Voices…from the past and emerging

“Now that I have seen, I am responsible. Faith without works is dead”

Knowing my love for worship my daughter Kate gave me a CD of Brooke Fraser that I’ve already played dozens of times but this morning I was especially drawn to the song “Albertine” and I found her video about Rwanda’s genocide on Youtube.  I’m sharing it with you cause it’s so powerful.

Last night we had a blow out glorious worship service and I kept hearing the Spirit say “Voices, its about the voices.” He wasn’t talking to me about the singing, but about declaring and proclaiming Him God and how He is empowering those voices for a new day to declare and proclaim His Words in the earth. I believe there was an impartation there for open hearts, ears and mouths to be empowered with a new voice for each one who will speak. A bold voice full of His mercy and grace to proclaim His Lordship AND what His eyes see and His ears hear every day 24/7. It hit me this morning what He must experience daily. Thousands in Myanmar lost in a day, possibly 50,000 lost in the China quake, and millions unnoticed in their suffering crying out to Him. Yesterday was an especially hard day in our community. This week two beloved families of our church lost their fathers. (Teresa, I’m holding you and your mom up in prayer. I remember Alpha and you are both amazing women of God, to that I am a witness.) Add to that the news of unavoidable job cuts that will greatly impact us all. I was feeling the burden of all this last night, the loss, of words for the hurting and the inevitable nature of this present fallen world. And I went into the worship service with that on my heart. As I kept praising Him and focusing on Him the weight of it all lifted. In His incomprehensible omniscience and foreknowledge, He already bore the pain of all of this week’s suffering and opened the door of hope to all who choose to believe. I had to rethink the height, depth, length and breadth of the cross. I had allowed Him to become too small again, but praising magnified His true nature again. He is the only hope for this world. And not just in message but in action, because He not only gives us His voice to declare who He is, He has made us His feet and hands as well. I’ve been to the villages in Guatemala in the 80’s when the rebels, armed with their liberation theology, terrorized the impoverished people, not just stealing what little belongings they had but taking their young boys to indoctrinate into their armies. Can we even imagine the pain of that kind of loss? My husband has ministered to the citizens of the unimaginable, many miles square, card board cities in Mexico City’s garbage dump. The first time I saw a card board city, it was within sight of the resort beach of Bahia Kino, Mexico, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, precariously leaning up against the metal buildings of a fish cannery. Then there was the card board city of Asuncion, Paraguay and the pastors who lived there who brought their people, hungry for God, to the church at which I was ministering. Their faces are still with me. He is speaking to us about these invisible people, for their salvation yes, but also to help relieve their plight.  The Church has always been about helping those in need. I remember Marilyn’s first trips to Ethiopia delivering food to the starving there in the famines of the 80’s. The faces of the children there and in so many other parts of Africa haunt me still. And Heidi Baker’s pictures of the children orphaned in Mozambique in the 90’s floods. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. He is looking for us to give our Voices to speak those thousand words and more. So let us feel the burden of the losses, bring our whole self to His throne and praise Him, intercede on behalf of those, and let Him trade our burden for His hope, using the Voices He has given each of us. This is for Albertine.