.  They're deeper than the synapses of the brain or the cognition of the mind.  Those old hymns are in their bones.

I said I don't know what it's going to be like for me if I'm still alive in 45 or 50 years.  What will people be playing for my generation?  Beyoncé? Taylor Swift? Will I still be able to "Shake It off"?

I don't know, I said, but my hope is that in 45 or 50 years someone will still know the old hymns well enough to wheel me up beside a piano and let me move my lips, and pat my feet, and experience again that "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine."

I pray it happens that way. And if it does, well, then I may very well get saved again also.