Noise

If anyone ever gets a chance to read a children's book called Duck on a Bike, got for it. I guarantee you will not be disappointed. High quality literature.



Worship has been on my mind lately. I guess that usually means music. Worship music is something that I see as a constant in my life. Weather I like it or not. Every time Christians get together, there's always some dude in the back of the room with an acoustic guitar, strummin' his heart out for Jesus. Or trying to impress girls with his spirituality. You wanna know how you know which one it is? If he ever says that his next song "is a song that I wrote for my future wife," then you know. Every dumb Christian kid with an acoustic guitar wrote a song for his future wife. (as a side note, I don't even know why that is supposed to be romantic, considering the fact that it's based on a relationship with some fantasy woman who is likely nothing like the woman this guy's actually going to marry)

Wow.

That was a tangent.

I think that there are two main reasons I find it difficult to decide if I want to be surrounded by worship music all the time.

First of all, most worship music is such a narrowly defined genre. You can go into any book/music store and find the worship section to see what I mean. You'll find a bunch of white guys (sometimes white girls) clutching their acoustic guitars in some sort of forresty or beach type background with this misty eyed, whimsical look on their face like they just finished watching a Full House marathon and they want to hug somebody. And they always sing the same songs, with the same super-dramatic voice, and the same four guitar chords. I have a book with charts for over 900 chords in it. I should loan that book to one of those people. How did we start thinking that worship music was this and nothing else? The Bible instructs us to sing unto the Lord a new song. It says that we should make joyful noises throughout the earth. Noise is worship to God. Really? Just noise? I love that. That the very noise from our mouths is pleasant to God's ears. Especially since that probably best describes my singing style anyway. But it's not just singing. In his letter to the Romans, Paul describes the daily sacrifice, and offering up of our bodies as a spiritual form of worship. Those are our everyday actions and our posture towards God. That also is worship. Sometimes even singing worship songs isn't really worship. Jesus says that all disciples will one day worship in spirit and in truth. There's something about our posture towards God that makes what we are doing worship or not. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy worship music. I sing it to myself all the time. I'm going to sing some tonight with my IV peeps. I even play the guitar, so what am I complaining about? This is the real problem. It's too narrow of a focus. We haven't even begun to figure out how to worship God, and we're already resorting to formulas? Why? Are we scared to go on, or did we just think we had found something so good that nothing could top it?

I'm reminded of my sister, Deborah, when she was a toddler. My mom had made her a doll for Christmas. She was insecure about it because she had never made anything like that from scratch, so she showed the doll to Deborah before it was finished, just to see if she would like it. Deborah took one look at the doll, and with a big smile on her face, grabbed it and hugged it tight with a squeal of delight. Mom was satisfied, so she tried to go back to work on the doll. She had to first wrestle it out of Deborah's hands. Deborah loved her new doll and thought it was just time for her to play with it forever. She didn't get that this wasn't the end. She wanted her doll, and my mom wanted to give her something more. I can see my mom pleading with little Deborah (we used to call her "Boo") to let her fix the doll, telling her that she would get it back, that it would be even more beautiful in time, and that my mother loved her and wanted to give her something good, if she would only trust.

I think that describes worship for me pretty much. What we now have is not everything, a part, but not the whole of the picture. A gift half completed. If we would only trust. Worship is an extent ion of our bodies, a reflection of our posture towards God. A joyful noise, and so much more.





I just realized I said there were two things about worship that make me uneasy. I'll talk about the other one later.