Lindsay And The Doxology

Great song, great girl! This is from October 1, 2015.

I guess I'm not mad at Lindsay anymore and I'm petty sure she knows I never was. Lindsay is a junior at WCS and in my third period Gospels class. She is also from South Korea and her given name is Yeonji although I had to look it up to know. Lindsay lives with John and Gracie Greer along with Kishi, a young lady from China, who is a senior at our school. I worship with John, who is one of our elders, and Gracie, our Westbury Christian School Director of Curriculum, as part of the Westbury Church of Christ. The Greers have made a home for a dozen Asian students, all girls, over the past decade, and it has become a mission for them. Lindsay and Kishi are simply the latest in a group of wonderful young women from China and Korea to live within their walls. I'm not unbiased here- I have been blessed to baptize three of these ladies (Annie, Ellie, April) into Jesus Christ. There is no telling the number of folks who will be added to the Book of Life because of Gracie and John.

I guess I should get back to Lindsay. At our Sunday night worship five days ago, she sat with her American guardians several rows ahead of me. But, when the final AMEN was sounded, she didn't come to say hello to her favorite Bible teacher. In her defense, she told me Monday that she never saw me so how could I be mad? Also, she did the best job of any of my 100 students on the Johnny Lingo discussion test the previous Friday so that helped ease my disappointment. Lindsay is a very good Bible student; I don't think I'm violating any privacy guidelines by revealing she has a 99% average in my class. If she comes through with a 100% tomorrow on our Test # 4, she could well be in triple digits with her score. As we finished our section notes this morning, we wrote down, or really typed into our laptops, the definition of doxology, which I gave as

 “an expression of praise to God, especially a short hymn sung as part of a Christian worship service.” 

As an example, we wrote down the best known English example, Thomas Ken's Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow, penned in 1674. It goes as follows if you aren't familiar with it:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him, all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

I sang the short chorus, which we often sang as a family in Nebraska, and asked if any of the kids knew it. Several raised their hands, including Lindsay. On the spur of the moment, I told her I would give everyone in the class one extra test point tomorrow if she would sing it in Korean. To the delight of those who can desperately use that additional point, she did. In a quiet but firm voice, she sang it in her native tongue. This is how it reads in Korean:

I was extremely proud of Lindsay. We are so used to hearing our praises to our Lord sung only in English that it’s a joy to hear them sung in other languages. I’m not going to say it was like the Day of Pentecost when all those in Jerusalem heard the Word preached in their own dialect- Lindsay is the only Korean student in the class- but it sounded really wonderful to me. All of us clapped when she finished and not just in gratitude for the bonus. More than half the youngsters in that section are either international or have close relatives in other nations. Nine times, the scriptures speak of singing a new song to the Lord. Today, Lindsay sang a very old song in a very new way, at least to those of us who are not Korean. And I think our God must have been pleased as well.

Applicable quote of the day:
“Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now."-A.W. Tozer

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve @hawleybooks.com