Preface: I absolutely love Bolivia, it’s beautiful and the people are great! We’re staying in a town 18 hrs north of La Paz, where we flew in, and took a bus (a long ride of 18 hrs!).
This weekend we travelled 1.5 hrs with some people from the church here to a super small village outside of the town we’re staying in. They really like how we sing and one of the things they wanted us to do was give singing lessons to the 2 worship leaders in the church and anyone else who wanted to come. It was mainly just the worship leaders who showed up, and though they were shy, they were eager and appreciative to learn. The Bolivians we’ve met tend to be very quiet and reserved as it is, so it took a bit to get them to open up. A girl on my team has actually had singing lessons before and knew much more of how to teach them, so we teamed up. I was just helping out because I can harmonize well, which they also wanted to learn how to do. For a large portion of our hour long session we sang the chorus of “Mighty to Save” by Hillsong in Spanish (“Dios Puede Salvar”) to practice harmonizing. I didn’t realize how hard it is to teach harmony (or even melody) to people with little musical background! I’m not gonna lie, that one hour didn’t seem to do much in enhancing their vocal careers, and whatever they learned won’t make them better singers unless they put it to use and practice (a lot) with each other.
After that weekend I was reading in good old Philippians (keep reading, I think it will make sense, or at least it does in my head!) where Paul writes in 1:25-26, “Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.”
Immediately I thought, “wow…that’s a bold statement.” I mean for real, how many people can raise their hands and say that, “hey, when people are around me, their joy in Jesus just starts overflowing?” Hand check. Not me. And probably not many of you.
But wait, Paul doesn’t stop there, I mean, why would he? In 4:9 he says, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” Okay, yeah, I definitely can’t say that. “Do what I do and your life will glorify God.” Maybe one day I will be able to say that, but this is not that day and I suspect that neither is any day in the near or far out future.
But isn’t this how closely we should be striving to live like God and for God? That others should be able to pick out Christians by how we live our lives and be able to join in by following our example?
Isn’t that what it looks like to live a life in harmony with God and scripture? But finding and living that harmony isn’t easy, and will take a lot of practice and fellowship with God and others. But when we finally get it right, man, I bet it’ll be a beautiful song.
Live well!
Crystal
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