“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” I Cor. 15:57-58
Easter has come once again. I search for a fresh metaphor that will help me describe how the Easter message sends my soul a “tune-up.”
Would “endless song” do it, that is, serve as the fresh metaphor. Surely I’m not the only one who lives with a song in the heart of my heart. Sensing that and oft-times expressing it is how I know I’m alive.
“The day the music died” is the saddest line in Don McLean’s classic: “American Pie.” Especially defeatist is this line as the fourth verse ends: “And as the flames climbed high into the night…To light the sacrificial rite…I saw Satan laughing with delight…The day the music died.”
Easter won’t allow the music God’s placed within us to die. Christ’s resurrection strikes a chord that sets a reverberation in our being. Paul claims it as a victory through our Lord Jesus Christ all the while naming Easter as a defeat for Satan.
“My life flows on in endless song; above earth’s lamentation,” writes Robert Lowry, one of our country’s greatest hymnists. “I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.”
This “endless song” metaphor not only serves us personally but expresses how we feel about Graceworks as an instrument of the resurrection-life Christ seeks to live through us.
Our song was but a faint burgeoning melody back in 1926. And no doubt there were times when some feared that this music might die. But the music in the heart of Graceworks is not an expression of “earth’s lamentation” but rather of that “…sweet… hymn that hails a new creation.”
This year we mark the 90th year that our Graceworks’ life flows on in endless song.
Lowry speaks for all of us at Graceworks as we send our Easter affirmation:
“The peace of Christ makes fresh our heart, a fountain ever springing! All things are ours since we are his! How can we keep from singing?”
Pastor Larry A. Hoffsis
Graceworks Lutheran Services
