I was blessed to be able to give a lesson tonight to a young student who’s just learning guitar. I was teaching yankee doodle, which was quite interesting and fun. The process of teaching is exciting and even a little scary sometimes, but it’s when a student brightens up and you can see it in deep in their eyes that they finally understood what was in front of them that makes teaching an incredible journey worth every moment.
After the lesson, I sent him into his class at church and helped him return his equipment into the back of the room. Eli, the children’s teacher that night, had just seen me a few minutes before and asked if I would be interested in leading worship for the kids and sing some songs. My first reaction was to think hard about what I was doing and what was to be done and the things that would keep me from it, namely not having a guitar or anyway to lead them. He had told me that they normally had worship with media if they didn’t have a person to sing and play, so he told me that I could sing. That made sense in my head, I could sing and just let the track be played over everyone, but I did have some stuff to do…
But if I didn’t choose to serve now, at this moment, to share the love of Jesus that I had been shown, with these kids, I would miss it. I’m fine with saying “No” but I knew in my heart that this was not something I could shrug off.
In the classroom, I stood in the back ‘til Eli started introducing me and I we briefly talked about how things were going to work and I realized that I had heard him wrong before. Theynormallyhave a track, but they didn’t tonight. Awkward. I didn’t have a guitar.
It was basically time to move forward or go home.
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I stepped forward, called the kids to listen, and we started together in song. A little awkwardly but entirely full of momentum and joy. It’s so true, as Donald Miller says, “…sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself…” I found myself singing louder and even more focused. Something inside me wanted to sing relentlessly like a child and even as innocent and honest as a child. I did. We sang songs I didn’t know and I asked them about songs they knew. We sang and clapped together in unison. They actually had good rhythm and I was totally surprised by their ability to remember words. They smiled, sometimes awkwardly. They watched. They watched and joined in. I think they joined in more when they knew that they were important and that there was something to gain from participating, subconsciously. It’s like they knew when something was real and when something was fake, but they wanted to believe all along that they could move along with something and with a family of people. And that made it beautiful. They were beautiful. Full of joy. Beautiful gems of joy, filled with light and love and laughter. And whether they had been hurt in their past or they were going through a rough family situation, it’s in these kinds of moments that we have the opportunity to see into childlike faith, childlike love, and the things that bring out the hints of beauty that we were made with.
No guitar. No band. Just voices and hands.
Hope does not disappoint. We made this for Easter. I’ve never directed or made a video like this before so it was quite fun with the community, lessons in collaboration, laughter, and realization that we were making something special and hopeful. We hope in things we don’t see. Though you can’t see it, may your faith be sight.
It’s an interesting thing to see people sleep. I haven’t been watching anybody personally, but throughout our lives we catch ourselves taking pictures of our friend who fell asleep with their mouth open on the bus or laughing at the kid in the front row with drooling with his head on the desk. Or maybe we’ve seen our younger brothers or sisters or nephews or nieces sleeping in their cribs and it humbles us a little. In any event, we see that they’re at rest… sometimes missing out on school work… or missing out on something. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping. We all need it, but maybe there’s something more about sleep than just getting rest because sometimes we make it an excuse, saying we need to sleep, but in reality we’re just trying to get by… are we lying to ourselves?
Sometimes things seem so hard, so mundane, so dry, that it hurts to open our eyes.
But maybe there’s more to sleep than ignoring the problem.
What would look like if we lived with our eyes open and our backs straight?
Oh, how many times I’ve found myself looking down at the ground. Now, there’s nothing wrong with looking down at the ground, but if I don’t have the courage to look up, I’ll never see the full grandeur of the sunrise.
It’s the same way with sleep, slumber… folding the hands to rest, while ignoring the beauty, the tension, the sunrise.
So many times, I’ve cried out to be alive, to fully express myself, and to be honest! It hurts. It’s hard, but there’s something inside us that says that that brightness and freedom is what we truly long for. It’s almost like we know we want to break free from something yet sometimes we don’t exactly know what it is we want to break free from.
We want our hands to be used. We want to know that things we made and came up with had more purpose than nothing.
But sometimes it’s the hardest thing to get up. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing to look up. To open those eye lids that have been closed for so long. To get in the car and drive away from the things that have brought us to places we wish we’d never stayed.
To awake.
But it’s worth it. I’d trade a thousand nights to see a sunrise.
“I believe in a few, important things.
I believe deep down we are all broken people.
I believe deep down we are each hoping to be met with love and acceptance.
I believe we have the power in us to be mistake-makers and world-changers.
I believe that those two things are self-exclusive but co-existent.
I believe in grace and love and forgiveness, and I aspire to live each day giving those freely.
I believe in bad days and great days, and days where the best of both worlds collide.”- Savannah Jaye
I agree. My friend was talking about something recent that happened in the news, but the truth that she brings out in her writing rings true for those who lived centuries past to those yet unborn. What I love about this is that it doesn’t end have to end with everyone looking at the person in the pit but by showing real and genuine love to others.
Relationships can be messy, risky, intense. People fail. Our response to this can vary from outbursts of anger to hiding, but grace and love give life to the giver and the receiver, so much so that it’s refreshing to see this kind of exchange. We don’t see that a lot.
Compassion in our listening. Compassion in our attitude. Truth and compassion, love and wisdom, do not have to live so far from each other. When tethered together, they serve the most important gifts we have to give to each other… and ourselves.
Being authentic… attracts life.
Loving others… gives and shows Life, the kind we always wanted.
We are all a people in need.
We are not perfect. We are not machines.
We make mistakes.
We need grace. We need compassion.
We need help at times. We need other people.
And that’s okay.
