When God sings

A few days ago I was reading my bible at one of the (many) church services we attend, when suddenly, something jumped out at me. I've read Zephaniah 3:17 many times, and ever since it was put to a melody I've sung it many times. Yet somehow, in all those readings, I never noticed the sincerity of this line:

"The Lord your God is with you,

He is mighty to save. 

He will take great joy in you. 

He will comfort you with his love. 

He will rejoice over you with singing."

God sings.

Wait. 

God sings?

Not only does God sing, according to the bible He/She rejoices, dances, speaks, gets involved... I think most times when we talk about God we talk metaphorically, but Genesis tells us we're made in the image of God, so it makes sense if we sing it's because God does too. My next question is: what does this mean? At first I picture those moments in movies when the main character finally "gets it, " whatever "it" is, and slowly but surely you hear the power-ballad build setting the scene for their inevitable triumph. Maybe when we do the right thing, get our lives straight for once, God busts out a Bon Jovi classic and we head bang our way into heaven.

But I don't think God waits until we get everything right to sing over us. I think the beauty of our God is He sings over us when we mess up, don't get it right, make a mistake, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, don't fit in, choose the wrong path... God will always rejoice over us with singing because She loves us just the way She created us. Only when we decide to respond to the song does it become a harmony. 

Hand turkeys I made with the kids.

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving by inviting 20 people from our churches and schools over for a big dinner. At one table we had old folks, young professionals, white people, black people, foreign people, Christians, Muslims, athiests... I told them it was a Thanksgiving tradition to each say something we're thankful for, and one by one praise happened. It was this beautiful moment of thanks to God for all the things we love about life. 

Being here in England I am thankful for so much!  I'm thankful for my teammates, our friends at church and school, my year 5 class, the culture and chilly weather. I'm thankful my family loves me enough to support me here, and for my friends who went out of their way to love on me before I left. 

(left to right: Jamanah, Cassius, Ikra, Aksah, Raul)

(June, Donna, Raul)

Praise leader John Mark McMillan said this about his song, "How He Loves": “I sat down to have a dialogue with God and, really, He ended up having a dialogue with me. It’s like He was speaking to me through the song.”

God sings and sings through us. He rejoices over us in song and our response of thanks is a song of joy itself. Happy Thanksgiving =)

Remember Peace

Today is "Remembrance Sunday" here in England. While this whole week has been about remembering the veterans, today is when the whole country actually pauses for two minutes during church service to meditate on their sacrifice. As a symbol of remembrance people where a poppie on their coats. The most striking thing about remembrance day is how widely it's celebrated, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, wears one. On Thursday night I went to the Paramore concert in Sheffield, and even they had poppies on! Needless to say I've had lots of time to think about conflict and peace this week. Last Sunday I tried out a new church near the city center. In actuality it is a German Reform church, but in the afternoon the Peace Studies program at Bradford College has a service called "Soul Space." Today was the second Sunday in a row I've been there, and so far I really like it. The format is considerably different than most churches I've been apart of, because Soul Space uses "fresh expressions"; alternative-creative-worship-practices. The congregants are young and old, students and professionals, English, German, Japanese, Dutch, African, etc... with two smiliar interests: Jesus and Social Justice. With a focus on peace, this church decided to wear a different kind of poppy, a white one.

A peace poppy.

I want to be clear, I love the veterans. It is my deepest belief that service men and women fight with the best intentions at heart. They love their country, their families and their values. However, my problem with some conceptions of Veterans day and celebrations like it, is they focus on the "victory" of us over them; and as one man in church today put it: 'in war, no one wins.'

'But Leigh,' you say, 'they sacrificed their lives for a greater purpose,

doesn't that in itself make them winners?'

Well, proverbial disagree-er, I would say this: are veterans the only people who sacrifice their lives for war?

1 in 6 deaths that occur as a result of war are soldiers. This means 5 of 6 are civilians.

No, it seems to me there's lots of sacrifice in war which has nothing to do with pride. War is hell and Jesus came to bring us peace.

In Chicago we were asked a very challenging question: are you a peace supporter, or a peace maker? Up until now I feel like I've been a peace supporter, paying lip service to the nice ideas about peaceful living... but where does peaceful living begin? How does peace come about? Martin Luther King Jr said this, "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." I realized today peace has as much to do with the Gaza strip as it has to do with my own home, my own heart - it's all brokenness - it's all conflict calling for rest, for contentment, for grace. "Shalom" is a Hebrew word meaning: completeness, wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony,etc...

God wants us to be peacemakers, and according to Dr. King if we live at peace with one another the result is Shalom in the world. Even if you cant get North Korea to stop being freaking crazy, you can call that friend you've been avoiding and make peace. Or that relative you can't stand -you know the one who makes every family reunion unbearable- and just talk things through. Live peace.

Peace be with you.

Is Missions words or deeds?

According to a recent news article, Bradford is the second poorest city in the country. The city has seen a lot of hard times over the past century: industrialization, pollution, unemployment, massive immigration, riots, etc. Today the city still bears these scars.

Last week a little girl in my class told our teacher her instructor at Mosque hits her with a stick. I held back tears as she explained what it's like being sent to learn about God in a place she doesn't feel physically safe.

It occurred to me in my "adult" brain, this teacher obviously does not speak for God. However, in this little girls mind, God is a bully with a big stick. Think about it - how much of our opinions about God are based on our experiences with His/Her followers? You and I - You could be the only Jesus someone ever knows. And if that's true, how will our presence in Bradford inform people's opinion of Jesus? What will it take to show His love? After so many centuries of colonization and inquisition, I (like lots of other Christians) have become uncomfortable with proselytizing, choosing instead to share the gosple through actions. But is that really enough?

I may have thought so before an article I read this week from RELEVANT magazine. In an column by Brett McCracken, Is Mission about Words or Deeds, he says this about "works-only" mission:

"I’m all for social justice. I’m passionate about it. Christians have to be serving people and loving them not just in word but in deed. But man, if I hear another well-fed, TOMS-wearing evangelical kid quote St. Francis (“preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words”) one more time as a justification for their unwillingness to utter a word to anyone about Christ as the one true hope, I don’t know what I’ll do."

Being one of those well-feed-TOMS-wearing-St.Francis-quoting- Christians, this hit pretty close to home, lol.

Poverty, racism, kids being hit by people they should be able to trust... the world is broken. Here's where your brain automatically replies: Thanks captain obvious. It's true, everyone on the planet will tell you, all is not right with the world. The good news of our God is that someone came to set it all right again, and we get to play a part in the restoration project. I think God wants us to be the announcers of this glorious thing He's done, in word and deed. If we don't, it's likely people will never know why it is we do the things we do. For all my class knows, I am just some mysterious American who came across the ocean to spend my days joking around with them. And while it's always fun to be the mysterious visitor, I should want everyone I meet to know just who it is I serve. I want the little girl in my class to know the Jesus who gathered little children to himself... I want her to experience his gentle love... His forgiveness and grace...

I'll end with a quote from my pastor's sermon this past week.

"While it sometimes feels like evil, distortion, wrong always win, in the end it is God's perfect justice that always prevails."

-Phil Roughtin