It was quite the Easter weekend.
Although it took me a while to realize the fact, it seemed that the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ that was being planned for this past Easter Sunday in the village was going to be something really special. Why? Because of the opposition, of course.
Saturday was a village workday, where the men and young men work together on various projects around our land such as building a greenhouse, gardening, fixing leaks, building decks, etc.
I was working on a website design for the new village site (yes, there’s a new site coming soon), and mostly spent the time running into problems. Then I ran off to a meeting with some of the musicians about the next day’s gathering celebration music, and ended up spending the entire planning meeting working through an argument, as I had inadvertantly made some of them mad.
Right as we were finishing that up, my wife called me up and told me I was needed at home to help out with a brother and sister there who were getting pretty heated at each other, so I ran home. The brother was working on replacing a broken and leaking outdoor faucet at our place, and the water to the house was shut off, and he’d gotten really frustrated with how badly the project was going, which had led to the confrontation. They worked through that great, though.
But our house was still without water.
Oh, and about that time I got told I had a meeting with our household group to discuss some plans for the next day …in fifteen minutes.
At this point, I was getting overwhelmed.
I called Ari to tell her about the meeting, and told her how I was feeling.
“We must be going to have an amazing day tomorrow,” she said.
That helped a lot. She had reminded me that we’re in a war all the time, and the enemy’s always trying to get in through the subtle, hidden ways to take us out before we even get to the fight.
We finished out the Saturday rushing off to a 50th anniversary party for Roy and Laura Pavao, Shammah’s parents, who are really amazing people. It was really a delightful time of skits and stories in their honor.
Then home, get the gang into bed, prep for the next morning (snacks, water bottles, etc.), and fall into bed ourselves.
Sunday we woke up at 5:45, got all the boys up by 6:00, and somehow got everyone ready and out the door to go up to the top of the hill and gather with other earlybirds for the sunrise on Easter morning. We sang the day in, and it was wonderful. Then we all went down to the “town hall,” which is the large building we meet in, ate muffins, drank coffee, and hung out together.
Then home to finish breakfast and get everybody ready to meet back down at the town hall at 10:30 for the gathering. Frank had let me know that the musicians were going to meet together at 8:30 to plan for gathering and do a sound check. But only a couple of us showed up at the town hall at 8:30. I was starting to get stressed out again, as I felt like we were totally unprepared, and the deadline was looming.
I couldn’t get in touch with Frank, and was pretty irritated until about 9ish, when I re-checked my message from Frank, and saw that I had missed the fact he said the musicians were meeting at 8:30 at his house, not the town hall. So it was my fault!
And now, I was feeling pretty desperate. I couldn’t shake my funk, and I could only cry out to God, “Somehow, you’ve got to show up, or we’re all sunk.”
Anyway, the rest of the musicians showed up, and we had about half an hour to run through a sound check and touch base. But Frank said, “let’s pray,” and we all gathered around, hand in hand, and asked God for grace.
I was still in a funk while we prayed, but started to feel like I should sing something.
Ah, no, I didn’t feel like that! But the feeling was pretty insistent. So I did, and everybody joined in, and we sang the chorus:
I will praise you, Lord
And I will sing of Love come down
And as you show your face
We’ll see your glory here.
All of a sudden, God was there, right in our midst! And, just like that, we were all together.
It was so incredible, and I felt so stupid, small, and grateful. There wasn’t anything in me that had caused this to happen, he had just decided to answer our cry, and come and be with us. I was getting taken out by petty problems, thinking about myself, and yet, God still shows up. I really should learn not to worry, because he truly is a good Father to us.
We went on to have an amazing gathering celebrating the risen Christ, breaking bread together, and basking in the Love of our Father.
a beautiful story of real life bringing you to our real God. i pray that i’ll learn from this testimony.
in Christ,
java