Reason to Sing:: Nothing is Holding Me Back

Have you ever considered the number of "thank yous" you say on any particular day? 

I started off thinking that I very rarely say "thank you", but after paying attention I've noticed that I say it all the time.

When I get my order from a coffee shop
When my sons do what I've asked them 
When someone holds a door
When someone lets me in on the freeway
When someone pumps my gas

The thing is that all of these "thank yous" are basically unconscious. I didn't think I said it very often because the reflex of saying it and a feeling of gratitude aren't the same thing.

What's really interesting is when you last said a "thank you" that you really, deeply and truly meant. When did it come tumbling from your lips because you were so full of gratitude? When was the gesture or act of service so profound that you wanted to say more than "thank you" because those words couldn't capture what you felt.

I was in a Fred Meyer buying a pack of Pokemon cards for my son for St Patricks Day. Leprechauns are both generous and avid consumers, it appears. I was pulling this off with my four-year old sleeping on my shoulder. A woman in front of me in line grabbed the pack of cards and put them on her side of the plastic dividing wand. I tried protesting in a whisper to keep my son asleep, but she was having none of it. 

"Thank you. That's so incredibly kind of you."

This was an out of the blue unexpected grace that I was compelled to respond to. She was making a decision to forsake social norms and just buy the thing for my boys. I was so very aware of that "thank you". It didn't slip past me without notice. I was fully awake to that gratitude. 

Singing in worship can be this exact same kind of gratitude. We can have experiences of thanking God for grace, peace, the ability to breath, the beauty of creation or even the fact that we're still standing. We can also have experiences of passive praise where it's akin to having your gas pumped or having your coffee delivered. 

The encouragement for this week is to explore ways worship can be engaged as gratitude. We can acknowledge the things in our lives that are really difficult and also acknowledge the things that are really, really good.