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 =)