Lent 13 Singing in the Choir

Yesterday I was playing in church on my own.  Usually Neale is on guitar and vocals and Rhys is on drums, the lovely Jonah does the sound and Mervyn does the powerpoint.  We are a team.  And we sound OK.  Mostly.   But yesterday Neale was away on a romantic weekend with the missus  ( awwwwwwww)  and Rhys was camping with the Scouts  ( wet socks abounding) so it was just down to me and the keyboard.   And it was OK.   I sounded alright.  Congregation sang well ....  but it just wasnt quite the same without the other guys there.

And it wouldn't have been the same if the heating hadn't been on.  Or if there were no chairs set out, or if ( most importantly) there was no coffee!  Someone had come in to open the building.  Eleanor and John were in the kitchen cooking bacon ( third Sunday in the month is bacon buttie Sunday - which in my opinion should be enshrined in church law and the catechism ).  Someone had put the service sheets on the tables.  Someone else had set up the kids corner and yet another person had cleaned the loos.   Church wouldn't have worked yesterday - or any Sunday - without lots of people playing a vital part.  And not just church people.  Electricians and plumbers and builders and shopkeepers and..... well society.  Everyone.  And when any one of those people in the chain is missing its just not quite the same - or something doesn't work properly!

If you have a half decent singing voice you could probably manage to sing a solo and sound pleasant. If you have an exceptional voice you might even manage to sound amazing.  But you are never going to sound like a choir.   Or a choir and an orchestra.

So the message for today is that you are important.  Vital.  You might not feel it but you are.  Your family/workplace/friendship group/ church would not be the same without you.  Perhaps you are thinking ' aye right, they wouldn't even notice if I never showed up again!'   ( trust me, I've had times of feeling like that ) Or perhaps you are thinking that all you do is sit at the back/nag the kids/do the filing/sweep the floors  - you don't contribute anything much and you certainly don't feel important.  But trust me, the flavour of this world would be different without you there.  The flavour of church is different when you aren't there.  The sound of worship is different when you are missing.  And the whole thing doesn't function quite the same if you are not being you, in the places where you are meant to be.

I know this isnt new.  You have heard it before.  But it came to me yesterday morning on the way home from church that this is what the blog should be about today.  And then, somehow, in the busyness of what came in the rest of the day I forgot what it was I was going to write about.  I knew that I'd had in idea, I just couldn't remember what the idea was!  ( Senior moments getting more frequent as I approach the big 50!)   But then in the evening watching the television it flashed up on the screen in the programme I was watching.  'Your voice is needed in the choir.'    Amazing eh?   So Im sure this is for at least one person who is reading this, and probably more.  And its certainly for me.

And one more thought.  About the singing in the choir thing.  Even if you cant hold a tune in a bucket and are tone deaf please don't stay quiet in the worship.  You might never be asked to sing a solo, but as part of the choir of heaven your voice is just as necessary  and lovely to God as the next persons.