Just to Pay Expenses

What’s the best job in the world?  One for which “…they actually pay me to do what I love!”  Talk about a dream job.

Jefa-fa Dun-ham (as his puppet Peanut calls him) has never worked at a real job.  He has always been a ventriloquist. (Sorry about commercial in the link.)  People just pay him millions to entertain them.

How unlike the Michigan man of the early 1900s I read about in the book, Anchor Post.  His daughter wrote that her father was a preacher of the Gospel; he farmed only to pay expenses.

So, I will take the advice of Kristen Lamb, author of Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer.  She said to her audience – writers, “When people ask what you do, you need to tell them, ‘I am an author’ or ‘I am a writer.’”  Since I believe Messiah would have me proclaim Biblical truths through my stories and essays and I enjoy writing, from now on I will tell people I am an author.  I just work in a factory to pay expenses.

Whom do you know has a dream job?

To Die Happy

I don’t believe I’m becoming obsessed with death.  However, I have been thinking a lot since my wife’s funeral last October about what I’d like to have at my own.  It boils down to a lot of music in worship of Messiah.

I would want

·      hymns from my childhood  O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, How Great Thou Art, Great Is Thy Faithfulness

·      anthems from my teen years in church choir     The Heavens Are Telling from Hayden’s Creation Oratorio, Open Our Eyes

·      choruses from young adulthood as a new believer      The Steadfast Love, (I’m drawing a blank on more examples.)

·      as well as proclamation music from these last decades          Indescribable, (Another blank.)

Open Our Eyes listed above declares

Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant!

For through its portals

we enter into the presence

      of the living God!

I love that song, not only for its stirring crescendo, but also for the truth of its lyrics.

It is often said when a man dies in the arms of a woman that at least he died happy.  Last Sunday, during worship, I wept, overwhelmed by joy in the Lord.  I thought that were I to drop dead right then, I would leave this life doing one of my favorite activities.