EXUBERANT PRAISE!

You may remember James, who comes to our church with his Mum and Dad, and is always so full of energy and enthusiasm.

This morning James wanted to play the Djembe drum (a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa).  He came straight in, sat down on the cushion and started playing the drum and singing.  I told him that the drum used to belong to our grandson and he would be really pleased to know that James was playing it today.  We had a little discussion about how to play it and then he just played - you can see by the movement in his left hand that he has got the idea!

During the part of the service before the children went out, James was so exuberant in his praise, wandering round and singing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”  Perhaps not a Christian worship song, but nevertheless, James was praising God in the way he knew and loved best.

I wonder if we always do that or whether we conform to the way others think we should be praising God.  For some of us, praising God can be difficult because of pain in our bodies or because of distressing circumstances in our lives - but God wants us to praise Him whatever we are going through - even the difficult times.

At one point in the service, after we had seen a video and sung along with it, James shouted out “Do it again” and then those very words were in the reading from Psalm 126 - “And now God, do it again!”

Oh that we would have the exuberant praise of a little child and then perhaps as it says in Psalm 126, we will “come home laughing with armloads of blessing!”

Be blessed this week whatever you do.

Worship is so much more 
     than the songs we sing 
          on a Sunday morning.
It is the lifestyle we live 
     during the rest of the week.

P.S.  I took a sneaky pic of Mr. HCB wearing his Tilley hat yesterday - and it’s my extra pic today.