Monday morning thoughts: dancing bear act, crash helmets and a Doxology

a (hopefully undramatized) stream of conscious meditation about Sunday worship:

"A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter. Week after week, we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, It is all right -- believe it or not -- to be people. Who can believe it?" 

(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk)

I first read Annie Dillard's apt description of corporate worship services at a time in my life when I was really, really tired of corporate worship.  I'd been trained to hope for, above all else, a Holy Spirit revival when God's people met on Sundays.  This hope made every other part of church life pale in comparison.  You can imagine the cumulative effect of such hope year after year with only rare sightings of anything other-worldly in our worship services.  

Eventually, I began to wonder things like "Why did Jesus ask us to do this little routine with the bread and wine when we're just waiting for the Pentecost flame moment all the time?"  and "What's the point of the Lord's prayer if we just want the tongues?"  

Probably these questions marked the moment of my conversion to Anglicanism.  I needed to find  an ecclesial container large enough, and sturdy enough to nourish and sustain the healthiest parts of those roots -- all that was good and true and beautiful planted into my childhood church experience that would produce good fruit in the dailiness of following Jesus.

The Anglican liturgy is old enough, and broad enough to articulate all that I strove for in years of restless worship and anxious altar calls.  Then and now, I hold out hope that one of these Sundays all of it would blow into smithereens, that the Holy Spirit would rend the heavens and touch down in our sanctuary.  In the meantime, this preacher's kid has found rest knowing that no matter how convicting the sermon or provoking the altar call, at the end of the service it is Jesus Himself hosting the feast. That every child, woman and man will walk to the front to receive gifts of God for the people of God, while healing pray-ers stand by waiting for the ones who can’t make it that far.

Last evening we had to modify our liturgy at Christ Church because both of our priests were on vacation and we had no one to serve the Sacrament.  This morning it strikes me funny that I didn't think twice about this.  Oh my, the conversations we would have had years ago imagining that there were actually Christians in the world who believed a priest had to preside over the Table.  And not only that, but that there might in fact be some mysterious element to the Lord's Supper that makes it something more than a mere symbol of remembrance, therefore requiring a wholly-dedicated representative of the Christ we can not see, but can only ingest.

I missed it though.  And Brian led in Evening prayer and taught us well out of the Gospel of Mark.  Our worship pastor Bryan led us passionately and thoughtfully into the worship of all the saints.  We sang the words that even now cherubim and seraphim are singing at the Throne: Holy, holy, holy..."  And we sang about the reality of this place where Jesus sits with the Father "Clothed in rainbows, of living color / Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder / Blessing and honor, strength and / Glory and power be / To You the Only Wise King."

And for just a moment, aided by the skillful musicians and the Holy Spirit, the veil that clouds my eyes from seeing fully this throneroom of Christ was lifted for a tiny glimpse.  It was a transcendent moment and my eyes and ears were more closely attuned to the Real World that is "on earth as it is in heaven."  And we sang and I raised my arms in the woefully inadequate physical response to this knowledge.  And I prayed in the lyrics and I imagined a more beautiful Truth than I'd imagined for at least the last seven days.  And then the song ended.

And it kind of reminded me of the time my friends Scott & Kim LaGraff performed a vocal recital for us in New York.  With all the grandeur of their voices, it was the moment of silence immediately following each song that nearly wrecked me.  That moment when the only response we can muster is silence.  As a group, we were transported and wondering if we'd returned to the place we started from or somewhere new altogether.

Last night, the pause felt the same way.  Might flames of fire actually fall from the sky and transport us into a new dimension of intimacy with Father, Son and Spirit -- and please, God -- with each other in the room -- and Lord, have mercy -- with hurting, desperate neighbors so in need of miraculous healing, let diseases and demons and death be gone.  And the silence is a sort of time outside of time in which we anticipate and imagine and listen for our orders.  And, hearing no new instructions, we take up again the mantle of praise and we sing -- what our Church mothers and fathers taught us -- the truth that we did not make, but instead makes us:  

1. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
   Praise Him, all creatures here below;
   Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
   Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And then we walk across the courtyard to a little, plain room where we potluck (emphasis on the "luck" since no one seems to have remembered it's potluck week) together because Christ has, in fact, made us all priests with food and stories to share. 

May we all be sustained and may the lonely, desperate in our city draw near to the Gift who gives us life even while we wait to see Him face to face.

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”  (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk.)

How to Change Your Church's Worship Service

For several years I've been writing reflections from the spiritual disciplines devotionals that I use during Ordinary Time (the time of the year that doesn't fall between Advent and Pentecost).  Some years I use the book Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson, Sr. and Michael W. Benson.  This year I'm using A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines by Richard Foster.  I am no speed-reader, especially when my intention is to not just hear but do the words I'm reading. This means my written reflections pop up rather sporadically here, but my hope is to share something from the series with you at least once a month.

The Sacred Practice of Corporate Worship 

“It is madness to wear ladies and velvet hats to church, we should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may awake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”                                             -- Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Since Pentecost I've been spending time reading through the sacred practices of worship.  This practice falls into two broad categories:  everyday worship and corporate worship.  I wrote the reflection for everyday worship here ("You Don't Have to be a Worship Leader to Worship God in the Mall Parking Lot").

Today, I'm sharing with you what I'm learning about the sacred practices that feed the habit of corporate worship.  Some little bit of New Yorker cheekiness prompted me to title this post: How to Change Your Church's Worship Service. You're pretty savvy readers, and I'm guessing you know that changing your church's worship service really begins with changing your own worship practices.

a worship service at our former church, Union Center Christian Church
Endicott, NY (photo by Hope Spicer)

1.  Practice All Week

"After all, [Jesus] had graciously spoken to me in dozens of little ways throughout the week; he will certainly speak to me here as well."-- Richard Foster's comment on the interconnection between daily private worship and communal worship, A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines

We spend all week worshipping this God with our everyday, walking-around lives.  The Word-made-flesh makes all places sacred.  The Spirit of Christ, our worship leader, conducts spirit-and-truth worship in every room we step foot, every building, every parking lot, every ball field, every traffic jam.  We practice worship paying attention to the kingdom presence of Christ in all the noisy chaos of everyday living.

We practice worship offering gratitude for everything we consume, offering petition for each need we discover, intercession for those inside and outside our sphere of influence, awe for each mystery.  We practice worship when we open our hands, hearts and homes to give and receive blessing.

We practice worship seeking quiet places to listen, learn the character of God in Scripture and spiritual writings, sit in quiet, read the Word, rehearse the goodness of our Father, lay our questions on Him, pay attention to the inner impressions we suspect come from Him.  We practice worship in a rhythm of alone and together, hushed and raucous, satisfied and needy, sitting, standing, lying down and walking around.

We can not change our church's worship service without a hearty work-out of week-long worship.

2.  Expect to Meet God

"A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we could only call a 'holy expectancy.' They believed they would actually hear the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God...They were coming into the awful, glorious, gracious presence of the living God. They gathered with anticipation, knowing that Christ was present among them and would teach them and touch them with his living power....When more than one or two come into public worship with a holy expectancy, it can change the atmosphere of a room. People who enter harried and distracted are drawn quickly into a sense of the silent Presence. Hearts and minds are lifted upward. The air becomes charged with expectancy."  -- Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline

One of the most important worship truths I've ever learned is that I am not responsible to initiate worship.  Instead, It is my job to respond to the invitation of God, through His Spirit and led by His Son.  Can you imagine the pressure this relieves?  Prior to this new understanding, I spent my whole life trying to be clean enough, sing loudly enough, feel tingly enough, clap on rhythm often enough to bring about God's presence.  

It is not true that we initiate worship.  The mantra that we worship for an audience of One is misplaced.  The truer statement:  We follow a worship leader of One.  Jesus has been given the authority to lead His Church to God.  If worshipping God depends on my ability to conjure up His Spirit then I'm sunk, you're sunk, we're all sunk.

Since God is the one responsible through His Son and Spirit to gather us each week to meet Him, I can expect that He'll also show up.  I can, of course, ignore him, dismiss him, blow right past him with my lofty expectations of how "worship" should look, sound and feel.  This often happens when I spend too much time worshipping my ideal modernized image of worship and church rather than simmering in the ancient truths of worship and church.  Sometimes, it happens when I forget that the Spirit of Christ is making all things new in and through His people, and might surprise us in new songs and methods of worship.

I miss meeting God in corporate worship when I am preoccupied, tending to my long list of wish-dreams for worship.  If I am not practicing a humble self-awareness of my long list of besetting sin and wounds, I do not have eyes trained to see the Presence of Jesus in the middle of His worshipping people.  Another word for a wish-dream that controls my expectations is idolatry.  

I'm learning a few practices that help me meet God in my church's worship service:

• Show up on Saturday night: We can learn from the Jewish tradition that Sabbath begins at sundown.  Treat Saturday evening and Sunday morning as important hours of preparation for my church's worship service.

• Be an introvert:  Arrive ten minutes early, sit in the sanctuary and quietly prepare ourselves.  Pray for the worship leaders and ministers to sense God's hand upon them, to speak and to lead boldly.  Pray for the others working to facilitate God meeting His people in worship.  Rather than finding people to talk with before the service, pray for one or two people instead.  Pray that they might experience God's presence in worship.

• Pray with your eyes open:  Notice the sanctuary space, the colors, symbols and ornaments.  Pay attention to the faces and sounds filling the room.  Listen to the noise in your head. The sort of "gut feelings" you experience during this time will alert you to your list of worship wish-dreams, the places God wants to forgive you, heal you and bless you as you worship Him this morning.  

We can not change our church's worship service without expecting to meet God as the worship leader, responding in worship to His promised presence.

3.  Act Like A True Worshipper

"If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship...Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured."      -- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

For as long as the Church has gathered for worship services, we've struggled to remember our worship responsibilities to God, to each other and to ourselves. The accounts we've been given of the worship habits for the Church in the dark ages provide an example of this sort of forgetfulness. The common folk were expected to listen to a priest read what they could not understand, and watch him partake what they were not invited to eat.  In a similar way, I'm thinking of the current predicament the Church has constructed, confusing the people in the pew as the audience and the people on the platform the performers.

Instead of riding the pendulum of worship service innovation, embracing and then jettisoning each idea published to get those people in the room engaged, what if we all just went back to God's ideas for worship given in the Law, given as a new command through His Son's life, death, resurrection and ascension, enabled by His Spirit at Pentecost?  Worship is an action, a habit we get to build each week of our lives, if we're lucky.  Worship is not a feeling, a program, or a set of songs.  We do the work of worship together, each with very important roles.  When you don't act like a worshipper, the whole Church misses out. 

One of my favorite habits in the Anglican church we attend is the practice of Communion during each service.  Near the top of the list of reasons I love this weekly ritual is that I get to watch the children walk to the front with their families and wait their turn to either receive the bread and wine or the prayer of blessing.  Every week I watch the family rehearse which little one should stand with hands open and which should stand with arms bent across their chest.  In our church, this habit is a reminder of each one's baptism.  Has it happened already?  Hands open, bread given. Not yet?  Arms crossed, blessing given.

This morning I watched a sweet little blonde stand with arms extended above the puff of her pink tu-tu, waiting for her bread.  When the priest placed the bite of brown bread into her hands, she did not know what to do.  She stood there looking at her bread until her father leaned down, placed his hand under her forearm and gently lifted her bread-filled hand to her mouth.  And I cried because I watched the Gospel enacted in front of me, in the ordinary sharing of bread, drink and blessing.  Sometimes I do not cry, but giggle, when I notice a harried mama deliver a stern glance or gentle nudge, making sure her little offspring does not haul off a chunk of bread for later.  All of it an unspoken catechism.  All of it enacting worship.

This, of course, is only one part of the worship service.  The Scriptures give us actions for worship all throughout the Old Testament and the New.  For a quick primer I recommend two passages I meditated during this study:  Deuteronomy 12:1-7 and the account of the beautiful worshipper Anna in Luke 2:36-38.  The list of practices God has given us for corporate worship serve as pathways to the act of worshiping in spirit and truth.  When we are formed in these practices we grow as true worshipers of the one true God rather than worshipers of our own worship wish-dreams and ill-formed ideas of who God is and who we are.

I'm learning a few practices that help me act like a true worshipper in my church's worship service:

• Sing like a worship leader:  Listen to the instruments playing, notice the rhythm and pitch, learn the tunes and mind the lyrics.  Focus on singing the songs directly to God, but also on the harmonies and melodies of those singing around me.  

• Believe God's Word:  Listen for God's direct voice in the Scripture readings and the Word preached.  For my learning style, I need to read those words as they are being spoken,  so carrying a Bible is very important for me to read and agree with God's word.  

• Practice acting:  Don't misunderstand "acting" in this practice to be "pretending" or "faking".  Practice the definition of acting as "performing".  When an actor performs, he places his whole self: body, memory, emotions into the hands of the script and the director.  This is the sort of acting I mean, with one difference.  Acting worship actually forms us into worshippers.  We become what we practice.  We practice to become.

We can not change our church's worship service without  acting -- body, mind, and emotions -- like a true worshiper of the one true God.

4.  Share Stories and Food

"A quickening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and blending our spirits within a superindividual Life and Power. An objective, dynamic Presence enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort with us, and quickens us in depths that had before been slumbering."                                                           -- Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise

Whether your church practices the habit of communion each Sunday, a bagels and coffee hospitality table after service or a coffee counter in the foyer, there are many ways to share stories and food after the worship service.  The old school term for this is fellowship (or, feller-ship, as some might say).  

I'm delighted to worship a God who makes the ordinary act of eating and talking an act of worship.  Because either my husband or I have been working for a church for almost ten years, we haven't been able to figure out how to share Sunday lunch with different people in our church community each week but we're committed to keep trying to find a workable solution.  

For now, I've begun entering the conversations at our coffee and bagel table with a purposed heart.  I want to hear the ways my church family experienced our service, the thoughts and questions and concerns and fears and healing and directions they received from the Spirit of Christ during our time together.  Out of all the practices I've mentioned, this one is, by far, the hardest for me.  I am an introvert and would prefer to take my experience from the service, duck out the back door and savor it all by myself over a bite to eat.  Sometimes, that is exactly what I do.  

Acts 13:1-3 gives a beautiful account of the importance of sharing  our worship experience with each other.  In the particular account, the men gathered were seeking God's direction for Paul and Barnabas.  They began by worshiping together.  When they sensed the direction the Lord was  giving them, they shared with each other and began worshiping together again, testing the Spirit.  Only then, after a full assurance they'd heard from the Spirit of God did they "lay hands on them and send them off."

Today, I applied Acts 13 in a small way by asking the people I talked with what they'd heard from the Spirit during the service.  Not every conversation was deep and profound, some might have been had we not been surrounded by a jabbering, caffeine-seeking crowd.  But a few were.  I heard from one friend who'd received an assurance for accepting a new job offer (after we'd been praying together on the question for a few weeks, from another who heard the Spirit telling her to consider leaving her job.  I met a new family who were visiting for the very first time, and I received a lavish gift of blessing from another friend.  

Clearly, I miss out a vital element of worshiping with my church community when I skip this part of our service each week.

I'm learning a few practices that help me share stories and food in my church's worship service:

• Be an extrovert: Oh, this is so hard for me!  My daughter told me, when she heard my plan to engage with people after the service, "Mom, don't you mean act like an extrovert because you know you can't be one."  Well, yes.  I may be an introvert but I love hearing and telling stories.  Entering the "after-service zone" with a story-telling purpose makes all the difference!

• Find something to do:  One of my friends who shares the same after-service dread  finds a way to help someone do something after the service.  Whether your church is portable like ours or not, I'm positive someone somewhere needs help with something.  Roll up your sleeves and get busy.  While you're at it, share a story or two.

• Pray with your eyes open:  Ask Jesus to show you someone who needs something you can give.  Maybe someone standing alone, someone still sitting in the pew, a young mom trying to have a conversation while simultaneously chasing her toddler, an older person navigating a crowded room.  Ask Jesus to show you one person you can pray over, help or comfort. 

We can not change our church's worship service without sharing stories and food together.

5.  Practice All Week

Worship alone.  Worship together. Repeat until Jesus returns.

Psalm 100
Laura James

"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!' 

 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, 'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.'                                                                                -- Revelation 7: 9-12, ESV

from the book pile, 2012: Annie Dillard, Veronica Roth

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

I've been working my way through the tower of books teetering off the antique writing desk that serves as my nightstand.  Working my way through reading and working my way through the thoughts and learnings each title provokes.

When I first started this blog in 2006 one of my goals was to nurture a forum that kept me accountable for the cultural goods I consume.  Of course, I didn't really know then to articulate the goal in those terms.  The truth dawns gradually: as in in worship so as in culture -- I did not make it, but it is making me.

Having also gotten quite clear with the truth that I will never be a professional book reviewer, I've let myself off the hook and changed up the way I document my reading.

Every new year, I consider making a number goal for books read in the coming twelve months.  It's never a good idea; rather takes away the enjoyment of arriving at December 31 and tallying up titles from the previous year.  Feels like an accomplishment no matter the number.  Hope you enjoy!

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Holy the Firm

Author:  Annie Dillard

Genre: non-fiction, essay

Published: Harper & Row, 1977

General Impression:  It's only 76 pages, so why in the world has it taken me this long to read this well-loved volume of essays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dillard?  I don't know, but now that I've read it I guess it really doesn't matter because I've tucked the words and images from this slim volume right into place between all the other Annie Dillard treasures already sunk away into my memory and imagination.  And a shimmery store of treasures it is!

Reading these essays felt almost like an epilogue of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Once again the author is hidden away in a pleasant burrow of nature -- this time an island in the Puget Sound.  Once again Dillard cuts herself off from all distractions threatening to blind her vision what's really going in this dusty earth.  In Holy the Firm, she sits in a wooden room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider and one person" and writes minutia and tragedy with the same pen, the moth in the candle flame and the girl falling out of the sky, each receiving the same deft touch.  And, thus, adds her voice to the immortal conversation of how much good is in a God.  

Speaking of that spider... (from chapter 1, "Newborn and Salted"):

"There is a spider, too, in the bathroom, with whom I sort of keep company. Her little outfit always reminds me of a certain moth I helped to kill. The spider herself is of uncertain lineage, bulbous at the abdomen and drab. Her six-inch mess of a web works, works somehow, works miraculously, to keep her alive and me amazed. The web itself is in a corner behind the toilet, connecting tile wall to tile wall and floor, in a place where there is, I would have thought, scant traffic. Yet under the web are sixteen or so corpses she has tossed to the floor."

Another favorite excerpt, of the sort both anomalous and particular (from chapter 3, "Holy the Firm"):

"I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand. There is an anomalous specificity to all our experience in space, a scandal of particularity, by which God burgeons up or showers down into the shabbiest of occasions, and laves his creation's dealings with him in the hands of purblind and clumsy amateurs. This is all we are and all we ever were; God kann nicht anders.  This process in time is history; in space, at such shocking random, it is mystery."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5. Divergent

Author:  Veronica Roth

Genre: fiction (technically YA Fantasy & Science Fiction)

Published: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011

General Impression:  Good golly, what a fun read!  Although, I have to confess I was reading this while everyone else in the world seemed to be reading a certain other trilogy.  Just another example in a long line of how I'm never quite in the right place at the right time.  It was my mother-of-teenagers ego that drove me to read this book in the first place.  Natalie reads through YA fiction series faster than Harry Potter rides a broom, Katniss shoots an arrow,  Percy takes on a duel and Bella changes beaus. You could almost say reading through YA fiction series is her superpower.  And she doesn't just read, she lives the stories.  Takes up the calls for justice, suffering of the underdog, angst of the unrequited love.  

So, I thought I'd earn some points by beating her to the next series on her list.  I entered the world of YA fiction and it was glorious.  I couldn't put the book down, yelling updates through the house with each turn of fate, racing through the pages describing the first kiss, imaging what tattoo I would get if I belonged to the Dauntless faction. (which I'd never, ever -- no matter how many days left to the end of the world as we know it -- would be a Dauntless.  Candor, maybe, even though I fancy myself making it into the Erudite.)

Natalie's learned a skill as a YA reader that she failed to pass along to her bumbling mother.  Never, ever invest yourself in a series until at least two of the books are already available.  Now I'm left waiting for the sequel.  The wait will be over.  Soon

synopsis from Goodreads:

In a future Chicago, 16-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Excerpt from really excellent opening page:

"There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.

I sit on the stool and my mother stands behind me with the scissors, trimming. The strands fall on the floor in a dull, blond ring.

When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot. I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can't say the same of myself."

Speaking of excellent opening paragraphs, here's a note about the author Veronica Roth:

She's 23 years old.  What more do you need to know?  

Here's the story of how she got a book deal after only being on submission four days.

Here's the story of how she sold film rights to her very first published book.  AND she's 23 years old.  

I wanted to hate her but then I watched this video of her jumping into a bathtub full of marshmellows and decided to like her instead.  And to follow her blog.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Natalie's essay inspired by Annie Dillard

[guest post by Natalie Murphy]

When I was 10 years old I went to summer camp for the first time. I went to a small Christian camp called El Rancho De Paz. My counselor had spent almost all of the summers of her life at that camp. She never cared if she had dirt on her face, she didn’t mind if there was a bat flying around in the room right above us and she could French Braid hair in record time. This was not me. I didn’t like walking long distances, I wouldn’t go with in 10 feet of horse dung and I would not pee in the woods.

I remember watching my counselor that week. She was fearless, she was brave and funny, strong and kind, she was clever and adroit, and I had never admired someone so much in my entire life. That week changed me. I realized that playing in the dirt was fun. And even though I still don’t enjoy hiking, I can appreciate it.

                 Four years later I found myself again at El Rancho, after spending 3 more summers there; I ended up there on a church youth group. Many of the girls I bunked with had never been to camp before and I realized that they were exactly like me, my first time at the Ranch. So I decided to do something crazy so they could see what I saw in my counselor. I wanted to be fearless, just like her. So I grabbed a friend of mine after a day of rain and we dove, headfirst, into a puddle of fresh, smelly mud. Soon everyone joined in and the group of adults and young adults jumped in puddles and rolled in the mud, completely throwing dignity out the window. Can you imagine the shower room that evening? I think that we used the mud exactly how God intended it. We used it as a way of throwing pride out the window and acting like children, forgetting the hardness of our hearts or how much money the clothes we were wearing cost. For a moment, just a moment, I caught a glimpse of Heaven. In Heaven we will have no sorrow, we will only have joy and peace. In Heaven no distance or time will separate the ones who love the Lord. In Heaven there will be no barriers.

 In four short years God used El Rancho to change me from a girl who put way too much care into her image and how people saw her, to a girl who rubbed dirt on her face and sang “Pharaoh, Pharaoh” at the top of her lungs, no matter who was watching. God used El Rancho to show me the majesty of the world he created and how beautiful it can be to lay your worries at his feet and simply jump headfirst into the glory of his masterpiece. God used El Rancho to strip me of my pride. God used El Rancho to change my heavy heart and make it light.

          Something I learned about the beauty of God’s creation in those four years was that God’s majesty isn’t held back by the simplicity of Earth’s atmosphere. I learned how to look at the sky at night, be patient. God knows the stars by name, he gives them their light. The stars are only loyal to him. I have discovered that stars are shy. If you simply glance at them, they do not trust you, you must take your time. Lie down and wait. First they will only show you a few stars and gradually reveal more. They need to know that you are a child of God, that he created you in his image. They need to trust you, and once they do, they don’t hold back. If you are just patient and calm, the stars will perform for you. They will appear all over the sky, as far as our human eyes can see. They will dance for you and twinkle, they will send each other shooting magnificently across your range of vision, the will show you something more wonderful and awesome than a firework show or a dance number, all for the glory of God and the glory of God alone. I’ve found that if you treat them right, the stars can become your friends. They will let you join them in worshipping the master, the creator, the only one who is truly fearless.

          The moon and the sun are full of there own wonder as well. They are not shy or bashful. They are not afraid to show themselves and provide light and wonder for everyone, even those who don’t take the time to appreciate them. When I look at the moon, I like to think that all the people I don’t have by my side, all the people I have rolled in the mud with, all the people who have taught me and learned from me, can simply look up and see exactly what I see. There are only two things that the Texas geography shares with the New York geography, the moon and the sun. God may have sent us to be apart for a while, until Jesus returns, but he did not leave us empty of each other. God gave us the moon and the sun so we remember who we are, his. He gave us the moon and the sun so that we remember how small we are and that even though in our eyes we are 1,764 miles apart, in his eyes, we are neighbors. The moon is large enough to give light to all the people I love at the same time, just imagine how big God is if he is the master and creator of the moon.

          God doesn’t hide his creation; he is not bashful or quiet. But God still makes you look. But if we are patient, if we are gentle and ready to praise and appreciate his masterpiece, he will let us see it.

 Who’s the king of the jungle? Who’s the king of the sea? Who’s the king of the universe? Who’s the king of me? Jesus is the king of the jungle! Jesus is the king of the sea! Jesus is the king of the universe! Jesus is the king of me!