Universe Fellowship

This is a picture of one of the sculptures designed, and created by the youth from Bob's Diner.  You can read about this unique youth group by clicking on this link.

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When the morning stars sang together 

all the sons of God shouted for joy...

Job 38: 7

Fortunately for me, I get to accompany my daughter to her youth group meetings.  She started attending  when we lived in Texas.  Fort Hood has an amazing, active group of up to 100 middle and high school youth, who attend Wednesday night meetings each week.  They call it Bob's Diner.  It is a different kind of community in that it's military - people come and go.  In fact, the leaders make it a point to let the kids know that they are always in transition.  At any time, about one-third of the youth are getting ready to PCS (the military member is making a Permanent Change in Station) away from Fort Hood , have recently PCS'd to Fort Hood, or are actually holding steady.  The kids were really good at welcoming new faces, at fellowshipping, and accepting one another.  They were wonderful with my daughter.  

Imagine being the leader of a group this size and this fluid.  Imagine trying to channel all of that energy, and youthful creativity, and curiosity, and impulse...  The couple in charge did (and continue to do) a great job!  First, they truly love the kids - each and every one of them.  They share their gifts with the youth - he, as an artist (kids from Bob's Diner made the statue in the picture under his direction), and she - as a musician.  She leads a Bob's Diner praise band composed of some very talented kids... They share their passion for Jesus.  

So, this morning, I was thinking of God's speech in Job - the poetry and majesty of Chapter 38.  You can read it here.  And when I came to the verse about the morning stars singing - I thought about a video played for us one Bob's Diner night.  It combines all of the gifts and passion of the youth leaders in a format that held all of our attention that night:   How Great is Our God!!!

Here's the thing.  I love how there's someone out there - Giglio who pulls the technology of YouTube and SETI and even an ipad mashup app, with praise and worship, together to present to someone like the youth leaders at Bob's Diner.  I love how the leaders at Bob's present this to us; kids and parents who live in transition.  I love how it combines science and the Bible.  In relationship.  Everything falls together, works together.  Kind of like fellowship.  Yeah, universe fellowship.  I like that.

God of the Heavens, thank you for praise and fellowship:  in art, in music, in groups like Bob's Diner.  Continue to guide and bless your messengers and leaders.

Music of the Spheres

My heart, O God, is steadfast,

my heart is steadfast;

I will sing and make music.

Awake, my soul!

Awake, harp and lyre!

I will awaken the dawn.

Psalm 57:7-8

Music fills me. It is in my head from the time I wake up until I go to bed at night. I think I'll have to blame my mother. She has a song for everything - for every occasion, for any circumstance. I remember a trip our family took, one year, from Arizona to the midwest, to the East Coast and back. I think my mom sang the whole way - and never repeated a song. She learned to play the guitar when we were growing up. That guitar and singing around the fire are the basis of my favorite memories from camping - with just our family and with others. Visits to my mother's family always included pulling out the guitars and singing. I have some very talented relatives. I remember doing dishes with my sisters and playing a game. One of us would start a song, the game was to interrupt with a different song - if you repeated, you lost. Yes, it got a little noisy in our kitchen...

As we grew older, my sisters and I sang in choruses and choirs. We sang in church. We took piano and played and sang. Music filled our home.

Yesterday, I was struck by a section from the book Tuck Everlasting. The plot involves a choice - to drink or not to drink from a fountain of youth. The writing is excellent - luxurious even - full of the kind of figurative language a reader can really savor. There's a section where one of the characters is trying to explain why everlasting life would not be a blessing. It's that circle of life speech, but done in pieces. It creeps up on the reader. The final realization that death is part of life comes to the main character, a young girl, through the wise words of Tuck:

Your time's not now. But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying....I want to grow again...and change.                           

Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

Bear with me.  So, the passage had me thinking... as Christians, we look forward to our heavenly life.  To life everlasting.  It made me wonder what heaven is going to actually be.  I mean, we've all heard the Bible stories - we will be made new, heavenly kingdom, hosts of angels, life everlasting - There it is again - the theme of the book, the theme of the bible... so I had to do some research.

I found an excellent article in "Christianity Today";  Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston University answered 35 of the most frequently asked questions about heaven.  You can read it here.  Yup, I read the whole thing.  I'll probably read it again - it's a lot to take in with one reading.  But here's what I found;  we won't be bored.  Unlike Tuck, we will be changing, growing for eternity, learning about God and one another in order to love more perfectly.  AND - there will be music!  I love this next quote - imagine the prose, poetry, and music of heaven if what we know in this world already moves us through the spectrum of human emotion...

Music, according to widespread tradition, was the first language, the language God spoke to create the universe. I strongly suspect there is more to this than we think. We usually think of music as ornamented poetry and of poetry as ornamented prose. But God is not prosaic. I think prose is fallen poetry and poetry fallen music. In the beginning was the "music of the spheres," and so it will be in the end.                

Peter Kreeft

Thank you, God, for music, for family, and for the promise of a heaven filled with both.

#TellHisStory: Guess What

Make a joyful noise, all the earth.  

Psalm 100:1

"Hey, guess what, Mom,"  my daughter turned to me in the car - big smile on her face.  We were on our way home from the commissary.

"I don't know, what?"  I thought I was playing our game - the one where the first person gets to say that's what with a big giggle.  But no, she had an answer.  A clear-as-a-bell, no Down-Syndrome-accent answer.

"I'm going to sing on the microphone tomorrow."  She means that she's going to sing with the praise band on the microphone at church...

I could barely reply to her, for laughing.  "Hey, guess what, Sierra..."  She looked over, full-on smile beaming, "You're not going to sing on the microphone tomorrow."  Emphasis on the not.  Then it was her turn to laugh.

Meet my girl.  Surface silly, emotion deep.  She's twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two (as she reminds me on a regular basis).  I've written before that she lives out loud - there are no secrets with Sierra.  The surprise is her sense of humor.  She was teasing me.

Ok, so there's a bit of a story behind this...

Music is huge to Sierra.  Her ipod has close to 2000 songs loaded on it - and they shuffle all day long for her.  She loves CMT, VH1, and American Idol.  She loves to perform.  She has a Sierra-sized, pink guitar, and of course, the requisite Garage Band instrument set.  When I hook up the karaoke machine (another story....), she's right there, karaoke-ing.   She air-guitars and drums in the car;   We can hear her singing with her headphones on, while she 'works' in the other room.  Did I mention that she lives out loud?

You would think, with all this playing and sharing and acting of music, you would think it would be ok for me to sing along to the radio every now and then.  Nope.  Sierra shushes me every time I start to sing.  And I sing ok.  Really.  I sing on key - I know the words - I have rhythm....   Really.  But every time I start to sing along - there's Sierra.  She either shushes me, or she tells me it's too hard for me, or she starts punching the air around me in annoyance.  It's annoying to me...

Of course, my rebel kicks in and I start to sing more, louder, and off-key.   I turn the music up.  And eventually I get her to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  But, honestly, it kind of hurts my feelings...

So, we're driving to the commissary, and I start singing along with the radio, and Sierra tells me to stop singing - and I turn the radio off and have a conversation with her.  I tell her that I love music as much as she loves music.  I tell her that I love to sing along with the songs just like she does.  I tell her that it hurts my feelings when she always shushes me.  And I tell her that I love her, anyway, even though my feelings have been hurt.  She turns her head away - I know she's processing something that she doesn't want to hear.

We run our errands - gas for the car, grocery shopping.  And now we're on our way home.  The radio is on.  I'm singing along, and for once, Sierra is not trying to get me to stop.  Instead, I hear, "Hey mom, guess what...."

I suppose I''m going to have to consider a way to get her on that microphone at church someday...

Thank you, God,  for the gift of my daughter and her sense of humor.  Thank you for her guidance toward joy.

Linking with Jennifer at TellHisStory

** Note:  I've been slammed-busy with a long-term substitute position for a woman who could really use some prayers for healing, strength, and peace.  I miss writing, and I miss this community.  Today's post is from my archives.  Thanks for reading, and thanks for prayers.

Angel Armies

I know who goes before me;

I know who stands behind.

The God of angel armies

Is always by my side.

Sitting at her desk in the early morning hours, she contemplated the song playing in her head.  It was one of the new songs by that Christian artist - sounded like two names - Chris Tom? Chris Thomas? No, Chris Tomlin.  It was the words in the chorus that struck her, honestly, those words stopped her cold.  The God of angel armies...  What a picture!

Her imagination conjured a Michelangelo-esque God-general, riding across a thunderstorm on a heavenly warhorse at the helm of legions of angels....  It somehow seemed pagan, Greek myth-ish, like those movies that were so popular:  Clash of the Titans, Wrath of the Titans, Immortals.  So was that bothering her?  No, not bothering - fascinating.  Yes, the image fascinated her.

Why?  She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to consider what was so captivating.  It was in the stories.  She had always loved reading fantasy and fairytales.  Maybe it was the combination of worlds without technology, the possibility of supernatural abilities, the heroes battling for good...  She smiled ruefully.  No, that was too simple.  She was fascinated by other worlds because they allowed her to  escape from her world, from everyday details and normal, from responsibility.  They allowed her to care and love without attachment.  Once the book was over, the cover closed, her relationship with the characters could end.  And that was what had struck her about the line in the song...

God is not a character in a fairytale.

God is not the hero of an epic poem.

God is not a book to be finished, closed, and put back on the shelf.

Oh my!  She thought.  Oh my!  All of those bible stories that had drawn her as a child - stories about Samson and his magic hair, the challenge of giants, enchanted food falling from the sky, the commanding of oceans and storms, angels and demons.  Oh my!  Her God WAS the stories she loved.

Like a drop of water on a pond, creating rings and ripples that spread ever outward, her thoughts exploded.  God, that all-knowing, all-loving, all-wise, all-planning ALL, knew her so well.  She was surrounded by him inside and out - through stories and through music.  She laughed out loud in that quiet office.  God was always giving her gifts.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.