At this morning’s Easter service, amidst dozens and dozens of roses, I had the good fortune to sit near the timpani and brass quintet the church hired to accompany the magnificent choir and organist.
There’s no getting around it: traditional Easter music is absolutely royal! They even brought in a long C-trumpet and a tiny piccolo trumpet to herald the victory of the King of Kings! What can I say except that it was very moving.
A friend of mine from graduate school who is now a professor asked me why it is that invariably the students who are Christians are always the very smartest students. You sure wouldn’t think so from listening to the media. [My next post will explain a source of the confusion.]
Many have noticed that what Christianity has to say is very important IF TRUE. Well, it is true. Jesus is coming back and his people will ascend into Heaven, like Elijah. (Someone has spent a lot of money on satellites that can project holograms into the sky to falsify Jesus’ return if it’s not true.)
Back in 2002, the Boston Museum of Fine Art had an exhibit of people floating up into the sky, ascending into Heaven. I’m not sure it intended to depict the Rapture, but I was very taken by it at the time, then I forgot all about it. But of course it’s true — Jesus is coming back and we’d be wise to be ready. The King is coming!
Keith Green
Scroll down to hear the Easter Song from Keith Green, the youngest person to have a rock & roll recording contract (Decca Records) at age 11 in 1965. A super-talented kid, he’d already written 50 great songs by then, but he never caught on with the public. Nonetheless, the record companies kept trying to push prepubescent stars (for what purpose?!) on an unsuspecting public. They finally hit the jackpot a few years later with Michael Jackson.
A bad LSD trip scared Keith Green so much he turned to Jesus as the only answer everyone agrees on, including all religions (except for Judaism, ironically). His family was Jewish, but had become Christian Scientist.
He became one of the most successful Christian artists ever with albums like Songs for the Shepherd & So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt. He and his wife were on salary as jingle writers for CBS, so he was able to regularly give away records for free and provide free accommodations to dozens of homeless people.
When he went on tour, his wife said he would leave the door open with a sign: If you need anything, take it, but if you’re here to steal, you’re stealing from the Lord.
In 1982, Keith Green and 2 of his 4 children were killed in a small private plane seemed to explode minutes after take off, although the cause of the crash was “overloaded capacity.” At age 27, Keith Green became yet another amazingly talented artist with a suspicious death.