How Great...

Three weeks of a whirlwind, and mom and I are home… in my New York home that is.  A million thoughts to process, and a thousand photos to edit, many blogs to come with stories of joy and heartache… yet this morning in church I was struck and moved to write this first blog post as one of praise.

About 6 times while at PWBC we sang “How Great Thou Art” in morning devotions, or chapel, or church, or some other service… it has always been a regular.  The first time we sang it my heart and soul broke open… Oh How Great He is indeed.  To have brought me back home, to my Zambian home… so much joy in reunions, reminders, and re-living.  How Great…

For the last two years my heart has often resonated with the Psalmist… “why are you downcast, oh my soul… why so disturbed within me?”  Yet for these three weeks, “…then sings my soul…!”  And oh how quickly my heart burst to be reunited with the Tonga verses, “Ndakwiimbila, Leza Mufutuli, Uli Mulemu, Uli Mulemu!”

This morning in Canandaigua New York, in the comfortable cushioned pews of our 120(+/-) year old sanctuary with 100+ft peaked, artistically painted ceilings above, surrounded by intricate stained glass, and clean carpet below our feet… we started our worship service with How Great Thou Art.  Dressed in our summer casual, each person holding hymnals that are clean and complete, our harmonies are drowned out by the sparkling brand new world-class million dollar pipe organ and our hearts agree together… How Great…

Somewhere in a rural village in Zambia, believers gathered today squished together on wooden benches in a building about 80 years old surrounded by 4 cement walls covered in peeling paint, below crumbling wooden ceiling boards which create a thin barrier between the congregated people and the congregated bats, standing on cement floor carefully swept of dirt and bat droppings by the church ladies the night before.  Dressed in Sunday best, the children roam the aisle proud of their oversized princess dresses, braided hair, shiny shoes and clip-on ties.  A few elders hold precious, treasured hymnals, red-brown as the dirt and pages as frail as the hands that hold them.  Most sing by memory, accompanied by nothing but the harmonies which only Africans can muster, echoing loudly off of an acoustically unsound metal ceiling and cement walls, these believers agree together… Uli Mulemu…

And somewhere in between it all my heart catches a glimpse, a very tiny one, of just How Great He is… to love a world so big, so diverse, so broken… to stretch so far and wide with the same love, compassion, grace and mercy for each and every person… that we can all agree together, though separated by many miles… Moyo wangu… then sings my soul… How Great Thou Art!