Grandma’s Prayer of Relinquishment

By Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg 

A book that touched me deeply many years ago was Beyond Ourselves, by Catherine Marshall.  (Fleming H. Revell Co, 1994.) Especially helpful was chapter six, entitled “The Prayer of Relinquishment”. In it she told of a time in her life when she was ill and did not begin to get better until after she surrendered her health to God and agreed in her heart and mind to trust him for the outcome and not worry about the future. It was definitely a turning point in her life.

Perhaps, however, I came to understand the concept most fully many years later when talking with my paternal Grandmother as I worked on our family genealogy. She told me of a painful time in her life—the illness and death of her youngest son as a small child. It illustrated to me that the prayer of relinquishment had been around long before I had heard about it.

Fifty years later my Grandmother could still vividly recall that difficult experience. She said,

"I did everything I could to help and prayed for the Lord to heal him, but when he kept getting worse, I just gave him to the Lord and said that whether he lived or died, I wanted God’s Will to be done.  One of my neighbors asked me how I could do such a thing, but I knew God always does what is best."

Clarence died of pneumonia in March of 1938, about four months before his third birthday. I don’t know why Clarence died and I don’t know why God didn’t do anything to prevent his death. But I do know Grandma was right, God can be trusted, whatever happens.

We don’t, however, want to make the mistake of thinking that every time we surrender fully to God something bad will happen. Usually the result is good, whether we see it immediately or later after the perspectives of time and later life events give a better understanding. Most of the time surrender is necessary so God can remove something from our lives that otherwise precludes something better. Surrender to God often brings our greatest freedom and joy whether or not it brings what we think is best for us (or what we desire) at the time.

To be in a loving and intimate relationship with Almighty God is a blessing beyond description. He cares about your situation and wants to help you to experience life that is full, abundant and filled with his blessing. I hope you have that kind of relationship with God and if you don’t, I hope you soon come to know him. Here is a prayer that may be helpful to you:

God, help me to always trust you so completely that no matter what difficulties I face in life, I can know it is safe to surrender them completely to you. I know that whatever you want to do is always what is best for your kingdom and I know it is also what is always best for me.
  
I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.
 

A Media Manufactured Malaise

By Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg 

Long before there were any indications of an economic downturn the television people were talking about a recession. I’m sure they didn’t think about the repercussions, but creating a recession by talking about it incessantly is a cruel thing to do to those who are mere pawns in the process.

In one example a network newscaster asked a gentleman interviewee—businessman, economist or politician (I don’t remember which), don’t you think we’re headed for a recession? She asked in about three different ways and every time he answered something like this, “There is no indication of a coming recession”. Finally, in apparent exasperation, she asked “But doesn’t it feel like a recession?” (Precise quote, emphasis hers.) And the gentleman to whom she was talking, hesitated, but finally said, “Well, yes, I guess it does”. It was obvious that was what she wanted to hear, so, with resignation, he capitulated and said what she wanted him to say.

This was just one of many I saw, as the constant barrage of recession by repetition from ABC, NBC, and CBS finally began to create faith in a recession and eventually thus created the real thing. The more businessmen who believed a recession was on the way, the more there were who hesitated to buy needed equipment for fear a recession would make it unnecessary at best and a future forfeiture at worst. Others hesitated to hire needed workers for fear of the fomented recession and finally there were those who laid off workers because no one was buying their machines.

So they talked about this “media manufactured malaise” (my term, not theirs) until enough people believed it and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is, now that they’ve manufactured a malaise (or recession) with the power of the tube, they don’t know how to turn it off. It was easy enough to start. It only took about three years of babbling about it until people began to believe it, but now the recession has spread all over the earth. Everyone wants to blame someone else and I guess that includes me because I don’t think I did it and I do blame the TV media.

The TV media is not to blame for the greed and hypocrisy in the banking and investment field, nor for the deliberate “misappraisal” of properties by bank and appraisal experts who collaborated to finance properties that were over-valued, to say nothing of selling properties to people who obviously could not afford to buy them. Both of these fields (banking and real estate) needed to be corrected. So should we thank the media who manufactured this current malaise? Not! There are better ways to handle such abuses if we would just do it.

There is no way to measure the pain and suffering such broadcasts have caused. All I’m asking for is real news rather than broadcast bias to create news. And I repeat, what we are experiencing is a media manufactured malaise. They should not start bad things, but especially not bad things they don’t know how to stop.

I’m Rick Blumenberg…and that’s “My View from Tanner Creek”

    

Life and the Mississippi

By Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg 


I grew up around the Mississippi River in Southeast Missouri. At one time our family owned a farm on Wolf Island—a Kentucky Island on the Missouri side of the Mississippi. We never actually lived on the island, but we farmed the land for several years and during that time my siblings and I helped to work the land and care for the livestock and played in the woods that surrounded our fields and visited the Mississippi River that flowed less than a mile from our land.

This amazing river begins as a trickle in Northern Minnesota, but by the time it passed our island it was more than a quarter mile wide and a highway for huge caravan-like barges that carry the goods for America and the world. From Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana, this river drains water from 31 states and pumps an average of 593,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second into the Gulf of Mexico.

As a boy, it was the most exciting thing in my life, from the unique sound foghorns late on a rainy night to the excitement of seeing huge barge fleets that I watched while dreaming of a future as a riverboat captain. Our island was just a few miles south of where the huge Ohio River entered the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, and many miles farther down this great river disappears into the gulf.

In so many ways the Mississippi is like life, so here’s my poetic take on Life and the Mississippi

Life and the Mississippi

   by Rick Blumenberg

Turned aside by pebbles in its infancy

and easily cut off.

Racing over boulders

in youthful excitement.

Grown to maturity

with burdens not it's own,

Perpetually moving

into the gulf stream of eternity. 

Who can possibly know

the destiny of a trickle?

 I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.
   

A Sunday Morning Prayer

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

It was five o'clock on a Sunday morning and I was wide awake in my sixth floor hospital room. The view from my bed overlooked the city of Elkhart, Indiana, and I could see the faint hint of dawn in the east.  Between my window and the horizon stretched the lights of the sleeping city below. I felt a keen sense of the presence of God as I thought about the day ahead and the many ministers who would rise early to begin a day of ministry to their various flocks throughout the city and in the surrounding countryside.

I wouldn't be in the pulpit this morning but my long habit of rising early to pray each Sunday must have brought me awake because I was totally alert with a sense of anticipation for the day to come. I began to pray for my associate who would preach in my place and for the other leaders in our congregation who would carry the ministry much more than adequately in my absence.

I prayed for each Sunday School teacher, each music and worship leader, for the choir and the musicians, asking God to bless every effort and every person involved in either the giving or the receiving.

Then I began to pray for fellow ministers, friends throughout the city, and for their various congregations. As I prayed for each one I also asked God to bless all the churches in their denomination and finally, when I had run out of all the ministers I knew, I prayed for all the others, ministers and congregations of God's people throughout our community and in the surrounding area.

As I prayed I think I began to understand, at least in a small way, how our heavenly Father feels as he looks out over his diverse peoples. I felt a sense of love and appreciation for them all and for the effects of their labors in our community. I asked God to encircle all his people with love and to draw into that community of faith all those who were alienated and alone and who felt so far away from him.

What a privilege it is to be a child of God and to be a part of this marvelous spiritual family where God is Father, Jesus Christ our elder brother and the Holy Spirit binds us all together with his perfect love!

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.
  

What to Do When You Need a Miracle

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

When Jesus did a miracle his disciples were usually astonished. Even though they had spent much time with him they still were not accustomed to miracles. He tried to tell them that, as his followers, they should be able to count on miracles any time one was needed but it was not easy to accept.

According to Webster's New World Dictionary (1966) a miracle is "An event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws." So how do we go about finding such a miracle when we need it? That's the first step to receive a miracle—it  must be necessary to accomplish something God wants done. It can be a personal miracle. For instance, God wants his people to be fed and if you cannot possibly feed yourself God can supply your needs the same as he did for the Israelites in the wilderness. Or, it can be a corporate miracle—perhaps a church that has a need that cannot be met with God's normal sustaining help. However, there is no reason for God to supply a miracle for something we can do in our own strength (even if we don't think we can do it.)

The next requirement for a miracle is "asking faith". God can't say yes to prayers we don't pray and it takes faith just to ask. In a typical congregation many would find it difficult to pray for a miracle from God to supply a particular need In theory many Christians believe God is a God of miracles, but few of us realistically believe God will provide a miracle for me. It takes faith just to ask.

All too often we are like independent children who want to do it ourselves. We don't want help. And that can be good. We shouldn't sit around and wait for God to supply everything with no effort on our part. But when we have done our best to obey the Lord, have given time, talents and treasure for work we genuinely believe God wants done, and it is still impossible for us to do, then it is time to ask for (and expect) a miracle. I'm convinced it pleases God when we ask. For us to refuse God’s help when we have done our best and are unable to do more, doesn't please God any more than it would please you, as a parent, if you had a child who, after doing his best to finish a task, would rather be defeated than allow you to help.

When our younger daughter, Twyla, began her sophomore year in college it was the rage to have a "deck" in your dorm room. The rules were if you built it, it had to be removable and could not be fastened in any way to the walls of the dorm—no nails, bolts, etc. She designed the deck she wanted, saved the money for the materials, but couldn't build it alone, so she asked for my help. We had fun building it and at the end of the year she sold it to another student for the next year and got her money back for the materials.

I'm glad she asked! I would not have built the deck for her while she was out having fun, but when she was willing to work at it, I enjoyed helping her. Just thinking about it brings back good memories of the time we spent together on that task. I think God is also like that. Our heavenly Father wants to help and is happy when we ask.

God said to the Apostle Paul (and to us all) "...my power is made perfect in weakness." (II Corinthians 12:9^(NIV))  Does that mean God's power is ever less than perfect?  In one sense, yes. God's perfect power is often limited, but not by any lack on his part. We limit God’s power when we don't ask for Divine help. It is also limited because we don't attempt great things God wants done that require his power. We are too easily satisfied with a mediocrity we can do with our own ordinary strength.

God's power is limited and cannot be perfect unless it is being used because that power must be let loose in the world to accomplish God's will! The reason many of us never see a miracle is because we never do anything God wants done that requires his miraculous help.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.