First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown”
Meditation on Philippians 4:1-9
Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford
Oct. 11, 2026
Dolly Parton is no longer with us. She went home to the Lord on August 25 after a brief battle with cancer. She was just 80 years old.
I was shocked to hear of her passing as many people were and still are. Tributes continue to be shared by those struggling with grief and overwhelmed by gratitude for the gift of her life. They all say how much she and her music and acts of kindness and generosity meant to them, even people who had never met her.
That was Dolly to a T. You couldn’t see her perform or give an interview without being moved by her candor, warmth, and joy. You always had the feeling that she cared about people. And that if you did meet her, she would care about you, too. She had a gentle way about her and always a smile. And yes, she was funny and known for her self-deprecating sense of humor. Whenever she was asked about her glamorous, rhinestone-sparkling appearance, she would say, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap!” She didn’t mind jokes about her well-endowed body, either. On receiving an honorary doctorate in 2009 from the University of Tennessee, she said, “Just think, I am Dr. Dolly! So when people say something about ‘Double-D,’ they will be thinking of something entirely different.”
Her desire to be a star that started from an early age “wasn’t the most obvious career path,” given her simple beginnings. The word “rural” doesn’t quite capture her Smoky Mountain upbringing in Locust Ridge, TN, in the 1950s. The daughter of an illiterate sharecropper, her parents and their 12 children lived in a small one or two-room log cabin. No electricity. No running water. No car. Her musical talent and her faith were nurtured at an early age. Uncle Bill Owens taught her to play guitar. When somebody came for a visit, her mama would tell her, “Run and get your guitar and sing that song” for whoever just arrived. She sang gospel, country, bluegrass, and blues. “Life, love, broken hearts, God, poverty, family, and moonshine,” she says, “we sang about it all.” She composed and sang her own songs from the age of 5, when she sang about her corncob doll, “Little Tiny Tasseltop.”
The 11-time Grammy and other award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, and philanthropist was proud of the world she grew up in. She never forgot her home, family, or community. Her Imagination Library has distributed more than 300 million free books so far, beginning with preschoolers in her own Sevier County. Her foundation awards a $15,000 scholarship each year to a senior in every high school in the county. She gave $1 million toward a new hospital in her county. And when massive fires swept through her county in 2016, destroying homes of more than 1,000 families, she asked her foundation to give $1,000 a month for 6 months to each family who lost their primary residence; the total gift came to $12 million.
Dolly wasn’t shy about speaking of her faith. It wasn’t the same kind of faith that her grandfather, a “hellfire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher,” had. But “I’m still very much a believer,” she said recently, “and always have been, of course.” She often talked about plain conversations that she had with God, and how she prayed before every performance and when she was working on her music in nature. “God is my co-writer and my co-pilot,” she said. “I sit under trees to write songs. I listen to God’s voice through the wind.”
While there is much to admire about Dolly, I am particularly impressed by her popularity with so many people and her gift of getting along with everybody, even those with whom she had had disagreements. One of her blockbuster hits, sung by Whitney Houston in the movie, My Body Guard, was written for Porter Wagoner. Porter had given Dolly, in 1967, her first big chance when he invited her to be the “girl singer” on his syndicated TV series, “The Porter Wagoner Show.” There came a time, in 1974, when the generation gap between their musical styles became increasingly obvious. They began to butt heads over the songs she would sing and how she would sing them. She was ready to move on to a solo career. But he didn’t want to let her go. So, she wrote him a song called, “I Will Always Love You.”
If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I’ll go, but I know
I’ll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter-sweet memories
That’s all I am taking with me
Goodbye, please don’t cry
We both know that I’m not
What you need
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Paul wasn’t an award-winning musician back in his day. But this letter written for his beloved church at Phillipi, mourning their loss of him while he is in jail, fearing he is a goner, is a beautiful poem that would be a lovely song, if someone were to put it to music, especially verses 4 through 9. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that this is the passage that has helped through many a hard time.
I realized this week, when studying this passage, that we often skip over the first three verses of chapter four. Yet they are so terribly relevant for the church of Jesus Christ in any age. Paul mentions two women by name. And you know how seldom women are named in the Bible. They must be important for him and well known to the church to name them, and then we learn that they have been mission coworkers with him. Listen to how he asks others to help them resolve what sounds like a bitter conflict.
He has talked about his love for them, Christ’s love for them, and their love for him and Christ from the first line of this letter. But now he gets to the meat of his lesson on love when he explains how love behaves. He inserts, in the middle of his beautiful poem, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my coworkers, whose names are in the book of life.”
We are left wondering what the conflict is all about. It might not be a theological conflict at all; but rather it seems to be personal. After all, Euodia and Syntyche’s names, together with Clement and the rest of Paul’s co-workers, are written in the book of life. This might be a reference to Revelation and those who are freed from condemnation in the final judgment.
Paul’s answer to personal conflict between his coworkers for the gospel? To be “of the same mind in the Lord.” We can’t do this in our own selves, alone. We all need help from the Spirit and one another. The mind of Christ stirs us to act in loving ways. The song builds to a crescendo.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Since Dolly’s passing, I have learned new things about her. I didn’t know that she had endometriosis in the mid 1980s, and because of it, she could not have children. This led to a bout of severe depression. She kept her depression a secret for a long time. Later on, she talked about it to help remove the stigma of mental illness and let others know that they are not alone in their suffering. She said that she relied heavily on prayer and close friends to help her through it. Then, in the last year of her life, she neglected her own health, while caring for her husband of 60 years. Knowing that she overlooked her own health problems while caring for Carl Dean, who died in March 2025, makes her seem even more real to me.
Something else that I learned about Dolly is that she recorded a secret song in 2015 called “My Place in History,” and locked it inside a time capsule at her resort. The wooden box, made by her Uncle Bill, won’t be opened until 2046—on Dolly’s 100th birthday. She never felt good about locking up a song that “nobody was going to hear ‘til then,” she said. “And I tell you, you have no idea how that has bothered me. I want to go dig that up so bad.”
I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure that “My Place in History” will never eclipse the popularity of “I Will Always Love You.” Every time I hear the song—and I hope this will happen for you now, as well— I think of how God has placed good people in our lives who are sometimes hard to love, such as Euodia and Syntyche—good and faithful people, colaborers with Paul, who had a personal conflict. The important thing to remember is the promise, if we live in loving ways, as Paul teaches us to do. “And the God of peace will be with you.”
I hope life treats you kind
And I hope that you have all
That you ever dreamed of
And I wish you joy
And happiness
But above all of this
I wish you love
And I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you.
Let us pray.
God of peace, help us to love those who are sometimes hard to love, to have grace for one another, as you have unconditional love and unfathomable grace for us. Teach us how to control our thought patterns, as Paul teaches us. Thank you for all that you have done for us through your Son and that our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Thank you that we will never lose our salvation, and for your promise of everlasting presence with us as we seek to live out our faith through gentle, loving ways, rejoicing at all times, and turning our worries into prayer. Help us to hear your voice in nature, like Dolly did, through the wind. In Christ we pray. Amen.
