Random Playlist Meme

Summers are short here, and once the snow goes, we have about 2 weeks to clean up the yard , fertilize it, till the garden, and plant the vegetables and flowers. I have a big yard and a big garden, so I’ve been a busy person. That means the blog has been neglected a bit and it may continue to be neglected for at little while.

But here’s a little meme I do have time for. I copied this from my friend Scott at Magic Statistics. Here are the instructions:

Get your ipod or media-player of choice, select your whole music collection, set the thing to shuffle (i.e., randomized playback), then post the first ten songs that come out. No cheating, no matter how stupid it makes you feel!

It’s pretty difficult to embarrass me, so I’m game to play the playlist game:

1. A Song for You by Whiskeytown from Return of the Grievous Angel: Tribute to Gram Parsons
2. Just One Time by Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler from Neck and Neck
3. Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues by Jim Croce from 50th Anniversary Collection
   
4. Blue Skies by Willie Nelson from Stardust
5. Morning Ride by Mark Knopler from Screenplaying
6. Canon for 3 violins and basso continuo in D minor by the English Concert from The #1 Baroque Album
7. Mama Told Me (Not to Come) by Three Dog Night from The Best of Three Dog Night.
8. How Deep the Father’s Love by John McDermott from Great is Thy Faithfulness
9. Myers: Cavatina by Norbert Kraft from Guitar Favorites
10. Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac from Rumours

If you’ve got an iPod and a playlist, why don’t you play along, too? 

Update on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 7:13PM by rebecca

Juanita plays along, with a list that includes a few things piratish.

Update on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 11:57AM by rebecca

And now the two Kims:

• Kim in ON
  
• Kim of Hiraeth
  

Update on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 7:58PM by rebecca

 Warren has also joined in.

Purposes of Christ's Death: Galatians 4:4-5

This is another reposting from a series of posts examining the statements of purpose that scripture gives us regarding the death of Christ. You can find the other posts from this series by clicking on the purposes of Christ’s death label at the end of this post.

Galatians 4:4-5 is the text where we find this post’s explicit statement of a purpose for Christ’s death.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (NASB)

I had planned to include these verses together with the text from Hebrews 9:15, since the purpose statements are similar. That scripture had to do with Christ’s “redemption of the transgressions that were {committed} under the first covenant, [so that] those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” Since inheritance and sonship are such related things, these statements are very much alike. The post on Hebrews 9:15 was long enough as it was, however, and in order to look just a little bit at some of the unique things in this passage, I’ve given it it’s own post.

The purpose statement in this text is “so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Once again you have Christ’s death redeeming people from something that comes along with being under the Law, or the Old Covenant. The phrase “when the fullness of time came” lets us know that in this text we are looking at things in a historical context. The verses before this one tells us that under the law, people were like minor children, and being a child was a kind of bondage because a child had to remain under supervision. But at the right historical time Christ came and bought people out from under the guardianship of the law, and gave them the position of fulfledged adopted adult sons with legal rights to an inheritance. It seems that when the word adoption is used here in this context, it refers to this legal right of sonship.

And if we read the verses following, we see that because we are sons, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into [our] hearts, crying, “Abba, Father’!” Because of the Spirit within us, we approach God as our own father. We are no longer like minor children or slaves, but adopted sons, “and if a son, then an heir.” Since in the historical cultural setting, inheritance came through sonship, then in Christ, we are all—both men and women—sons of God in that we are both heirs.

One of the purposes of Christ’s death is so that we would be adopted sons of God.

Sunday's Hymn: John Newton

I’ve featured John Newton’s hymns here before, but today I’m presenting one more because I want to post a little bit about Olney Hymns, a hymnal published in 1779 that contained hymns written by William Cowper and John Newton. Shortly after Cowper’s conversion, John Newton became his pastor when Cowper moved to live in Olney. They shared a close relationship that continued after John Newton moved from Olney to take over a new pastorate thirteen years later. From John Piper’s book, The Hidden Smile of God:

Newton saw Cowper’s bent to melancholy and reclusiveness and drew him into the ministry of visitation as much as he could. They would take long walks together between homes and talk of God and his purposes for the church. Then, in 1769, Newton got the idea of collaborating with Cowper on a book of hymns to be sung by their church. He thought it would be good for Cowper’s poetic bent to be engaged.¹

As it turned out, Cowper wrote 68 of the hymns included in the Olney Hymns before he suffered another mental breakdown, and Newton finished things off by contributing more than two hundred. The previously featured hymns by Cowper were all Olney Hymns, and so was the ever popular Amazing Grace by Newton.

The breakdown that Cowper suffered was a bad one, and once again he was often suicidal. Newton, Piper writes, “stood by him all the way through this, even sacrificing at least one vacation so as not to leave Cowper alone.”² You get a glimpse there, I’d say, of John Newton’s pastoral heart. When Newton left Olney, he kept in close touch with Cowper, and the two men exchanged frequent letters for the next twenty years.

This hymn by Newton from Olney Hymns is one I was unfamiliar with, but it is in my church’s hymnal. I love it’s cross-centered words.

I Saw One Hanging on a Tree 

I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood,
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.

Refrain

O, can it be, upon a tree,
The Savior died for me?
My soul is thrilled, my heart is filled,
To think He died for me!

Sure, never to my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair,
I saw my sins His blood had spilt,
And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said,
“I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid;
I die that thou mayst live.”

Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.

 
¹ John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God, 96.
² Ibid., 97.

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Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross at Fish and Cans
• Not What My Hands Have Done at New Lumps
• Day by Day at The Happy Wonderer
  
• Take the Name of Jesus with You at Above the Clouds
• The Gospel Way, from The Valley of Vision, at The Thirsty Theologian.
  
• From the Depths of Woe I Raise to Thee at John Dekker’s Journal
• Take My Life and Let It Be at Seasonings of the Heart
• Quiet, Lord, my froward heart at joythruChrist
• The Collect for Sunday after Ascension Day at Magic Statistics

Have you posted a hymn this Sunday and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar, and I’ll add your post to the list.