Episode Transcript
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Peggy Griffith (00:10):
Welcome back to
Next Door Gospel.
I'm your host, Peggy Griffith.
I'm so glad to be with youtoday, and I am so grateful that
you're listening.
I hope you're having a greatspring and summertime.
The temperature finally seems tobe trending upward here in
Milwaukee.
Man, we love our summertime.
(00:32):
Last year it happened on aWednesday.
Seriously though Milwaukee ishome to some amazing music and
ethnic festivals, streetfestivals, the Wisconsin State
Fair, the Milwaukee BrewersBaseball, it's just an amazing
time around here.
Uh, anyway, I am looking forwardto spending some time with you
(00:53):
today and sharing some storieswith you.
I hope as you listen that youwill recall some stories of your
own that remind you of God.
Showing up in moments of yourlife.
So there's an age old hymn thatgraces the pages of nearly every
Christian hymnal and at thesmall church where I was
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baptized, uh, pleasant HillChristian Church in Butler,
Kentucky.
We sang the first verse of thishymn at the end of every worship
service and at my currentchurch, we sing this song often
at the conclusion of churchmeetings and sometimes as a
choral benediction at the end ofworship, the song is called
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Blessed Be the, that Binds andForgive my singing voice, but
the lyrics.
Of the first verse have been onmy heart these past few weeks,
and they go like this.
Blessed be the tie that bindsour hearts in Christian Love.
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The Fellowship of Minds is liketo that above.
So sorry to grace you with mysinging voice, but I find that
to be just such a simple andbeautiful song.
And so me being the inquisitiveperson who geeks out on stuff
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like this, I took to the oldGoogle to learn more about the
origins of this hymn, and Ilearned that it was written in
the late 17 hundreds by a ruralpastor in England by the name of
John Faucet.
He was a man who was orphaned atthe age of 12, but he learned to
read and ultimately became apreacher.
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And his little congregation wasin a rural area called
Wainsgate, and in some of thepublications that I found, that
small town is described asfollows.
The people were all farmers andshepherds poor as Job's Turkey.
An uncouth lot whose speech onecould hardly understand, unable
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to read or write.
Most of them pagans cursed withvice and ignorance and wild
tempers.
The established church had nevertouched them.
I mean, in that descriptionalone, there is so much to
relate to there as I think aboutit through today's lens.
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It sounds like Wainsgate was apoverty stricken, marginalized
community that was mainly justignored.
And so the story goes thatfaucet engaged families in this
community house to house, handto hand, and he built a growing
congregation there, and so muchso that it got the attention of
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a much larger and prestigiousparish in London.
And they extended a call to him.
At this point, it gets a littlefuzzy on the specifics, but
Faucet ultimately chose to staywith his small congregation,
which was met with tears of joyfrom this community who loved
him and his family so much.
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Now at that time in history, itwas actually a common practice
that ministers actually wrotehymns on the theme or topic of
the sermon that would be sungduring Worship.
Faucet wrote that song for hiscongregation the following
Sunday after he decided to staywith them, and he continued to
serve and live with the peopleof Wainsgate for the rest of his
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life.
And now 260 years later, blessedbe the tie continues to connect
people in communities of faith,identifying with the struggles
of life and our unity togetherin Christ.
So you might be asking now,Peggy, I know you like to rock
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out to more contemporary music.
Why are you dwelling on this oldhymn?
Well, I'm finding these words,whether they are sung or spoken,
to reflect a theme that hascontinued to stay top of mind
for me in the past few weeks.
So a few weeks ago I posted onFacebook and Instagram, one of
my short music Monday reflectionreels, and it was on Toby Mac's
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Song Help is on the Way.
This came about on the heels ofsome devastating tornadoes that
struck areas in the Midwest, uh,including some towns that I love
very deeply in Kentucky.
And my dear friend Patty, whomyou have met on one of my, uh,
earlier episodes was deployed asa Red Cross volunteer to the
(05:44):
area.
And as I reflected, I said towhoever was watching on the
interwebs that day.
When we look for God, it's oftenin prayer and we are conditioned
to fix our eyes upward towardsthe skies.
And when hard times come, suchas a natural disaster, illness,
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grief, lost jobs, I said thatwhile we might look up to find
God and ask where God is in themidst of this story, don't
forget to look around.
Because when you look around,you'll see God's movement
through the hands and feet ofhelpers, through the color pop
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of a dandelion growing throughthe pavement on the sidewalk, or
through a serendipitousconversation with an old friend.
And while I've been in this timeof discernment and sharing this
process with you through thispodcast, I decided to challenge
myself.
To look around more, to be morepresent and more aware of God's
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movement within my own life.
Man, what a fruitful past fewweeks it has been.
And I wanna share two specificstories with you today.
The first story goes back 40plus years.
I kid you not, but social mediais such a blessing in this area.
I was born the youngest of threechildren.
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My brother is the middle childand has severe autism.
And as a young child growing upin the late seventies and early
eighties, and I know I'm datingmyself here, but at that time
there weren't a lot ofadvancements and options and
working with his type of specialneeds.
So when my brother became schoolage, my parents started to get
nasty grams about needing tosend him to school.
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But unfortunately, the schoolsystem in my small hometown
simply did not have the means orprogramming to work with a
6-year-old, hyperactive,nonverbal, non potty trained
little boy who had a spittinghabit.
And my parents fought a toughfight to get him the support and
care he needed.
And so what happened was theBoard of Education purchased a
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big old station wagon and theyhired a very kind woman named
Diane to pick up several specialneeds children in our community
and drive them the next countyover to a school that could
better accommodate their needs.
Now Diane holds a very specialplace in my heart.
She loved our brother and sheloved our family at a time when
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there was just a lot of chaos inour household and she passed
away a few years ago, and I meanit when I say the, that the
world was made better by herpresence here.
I got to know a lot of theseyoung children with whom my
brother shared a seat in thatstation wagon.
One young man named Matt was abeautiful soul, and he was
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completely blind, and he went toan elementary school in the next
county.
Now, Matt was a spunky young boywho never met a stranger, and he
kept us in stitches with hisjokes in his kindred heart.
And I remember one day he askedmy mom if he could see her face,
so she bent down, took off herglasses and let him touch her
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face.
After which he told her she wasvery pretty.
And for a mama going throughsome of the toughest years of
parenthood anybody couldimagine, it was a pretty sacred
moment for her to feel and beseen by a little blind boy at
the time when she felt so lostin the chaos of everything.
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Na, as luck would have it, Mattand I connected over Facebook
and a few weeks ago he mentionedthat he was thinking of
launching his own podcast and Iimmediately commented about Next
Door Gospel and I said, I'd loveto chat, help and collaborate in
any way.
So excited for this opportunityfor him.
Well, lo and behold, Matt notonly took me up on it, but he
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remembered exactly who I was andwho my brother is and my whole
family.
And we ended up having awonderful phone conversation
where I was overcome with howmuch some 40 years later he
remembered of our experiencesand while his first question was
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to ask how my brother was doing,his next comment was, this is
awesome.
I feel like I'm talking tofamily.
Now I'll bet.
We talked for a good half hourcatching up on sharing stories,
and we're planning to do somepodcast collaboration, so stay
tuned for that and you'll beglad to know that he is still
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the spunky, hilarious, andkindhearted human that I had
always known him to be.
God is so good.
You see, when I hung up thephone, I was grinning from ear
to ear.
I couldn't wait to tell John allabout it, and I was just in awe
of how every little detail,experience, and action that we
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take in our lives and how itextends, this sacred string, the
tie that binds us.
And sometimes we get glimpses ofthat sacred tie and we get to
tug on it and what we do withit, well.
That's up to us.
I reflected on growing up withthis notion of God being this
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puppet master in the clouds,pulling and tugging on strings
like we're all a bunch ofmarionettes.
The everything that happens isGod's will theory, I call it.
But the aha moment struck methat God is not the puppet
master.
God's the string.
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God is the sacred tie that bindsall things together.
And when we take the time tolook around and see the precious
glimpses of that sacred tie, weare the ones that get to discern
God's will and tug that tie.
And when we tug it, we eitherput out love and positivity or
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we don't.
40 years ago, our friend Dianetugged on that tie and drove a
carload of special needschildren to places where they
could learn in an environmentbetter suited for the type of
support they needed, and whethershe understood it at the time or
not, I don't know, but itfostered some memories and a
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connection that I am sincerelygrateful for today.
Now, the second story that I'mgoing to share with you actually
goes back to my first episode ofNextdoor Gospel.
Ugh, that sacred tie.
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But on the first weekend in May,a dear member of First Church
Tosa passed away unexpectedly,and I have such great love for
this person and her family, andthe grief has been tough.
And we got to celebrate her lifein a memorial service a couple
of weeks ago.
And whenever I come across aperson in some significant need
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of healing, I think about myfriend Markey's sourdough bread
that she baked for me last yearin the midst of the fire of
John's critical illness.
And I call it healing bread.
And while I really wanted totake a loaf of her bread to the
family.
But she was on vacation,traveling, um, that week and
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just having an epic time.
So I thought, well, I'll waituntil she's back home, has had
some time to get settled in, andthen I'll ask her if I can
purchase a loaf of her bread forthe family and take it to them
later.
Folks, I kid you not, the verymorning of the memorial service,
Markie posted online that shehad two loaves of bread.
She had just freshly baked.
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I swear she truly must have justgotten home, fed her starter and
gone straight to baking, and youbetter believe I was checking in
to get one of those loaves andMarkie being the kindred mind
that she is said, don't worryabout paying me for the bread.
I'm honored to do this for thefamily.
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The sacred tie that bindsappeared again and Marky tugged
on it and shared her wonderful,delicious and healing gift with
a family who needed it.
And friends.
I wonder, 40 years from now, howwill that very tie appear again
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for someone else to tug?
I hope I'll be around.
To witness it and friends it.
It can be hard to see thatsacred tie sometimes.
Heck, probably most of the time.
And the busyness of our lives,we go from one thing to another.
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We get to work some days andthen wonder how we got there
because we don't even rememberdriving.
I'm raising my hand slowly here'cause I am guilty of that.
And I am sure God shows meglimpses of the sacred tie so
many times throughout a day, butI probably only notice a few.
I get it.
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But can you imagine how thisworld would be if we all just
tried to notice one sacred tie aday, one moment where we get to
tug on that supernatural stringand put some love out into the
world.
And it doesn't even need to be agrand gesture.
Some of the smallest moments canmake the greatest impact.
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What moments in your life stickwith you to this day where you
saw God's goodness show up foryou?
What connections andintersections have you made?
All because someone tugged onthe string and made a
difference.
What are some moments where youhave been the one to tug on the
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string and put some good outinto the world, and then when
God has given you that glimpsethat showed you the difference
it made?
Wow.
I would love to hear about it.
You can click the send an emaillink to this podcast or even
send me an email atnextdoorgospel@gmail.com.
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And if you'd like to share yourstory, I'd love to help make
that happen.
And if you've enjoyed today'spodcast, I'd appreciate it if
you'd share it with a friend andfollow this podcast wherever you
listen to them.
And you can also follow NextdoorGospel on Facebook and
Instagram.
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And until we meet again, may theLord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face toshine upon you and be gracious
to you.
The Lord turn his face towardyou and give you peace.
Amen.