March 22, 2022

Who, Me?

Read UMH 593

I hope this doesn’t come off as complaining when I really have so little reason to complain. It’s been a frustrating time and even I get tired of making the best of it sometimes.

COVID stinks. Lockdowns stink. Social distancing stinks. Masks stink. Being apart from my church family stinks. No choir? That really stinks. How can we worship without our music? (Yes, I know we can worship without music, but that’s what got me truly, deeply involved in worship and the life of the Body of Christ, so it’s very important to me.)

Well, we can do some of those virtual choirs, right? (Thanks to Bob Rossbach for his expertise and just plain tons of work on those.) And they were pretty good – no, they were good; and we were singing! But we weren’t together singing, were we?

Then – at last! – we can put the choir back together for real. And we did. And it was great. And then Patti died. And that stinks for us. She and Charles are together – I know that – and they’re happy in glory….

But, now what?

As the hymn doesn’t quite go (and as Isaiah almost said in Isaiah 6:8), “Here I am. Who, me?”

I don’t really know much about directing a choir. Heidi and I tried it many years ago and discovered that we knew how to be in a choir, but we didn’t really know how to be in front of a choir – it was going to take a lot more to figure out how to run one. Still, there was the need, and my Thursdays were still open, so I took a leap of faith and just said, “Here’s what we can do. Will you join me?” And join we all did.

I know we’re not as fabulous as we once were – but that’s not the point. The point is that we wanted to help lead worship by sharing the music that God put in us, and that’s what we’ve done and what we’re doing. Sure, it’s for us, but more than that, it’s for our church family, and it’s for the glory of God. It’s worship.

I feel a bit like the boy with the loaves and fishes that Jesus used to feed the multitude: I have a little to offer, but God can take that and make it enough, make it work.

As Paul told the Corinthians, the body is made of many members, and we each have a part to play. The question I need to ask myself is, how am I using the gifts that God has given me? Am I working for the whole body, or just for myself? I pray it’s the former.

Father, I know you can take whatever I offer to You and use it for the good of all Your children. I ask You to remind me of what You have given me so that I can remember to offer it back to You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Charlie van Becelaere