Strange songs of Zion

eejoseph

You may recall that the Hebrew people in exile were invited to sing one of the songs of their homeland, to which they responded by asking “How can we sing the Lord’s song In a strange land?

How can we sing the Lord’s song In a foreign land? (Psalms 137:4)

Sometimes we find ourselves at an even stranger intersection and realize there is neither road map nor traffic cop here.

If a song’s refrain is “We Have an Anchor that Keeps the Soul” it will surely help the singers to know what that anchor is, and it should not take very long to realize that the Bible has ANCHOR in two narratives and ANCHOR appears once in a portrait of God’s sure promises. 

Will Your Anchor Hold?

The title of a song should address the subject, but not the song “Will your anchor hold?”. It goes off on a tangent.  For comparison here is the anchor verse in two translations.

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, (Hebrews 6:19 NASB)

Which [hope] we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; (Hebrews 6:19 KJV)

We can see that hope is the anchor, as the King James version supplies the word hope In italics) and 18b shows the divine purpose, namely that we … would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us… (Hebrews 6:18b).  Furthermore, the discussion of the certainty of God’s promise and his oath (verses 13 to 17) together help to show how hope serves as an anchor. So it is strange that this song never says “hope”.

The 5-verse version of the song has one reference to hope, or more precisely, it refers to HOPES. Not exactly the same thing as hope.  But poetic license aside, I would reckon that few people singing that song realize that the celebrated anchor is hope.

It will surely hold in the floods of death,
When the waters cold chill our latest breath;
On the rising tide it can never fail,
While our HOPES abide within the veil.

These days the script has flipped. We are singing strange songs in the Lord’s land.  Are you singing songs these days that float away from the truth and from the affirmation in the refrain or the title? How many songs have what sounds like a biblical theme – anchor for the soul – but have no recognizable lines about the theme?  The refrain of the song says we are grounded firm and deep in the savior’s love, but it never says a word about the hope that we are being invited to lay hold of.  Strange huh? You can continue this discovery by examining “Redeemed! How I love to proclaim it” and see exactly how many of the sentiments in the song are your settled belief.

We are singing strange songs in the Lord’s land, but life gets even stranger when we settle for the tinsel objects that are popular these days as eternal and present truth.

They can never fool us again

eejoseph, ,

United states are expected to be  unstoppable agents of good for their people.  Having people unite around a cause is guaranteed to bring success. All the united republics, states and kingdoms, all the religious affiliations and sects, are struggling with societal failures and insurmountable crises.  We are beginning to question the honesty of people who declare themselves to be united.

Recognizing unity

What are the signs of a united people? Can unity be forged without conflict, oppression and exploitation? Can states like Nigeria ever be strong again? One would have thought that out of the forced unity of earthquake and disease that some semblance of solidarity might have emerged in Haiti. It seems like a together-bee is the last thing on the human agenda when Israel, forced to face the truth of its crimes against humanity, calls revenge massacres of Palestinian people a war. We have seen how well wars-to-end-all-wars end. We are not going to be fooled again by armed patriots and nationalists. The terror of marauding gangs in Israel or Haiti should not impress anyone. 

The smoke screens of unity

The religious undercurrent in American and Canadian politics is a disease with which we are familiar from our casual reading of Scripture. A united people are not constantly at war with insiders and outsiders. Homicides are a poor way to preserve liberty and livelihoods. Israel destroyed herself and so will all the united kingdoms, republics and federations.

We will definitely not allow ourselves to follow duct taped religion posing as God’s government.  We dismiss them out of hand.  Now, whether or not the churches and the powers that be succeed in putting on a show of success and near miraculous ingenuity we are convinced that they all crash on the rocks of human frailty. We will never again fall for superior commerce, bigotry, racism, domination of one’s neighbours and tyranny disguised as emergent democracy. Democracy running emergency powers is autocracy, dictatorship and misery for the masses. We refuse to be led by anyone not completely committed to Christ and human life.

Called by a Name

eejoseph, ,

Introductory Note

Names are never neutral. They carry the weight of identity, the imprint of authority, and the scars of history. In scripture, to be called is to be claimed—sometimes by covenant, sometimes by empire. In the African diaspora, names were stripped, replaced, and resisted, becoming both a site of oppression and a spark of liberation. 

This reflection explores the power of naming—from Nazareth to Babylon, from the Middle Passage to modern reclamation—and the promise of the secret name God gives to every believer. It is a meditation on how names shape destiny, how reclaiming them restores dignity, and how the divine call seals us with intimacy that no empire can erase. 

Called by a Name

He came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth. 
Prophecy whispered: He shall be called a Nazarene. 
Not just geography, but destiny. 
Not just a label, but a claim. 

I. The Weight of Names


In Hebrew memory, names are more than syllables. 
They are covenant, breath, and burden. 
Abram stretched into Abraham, 
Jacob wrestled into Israel. 
To be called is to be claimed, 
to be summoned into story. 

But empire renames. 
Daniel becomes Belteshazzar, 
identity bent beneath Babylon’s tongue. 
To rename is to rule. 
To resist renaming is to remember. 


II. The Diaspora’s Cry

Across the Atlantic, chains carried not only bodies but names. 
Kwame became William, 
Amina became Ann. 
The erasure was deliberate, 
a stripping of lineage, 
a silencing of ancestral drums. 


Yet in hush harbors, in coded songs, 
the old names hummed beneath the new. 
Memory survived in fragments, 
waiting for reclamation. 

III. Reclaiming the Call

Today, when sons and daughters of the diaspora 
adopt African names, 
it is not nostalgia. 
It is not rhetoric. 
It is resurrection. 

It is saying: 
We are not what empire called us. 
We are not the names of plantation ledgers. 
We are the names of rivers, of ancestors, of freedom. 
To be called again is to be restored. 

IV. The Nazarene Parallel@

Jesus was called a Nazarene, 
a title of scorn, 
a mark of obscurity. 
Yet prophecy turned insult into identity, 
mockery into fulfillment. 

So too the diaspora: 
names once erased, 
now reclaimed, 
become prophecy fulfilled. 
The act of naming is not nostalgia— 
it is resistance, 
it is covenant, 
it is liberation. 

V. The Secret Name

And yet beyond all human naming, 
there is a name that empire cannot touch. 
A name no overseer can erase, 
no ledger can record, 
no whip can silence. 

“To the one who overcomes,” Revelation declares, 
“I will give a white stone, 
and on the stone a new name written, 
which no one knows except the one who receives it.” 

This is intimacy beyond oppression. 
This is uniqueness beyond renaming. 
This is God whispering identity 
that only you and He can share. 

VI. The Forehead Seal


“They shall see His face, 
and His name shall be in their foreheads.” 

Not the brand of empire, 
not the scar of slavery, 
but the seal of belonging. 
The forehead becomes a canvas of covenant, 
the body itself a testimony: 
I am called, 
I am claimed, 
I am His. 


VII. The Ultimate Liberation

So what’s my name?

So the believer bears two names: 
the one shouted by empire, 
and the one whispered by God. 
The first seeks to erase, 
the second restores. 

The first is public, imposed, 
the second is secret, intimate, eternal. 
And in the end, 
the secret name triumphs. 
The forehead shines, 
the stone glimmers, 
and the believer stands 
with a name that cannot be taken away. 

What people call one another are usually chips we seldom cash in.

Gifts galore and giving gifts

eejoseph, ,

Some gifts do not deserve the name. Others mark a person in ways one cannot explain. The intrinsic value of gifts must be measured by the source and the receipt.  Only the most twisted or damaged personalities customarily reject gifts.  Today the things I call gifts are not things at all.  They are people.  All give and sputter. Supposing one gave and never stops giving, would it be time to stop living? Giving perpetually without strings is diagnostically divine.

Gift glut and glitching generosity

Your parents may have passed off the stage of life but from time to time something they passed on to you comes in handy and supremely effective.  It seems that people are needing bigger barns for all the gifts we receive; gifts from the home circle, from school, from friends, from the workplace, and from random strangers who have taken notice of us. The numerous gifts in our experience may cause us to think that generosity is mounting, that would be an illusion. Society is so fragmented and siloed that interactions that would have been the agency of generosity and love are fewer.  Genuine gift giving is rare and still needed.

The everready gift that keeps giving

In our world where buy and sell,  glorified consumerism, and law and order are quick and easy gotos, the things that are permanent and infinite get graded C, D, and F. You ask someone about the morality and they give you the Ten Commandments.  You can also discuss salvation with someone and you’d be surprised at how often people will deny that they are saved.  There are people who actually prefer living in terror of losing their way, and are convinced that they get baptized by the Holy Spirit every day, and can be born again every day.

Deniers of the truth

This is what happens when people replace the Christ of  Calvary with their own message, a time-bound doctrine, or even a divine promise. I think we can agree that the truth for Christians will always be tethered to the elevated Christ. They will never say that God has saved them. They deny the truth of their conversion,  their passing from death to life, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit as down payment of the future inheritance.  They deny Jesus the outcome of his offer. 

Belief is not works

Whether we need to be saved from our sin, or whether we need the necessary maintenance of our salvation from sin, it is the Christ who is lifted up who is the remedy. Imagine that God needs to test you after he gives you repentance, gives you faith, pardons all your sin, makes sure his child, and gives you an appointment to serve. Then imagine that God sets you adrift and requires you to finish what he started on your own. That horror house is where many Christians live. 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

My fear and my trembling is God at work!

Affirming from antiquity that God fights for his people, he saves them, he keeps them, and he brings them to fulfillment, we find.

Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. (Psalms 127:1)

Let’s get our fasting act together

eejoseph, ,

Have you been telling yourself that you have a full slate of victories, are so soulfully graced that you have not a single request to Almighty God?  That’s not happening, right? Still, we truly find ourselves bent out of shape often enough to want to do something about it.  Fasting has become a primary rallying point for many believers, providing a fellowship opportunity, a smoother of rough spots, and a panacea for a host of human problems.

Fixing the bends

Suppose the things we needed to do were aligned with the simplest and delightful human routines like feeding ourselves and doing something for others, would we have genuine access to that fabled victorious life?  Yes, if fasting is a means of getting God’s attention.  But all the fasting to cast out demons, fasting to counteract the influence of evil, and fasting to bridge the gap between our diligence and our mediocre efforts. Fasting for spiritual revival and physical fitness are probably driving by you right now, but we must ask why we still have so many hurdles to overcome.

Upping the game of effective feeding and fasting

We fast every day quite naturally, between each meal.  If we followed the conventions and the elementary constrictions of nutrition and energy we might find ourselves doing what we do for machines.

  1. Loading up on fuel before we work
  2. Take on only the amount of  fuel we need on a daily basis
  3. Using the energy to serve others
  4. Running regular maintenance routines

We can sum up these as eat measured amounts, be active, and rest.   The only thing missing from a vibrant life with those priorities is feeding on God’s word.  If that were prioritized perhaps we would not need an emergency approach to fasting. there is less effective feeding on God’s word per believer.

Let us recognize that there is a famine for the word of God. There is increasingly less effective feeding on God’s word per believer.  How many demons have you seen expelled by fasting and prayer? How many people have been healed of cancer because of fasting in prayer? The testimonies about victories achieved, all the jobs acquired, the perplexities smoothed over by fasting and prayer are many.

If you are not feasting you are fasting

Fasting has become a fad, offering people physical and spiritual advancement and progress. The physical benefits of fasting are unmistakable, and the average person, though he fasts every single day, is not benefitted by his fasting because his feasting is dysfunctional. We have lost sight of the permanence of feeding on God’s word.

The juvenile vs the mature

If no one needs commands to eat to live why are commands (invitations?) being issued to fast to die?  Sure enough, both feeding and fasting support life, but no feeding leads to death.  Let’s recognize that fasting and feeding are natural phenomena.  Mature Christians live on a faith highway.  It is completely satisfying to God that people in the Way believe, pray and lovingly serve others.  The same highway – faith – brings solutions to problems, spreads goodness and keeps the believer safe.  It is juvenile to live under a host

You have fasted without feasting on God’s word and expect to live. By God’s word I mean the life giving example of Christ and his verbal wisdom. Surely there should be no confusion about Christ as example and instructor. So let’s approach our daily food understanding that a fast will follow, and understanding that in that fasting we need to create profound feeding opportunities.

Foreground and background things for fun

eejoseph,

List five things you do for fun.

  • I cook for my family.
  • I create eye-opening songs,
  • I read the Bible like a scientist tracking DNA for clues how lift people higher.

In the background, mentally and spiritually:

  • I keep a youthful outlook on life,
  • I keep my sanity by letting a day go by just to see what would happen, and
  • I call up my personal mantra often, “light up the world with love”  (I have several versions of my mantra, but this one is the most satisfying)

Straight path confusion  – says who?

eejoseph,

Clarity is knowing that you know and that nothing is outside of God’s goodness net. Sometimes we find an expression that evokes a sigh or a bewilderment so profound one asks “says who?”

Qur’an, Hud (11:56) إِنِّى تَوَكَّلْتُ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ رَبِّى وَرَبِّكُم ۚ مَّا مِن دَآبَّةٍ إِلَّا هُوَ ءَاخِذٌۢ بِنَاصِيَتِهَآ ۚ إِنَّ رَبِّى عَلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍۢ مُّسْتَقِيمٍۢ ٥٦I

The God of the Bible has his ways, entirely different to ours. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and yet what he shares with us is consistent with his ways and his primary thoughts towards us.   He makes paths for us to walk, and he allows us to make paths for our feet, crooked or straight. We should not however confuse unbending with constricted, straight with strait.

‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Why the Islamic deity is on a straight path is beyond me.

Indeed, I have relied upon Allāh, my Lord and your Lord. There is no creature but that He holds it by its forelock [i.e., controls it]. Indeed, my Lord is on a path [that is] straight.— Saheeh International

The straight path in both the Law and the Gospel is the path assigned  for humanity. Even when the Word of God was made flesh, he was not on the same path as those that were following him. The confusion is deafening, and that does not even address who the speaker is in that verse.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith 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. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

On the roads we tread, long, short, winding, upwards or downwards God says he has us. On the mountain or in the valley, our God has us.

Here today, gone tomorrow

eejoseph,

The most beautiful things on the planet are not lasting, like a flower, and Peter the Apostle of Jesus Christ was onto this. He was not the first to have seen this surprising fact.

Here is Job saying. “Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. (Job 14:2)

Here’s the famous songwriter David singing it.  As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. (Psalms 103:15)

Here is the prophet Isaiah making the glory of men like a flower.  Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, And to the fading flower of its glorious beauty, Which is at the head of the fertile valley Of those who are overcome with wine! (Isaiah 28:1)

Where is James, a contemporary of peter, saying the same thing. and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away. (James 1:10)

Pretty flowers, attractive humans, amazing cities and high-priced purchases kick the bucket. So what is really important in life? God’s word, and for most spiritual seekers that means secret writings that have been treated as reliable for Millenia.

For, “All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off, (1 Peter 1:24)

What are you going to do without God’s word.  That is like a baby surviving without mother’s milk.