child of God

Every tuesday night we have this thing called Raleigh Worship. Its quite a beautiful idea really. A bunch of college students come into a sanctuary at 9 pm on tuesday nights and sing hymns and other songs to jesus. A few kids play guitar at the front and pick the songs each week and the rest of come to worship the love of our lives. And we sing. We're not harmonious or in tune but we pour out our hearts and sing loud and sing soft and somewhere in the middle we stop and pray and it reminds us that when it comes down to it, its just us and him. All the rest fades-school, career, ministry, and He loves us and loves me so well through my worshiping him. Today was a little extra good. I lost my voice this week (which I am secretly kind of happy about because it is my battle scar from spending a really beautiful weekend staying up way to late and having way to great of a time with high school girls) and singing was quite a struggle. But through the little fact of not being able to sing my usual way, God had so much to show me. I was struck by the sense that he loves my raspy, terribly off tune, mostly whispering praise as much as my best praise. I could feel it. I could feel how delighted he was with my praise tonight. And it hit me that my entire life is like that, not just my worship. It was so obvious that he adored it because it is my expression of love to him, but so is my life. So are my classes and spending time with girls and with him and all that I do, and yet to so many things I hate my imperfection and inadequacies and inability to serve well but none of it is any different than my singing. He loves it all the way a parent loves the work of their child. He loves it simply because he loves me and delights in me. and so I stood there, joyfully mouthing the words that weren't coming and realizing how his love has nothing to do with my performance in anything.
But that wasn't all. I could hear. I could hear the voices around me and they were stunning. And I needed them to worship tonight, because my voice failed to go forth, but theirs did. And we sung together. And what I could not do, the believers surrounding me could. And I can hear so much more clearly when I am not singing. I was extra attuned to the voices around me, the chorus praising him. And it was such a strong sense of the beauty and power and mystery of the church being the body of christ here on earth. There is nothing like that. Nothing in this world I love so much as the body of christ.
It was just a rich day with my voice gone. The effort it took to speak that made me realize that I am not entitled to a voice and that it is a gift and the heightened desire to listen and to choose words carefully because I didn't have so many.
I got to see this girl that I love as well. Her name is Cheyenne and she is in the 4th grade. Today we did homework together. Kids learning is one of my favorite things. Really learning. Even little stuff like multiplication. That is miraculous to me. Watching a mind start to get that for the first time. All the finger counting and picture making before it becomes second nature. And it points back to Christ too. And the way we are born again and we have so much to learn. And we need spiritual milk before solid food. Children of God. Today I got to deeply aware of my status as a child of God. And that God adores his children better than the greatest parent in the world. And that it is for all of us. The arms of Jesus are for ever single one of us. They are for Cheyenne. They are for my YL girls with deeply broken families. They are for my professors. They are for me. That is a beautiful thing really.