lifted up

Binge-watching is evil. There may be a scientific, physical explanation for why I can’t stop watching episode after episode, but it mostly feels like I have an emotional disorder. I cannot walk away from a TV series after a cliffhanger or a new plot twist has piqued my interest for just one more episode. And so I stay up late. Way too late. Way, way too late for someone who has to get up early and have enough energy to coax a 9-year-old boy out of bed early, too.

So this morning started slowly for me. Foggy, in fact. And I’m not a caffeine consumer, so I was dragging by the time 10:00 chapel rolled around. Gratefully, I wasn’t the preacher today. And so I settled in to my chair on the aisle and prayed for energy to face the rest of my day.

But it wasn’t a day to settle in – it was a day to stand up and praise. The Chapel Band was leading us in worship and they were on top of their game. There were 3 guitars and a bass player, 4 vocalists, a pianist and a percussionist. They filled the front corner of chapel with their presence and filled the entire space with their sound and their energy. The variations in the verses, the lead guitar improvs in between, and the stylistic flourishes that emphasized certain lyrics all combined in a mass of praise and creativity and joy.

And they lifted me up. Watching them play together – not just play instruments, but really play, having fun together – it lifted me out of my haze. Their swaying, their grooving, their giving it their all moved me to a higher place and enabled me to gather strength for the day ahead. It reminded me of the fun I had as a music major in college, singing with my roommates while we put on makeup in the mornings, making up harmonies just to try out a different sound. But it also reminded me of the great pleasure God takes when we use our gifts to lift others up.

I felt the presence of the Holy today in chapel, not because I was particularly attuned or prepared, but because of the collaboration of our student musicians who may not even know how valuable their gifts are. But I’m here to say that we couldn’t worship without them, and I, for one, couldn’t have gotten through my morning without them.

Thanks be to God for the opportunity to use our gifts to lift one another up.