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| Yup, that’s Brad, slogging through the Mud Run. |
I really wanted to go with Deidra and Jennifer to hear Ann Voskamp speak at the Women of Faith conference in Des Moines this past weekend. Really, really.
But I didn’t go. I didn’t go because the Holy Spirit told me to stay home. {although for a few days I pretended not to hear}
You see, Brad ran in the Lincoln Mud Run 5K on Saturday morning – a race he’d diligently trained for over the past few months. {and yeah, it’s as gross and grueling as it sounds: slogging through knee-deep mud, scaling walls and squirming beneath obstacles on your belly}. And even though he told me, “Go, go! Really, go to Women of Faith, you don’t need to stay just for the race,” and I knew he meant it, I felt something else in my gut. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to stay in Lincoln. To go to the race and support my husband.
Fast forward to Sunday morning, when I read this from Psalm 134:
“Come, bless God, all you servants of God!” (Psalm 134:1, Msg)
In fact, I read it twice to make sure I had read it right.
Isn’t God the one who does the blessing, I wondered? Isn’t he the one who bestows all good things, and isn’t it our job to praise him and thank him? So what’s this about us blessing him? What kind of blessing can we flawed and insignificant beings offer the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-creating God?
These were my questions as I sat in the pew and listened to yesterday’s reading. And truthfully, I didn’t get much of an answer from the pulpit. Or so I initially thought.
The problem wasn’t with the sermon, per se. It was simply the fact that I couldn’t understand or hear the minister well. Pastor Mmanga, who is visiting from our sister church in Uswaa, Tanzania, has a beautiful, melodious voice and a thick accent – and as Brad will attest, I do not do well with accents. That, combined with the fact that my left ear is almost entirely blocked from an infection, had me leaning forward in my seat, squinting (because that helps with hearing, right?) and straining to hear the sermon.
When Pastor Mmanga returned to his seat, I realized I’d gotten just two words from his sermon:
Obey. And trust.
But those two words were more than enough. Those two words made all the difference in my understanding of how we flawed and insignificant beings can, in fact, bless God himself. Those two words got me thinking about that crazy Mud Run race again, and the fact that when the Holy Spirit told me to stay home, I actually listened.
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| Crossing the finish line |
You see, when Brad crossed the finish line filthy and soaked, Rowan and I cheering under our umbrellas as the rain came pouring down, I couldn’t have been prouder of him or happier that I’d stayed in Lincoln to watch the race instead of going to Women of Faith (a race in which he finished first place in his age division and in 14thplace overall out of more than 700 runners!). And when I heard those two words in Pastor Mmanga’s sermon I knew why:
When we bless God through our obedience and trust, God blesses us, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
“Come, bless God, all you servants of God! You priests of God, posted to the nightwatch in God’s shrine. Lift your praising hands to the Holy Place, and bless God. In turn, may God of Zion bless you – God who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 134)
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