Books by Dale Harris

Books by Dale Harris
A Feast of Epiphanies

Though I Walk, A Novel

Daytime Moons and Other Celestial Anomalies, a book of poems

Second Wind

Second Wind
An album of songs both old and new. Recorded in 2021, a year of major transition for me, these songs explore the many vicissitudes of the spiritual life,. It's about the mountaintop moments and the Holy Saturday sunrises, the doors He opens that no one can close, and those doors He's closed that will never open again. You can click the image above to give it a listen.

The Song Became a Child

The Song Became a Child
A collection of Christmas songs I wrote and recorded during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. Click the image to listen.

There's a Trick of the Light I'm Learning to Do

This is a collection of songs I wrote and recorded in January - March, 2020 while on sabbatical from ministry. They each deal with a different aspect or expression of the Gospel. Click on the image above to listen.

Three Hands Clapping

This is my latest recording project (released May 27, 2019). It is a double album of 22 songs, which very roughly track the story of my life... a sort of musical autobiography, so to speak. Click the album image to listen.

Ghost Notes

Ghost Notes
A collections of original songs I wrote in 2015, and recorded with the FreeWay Musical Collective. Click the album image to listen.

inversions

Recorded in 2014, these songs are sort of a chronicle of my journey through a pastoral burn-out last winter. They deal with themes of mental-health, spiritual burn-out and depression, but also with the inexorable presence of God in the midst of darkness. Click the album art to download.

soundings

soundings
click image to download
"soundings" is a collection of songs I recorded in September/October of 2013. Dealing with themes of hope, ache, trust and spiritual loss, the songs on this album express various facets of my journey with God.

bridges

bridges
Click to download.
"Bridges" is a collection of original songs I wrote in the summer of 2011, during a soul-searching trip I took out to Alberta; a sort of long twilight in the dark night of the soul. I share it here in hopes these musical reflections on my own spiritual journey might be an encouragement to others: the sun does rise, blood-red but beautiful.

echoes

echoes
Prayers, poems and songs (2005-2009). Click to download
"echoes" is a collection of songs I wrote during my time studying at Briercrest Seminary (2004-2009). It's called "echoes" partly because these songs are "echoes" of times spent with God from my songwriting past, but also because there are musical "echoes" of hymns, songs or poems sprinkled throughout the album. Listen closely and you'll hear them.

Accidentals

This collection of mostly blues/rock/folk inspired songs was recorded in the spring and summer of 2015. I call it "accidentals" because all of the songs on this project were tunes I have had kicking around in my notebooks for many years but had never found a "home" for on previous albums. You can click the image to download the whole album.

random reads

Teach Us to Pray

I was reading my youngest daughter her bedtime Bible story the other night, when we came to the episode where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer. The story opened with these words: "Jesus was praying. When he was done, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, please teach us to pray.'" My daughter stopped me and asked innocently, but insightfully enough, "Dad, Jesus is God. Why would he be praying?"

The kind of question every pastor-dad waits, bedtime story after uneventful bedtime story, to be finally asked.

I explained that as Christians, we believe God is three-in-one: God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I told her that Jesus is God the Son, and he was praying to God the Father. That's why his prayer begins with the words "Our Father in Heaven..."

She seemed satisfied enough with this answer and was ready to move on with the story; but I wasn't. This wasn't just some interesting tid-bit about the anatomy of some abstract god that we were discussing. Her simple question had driven us straight to the heart of how we know, and experience, and worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I explained that Jesus is fully God, who receives our prayers; but he is also fully human, who offers them perfectly to the Father on our behalf. Because Jesus is fully God and fully human, he always prays in us, and through us, and with us whenever we pray; and because we are praying in, through and with Jesus the Son, God the Father always hears us. And even when we don't know how to pray the way we should (like those disciples), the Spirit of Jesus is at work in us, transforming our broken prayers into his perfect prayer to the Father. Then I told her that when she prayed, "Lord, please make ___ well, because I love her," Jesus was praying that very prayer with her, and in her and through her, making it into his perfect prayer: "Yes Lord, yes; that's our prayer. Let your will be done."

I was trying to explain the mediation of Christ to her, without using that term. And I was thinking of John 15-17, and Romans 8:12-27, and the whole book of Hebrews while I did so.

But after I had closed the picture Bible and kissed her goodnight, her question kept echoing in my spirit. It reminded me of a book a read a while ago that changed everything for me, James Torrance's Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. In this deceptively slender study of the mediation of Christ, Torrance shows how every act of Christian worship must happen in, through and with Jesus. We never praise, or pray, or worship, or serve alone, or directly. Jesus, our fully-God-and-fully-human-mediator, always worships in us, with us and on or behalf.

Of prayer,Torrance writes: "The Son of God became our brother that he might lift us up into [the] life of wonderful communion [with the Father], and so he sends his Spirit into our hearts and puts his prayer on our lips whereby we too can pray, 'Abba Father.' ... In the communion of the Spirit in the communion of saints, our prayers on earth are the echo of his prayers in heaven."

This is the fuller answer to my daughter's innocent question. Jesus prays so that our feeble prayers might become an echo of his perfect prayer in heaven. And I sometimes wonder if Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace shouldn't be mandatory reading for all Christian worshipers and especially all worship leaders. If it were, our prayer and praise life as a church might be transformed by this truth: we need no longer depend on our own spiritual resources to generate an acceptable response to God, because our worship actually participates in that perfect response to the Father that the Son offers for us, through us, and with us.

2 comments:

Adam Pastor said...

Greetings Dale Harris

Truly,
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
[Matt 21.16]

With childlike simplicity,
your youngest daughter has seen right through the charade of the doctrines of:
Jesus being God & God being three-in-one!

She has understood that GOD has no need to pray, so if Jesus prayed,
Jesus isn't GOD!!

Maybe you should reconsider how you answered her.
Because
1) The Bible does not speak of a "God the Son"
2) and there is no place in Scripture, where GOD is depicted as
three-in-one

Rather,
Jesus identified his Father
as the only true GOD
[John 17.3];
as the only GOD
[John 5.44];
and as "his GOD"
i.e. "my GOD"
[John 20.17, Rev 3.12].

Almighty GOD does not have a GOD; therefore Jesus cannot be Almighty GOD!
Your daughter could see this.

Also the early church concurred with Jesus' teaching; they did not believe
in a three-in-one God;
but rather:
(1 Cor 8:4) ... that there is none other God but one.
(1 Cor 8:6) But to us there is but one God, the Father, ...

So, how was Jesus taught
as a child?

Answer: the Shema i.e.
(Deu 6:4-7) Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. ...

Dale, Jesus, himself, the Messiah, quotes this verse as the foremost (first) of all the commandments in Mark 12:28-34.

This was therefore, Jesus' creed; therefore, as Christians, followers of Christ, this ought to be our creed!

If Jesus was never taught such a concept as the trinity when he was a child in light of Deut 6.4-7 (the first of all the commandments), then is it right that we teach such things to children??
Surely we ought not to!

Jesus' creed stipulates that GOD is ONE i.e. ONE Being, ONE Person, for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
[Mark 12.32]


Thus, there is solely ONE GOD,
the Father.

[John 17.3; 1 Cor 8.4,6]

A child can easily understand that.

This teaching is indeed foundational for a child's understanding of GOD; i.e.
the fact that GOD is ONE & this ONE GOD is the Father;
indeed, the GOD & Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
[2 Cor 11.31, Eph 1.3, Col 1.3, 1 Pet 1.3]

Therefore, Dale, with all due respect,
I encourage you, as a truthseeker, to consider the difference between Jesus' creed and what you are currently teaching your children,
especially your youngest daughter.

For more info on this subject,
I recommend this video:
The Human Jesus

Take a couple of hours to watch it; and prayerfully it will aid you in your quest for truth.

Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor

Adam Pastor said...

PS

John Milton also (rightfully)
rejected the doctrine of the trinity!!