I’m listening this morning! I heard Austin French’s Wake Up Sleeper this morning – I liked it but made me think: Doesn’t Bach also have a Sleeper Awake? Listened to it too – it’s very pastoral as an organ piece and the cantata part was in German. I don’t do German at all so read more about it. Sleeper Awake (I also noticed there are many versions of the title based on translation from a Lutheran hymn prominently using Matthew 25:1-13 as its base but also drawing from Revelations as well. There is a strong call in the wording to BE READY! SLEEPER AWAKE!!
The Matthew passage is the parable of virgin brides and waiting for the Bridegroom. Take time to read it and you will see that half of the brides did not prepare properly for waiting for the Bridegroom. He was oh so long in coming, for we do not know the hour or the day, that they had run out of oil in their lamps and could not meet him. To get another idea of the theme perchance you remember the Sunday school song about Give Me Oil in My Lamp to keep it burning, burning burning!
To keep on track I sometimes float things out to Mark Schulte – poor guy, I didn’t know he had flown to California for work, so I sent him an early bird text unintentionally. I do this to my son Drew in LA from time to time. Ooops! Mark was as gracious as my son usually is.
I thought his response was not only coherent (amazing as it seems he flew in late Sunday night) but has choice morsels to help us guide our path. Read for yourself:
A few thoughts:
I’m waking up this morning in Long Beach, CA this morning. Went to sleep at 2:30am EST with the alarm set for 6:20PST. The math worked for a pretty solid night of sleep for me. Unfortunately I awoke at 4:55am PST pondering if the alarm would really go off and a host of other things. It did and then I got this text aptly focused on awakening. I wasn’t tossing and turning…I was trimming my lamp for a week of conferences. Thanks for the reminder that I need to be looking for Jesus moments this
week. -Mark
I’m waking up this morning in Long Beach, CA this morning. Went to sleep at 2:30am EST with the alarm set for 6:20PST. The math worked for a pretty solid night of sleep for me. Unfortunately I awoke at 4:55am PST pondering if the alarm would really go off and a host of other things. It did and then I got this text aptly focused on awakening. I wasn’t tossing and turning…I was trimming my lamp for a week of conferences. Thanks for the reminder that I need to be looking for Jesus moments this
week. -MarkI thought I had always heard in my growing up music learning years that this was Bach having fun and he wrote it as a rather quiet piece and as he played the organ at church he had some passages that all of a sudden had the organ blaring for a couple chords to catch those worshipers who just might have fallen asleep. I did not hear this at all even though the piece is so very beautiful. Perhaps it is another piece and my mind is failing me but today I am crushed by this mythbuster this late in life. It was a fun fact for almost 50 years. It would have been good, right? I mean the myth had elements of greatness even to drive home the point in catching possible church sleepers and suddenly waking them up to remind them to be ready! Music can accomplish such wonderful things – so while, in this case, it did not happen, put the idea in your thinking cap for how you may remain ready for Jesus at any time.
Anyway, here are the two pieces back to back for your listening pleasure. First we have the J. S. Bach chorale rendition and then a more contemporary groove from Austin French. Both are worthy. Bach is simply delicious and peaceful and Austin has an upbeat call to alertness that is hard to resist. Give praise today and stay ready! 
(couldn’t find an actual keyboard organ emoji so this will have to do)
(couldn’t find an actual keyboard organ emoji so this will have to do)~Shauna Weil
A devotion provided by the Devotion Ministry of Goodrich UMC