Three ‘Loves’ – Desires of the Heart by Peter A. Black

Lately I realized that three longstanding ‘loves’ in my life have received continuing avenues of expression, even into my wife May’s and my retirement years. We can hardly keep up with it all.

Music making, both vocal and instrumental, has been virtually life-long for me. The interest was awakened when, as a three year-old, I got my first harmonica.

Creative writing, while showing an early start in elementary school, blossomed during the second half of my pastoral service years.  

Pastoral care and sharing of the message of redeeming love and life in Jesus Christ, in the joy and peace of His grace, budded during my teens through engagement in Sunday school teaching, music and witness teams.

These three ‘loves’ in some measure found outlets in two successive careers spanning fifty years till retirement (the music instrument servicing industry and pastoral service). However, they continue to find avenues of expression today in various volunteer and pulpit supply settings.

Recently, during a pastor friend’s hospitalization and recovery my wife and I had the privilege of ministering to his rural Baptist congregation (we’re often involved there, musically). On 

Rotunda. St Paul's, T'burg, Ont.

 Easter Sunday we were at a United Church, St. Paul’s (its beautiful sanctuary is a favourite of mine), where the choir presented one of my compositions – an Easter anthem – and I sang "The Holy City." 



Front. St Paul's UC, Tillsonburg, Ont.

More than a decade ago I had that anthem and another piece arranged by Joy Brown, a Toronto area arranger and accompanist.  I’d hoped to have her arrange several other inspirational compositions, but didn’t get around to it.


St. Paul's UC

Instead, since then, the writing occupied available time, finance and creative focus, resulting in publishing two books and hundreds of newspaper columns and a number of magazine articles.
The other arranged piece – an ode to Canada, with Christian motifs – may be presented by St. Paul’s in June of this year. Its original form was written for a Canada Day celebration almost two decades ago.

How grateful and blessed I am to experience, even with limited and jaded abilities, avenues for expressing those three loves that have been woven into the gift-mix and fabric of much of my life.
Jaded? Faded? Maybe, yet it often feels a lot like spring!

Our Heavenly Father has seen fit to grant the desires He has placed in my heart (Psalm 37:4-5) regarding that threesome. The day will come when one thing or the other will be laid to rest, and so will I.

The Lord has given, and the Lord has the prerogative to take away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

~~+~~

Snapshots of St, Paul's UC, taken by the author.

Peter, now retired from fulltime pastoral service, is an author, inspirational columnist and songwriter living in Southwestern Ontario. He enjoys singing and playing sacred music and praise songs – especially for his friends in a number of residential care facilities and in area congregations.

~ Raise Your Gaze ... Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart

~ Parables from the Pond

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Anticipating The Desires of Your Heart by Christine Lindsay

There comes a time in every believer’s life when we struggle with the desires of our heart.

Is my desire God’s will?  Is He going to give me what I want?

The answer is: No…and…Yes.

I can best show you this through the cover development of my non-fiction book Finding Sarah, Finding Me that is coming out this August.

I put the following samples from my publisher up on Facebook a few months ago to get reactions. 

Here are some of those reactions from Facebook friends:

• The one of the right, the soft sweetness got me.
• I like the one of the left because it is a happy moment.
• The one on the right. I think reunions are very emotional and stressful. The outcomes may end in joy, but I the first few moments are breath taking.
• I like the one on the left with the little girl running to her mom.
• At first I thought the left and then thought the right because this a book about your daughter’s journey as well as your own. The left image then became too stereotypical.
• Definitely the one on the left, which for me shows a joyful reunion.

The overall vote was about 40% for the left image, and 60% for the right. 

But the exercise got me thinking. People really wanted a happy adoption reunion cover. Just like I wanted a happy reunion with my birthdaughter Sarah. That’s what I’d prayed for the 20 years after I relinquished her to adoption. The desire of my heart was a good one. It certainly wasn’t sinful, but the reunion was so traumatic for my birthdaughter’s adoptive parents and thereby traumatic for her, that the heartache and trauma was then passed on to me.

Reunion Day 1999, I'm smiling (in the middle) but my heart was breaking.
Sarah is the blond standing beside me. The brunette is my daughter Lana,
 the tall guy in back is Sarah's husband, and the little blond guy in front is my youngest, Rob.

The reunion I’d prayed so hard and so long for broke my heart as much as my original relinquishment in 1979.

Was the desire of my heart God’s will? It sure seemed it wasn’t at that time.

Looking back 16 years after the reunion I can see that God was involved in my journey. There was so much He wanted me to learn. He wanted me to know how much He loved me in spite of my rejection of Him at times. He wanted me to learn some of those deep things about His nature, such as His suffering. The only way I could learn that was by not getting what I wanted when I wanted it. He showed me the depths of His love for me as I experienced my "seeming" rejection from Sarah.

God didn’t leave me in my heartbroken state. A relationship did gradually grow between my birthdaughter and I. So the answer to whether or not my desire was God’s will really is “No…and…Yes”.

All my children together, some of my grandchildren, including Sarah's first baby sitting on my mother's lap in the front row. 

My search for my birthdaughter Sarah helped me find my own face in the face of Christ. Maybe that’s what your suffering is about too.

You might even be wondering if your desire to write is God's will too. In my career as a writer I've discovered that the journey toward that goal is another of God's priorities for my life. Take joy in the journey. 

Busy writer and speaker, Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction, currently writing her eighth book.