I was reminded this week that God doesn’t always show up
accompanied by fanfare and flashing lights. God can show up in the
smallest things that are right in front of me. If I will just open
my eyes to look and open my ears to hear, He will be there. I have
written in the past about Ben Smith. Ben is a worship leader at his
church and has now released his first album. In one of his songs,
he cries out to God, “Whisper, whisper, whisper in my ear. Tell me words
I thought I’d never hear. Illuminate what’s right in front of me.”
If you have a few extra minutes, listen to him perform the song with his wife,
Kelly, here. If
you have more time, you can join him for a night of worship
at Serenbe on Saturday evening.
In this week’s post at SpotOnTheLake.com, I talked about
Project Safe. Project Safe is an Athens, GA organization whose mission is
to end domestic violence and support those who have been affected by it.
So many times I wonder, “what on earth could I do to help?” Volunteering
time or donating money is always an option, but Project Safe recognizes that we
may know people who have been affected by domestic violence. If so, we
may be able to help directly just by noticing and intervening when
appropriate. The Project Safe website lists these other ways to help.
If you know me or have been following this blog at all, you
will know that I love music. My wife, Caroline, and I played in
high school band together, got married right out of college, and are now
playing in an adult band together, The Georgia Wind Symphony. We get to play some great music. One of
my favorite composers is Alfred Reed. We played one of his works, Russian Christmas Music,
at your December concert. I have to work hard to prepare my one little
part on the stand in front of me, playing one note at a time. I marvel at
the ability composers have to first “visualize” (audialize?) the work in their
head and then begin to flesh out the entire piece – with all of the variations
and the scoring of the individual parts - the weeks, months and sometimes years
of work to get it just how they want it. I can imagine it would be tough to
ever be finished. When I think of my God, the Creator, I like to
think of him in these terms. First visualizing the finished product and
then building it carefully step by step. And knowing from the
beginning that He would need to come to Earth as a man to complete the work, so
that He could one day proclaim, “It is finished.” The Great Composer,
indeed.
The Vine Church
started a new series last week entitled “Exponential”. As a church,
we are reading through Proverbs this month. There are 31 chapters, so
that will help to keep us on track. King Solomon wrote Proverbs, and
Chapter 7 deals with lust and sexual temptation. I couldn’t help but
think of the movie “Fatal Attraction”. Michael Douglas’s character
gets lured into a sexual relationship that doesn’t turn out well for him, or
his family or his pet rabbit. The consequences that he endured were
natural consequences (on steroids) associated with his infidelity.
We think of the current cultural sexual explosion as being something that
has developed recently, but Solomon confirms that this has been a problem for
at least 1000 years, and probably much longer. While the natural
consequences for infidelity may vary from situation to situation, the
separation from God that it creates is inescapable. I am not sure if our
pastor is going to focus on this subject in this series, but Andy Stanley had a
great sermon series a few years ago called Guardrails. He
offers practical recommendations for how to avoid all of this. I watched
the first one again today. I hope you will too.
