Funny how sometimes I choose songs for Sunday morning. As I was playing "All Creatures" this morning in the 8:15 service, I remembered the corresponding Sunday last year.
I went into church May 15th, 2011 not knowing what to expect. I certainly didn't want to lead worship. I felt I had nothing to offer. I talked to the pastor and asked what we were going to do and his answer was that we were going to have church. I didn't want to. How could I lead worship when that happened? How could I praise a God that did that to them? My job is to lead a group of believers to worship the God of the universe and I wasn't sure I could worship him myself.
All creatures of our God a King, lift up your voice and with us sing, oh praise Him, Alleluia.
Let all things their Creator bless. And worship Him in humbleness. Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son. And praise the Spirit, Three in One.
And then it came. A bunch of alleluias. I normally do the set of 4, 3 times. Since it was just me and my guitar, no band, I went longer. I angrily screamed "alleluia" at my God. I sang as loud as I could, I cried out to God, I didn't want to worship Him. He had done what I thought was unthinkable, and then I had to lead these people worshiping Him.
I continued. I just looked up alleluia. It's an interjection, an expression. I don't know if there is a word for interjection confusion, but I was feeling that. It wasn't an alleluia like a sarcastic "thanks a lot," it was as if told Middle to apologize to Little for stealing her ice cream. The only reason she would do that is to not get in trouble. She doesn't mean it, she doesn't even really open her mouth when she says it. I was singing a word that is supposed to be a holy, worshiping, glorifying word to God and I am screaming it as angry as I could.
As tears rolled down my cheeks, I felt it. I don't know what it exactly was, but I knew I could stop singing. He heard my cry. I realized that there was a plan. Who am I to question it? Over the next three days I would be so incredibly privileged to witness and experience God's Love in a way that I'd never seen before, and hope to never see again, because it would, most likely, mean the unthinkable.
Carrie and I were asked to be involved in the planning. We asked her mom to take the kids for those next few days, and without a question she gladly did. We got a bunch of pictures and put together a bulletin for the service and a bookmark that Grandma wanted to make, the girl at Kinkos found out what we were doing and gave us her employee discount. We knew parking was going to be an issue for the viewing, so we asked Anderson Grove (the small group) to man the parking lots. They gladly stood in the rain and directed traffic. Video feed in the overflow room for the service at 11:30pm the night before? "Let me go home and get any cables that we might need. Let's do this." Take off a work day to lead worship for the service for a family we've never met? Boom, I have a band.
The next few days were Church. I couldn't believe the outpouring of Love that came that week. That week I fell in love with my church. The Bride of Christ served Her Groom by reaching out to one of Her own. By loving on people at their weakest.
When the kids finally came home all we did was hug them. They knew something was up. So we told them the best we could. After those days, we made sure our daughters (and eventually our son) knew 2 things.
1. God is always in control
2. Mommy and Daddy will never stop loving you, no matter what you do.
Thank you to all of you who helped us that week. Thank you for those of you that let us serve you that week. Thank You, God, for always being in control.
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