My friend Lucy in Tanzania sent me this text this morning: Habari za leo, dada. Nyumbani kwako ni sawa? Ninaomba kwa wewe sana. Upo wapi?
Roughly translated: How are you, sister? Is your house okay? I am praying hard for you. Where are you located?
When a friend from the other side of the world, who gets her news from local Tanzanian radio, knows about the fires in Southern California, that’s when you know you know the events happening around you are a big deal.
I woke up on Wednesday morning to the howling of sirens and the smell of smoke and looked out my second-story window to see a dark plume in the distance.
“It looks close,” I told Gil. “But I know the mountains can play tricks on you.” The mountains surrounding us on three sides had been on fire in September (over 40,000 acres in the end). Those fires had seemed close too, but stayed miles away.
I jumped onto Facebook and saw my local community groups buzzing with chatter. I was right this time – the fire was close. The Moose Lodge, not half a mile from our house, was engulfed in flames.
“One of the house church leaders actually asked me, ‘Do you know what prison is for us? It is how we get our theological education. Prison in China is for us like seminary is for training church leaders in your country.’” (From The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken)
Sometimes I wonder how persecuted Christians would feel about some of the stuff we non-persecuted folks say and sing and do.
This song came on the radio:
So I throw up my hands And praise You again and again ‘Cause all that I have is a hallelujah And I know it’s not much But I’ve nothing else fit for a King Except for a heart singing hallelujah I’ve got one response I’ve got just one move With my arms stretched wide I will worship You
I wondered what my brothers and sisters around the world would think about this song when they’ve lost jobs and gone to prison and faced threats and harassment and sometimes even death because they’ve chosen to follow Jesus. I don’t know if they would agree that all we can give to our King is our outstretched arms and singing voices.
I want to be careful in sharing my thoughts on this song. There is indeed nothing we can offer God to repay Him for our salvation. It’s a gift that cost Him everything and us nothing, and our response should be a profound and reverent sense of gratitude and awe. We are unworthy. And in moments when we grasp the depth and width of that gift, worship should be spontaneous. Which is, I assume, what this song reflects and why it resonates with so many people.
But my concern is with the narrow definition of worship that’s implied. And it’s not just this song: guys who lead the singing in our churches are called “worship” pastors, and the woman on Christian radio demands “WORSHIP NOW” and then plays a song. I wonder when it happened in our Christian culture that we began to equate worship with music.
We can worship through music, of course – it’s one of my favorite things to do. But when I hear a song on repeat that tells me that the best I can offer the king of the universe is a hallelujah and outstretched hands and singing loudly (after all, you’ve got a lion inside of those lungs!), I ask myself if we’re missing something. Is this all that worship is?
Jesus told his followers that they would be hated because of him and that obeying him may mean that they leave their families and homes. He said they would be ostracized and insulted and that anyone who wants to follow him must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow him.
Following Jesus means our lives mirror his. And that means willingly embracing – even walking into – unselfishness, humiliation, sacrifice, and pain. Yes, resurrection is coming – that’s our daily hope – but may we never fail to remember that the cost of following Jesus is so much more than singing and lifting our hands.
When we tell ourselves that worship looks only like singing, then it’s easy to ignore that God made it clear that worship looks like:
Choosing integrity over a job promotion Fighting for sexual purity Being generous until it hurts Showing kindness to a nasty person Finally forgiving Sacrificing free time to volunteer Caring for someone who will never reciprocate Texting a neighbor Doing a job to the best of our ability Creating beautiful things: books, gardens, spreadsheets, cakes…and songs, of course Starting a Bible study Opening a home to visitors Putting down the phone or changing the channel Learning a language in order to make a friend Risking humiliation to have a spiritual conversation Intentionally embracing the messiness of community Uprooting for a workplace, neighborhood, or country that needs the gospel Praying for someone right on the spot
Every day, every decision, every action, gives us a chance to worship God. Music is a powerful tool for reminding us who we are living for, why we chose Him, and why He’s worth it. But our response to the King who gave us everything should never just be a song; it should be a willingness to lay down our lives. Just ask the Christians in China.
I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I feel like I’m walking in darkness. People say the world is getting darker, but when I contemplate all the horrors of the past that I have not experienced (World Wars, the Great Depression, a pre-antibiotic or anesthesia world), I will venture to guess that an intensifying darkness is only my perception. The world has always been dark. And since I had an abuse-free childhood, it makes sense that with age and wisdom comes a deepening understanding of the depth of the evil that has always shadowed the earth. Shadows my own heart.
Of course, I love more people more intensely than I used to, and thus, the more burdens I carry. I keep thinking that once my children are healthy, thriving, and successfully launched into the world, some burdens will be relieved. Until that is, I hear folks in the season above me praying for their grandchildren. Even Paul, who experienced shipwrecks and floggings, starvation and prison, lists his concern for those he loved and invested in as perhaps the heaviest burden of all (II Cor. 11:27-28).
It’s too bad that so often, the emphasis at Christmas is on all those warm fuzzy feelings that go along with family and parties and merry-making. We imagine that our lives in December should look like one big Norman Rockwell painting or Hallmark movie; when it doesn’t, those images mock us. How dare they look so happy when the world is so heavy? Maybe I’m just not in the Christmas spirit this year, we think.
My mom tells the story of taking my brother and me to a Christmas event at the American Embassy in Liberia. I had just turned seven and had lived in Liberia for a year. There was a Santa at that party, and he asked Paul and me what we wanted for Christmas. We sat perched on his knee, completely stumped, unable to think of a single thing. There was no question in our young minds that we wanted Christmas presents. But since a year had separated us from television, Toys R Us, and the Sears catalog, we couldn’t possibly imagine what we wanted those gifts to be.
My kids used to be the same way. But after four years in America? They can fill up an Amazon wishlist like nobody’s business.
When we moved into our new house a year after we arrived in California, I fretted over the laminate flooring, which is light brown on the bottom floor and dark brown from the stairs up, and gazed disapprovingly at the bedroom doors which look like they’ve been patched over several times by miscreant children. That is, until Gil gazed disbelievingly at me and reminded me that this house is way nicer than anything we’ve ever lived in, and what on earth had happened to me?
