Showers of Blessing
15/06/15 05:06
There is an African-American spiritual that goes:
“Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Allelu, allelu, alleluia!”
Historians have read a world of meaning into the spirituals. I once read that this song was, both a celebration of mental acuity and a prevention of losing one’s mind. To wake up with one’s mind was an accomplishment in a world of hurt, grief and sorrow. A slave suffered not only the indignities of unpaid work, but the cruelty of the master and the frequent forced disruption of the family. They saw their children sold away to other plantations and their families broken up through other harsh measures. It was a brutally rough life and just not going crazy from the stress of such a world was an accomplishment in itself.
I didn’t exactly wake up this morning with my mind “stayed on Jesus,” but I did wake up with a hymn at the top of my consciousness:
“There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above.
Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.”
That tune and those words shouldn’t surprise anyone. We had another rain shower in the night. I remember lying on my back in bed and listening to the rain outside my window. Our home is fairly tight and a little shower might not make that much noise, but there are some normal sounds that are easy to hear. Our bedroom is on the northeast corner of the house and their is a drainpipe that runs down that corner right next to where I lay my head. I like to sleep with the window open and hearing the water running down that drain is pretty easy. I can’t exactly hear the raindrops on the roof, as our home has a second story above our bedroom, but I can hear the rain falling on the walk outside and if it rains hard, I can hear the raindrops on a skylight over our stairway.
Last night’s shower was gentle. If there was thunder and lightning, it was so far away that I didn’t hear it. It has turned out to be a wet spring, a real blessing to the hills that were dry from a winter that was light on snowpack. The damp weather has made everything grow. The hills are green and the grasses are springing up at a fast rate. It seems like as soon as the sun peeks out from behind the clouds the grass grows so fast that you can almost watch the motion. Mowing is a challenge and should probably be done more than once a week in this weather, but I don’t seem to find time for more than the once a week trip across my lawn. The neighbors seem to be keeping up at about the same pace. Whenever it isn’t raining you can hear the sound of mowers in the neighborhood.
Showers of blessing isn’t one of my favorite hymns. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it is a line in the third verse that asks for blessings:
“There shall be showers of blessing;
Send them upon us, O Lord;
Grant to us now a refreshing,
Come, and now honor Thy Word.”
I’m not a poet and I’m not a hymn-writer, but I am not especially enamored with the appeal to “come, and now honor Thy Word,” as if God would somehow ever fail to honor a commitment. The problems with the covenant with God arise from human failures to honor our promises, not from God.
I know that is a picky little argument, and I know that the overall hymn is meaningful and sparks pleasant memories for a lot of people. I don’t mean to criticize it. Somehow, it just isn’t one of my favorites.
It is, however, embedded in my mind. Without a hymnal for reference, my mind was singing the song as I lay in bed listening to the rain in the night. I woke up with the song in my mind and at the moment, I haven’t gotten it out of my consciousness.
Scientists have a name for the phenomena: “earworms.” Researchers have found that if they play part of a familiar song to research subjects, the auditory cortex lights up with activity. Not only do we respond to familiar sounds, but we automatically fill in the gaps. Our brains keep “singing” after external stimulus has ended. I hear the rain. I think of the word “showers,” and my brain fills in the rest with the complete hymn. According to the researchers, the area of my brain that keeps repeating the song is the same area that is stimulated by listening to or making audible sounds. I’m literally listening to the song even though there is no sound in the room of me or anyone else singing.
Although it hasn’t happened with this song yet, there are songs that get stuck in your auditory cortex. They become a kind of brain itch. The more you think about them, the more you hear them. The more you try to get them out of your brain, the harder it is to stop hearing the songs. This happens with advertising jingles, children’s songs, and many other familiar songs. Most of us have learned to replace the annoying song with another song - sometimes we just replace one annoyance with another, but sometimes we can find a more pleasant tune for our brains.
With my song this morning, I’m not really annoyed. I do see a connection between my faith and the events of the world around me. I do find rain to be a blessing and I do find my self very fortunately surrounded by abundant blessings.
And, if your brain works like mine, now that you’ve read my blog the hymn will be playing in your mind as well.
“Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.
Allelu, allelu, alleluia!”
Historians have read a world of meaning into the spirituals. I once read that this song was, both a celebration of mental acuity and a prevention of losing one’s mind. To wake up with one’s mind was an accomplishment in a world of hurt, grief and sorrow. A slave suffered not only the indignities of unpaid work, but the cruelty of the master and the frequent forced disruption of the family. They saw their children sold away to other plantations and their families broken up through other harsh measures. It was a brutally rough life and just not going crazy from the stress of such a world was an accomplishment in itself.
I didn’t exactly wake up this morning with my mind “stayed on Jesus,” but I did wake up with a hymn at the top of my consciousness:
“There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above.
Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.”
That tune and those words shouldn’t surprise anyone. We had another rain shower in the night. I remember lying on my back in bed and listening to the rain outside my window. Our home is fairly tight and a little shower might not make that much noise, but there are some normal sounds that are easy to hear. Our bedroom is on the northeast corner of the house and their is a drainpipe that runs down that corner right next to where I lay my head. I like to sleep with the window open and hearing the water running down that drain is pretty easy. I can’t exactly hear the raindrops on the roof, as our home has a second story above our bedroom, but I can hear the rain falling on the walk outside and if it rains hard, I can hear the raindrops on a skylight over our stairway.
Last night’s shower was gentle. If there was thunder and lightning, it was so far away that I didn’t hear it. It has turned out to be a wet spring, a real blessing to the hills that were dry from a winter that was light on snowpack. The damp weather has made everything grow. The hills are green and the grasses are springing up at a fast rate. It seems like as soon as the sun peeks out from behind the clouds the grass grows so fast that you can almost watch the motion. Mowing is a challenge and should probably be done more than once a week in this weather, but I don’t seem to find time for more than the once a week trip across my lawn. The neighbors seem to be keeping up at about the same pace. Whenever it isn’t raining you can hear the sound of mowers in the neighborhood.
Showers of blessing isn’t one of my favorite hymns. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it is a line in the third verse that asks for blessings:
“There shall be showers of blessing;
Send them upon us, O Lord;
Grant to us now a refreshing,
Come, and now honor Thy Word.”
I’m not a poet and I’m not a hymn-writer, but I am not especially enamored with the appeal to “come, and now honor Thy Word,” as if God would somehow ever fail to honor a commitment. The problems with the covenant with God arise from human failures to honor our promises, not from God.
I know that is a picky little argument, and I know that the overall hymn is meaningful and sparks pleasant memories for a lot of people. I don’t mean to criticize it. Somehow, it just isn’t one of my favorites.
It is, however, embedded in my mind. Without a hymnal for reference, my mind was singing the song as I lay in bed listening to the rain in the night. I woke up with the song in my mind and at the moment, I haven’t gotten it out of my consciousness.
Scientists have a name for the phenomena: “earworms.” Researchers have found that if they play part of a familiar song to research subjects, the auditory cortex lights up with activity. Not only do we respond to familiar sounds, but we automatically fill in the gaps. Our brains keep “singing” after external stimulus has ended. I hear the rain. I think of the word “showers,” and my brain fills in the rest with the complete hymn. According to the researchers, the area of my brain that keeps repeating the song is the same area that is stimulated by listening to or making audible sounds. I’m literally listening to the song even though there is no sound in the room of me or anyone else singing.
Although it hasn’t happened with this song yet, there are songs that get stuck in your auditory cortex. They become a kind of brain itch. The more you think about them, the more you hear them. The more you try to get them out of your brain, the harder it is to stop hearing the songs. This happens with advertising jingles, children’s songs, and many other familiar songs. Most of us have learned to replace the annoying song with another song - sometimes we just replace one annoyance with another, but sometimes we can find a more pleasant tune for our brains.
With my song this morning, I’m not really annoyed. I do see a connection between my faith and the events of the world around me. I do find rain to be a blessing and I do find my self very fortunately surrounded by abundant blessings.
And, if your brain works like mine, now that you’ve read my blog the hymn will be playing in your mind as well.