'Once Upon a Tim' books 1-4

One Upon a Tim
The Labyrinth of Doom
The Sea of Terror
The Quest of Danger
by Stuart Gibbs
Recommended Ages: 8+

In the first of these four short, kid-friendly, adorably illustrated adventures, Tim and his best friend Belinda seize their one opportunity to escape being peasants – trying out for knighthood. The alternative, for Tim, is a lifetime of dawn-to-dusk drudgery with nothing to show for it but a mud hut over his head and a cup of gruel now and then. For Belinda (who disguises herself as a boy and takes the name Bull) there are two choices: housewife or witch, neither of which appeals. Joined by the Ferkle, the village idiot, they jump at the offer to become knights, signing on with Prince Ruprecht and his wizard counselor, Nerlim, to rescue the fair Princess Grace from a smelly monster (the stinx). Little do they know they all, and not just Ferkle, are being taken for fools.

Obviously, adventures will be less than straightforward when everything on the map has "of Doom" in its name. As Nerlim comments when Prince Ruprecht tells him to stop being such a scaredy-cat because everything looks perfectly fine: "That's what I'm afraid of. This is called the River of Doom. Why would it be called the River of Doom if there wasn't any doom?" Favorite quote. But at the risk of spoiling what is to come, Ruprecht and Nerlim prove to be the boss villains throughout the remaining three books of the series, which feature a quest to resecue Grace from the center of a monster-infested maze, a sea voyage past half the perils in Homer's Odyssey, and another sea chase from the edge of the world to Atlantis, featuring the other half of those perils. Cyclopes! Krakens! Whirlpools! Sirens! And of course, a kingdom under the waves – but not the one you think! It's all there, arranged in loopy harmony with a tale of a non-traditional princess, a secretly intelligent idiot and two knights-in-training who have more spirit than the whole Knight Brigade of the Kingdom of Merryland.

I've enjoyed many of Stuart Gibbs' books for younger readers – usually not so young as the target audience of this series, though. And it wasn't just because of the age target that I didn't enjoy this set quite as much. To start, there is less of them to enjoy. The stories are humorous; the illustrations by Chris Choi are delightful; but even at the speed of Gibbs' typical offerings, these books go by awful fast and leave a lightweight impression behind. The vocab-building "IQ boosters" are a nice touch, and there's a certain whimsical quality to the narrator's way of addressing modern-day kids as if he understands exactly how different his world is from theirs. But the anachronisms don't stop there, building up to a gender politics-tinged finish that wouldn't leave any disciple of Wokism unsatisfied. But it left me less than fully satsified, and there I'll leave it.

Gibbs is also the author of now 10 FunJungle books, the Last Musketeer and Moon Base Alpha trilogies, the Charlie Thorne quartet and 13 Spy Camp novels, each of which I'm somewhere in the midst of reading and would (so far) recommend to anyone with a funnybone to tickle and a taste for adventure.

543. Heart Hymn

I felt this hymn coming on today, so by way of taking a break from my Heroes of the Faith hymn cycle, here's an unplanned volunteer for my next collection of hymns. I reckon the "Faith and Justification" section of the book needs a little more material; I've never been particularly attentive to that topic area, apart from touching on it in hymns planned for other sections such as Sundays of the Church Year, etc. With a nod toward Ezekiel 36:26 and 2 Corinthians 3:3, here goes:

Take, Lord, from me this heart of stone,
Cold, darkened, dead and past correction;
Graft in its place a living one,
Alive to You at Your election:
A heart that sorrows for my sins
And on its crossward crawl begins.

Put, Lord, into my heart Your word,
Which shaped a world once void and formless.
Where it is sprinkled, tasted, heard,
The desert blooms and seas fall stormless,
And every part of me, remade,
In Jesus' image is arrayed.

Give me a heart, Lord, to receive
What You at Jesus' cost committed.
Draw me from doubting to believe
That, with His spotless garment fitted,
I may at last approach Your throne,
Made for Your house a living stone.

ART: By Peter van der Sluijs, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

542. SS. Peter & Paul

I have already written hymns for the feasts of the Confession of St. Peter (Jan. 18) and the Conversion of St. Paul (Jan. 25). And yet there remains a joint feast of the two apostles, slated for June 29, for which the readings are Acts 15:1-12 (verses 13-21 optional), Galatians 2:1-10 and Matthew 16:13-19. So, with a grim sense of going back over ground that I've covered before, and with no further ado, I propose the following hymn. The art is by Jusepe de Ribera, †1652, public domain.

Jesus is the Christ, God's Son!
On the rock of this confession
Stands the Church, against which run
Hordes of hell and man's aggression,
All their rage and force in vain:
Christ His faithful will sustain.

Jesus gives His kingdom's keys
Even to that great confessor,
Peter, who with equal ease
Turns denier and transgressor;
Yet, to loose on earth our sins,
Jesus' word of pardon wins.

On the road, He blasts His call
At His persecutor, breathing
Faith and ministry in Paul,
Who with hate was lately seething.
Such a sinner Christ sets free
His bondslave and saint to be.

Let the child of Israël
Unto Peter's witness hearken,
And His great confession swell
Though this generation darken
Counsel with vain words galore;
Open yet stands Jesus' door.

Let the heirs of heathendom
Hear the gospel Paul delivers
And to saving knowledge come,
Which the house of bondage shivers;
Come, with Jesus' name engraved
On your hearts, from Hades saved.

541. St. Barnabas Hymn

The feast of St. Barnabas is June 11. Readings appointed for it are Isaiah 45:5-12, Acts 11:19-30 and 13:1-3, and Mark 6:7-13. Barnabas is he whom Luke, in Acts 11, described as "a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith," and whom the church of Antioch – where followers of the Way were first called Christians – sent with Saul (i.e., Paul) to do mission work. As I'm currently shagged out following my prolonged squawk about SS. Philip & James yesterday, I won't detain you further before proposing the following hymn. The art is an icon of St. Barnabas from the museum in his honor in Salamis, Cyprus, image by Gerhard Haubold under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license, which represents more hyperlinks than I feel like creating right now so if you're interested, look them up here.

The Father uttered, "Though you know me not,
I give you light and peace and gird for labor."
Though we, His handiwork, had never sought
To know Him, every man and child and neighbor
Must learn His promises and His commands
From Zion's pile unto the farthest lands.

The Spirit uttered, "Consecrate to Me
These men to do the work for which I call them,"
Then Barnabas and Saul He named to be
Such that nor chains nor shipwreck need appall them.
Through prayer and fasting and the church's hands
He sent them to preach Christ in heathen lands.

The Savior uttered, "Go and preach the word;
I give you power o'er the unclean spirit.
Then blessed be the house where it is heard;
It will go hard for those who will not hear it."
O Lord, with all humility and fear
We pray, bend to Your word our heart and ear!

With fear indeed, yea, with glad acclamation
Your word we now speak back in prayer and praise:
For You have spread the message of salvation
Through good and faithful men, from early days
Down to our time. Still consecrate and call
Such heralds, till Your gospel reaches all.

540. SS. Philip & James

The feast of St. Philip and St. James, apostles, is May 1 in Lutheranism. Readings appointed for the feast are Isaiah 30:18-21, Ephesians 2:19-22 and John 14:1-14, in which Philip actually gets a line!

Disambiguation time! Philip the Apostle is not to be confused with a couple of other Philips in the New Testament. Matthew 14, Mark 6 and Luke 3 all mention a brother of Herod named Philip, the first husband of Herodias and father of Salome (she of the seven veils). He's not the saint in question. Also not him is Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven deacons appointed in Acts 6 along with Stephen. This Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 and played host to Paul and his companions in Acts 21. But again, he's not this saint.

The other times a man named Philip is named in the N.T., it's the Philip named in lists of the 12 apostles in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts 1. He's one of the first half-dozen or so disciples of Jesus, present to witness the first of Jesus' miracles at the wedding at Cana. Only John's gospel presents him as a speaking character and reveals that he comes from the city of Bethsaida in Galilee, also the hometown of Andrew, Peter and Nathanael. It is Philip who tells Nathanael, in John 1:45, "We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." It is Philip who reports to Jesus, in John 6, that feeding the 5,000 will exceed the disciples' financial resources. It is Philip, in John 12, who brings word to Andrew that the Greeks want to see Jesus, which Andrew passes on to the Lord. And Philip, Thomas and "Judas (not Iscariot)" enter the dialog in John 14, each feeding Jesus a prompt during his after-the-Last-Supper sermon. Philip's comment is, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us," to which Jesus replies, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip?"

Aaand Philip is never heard of again. I mean, he has some apocryphal writings named after him, and there's an early-church tradition about him that claims he was executed in Hierapolis, a city in what is now Turkey, by being either crucified upside-down or beheaded. The crucifixion version is a little silly in its details (look it up for yourself), but that's hagiography for you.

Then there's James, literally Jacob(!!), one of two apostles by that name. The one who shares May 1 with Philip is not to be confused with James the Elder, the son of Zebedee and brother of John the Evangelist, whose feast is held on July 25. The James we're concerned with is the son of Alphaeus, listed among the 12 apostles in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts 1. Scripture says no more of him, unless he's the same guy as "James the Less" (or "the Younger") mentioned in Mark 15 along with his mother Mary and brother Joses; see also Matthew 27, Mark 16 and Luke 24. Then there's James of Jerusalem, or James the Just, celebrated on Oct. 23 on the Lutheran sanctoral calendar. Assuming, as Lutheranism does, that he's a separate James, he was technically not an apostle, but an early bishop of Jerusalem (Acts 12, 15, 21; 1 Corinthians 15) who wrote the N.T. epistle of James, and is known as a (half-)brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3, Galatians 1:19), along with Jude (Jude 1).

Of James the son of Alphaeus / James the Less (assuming they're one and the same), Scripture only records his name and those of some immediate family members. He doesn't get any lines, even in John's gospel. Tradition mentions him preaching in Jerusalem, where he was thrown to his death and/or stoned and/or clubbed to death. But since, again, Scripture is silent, he gets to wear the rear half of the two-man saint costume on May 1. And now, at long last, the hymn:

O Christ, who armed the church for strife
The night before You died,
You are the Way, the Truth, the Life
And there is none beside.
Where hearts are troubled, let the grace
Poured from Your ruptured side
Flow with assurance that a place
In heaven You provide.

When to the cross for all You went,
You bore sin's darts and slings,
Then rose—and great was Your ascent—
To fill and rule all things.
At God's right hand, and One with Him,
To us His face You show;
Though we be weak, our eyesight dim,
In You God's way we know.

On You, the Cornerstone, now stands
A living house whose parts
We are, with saints from many lands,
A temple built of hearts.
Knit us as one, so that therein
The Holy Ghost may dwell—
A shrine of life, made hard from sin
And from the gates of hell.

By word and sacrament, from youth
Your love has held us fast.
By men like James and Philip, truth
Shall keep us to the last.
Wait, Lord! Have mercy, though our feet
May stumble on the way;
Restore our steps, until we greet
That glad reunion day.

ART: SS James and Philip, 12th century painting, public domain.

Every Day Is a Gift

I've been going through some medical stuff. Here's what's up.

In the first couple days of December 2025, I was under the weather. I took some hours off work due to fatigue, acid reflux, headache and occasional nausea. On Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 2 a.m. and again at 8 a.m., I vomited – something that I had done rarely (maybe two or three times) since I was a small child. I also experienced some muscle weakness and odd vision distortions. I took a day off and went to the local Essentia Health walk-in clinic, where I was nasally swabbed (for viruses) and had blood drawn for a metabolic panel, hereafter described as "labs." The walk-in doc called me later to say my blood calcium was way high, my creatinine (an indicator of kidney function) ditto, and I should get a ride – not drive myself ‐ to the emergency room forthwith. I did that.

In the ER at CHI St. Joseph's Health – the hospital in Park Rapids, Minn. – I spent several hours reclining on an uncomfortable gurney while docs and nurses bustled around me. They x-rayed my chest. They gave me an abdominal CT-scan. They probably drew more blood (I'm losing track now of how many donations I've made). Eventually they decided to admit me, and stuck me in a tiny room on the second floor of the hospital, where they started me on IV fluids and certain other meds, such as Protonix (an acid reducer), Zofran (for nausea), magnesium and potassium supplements and, later on, some laxatives to get my bowels moving. A couple times, I was given Lasix (a diuretic) because my hands and feet were swelling up. Good times.

I spent several days there, mostly peeing into a plastic urinal because the cramped room, the bedside tray table and the IV cart made it next to impossible for me to get to the toilet without wetting myself. Eventually I was moved to a bigger room, which resolved this issue. I grew used to a routine of nurses and techs popping in every few hours to test my blood sugar, draw blood for labs, jab me with an insulin pen (if needed), take my vitals, etc. I went from having almost no appetite – sometimes taking just a couple bites of a meal before clapping the lid over the dish and turning away – to, finally, cleaning the plate and even (on my last night inpatient) asking for a late-night snack. I took increasingly long walks in the corridors as I gained strength. I received a pastoral visit and communion in my hospital room.

A doctor came by once or twice a day to advise me of what condition my condition was in. Apparently my calcium, which shouldn't go higher than about 1.2 and could be doing serious damage above 1.5, was around 3.5 when I showed up, and it climbed to 5.0 and finally to 5.7 before plateauing and starting to come down. Meanwhile my creatinine was also concerningly high, maybe (I later learned, during a follow-up with a specialist) to the point where kidney failure was imminent. But this also started to come down. The hospital doc was of the opinion that a drug I was on for blood pressure was promoting this hypercalcemia, so he changed my prescription. He also advised me to stop chewing Tums, which I had been taking heavily during that horrendous bout with acid reflux (which, I take it, is a symptom of hypercalcemia, so we have a chicken-egg problem there). And with my numbers starting to dial back in the right direction, the hospital let me go, scheduling me for follow-up labs (combined with my regular, semiannual labs to monitor my diabetes and other issues) and a consult with my primary care doc the following week.

Well, I had the labs drawn at my primary care clinic (Sanford in Park Rapids, making a clean sweep of all three health care systems in town). The night before my scheduled appointment there, my nurse practitioner called to voice grave concern about my kidney numbers (including BUN and eGFR) as well as my calcium levels, among other numbers that were all over the place and whose ups and downs on my routine labs had never quite made sense. And now, she observed, something seemed to be pulling calcium out of my bones. She proposed that I was either looking at hyperparathyroidism – a gland condition that could explain pretty much all the symptoms I'd had before going into the hospital – or maybe some kind of cancer. And my kidneys were angry, too. She advised me to hydrate like my life depended on it, and to follow the orders of the physicians assistant who would be seeing me the following day in her absence.

Well, the P.A. told me to stop taking metformin for my diabetes (because it's hard on the kidneys), referred me to an endocrinologist (gland doctor) and a nephrologist (kidney doctor), and then told me to go straight to the Sanford emergency room in Bemidji, which I did. Apparently the P.A. thought Sanford was going to admit me, but they didn't. They drew blood for more labs. The ER doc told me my calcium was actually low and gave me a calcium supplement, and they sent me home with a sheaf of instructions, including symptoms of hypo- and hypercalcemia to watch for.

None of this advice did favors for my ability to sleep at night. I was a nervous wreck. It seemed like my blood chemistry could pull any trick on me at any time, on no notice whatsoever, and every twinge or pang or tingle could be a sign of something that could put me back in the hospital. I was really scared.

As December progressed, I went back to Bemidji to see the nephrologist, with another round of labs being drawn the day before so he could discuss them with me. The nephrologist told me about a phenomenon he called the parathyroid-kidney axis, where a parathyroid gland goes haywire and starts pulling calcium from the bones while instructing the kidneys to leave it be in the blood, rather than filtering and peeing it out. He noted that my kidney numbers were moving back toward the normal range with each round of labs, and my calcium was currently in the normal range, so he scheduled me for a six-week follow-up and sent me on my way. He also advised me that in all likelihood, having one of my parathyroid glands cut out would set everything right again – pending advice from an endocrinologist. He also let me go back on a very low dose of metformin, meaning my diabetes isn't going entirely untreated.

Somewhere in this period, an ear-nose-and-throat doc's office at Sanford in Fargo set me up for a CAT scan and consult there, which was scheduled for Jan. 22 – this week, as I write this.

At the very end of December, I had (by the way) a medical eye exam in Wadena, an annual thing due to my diabetes. The news wasn't too bad, other than a concern about high ocular pressure. Then I saw the endocrinologist in Bemidji. He was the one who told me how close my calcium spike had brought me to kidney failure (thanks, dude). He also ordered some tests – a nuclear medicine scan of my thyroid area and kidney ultrasounds, followed by more labs – and cheered me up with the choice of three scenarios based on the results: (1) Everything looks normal (unlikely) and so no action needs to be taken. (2) A hyperactive parathyroid pops out in the scans (likely) and, by the way, I probably also have kidney stones; in which case he would refer me to an endocrine surgeon at the Mayo Clinic to have the bad gland removed. (3) The calcium spike is back (possible) and if so, I should go back to the hospital and have them do to me what they did before.

I slept on this advice until last week, when I went back to Bemidji for the tests the endocrinologist had ordered. I won't go into a lot of detail for now but I will mention that I had a rare, radioactive element – Technetium 99 – injected intravenously, then I had to lie very still while a huge camera took very long exposures of me. The second of two photo shoots that day, lasting about an hour, featured a 30-minute-plus scan in which the camera rotated 360 degrees around me, very slowly, followed by the same three stills (about 7 minutes each) they had taken earlier, meaning I could, and did, actually listen to all of Beethoven's 9th Symphony during the time I lay in that uncomfortable, claustrophobic machine. And then I got quickie ultrasounds of my kidneys and bladder and was sent home.

The results came in and were as encouraging as they could be, given the technical jargon they came packed in. The impression of my kidneys and bladder was described as "grossly unremarkable," which I chose to take as a compliment. The nuclear imaging didn't see any signs of hyperactivity, either. And in the labs drawn last Thursday, all my numbers were (at last) in the normal range, except sodium and chlorides being just a bit low and sugars (sigh) rather high. I actually took enough courage from these results to text the ENT doc in Fargo and ask if it's really necessary for me to have a CT this week and see him afterward; and to his credit, he canceled those appointments.

So, with a sense that, aside from not really knowing why all my innards went haywire last month, everything was settling back into normalcy, I sat down on the couch this past Friday night to enjoy a Saturday Night Live sketch on YouTube. And that's when I became suddenly and violently ill.

I mean, I went from feeling totally fine to being so dizzy and lightheaded that I could only sit up with difficulty. I found myself bathed in sweat. I thought I was going to lose consciousness. I had difficulty switching from YouTube to the dialer on my phone so I could call my friend (the one who drove me to the hospital last month) and have her come over. I had to support myself on the walls and furniture to get across the room, and down the hall, to put on shoes, sweatpants and a coat. By the time my friend arrived, I was barfing heartily into the kitchen sink. It took me quite a while to reach a point where I could stand up and take a few steps without either staggering or having to puke again. I finally pulled myself together enough to accept a ride to the ER.

The nurses and doctor at the CHI emergency room were nice. They tested me for the flu and other viruses that are going around these days; the results were negative. The ER doc explained something about vasovagal syncope, a fainting spell caused by a reflex that slows the heart and lowers blood pressure due to some kind of trigger, perhaps something I ate that disagreed with me. The sweats and vomiting are part of the package. The doc reassured me that so soon after my labs came back normal, I probably wasn't experiencing blood-chemistry wackiness. And since I was no longer sweaty, dizzy or nauseous, he sent me home.

It was spooky. It was discouraging for this to happen, so soon after everything seemed back to normal after my previous illness, which had also peaked with a barfing jag. I felt a bit of self-pity, like "I thought I was over all this, now ..." But it wasn't unprecedented. I said I had rarely puked in my adult life before last month, but the previous time was pretty much exactly like what happened on Friday night. After a meal at my parents' house, I came over all pale and sweaty, had a dizzy spell, ran to the bathroom and yakked, and felt much better afterward. I suspected then, as the ER doc suggested Friday night, that I may have eaten something that my body rejected. The first instance has made me leery of venison-based entrees; the latest installment might give me pause the next time I'm considering ordering Szechuan shrimp. I definitely threw out the leftovers from that night's dinner, I'll tell you.

UPDATE: Minutes after first publishing this, the endocrinologist's office called me and told me to go straight to the ER to have my low sodium level evaluated and if necessary corrected with IV fluids. The local ER personnel reran my labs but didn't think any urgent treatment was needed, so they let me go. Hmph, so much for saving money (for example, by not having that unnecessary CT scan).

All this medical melodrama has taken a lot out of me. I've lost a lot of time at work; my PTO bank is pretty much dried up. I haven't gotten a lot of the projects done that I meant to work on at home. A week without having blood drawn or having to travel to a doctor's appointment has become a rare treat. I can hardly entertain the idea of traveling any great distance for any length of time (like, a week's vacation to visit my folks, now living in another state – which was what I had planned for the five days I spent in the hospital last month). And if you want me to tie it all up in a bow, I've realized that every day of life, every day of full strength and free activity, every night in the comfort of my own home, is a gift.

ART: A nuclear imaging "ironing board," like the one I lay on for a good hour-and-a-half last week, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

539. St. Mark Hymn

The feast of St. Mark the evangelist – author of the Gospel According to Mark, you know – is April 25. The Lutheran Service Book calendar of Feasts and Festivals appoints readings for the day from Isaiah 52:7-10, 2 Timothy 4:5-18 and Mark 16:14-20.

Besides his name at the top of the second gospel, Scripture doesn't tell us a whole lot about Mark. He is first named in Acts 12, when an angel busts Peter out of prison and he (Peter) goes to the home of Mary, identified as the mother of a certain John Mark. Later, Saul and Barnabas depart on the first of their missionary journeys, and they take John Mark along. Apparently, Mark bailed during the trip, and in Acts 15 as Paul and Barnabas are planning their next journey, they have a "sharp contention" over whether to take Mark along again. This results in a split; Barnabas leaves with Mark, and Paul with Silas.

It seems that by the time Paul is in captivity in Rome (the period in which Martin Franzmann places his letter to the Colossians), Paul has reconciled with Mark, identifying him in Colossians 4:10 as a cousin of Barnabas (which explains a thing or two). He says Mark is with him in his prison and urges the Colossians to welcome him if he comes to them. Again writing from prison, Paul sends greetings to Philemon from Mark and others whom he calls "my fellow laborers." Even later, in his second letter to Timothy, Paul urges Timothy to come to him and bring Mark as well, "for he is useful to me for ministry."

Peter also writes from Rome, in 1 Peter 5, calling it Babylon and extending greetings from the church there as well as "Mark my son." This Mark, the Mark of whom Paul writes, the John Mark of whom Luke writes (in Acts) and the Mark who wrote the second gospel are widely, but not universally, believed to be the same person. If so, Mark seems to have been a close associate of both Peter and Paul, and one often hears his gospel described as a summary of Peter's preaching. Other than that, we have only church tradition to go on. Symbolized by a winged lion, Mark is said to have become the first Christian bishop of Alexandria, where he was dragged to death by his neck on a stormy Easter Day in A.D. 68.

As far as where Mark might lurk between the lines of Scripture, I've picked up on a few tidbits of idle speculation. One rumor has it that Mark was the rich young ruler who sought Jesus' advice in Mark 10:17-22, and who was sorry he asked after Jesus told him to sell everything and give it to the poor. The story is also in Luke 18, but (the rumor argues) only Mark supplies the detail that "Jesus, looking at him, loved him." The other rumor, again based on something that only Mark's gospel says, has it that Mark is the young man who witnessed Jesus' arrest in Mark 14 while wearing nothing but a linen cloth, and who fled naked when the soldiers grabbed at him. The possibility that both rumors could be true is entertaiing to think about, from a character-development viewpoint – but again, it's just speculation.

It almost goes without saying anymore, but I wrote this hymn with no particular tune in mind. If it seems I stray from the source texts in stanza 4, my excuse is that I was thinking about the idea of lions sleeping with their eyes open.

Hark, the watchmen lift their voices,
Singing that the Lord has come!
And with them the church rejoices:
Christ redeems Jerusalem!
God sheds comfort on the land,
Saving us with mighty hand;
Merciful and free His choice is,
On which stands all Christendom!

Just such watchmen, apt for serving,
Grant, Lord, in these latter days.
Make their footsteps sure, unswerving,
Bearing witness to Your ways.
Give them, like Your lion, Mark,
Eyes to pierce this Babel dark,
From this age a stump preserving
That shall bud with fruitful praise.

Send them preaching, that the hardened
May Your good news take to heart;
Send baptizing, that Your pardon
Trickle to our inmost parts.
Armor them against all pangs
From the devil's venomed fangs,
That they never tire of guarding
Us from Satan's fiery darts.

Meanwhile, Lord, set guardians watching
From Your throne at God's right hand,
With a wakeful spirit touching
Us who weary watch yet stand.
Leaving cares of earth behind,
Let us higher treasures find
Where, a blood-washed garment clutching,
We'll keep vigil with that band.

ART: From St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, ©2010 by Marie-Lan Nguyen under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

538. St. Joseph Hymn

The feast day for the upright man who claimed the Virgin's Son as his own, Jesus' earthly father Joseph, falls on March 19 according to on Lutheran Service Book's calendar of Feasts and Festivals. For what it's worth, the appointed lessons are 2 Samuel 7:4-16, Romans 4:13-18 and Matthew 2:13-23, minus a handful of verses (16-18) regarding the slaughter of the innocents. However, I'm going against my usual procedure on this hymn and just freestyling it. Why? Mainly because this hymn has been writing itself in my head and I just have to let it out. Here goes:

Naked You came, Lord, to our flesh;
In rags dear Joseph bound You,
That You in garments pure and fresh
Might clothe the race around You,
Though our filth must astound You!

That night, all jealousy aside,
The Virgin's husband claimed You,
Who might their union have denied
And by men's custom shamed You;
As David's Heir he named You.

A workman with hard hands and skilled,
Stout arms he might have wielded.
When Herod sought to have You killed,
To dreams he softly yielded;
Your precious life he shielded.

Departing country, kin and hearth
And into Egypt fleeing,
He served a father's selfless part,
Fulfillment guaranteeing
Of ancient scribes' foreseeing.

In what God's word of him reveals,
We see sincerely burning
A love that but a father feels,
His pride and profit spurning,
With higher things concerning.

On You, King David's Heir and Lord,
Who after Joseph toddled—
Incarnate God and living Word,
In grave-clothes briefly swaddled—
Our hope of life is modeled.

Let men the office now embrace
That Joseph wore with lightness,
And every child the Father's face
Reflect with Christlike brightness,
Draped freely in Your rightness.

ART: St. Joseph and the boy Jesus by Jusepe de Ribera, public domain.

537. St. Matthias Hymn

Continuing my planned set of "Heroes of the Faith" hymns based on the Feast and Festivals schedule of Lutheran Service Book, the next up would be the Purification of Mary and Presentation of Our Lord (Feb. 2), on which I've already delivered a hymn. So let's skip to Feb. 24, the feast of St. Matthias, the guy who was chosen by lot to replace Judas Iscariot in the original 12 apostles. Post-Vatican II, the Roman church celebrates his feast day on May 14. Lessons for the service are Isaiah 66:1-2, Acts 1:15-26 and Matthew 11:25-30.

I can dispose of what Scripture reveals about Matthias in less time than even Thomas and Titus. It's all in that pericope from Acts 1, which only mentions his name twice. Early Christian writers variously identified Matthias as one Tolmai (father of Bartholomew?), Zacchaeus (the wee little man from Jericho, Luke 19), Barnabas (who accompanied Paul on his early travels, Acts 4-15), and that Nathanael who came and went from the company of disciples in John 1 and 21. Traditions about where Matthias went and what he did as an apostle are equally contradictory, mentioning such far-flung mission fields as Ethiopia and modern-day Turkey and Georgia and alternately claiming he was stoned and beheaded or that he died of old age in Jerusalem.

The procedure of casting lots for a decision (like, "Justus Joseph-a.k.a.-Barsabas or Matthias?") is interesting and brings to mind two charming stories. One is how my dad recently decided whether to accept or return a call to serve as pastor in a dual parish in Montana. He put multiple copies of the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in a hat – 1 meaning "no," 2 "yes" and 3 "draw again" – and drew pieces until he had an answer. A 2 fell on the floor and was put back in the hat. After praying for God's guidance, he then drew a 3, threw that slip away and drew again – a 2. Well, he's in Montana now.

The other story comes from my vicarage, where my supervising pastor opened a voters' meeting with a devotion based on this Acts 1 lesson. He then waxed poetic about how it might be for the church to make choices by lot rather than a popular vote. Someone raised his hand and said, "But Pastor, then we wouldn't be in control," and the pastor shot back, "Exactly!"

According to Apostle Peter (speaking in Acts 1), both Matthias and Justus Joseph were among the disciples who had accompanied the apostles throughout Jesus' ministry, from the time of His baptism by John until His ascension. He was required, Peter says, to complete the complement of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Oddly, Luke (author of the book of Acts) concludes that Matthias was numbered with the eleven apostles, which kind of sounds like their attempt to restore the twelve didn't quite take. Perhaps it could be argued that the 12th spot really went to Paul. But one has to respect the concept of prayerfully leaving the choice up to God via a lottery-type drawing. Like the guy said, we're not in control! And God calls whom He will!

So ... how does one write a Christ-centered hymn about this mess? Well, let's try this:

To God, whose throne is heaven,
Whose footstool is the land,
What temple can be given
But what He shaped by hand?
The poor and contrite heart
That trembles at God's roaring,
That cries out for restoring—
Thereon rests God's regard.

Christ from the wise and prudent
His holy secret hides,
And yet the infant student
Thereto He gladly guides.
Christ—meekest, gentlest, best—
To those both sorely harried
And who His light yoke carried
Has pledged eternal rest.

Let those by God elected
Trust, and in no wise doubt,
That they will be perfected
And greet Him with a shout.
Our lot with Him is cast;
And as He chose Matthias,
He will do justice by us
And call us home at last.

Zootopia 2

I generally try not to make a practice of seeing the sequel to a movie I haven't seen, but I made an exception this weekend because I genuinely needed to go to the movies and I couldn't think of any other movie playing within an hour's driving radius of home that I wanted to see. For context, this beat out Marty Supreme, Anaconda, Avatar: Fire and Ash, The Housemaid, David (which I'd already seen) and the runner-up (by an inch), Song Sung Blue. The Spongebob movie had been playing last week and I refrained from seeing it as well. I feel bad about my reluctance to see Z2 now. I actually had a pretty good time. There's a lot more to this animated movie about a city of more-or-less anthropomorphic animals than you would expect, including jokes (and dramatic beats) that parents and film buffs in general will enjoy. Like Auntie Trunchbull's chocolates, it's too good for children. And though I wouldn't know, I heard from a dad who was seated in the row behind me with his wife and kids that this movie is actually better than the original.

The cast is a blast. And it goes on and on. Headlining it as a rabbit-fox pair of buddy cops, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, are Ginnifer Goodwin (previously Snow White on TV's Once Upon a Time) and Jason Bateman (Michael Bluth on Arrested Development). Joining them are recent Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies, Everything Everywhere All At Once) as Gary De'Snake, Andy Samberg (Hotel Transylvania, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Pawbert, the misfit runt of a powerful family of lynxes, David Straithairn (Delores Claiborne, Good Night and Good Luck) as Pawbert's villainous dad, Macaulay Culkin and his partner Brenda Song as a couple of Pawbert's lynx siblings, Shakira as a pop-singer gazelle, Idris Elba as a Cape buffalo police chief, Michelle Gomez (Missy on Doctor Who) as a razorback cop, an outrageous Patrick Warburton (The Tick, The Emperor's New Groove) as Zootopia's horsey mayor, Danny Trejo (Machete) as a reptile, Bonnie Hunt (Return to Me, Jumanji) as Judy's rabbit mum, June Squib (Nebraska) as her grandma, Wilmer Valderrama (NCIS, That 70s Show) as a zebra cop, Jean Reno (Leon: The Professional) as a pair of goat cops, Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Resident Alien) in multiple roles, John Leguizamo as an anteater, Maurice LaMarche (voice of The Brain, the lab rat that kept trying to take over the world) as a shrew mobster ironically known as Mr. Big, Josh Dallas (Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time) as a pig, Tommy Chong as a yak, TV chef Nick DiGiovanni as an iguana barback, Tig Notaro (Star Trek: Discovery) as a grizzly bear, Ed Sheeran as a sheep who (funnily enough) is seen getting sheered at a barbershop, Michael J. Fox as (duh) a fox, Josh Gad (Olaf in Frozen) as a mole, Mario Lopez (Saved by the Bell) as a wolf, Robert Irwin (the late Steve Irwin's son) as a koala, Jenny Slate (SNL, Bob's Burgers) as a villainous sheep from the previous installment, Mark Smith (Rhino on Gladiators) as (like, duh) a rhino, archival recordings of the late Tiny Lister (president of Earth in The Fifth Element) as a fox who goes undercover as a baby bunny, Dwayne Johnson as a dik-dik (snort) whose only audible line to my recollection is a brief scream when he gets blasted out of a tuba (don't ask), and among several animation studio honchos making cameos, Disney CEO Bob Iger as a tiger weatherman. Whew!

So, it's a movie with a lot of speaking characters in it. Obviously, being open to diversity is a not very subtle theme. The hero bunny and fox have to overcome differences of personality and culture to work together and solve a case involving a forbidden reptile in the all-mammal city, who seems to be trying to steal a precious artifact of one of the city's founding lynxes. But there's more to the maguffin than meets the eye. I mean that literally. And the outcome is two rookie cops having to go on the run, framed for crimes they didn't commit, trying to get to the bottom of things and clear their own names while being chased by other cops as well as fiendish bad guys. There are perilous pursuits and escapes, a potentially deadly betrayal, lots of close calls and some therapeutic work on the central relationship, which a well-timed movment of levity just barely saves from being too on-the-nose. There are film buff Easter eggs, satirical gags (nothing is spared) and downright breathtaking scenery, art, animation and animated-character acting. It has a good story, good dialogue, good voice acting, the whole works. I fully endorse this movie.

And now, to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Danger, division and structural collapse in a crumbling, mountaintop chateau. Or whatever that was. (2) Judy and Nick are warned not to refuse an offer of food when they visit the reptiles' speakeasy ... and are immediately put to the test with a bowl of squirming grubs. (3) The climactic crisis in which snake venom and antivenom play key roles. Actually there are so many scenes that I could have put on this list, including everything surrounding the Marsh Market as well as a thrill ride in a sloth's hot rod. Here I am, a well-known (?) hater of sequels, wondering where this franchise will go next.

536. St. Titus Hymn

Continuing my hymn-writing tour of the Feasts and Festivals lectionary in Lutheran Service Book, I've decided to skip past New Year's Eve (because it doesn't fall under the "Heroes of the Faith"), as well as the Circumcision and Name of Jesus (Jan. 1), the Confession of Peter (Jan. 18), St. Timothy (Jan. 24) and the Conversion of Paul (Jan. 25), which leads us to Jan. 26 and the feast of St. Titus. Funny how Timothy and Titus bookend Paul like that. But other than New Year's Eve, I've already written hymns for these other celebrations; see the links back here.

What does Scripture tell us about Titus? He is often mentioned in Paul's epistles as a protégé and partner in preaching the gospel. Paul addresses an entire epistle (letter) to Titus, calling him "a true son in our common faith" and trusting him to operate independently, such as leaving him behind in Crete (Titus 1:5), commending him to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 7, 8 and 12), and bringing him along to Jerusalem (Galatians 2). In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul confesses to feeling anxious without Titus in Troas. In Titus 3, Paul urges Titus to join him for the winter in Nicopolis. In 2 Timothy 4, his last writing from house arrest in Rome, Paul mentions that Titus traveled to Dalmatia, across the Adriatic in what is now Croatia and Montenegro. However, the way Paul connects this with a complaint about his supporters bailing on him makes it unclear whether Titus went there as an evangelist or to escape martyrdom. If Paul is complaining about Titus, it would be the only hint of discord between them; so let's let his descriptions in 2 Corinthians and in the epistle to Titus stand as a glowing record of service to the gospel and to Paul personally. Readings for Titus, according to LSB, are Acts 20:28-35; Titus 1:1-9; and Luke 10:1-9.

Equip the church, O Savior,
With stewards of Your grace,
Blameless in their behavior,
To serve in every place;
Fit them to oversee us,
Your faithful word hold fast
And by sound teaching free us
From our vain works at last.

Secure their hearts from loving
Wine, money, pow'r and ire,
Kind and high-minded proving,
Drawn but to holy fire.
Incline our hearts to hear them,
To curb hostility,
To succor and to cheer them
And follow faithfully.

Through Tituses among us
Your kingdom, Lord, draws near.
Wherever life has flung us,
Through them Your voice we hear.
Enrich them with Your Spirit
To preach in parlous lands,
And grant that we who hear it
Hold up their weary hands.

ART: An icon of "Holy Apostle Titus of Crete" from 14th century Kosovo.

535. St. Thomas Hymn

Another "backfill" in my Heroes of the Faith hymn project, this feast on Dec. 21 (per the Lutheran Service Book; it's July 3 in Roman Catholicism) commemorates the apostle who was absent when the resurrected Jesus first appeared to His disciples, and who famously wouldn't believe them when they told him Whom they had seen. But a week later – and note that well, it figures in the lessons for the first Sunday after Easter – he was with them when Jesus appeared again, and Jesus offered him the look-and-touch test he had avowedly held out for. And then, as the Gospel lesson for the feast (John 20:24-29) tells us, Thomas immediately confessed his faith in the words, "My Lord and my God!" After which Jesus gently chided him for his seeing-is-believing attitude.

That's most of what we know about Thomas from Scripture. Both his Aramaic name and his Greek "a.k.a.," Didymus, mean "twin." The synoptic gospels only mention him once each, in a list of the 12 apostles. John gives him a couple of lines, including the melancholy remark, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him," in John 11; and the question, "Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?" in John 14. He was also in that group that met Jesus by the Sea of Galilee in John 21 (see also St. Andrew); and he was with the other 11 surviving apostles when Matthias was selected to replace Judas Iscariot in Acts 1. The rest is folklore and tradition, such as the belief that he was killed with a spear in India. And there are also a couple of apocryphal (and heretical) gospels attributed to him.

Other readings for St. Thomas' day, according to LSB, are Judges 6:36-40 (where Gideon puts God to the test) and Ephesians 4:7-16, obnoxiously omitting verses 8-10. Someone needs to shake that lectionary committee to its senses, in my opinion. So, on to the hymn!

Our Lord and God, arisen from Your rest,
Forgive us when we put You to the test.
Bear with our weakness, as when You spoke peace
To Thomas, that in faith we may increase.

When we are weak, encourage us by sign
And sermon to believe Your grace divine,
Still giving men to shepherd us and teach
Such faith that we might in Your nailprints reach.

For in full view of Thomas and the ten
You freed the captive, giving gifts to men;
You rose above the skies, all things to fill,
Your presence and Your peace to bring us still.

Our Lord and God!—We join in Thomas' creed—
In You is life and light and all we need;
Grant that we be on all Your riches fed,
And grow in truth and love to You, our Head.

ART: Martyrdom of St. Thomas by Peter Paul Rubens, public domain.