As a church family, we must be able to put down our happy faces long enough to engage one another. To meet each other where we really are.
As a worship planner/leader, I hereby confess & repent of my past efforts to keep it all upbeat and positive and encouraging and happy and "ending on a positive note". That's just not reality. For too long, we have relegated songs of lament and despair to funeral services. Sure, we occasionally sing "It is Well with My Soul"...one of my all-time favorite hymns. But even it ends on upbeat thought toward Heaven. Nothing wrong with that. But some days we would be better served/better expressed by singing a song that goes, "Lord, I'm angry and confused, hurt and broken. Where are you in my pain?"
We must learn how to suffer with and alongside one another. We must learn how to face life's issues with integrity, honesty, authenticity.
Our refusal to mourn more often in our public services has kept people from having the voice they needed to cry out to God...in anger, in sorrow, in confusion, in doubt. Oh sure, they've still cried out, but they had to do it somewhere else...at home alone or away from a community of faith (aka shiny happy people).
Let's strive together to give ourselves permission to hurt, to be confused, to bring every emotion into the assembly. Our God is able to deal with it, I'm 100% confident. But we must learn to deal with it as well.
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2 comments:
Amen......check out MARK SCHULTZ's song "He's my Son."
Murray,
I agree with you so much on this one. We are supposed to rejoice with one another and mourn with one another. In our writing group today we were discussing the fact that sometimes we feel closer to God in the midst of pain and despair than we do in the midst of our busy preoccupied living outside of crisis times. That being said, there is a lot to be said for positive words during negative times. Encouraging words are like a drink of cool water on a hot day--refreshing....as long as they are spoken kindly and with a heart of compassion. You are really good at that, Murray.
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