A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of taking a group from our church to Orlando. I intended the trip to provide folks from the church a glimpse of the Children’s Home, a ministry of the United Methodist Church in Florida aimed at helping at risk children. They call it Residing Hope nowadays, and they indeed have a residential program close to Orlando in Enterprise, FL. We are great supporters here at First Boca.

       Because of when the program was to start on Thursday morning, I decided that the group should go up the night before and do something in Orlando that Wednesday afternoon. Which we did. We went to the Titanic Experience.

       If you haven’t been to that exhibit, let me tell you just a tidbit about it. One wreck diving crew got the license (I don’t know who gives that permission) to dive the wreck and bring up from the Titanic whatever they could salvage. The rationale goes that the Titanic is breaking apart, and at some point, there will be nothing to salvage, so do it while you can! So anyway, one group got to pick items from the Titanic, but under the condition that they could not sell any of them. They brought thousands and thousands of items up from the depths of the ocean. All kinds of things, including pieces of the actual ship, and even things like wrapped postcards that somehow were still intact. It’s pretty incredible. The only way they can monetize their work is to put on these exhibits and to sell coal. They brought up a ton of coal. There was a large piece of coal in the Gift Shop, with a $500,000 price tag on it. Yes, a half a million dollars! Wow!

       I want to share one memory from that experience with you. They had recreated the radio room. They had set up a first-class bedroom suite. They also had recreated a dining room. And after touring all of that, you went to an upper area where music was playing. Having grown up in church, I recognized the tune. It was a hymn, played by a string ensemble. The hymn? “Nearer, my God, to Thee.”  The musicians (and they had a list of their names, none of whom were invited into the lifeboats) were asked to play “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as people were plunging into the frigid waters–and as they approached their own demise on the sinking ship.

       I felt torn between thinking it incredibly ironic and, conversely, perceiving it comforting that they played that song. Many of those people, whether they knew it or not, were getting “nearer to God” that night. That might be construed as ironic. But the first verse of that hymn says:

E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

I think of two things when I read that. My Mom, approaching her last days on this earth, expressed to me her gratitude for the beauty and the grace that God had surrounded her with all her life, even to the very end. I want to say, like her, that “even if it’s a horrible death that’s before me, still my song shall be one of desiring God.”  My Mom is modelling that for me. But as we celebrate Easter, my other thought is that Jesus, as he was raised on that Cross, in His final words said, “into Thy hands I commit My spirit” (I’d never noticed the Trinitarian aspect of that statement!). Jesus trusted God not to the end, put through death. Death was just one middle point in His ministry. And we are to trust, and love, and praise God not to the “end of our days,” but all through the days of this life, and into the next. That’s why Jesus died. To conquer death. And so that we could sing before it, in the midst of it, and Hallelujah!, after it, “Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.”

Closer to the Father because of the Son,

Craig

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship
in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God
in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought
near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:12,13 (NIV)