when old people sing

This week is seniors' camp at Braeside, the Christian camp I have gone to since I was a child.

I've gone to a few of the services, and I have to say, a part of me missed that old-time Pentecostal flavour. We loved our church in Halifax, but a band of young adults in a movie theatre isn't quite the same as tambourines shaking or wrinkled arms waving hankies at a camp meeting.

I notice a few things about the old people at Braeside:

1. First, they bring their Bibles to church. Even though the speaker reads from the Bible, and even though they have most of the verses he mentions memorized, they faithfully lug their black KJVs in.
2. Along with Bibles, many of them also bring cushions to help them endure the hard wooden pews. Smart thinking, because a lot of them will be there for quite awhile. 
3. They sing really loud. It's not so much about sitting back and listening to the guy on stage as it is about -- surprise, surprise -- worshipping. 
4. They know a lot of songs. And every verse to every song, verses I didn't even know existed. My husband Isaac is doing powerpoint, and finds it difficult to follow along with the singer or preacher, who spontaneously burst into another Gospel tune that no one has heard in decades. He finally just gives up searching for the song, realizing that all of the seniors there know it off by heart anyway. 
5. The seniors love their preaching, not just their teaching. A calm guy with square glasses sitting on a stool, carefully flipping through his iPad notes? They'd rather take a sweaty, red-faced preacher in a tie waving his Bible and literally jumping on the front pews any day. (That's what the guy did last night -- jump on the front pews.) 
6. They assume they are participants in the service. They shout out encouragement to the preacher, stand up and clap when they feel like it, or pipe up and add to the sermon. 
7. Pretty much every service ends in an altar call. Again, the assumption that they are participants, that what was spoken about can be experienced today. 
8. They keep Kleenex on the front pew for said altar calls, and they aren't afraid to use them.  

I sat between my grandparents last night. Right as the preacher was finishing a string of punchy points and snippets of verses, my grandma squeezed my knee. 

"That brother, that brother sitting beside you," she said, motioning to my grandpa, who was nodding and saying "Amen." "He actually believes all of this stuff." She laughed and then said, "And he's right, too, you know!" 

Although the style is different than what I've become used to, you can't deny that it's the same Jesus who is being praised, and the same Spirit that is present. There is something very sweet, very significant about a group of people praising God after they've walked with Him for decades. 

Sometimes I wish they'd turn the microphone around so I could hear the stories from those old-timers and find out what, in their life, has prompted them to belt out "Great is Thy Faithfulness" with such sincerity? 

another angle on grace

Grace is one of those words that can quickly become a filler word, a "Christianese" term that floats around like a cloud, nothing but a ball of fluff. We take grace for granted, or fix it into one simple formula, one expression.

Grace is not a one-time experience. It's not only the doorway into the Christian life, not simply the initial baptism into a relationship with Christ. It is the foundation, the lifeblood of our walk with Him. It is the soil and the sun and the water for a growing Christian.

I hope I am always baffled, always taken by the grace of God. Too often I am comfortable with grace or fail to see what's so "amazing" about it.

Lately I have felt myself drifting from God. In the midst of a move and the busyness of visiting friends and family here in Ontario, one of the first things to slip is my own devotional time. I'm not going to pretend that I was perfectly faithful before, but when a few weeks go by and I haven't cracked open my Bible I start to feel it. And -- when I really stop and think -- it's been more than a few weeks!

When I neglect to refresh myself spiritually, I start to feel a little disoriented. I cave into anxiety more easily and become discouraged, irritable, impatient. And then I start to feel guilty, which is ridiculous because it only makes me avoid one-on-one time with God.

I finally got hungry enough that I sat down and started reading several chapters of the Bible, thinking:
"I'm dry and disconnected? Okay, I'll fix this. I'll pull up my bootstraps and really get into God's Word."

And in the order of my reading, I was brought to Psalm 80. Threaded throughout this chapter is the repetition of a few phrases, just in case (like me) you didn't get it the first time:

"Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." (v. 3)

"Turn us again to yourself, O God of Heaven's Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." (v. 7)

"Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven's Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." (v. 19)

I was also struck by verse 18: "Revive us so we can call on your name once more." Or, in the KJV (love my parallel version!): "quicken us, and we will call upon thy name."

What a mystery! We need the grace of God to turn us to the grace of God. While there is something to be said for spiritual discipline, I cannot stir my own spirit. I can put myself in His Word, or adjust the conditions, but I can't do it on my own.

God has forged his relationship with me by paying for my sin and clothing me in righteousness. He sustains his relationship with me by turning me toward him.

This also gives me faith for the people in my life that I am praying will turn to God. I can try to point them to Christ, but I don't need to agonize about what I did or didn't do, what I said clearly or what I miscommunicated. This is God's work, not mine.

Turn us to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven's Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.