Take Heart

“When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned… Paul stood up among them and said… “I urge you to take heart… For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.” – Acts 27:21-25

“Take heart, my friend, we'll go together / this uncertain road that lies ahead / our faithful God has always gone before us / and He will lead the way once again” – Fernando Ortega

The situation was pretty bad, and somehow Luke’s use of the first person makes it that much more real: they were in a violent storm, with darkness for days. Quarantined in the midst of a force beyond their control, having jettisoned all non-essential cargo and tackle. Hope was gone. Yet when Paul speaks, he uses twice a word that only occurs a total of three times in the entire New Testament: euthymio, to “take heart, be of good cheer, be joyful and merry.” It’s also used in James 5:13: “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.” Paul was not only willing to speak about God to nonbelievers, to let go of any grudge that his warnings about the journey were ignored, to admit feeling afraid himself—he was willing to stare hopeless people in the face and say, twice, cheer up.

There’s a tendency to think, well, if an angel appeared to me, it would be easier to cheer up. Yet this angelic visit did not preclude further suffering. And despite hearing about it, several were driven by fear and self-protection in the face of their conditions (Acts 27:30). Belief is difficult. Faith may feel like a choice. We need to be told, take heart. Be people who sing praise. 

The transition to homeschooling has been an adjustment. We’ve come up with a schedule that adopts much of what the kids have in their typical pre-K, kinder, second- and fifth-grade schedules, like marble jars, choice time, morning calendars, weekly jobs, and (my favorite) “charging time” for the teacher. We do math, reading and writing, watch science and exercise videos. But my favorite time is actually the first fifteen minutes of the day, when we read a short devotional (from Thoughts To Make Your Heart Sing as that happened to be nearby) and have ten minutes of silent drawing or journaling. Because Elijah’s kinder teacher played a morning song as the day starts, we open that time by singing something simple, like “Rise and shine and give God the glory…” or a short song we learned in BSF, “Good morning, God. This is your day. I am your child. Show me your way.”

It’s hard to know how to be cheerful when the world seems to be crumbling around us. But the songs help. I come to the table most mornings with a bit of dread, not sure how the day will go, whether my emotional reserves will last, but then we sing those little melodies, and I look around at these four faces around the table, and I think, even this moment is a gift. We would not be having it were it not for the pandemic going on around us. It’s like I can hear Paul’s voice, saying, take heart. Take heart, for I have faith in God.