Crystal Brings Music Home--and We Rescue a Sleeper at a City Intersection!

It was such a joy to listen to Crystal playing beautiful arrangements on the piano in her free time at home

when she wasn't at cleaning jobs or helping her mom and sisters, or catching up in college studies.

She played a couple hymn arrangements as preludes or offertories both Sundays she was home, and I appreciated that she didn't have to have a big audience to be willing to play.

Due to so many church people traveling or sick, some Sunday School classes were canceled, and it was just a few people there for Sunday School.

It was great missionary training!

Or pastor's wife training.

Or just training in willingness to serve regardless of the size of, presence of, or lack of audience.

Sometimes the audience need only be the size of One.

Are we willing to serve when only One sees and hears?
Easter Sunday evening while chores and dishes were being done, Crystal was playing some of my favorite arrangements like "The Lord is My Light and My Salvation," "The Holy City," which my brother used to sing as a solo, " "The Palms," and "Panis Angelicus" ["O Lord Most Holy]. I sang along with her, my voice squeaking and cracking on the high notes.

It was so unbelievable that it was my own daughter who had worked so hard and practiced so much at college till she could play these difficult arrangements with the amount of ease that she did. 

How I have loved music and wished so much that I could play like that, but I  just haven't been able to. All my sisters play well, and my daughters are learning, but all I can do is try to sing along.

But enough about me and my poor abilities (or lack thereof).

“He must increase, but I must decrease," 
Ann Voskamp quoted in a post I read Monday.
It had been a long time since I checked out any of her posts, and here the theme was about platforms and serving!

She wrote,

"In a world where there are 93 million selfies taken a day and counting — the strange thing is, for all the striving to be seen:  The more exposed we are, the more unknown we can feel. 

Fame and feeling noticed —- isn’t the same as being known and feeling loved."

It’s a conversation to have when you’re bending low in dirt, planting small seeds, dirt under your fingernails:
A platform is whatever one finds under one’s feet—and the only thing that is meant to be under a Christian is an altar.
The only call on a Christian is not to pick up a microphone, not to pick some stairs to some higher platform, but to pick up a cross and come die.

The only call on a Christian is to build every platform into the shape of an altar, to shape every platform into the form of sacrificial service.

Every platform, every microphone, every podium is meant to be a nail—fixing us to Christ, the only One lifted up...


"When our culture places a premium upon stardom — we live in perpetual dark.
Culture that is fixated on stardom misses the light of extraordinary people doing holy, ordinary work."

"Serve from a real place," she wrote. "A platform isn’t about remarkable marketing; it’s about serving in a remarkable way. 

 It’s about serving from a real place of humility, authenticity, and vulnerable transparency.

"Cease striving to get to a higher, greater platform—and start praying to go lower to serve greater.
Jesus’ platform was a place of serving from His real humanity, as He walked and talked and broke and gave away His real life...
A platform is a holy place to kneel down and wash the very real wounds of the hurting. Jesus’ platform wasn’t about pushing his agenda or ‘product,’ but about caring for people’s afflictions and pain."

"A platform isn’t about self-serving, but is about...bending low ...
... The Seed Life, a way to believe in the eternal answers found in small things that do the best work in hidden ways.
...we plant seeds, the knees of old jeans worn and dirt-laden with the bending, with the brave beauty of going lower."

Thank you, Ann Voskamp! I couldn't say it better.

 Reading these words, I was convicted about my frustration with having the added job of trying to treat and dress Jonathan's hand over and over when I would rather have been doing other things over Easter weekend and beyond. 

Somehow, these words from one of my sister Heroes in Humility helped me gain a proper perspective about what really matters in the sight of God.

And so I swallow my frustration with not knowing quite how to treat and dress such a serious wound, and do the best we can with doctor-prescribed antibiotics, essential oils, coconut oil (thanks to a friend of a sister and a clerk at Home Depot who both recommended it) and various bandaids and bandages and poultices with garlic and comfrey. 

On our way to Sunday School again last Sunday, we were already running nip and tuck to not be late, when we discovered someone in trouble at their wheel at a busy city interesection.  They were off to our right, in the left turn lane at the intersection. 

"Something's wrong!" I said, after another vehicle had driven around the stopped vehicle with tinted glass to our right,  that wasn't going when their light was green. As we proceeded on our way. I looked through that windshield and saw the person's head tilted back instead of awake and alert. 

"Shall we go check?" Jonathan asked.

I thought of Crystal who had been asked to play for Sunday School, and her lovely arrangement she had practiced to play for prelude. 

But in the same second I thought of that, I thought of the priest and the Levite and the Good Samaritan.

And without a moment's hesitation, we found a place to turn around.

Preludes can be dispensed with.

Beautiful music, however well practiced, can wait on the priority of caring for someone in need.

Church platforms do not take priority over helping in an emergency.  

Our children learn more from our deeds than from our words.

We whipped into the parking area of the business across from the busy intersection and I jumped out of the van, while Jonathan called 911. Other vehicles were again waiting, somewhat trapped, behind this vehicle.

I tapped on the window, and when there was no response, I tried the door.

Unlocked, it readily opened.

A young fellow,  dark-skinned and black-bearded suddenly started rousing.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Jonathan reached inside with his long leg to push the emergency brake.

Little by little the man came to, mumbling that he had been on his way home from work and must have fallen asleep.

The poor, exhausted man!

It took him a bit to come to fully. Suddenly he exclaimed something which I will not repeat, and started to drive forward, stopped by the emergency brake. 

I refrained from releasing it for him, wanting him to know what he was doing, and to do it for himself. He quickly released it and took off, leaving Jonathan still on the phone with emergency personnel who decided it was likely not a medical emergency!

That was quite the excitement for the day!