This time I got smacked in the head ...

Ever have God smack you upside the head when you thought you were paying attention, but you really weren't?

This is at the end of a Q and A with Shane Barnard of Shane and Shane:

CCM: How did the song "Turn Down the Music" transpire?

Barnard: We heard a Holocaust story about a boy who was a part of a small Christian church on the route to a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. Train cars full of wailing Jewish people screaming for relief would stop right outside the church every Sunday. "Spray some water on us! Take my child! Mercy!" they would yell.

The church derived a plan to solve this "annoying" problem. When the train would arrive, the windows would be shut, and the worship leader would get up and start leading "worship." "Louder! Sing louder!" he would declare from stage. And the congregation would drown out the cries of the dying people outside with their beautiful singing.

Maybe we aren't too different from this church. Maybe we have drowned out the cries of our neighbors by singing and gathering, by belonging to a social club [rather than] the radiant body of Christ, shining light in the dark places and bringing relief to dying people. Maybe we should turn down the music so we can hear their voices, and more importantly, the Lord's voice asking us to go and tell and care and love.

For the entire interview:
http://www.thefish.com/music/interviews/11623706/

Not that I'm trying to bring others into my misery ... but just asking you to ask yourself before Jesus:

"Am I anything at all like that church in that story? Am I singing too loud that I can't hear the cries of the least of these, that I can't hear You calling to me to serve?"

From an e-mail later in the day/early Saturday a.m.:

True Worship Steps Into Pain
From Dan on Haiti

Tonight, my heart is half a world away, with friends who are aggressively working to respond to the crisis in Haiti. I don't know all those friends by name; I do know that I am thankful for their feet going in my stead, ambling through airports and stepping into rubble.

It is ours to remember, that in a time like this in the world, when poverty stricken nations find trouble upon trouble mounting toward them, that we who bear the Hope of the world enter into their pain - like the God Who we follow.

If Jesus' life evidences anything to us about true worship, it is that the God unseen enters into, walks into, even runs into, the pain of those who are "other." He spends Him- self on behalf of those He loves. This is His way.

We who live far from Haiti in these moments must allow ourselves to bear pain with them, as part of our human family, and as another reason for the great wealth and gifts we possess in our parts of the world. Strength finds its reason and purpose in covering another's weakness. This is His Design.

They are our family, no matter each one's faith perspective.

We do not all need to be in Haiti. We must trust that those who must go, will go. But is not enough to shake our heads and share moments of awe and sorrow. We must make the request of God that He reveal to us our part to play, no matter how simple it may be.

I encourage you, as an act of living worship as your read this, to ask what your part is to play. Then, simply respond.

We each have a portion in one another's story. We are connected with Haiti's turmoil in ways we may only sense when the lights are out and we are considering the world in which we find ourselves.

In this case of pain that reaches our eyes and ears, we are invited by God to weep and mourn with them over what is all of our great loss. If it were directly my own, I would wan them to ask what their part was to play in coming to my loved one's support.

True worship, in the face of great suffering, asks for an invitation into the pain that God and the sufferers carry. Simply ask, then simply respond. It is enough.

In this journey of willingness, we find real prayers rising, authentic acts of physical and spiritual generosity, and the ability to partner with God in the ways in which He is inviting us.

It is a privilege to worship with you, in our generation, and to lead others into the kind of worship encounters that compel us into the very Heart of Love, and into the very Heart of Suffering.

We, as followers of Jesus, choose both.

In prayer with you for Haiti,

Dan

Dan Wilt, M.Min.
Learning Community Director
WorshipTraining.com

WorshipTraining.com
P.O. Box 159050,
Nashville, TN, 37215-9050