Harmonies

I was leading worship for our Race/Ethnicity weekend and as I was planning out the final worship set that would follow our racial reconiliation time, I had this grand idea of singing “Hallelujah, Salvation, and Glory”- a song whose 3 part harmonies could be a beautiful metaphor for the unity of diverse voices that symbolize reconciliation. I had plans of encouraging students to identify that their voices are all different, and to sing their part proudly.

But from the moment I started playing the song, things were terribly wrong. My fingers couldn’t seem to hit the right notes on the keyboard at all, and I totally got distracted. Then, as I was singing the song, I realized that my co-leader (who was a student from another school) and I hadn’t talked at all about how we were going to go through the song and were totally singing different parts. As the song went on, it just got worse and worse- people singing different things, people unsure of what they were supposed to sing, people unclear about their own parts, people singing parts that weren’t their own. The perfect harmony I imagined was more like an uncomfortable dissonance.

Yet in the midst of all those mistakes, the awkward laughter, and singing both off-key and disunited, God reminded me that this was in fact a more accurate picture of our journeys. In the same way that perfect choir harmonies don’t come on the first try or without practice, true racial reconciliation comes through many awkward experiences, chaotic moments, confusion and miscommunication, and tons of mistakes. Things don’t always get tied up into neat little packages. Conflicts don’t always get resolved the way we want them to. Conversations are hard and awkward.

Somehow, we get through.
Somehow, God is in those moments.
And we are continually arriving, but never fully arrived.
And that is still an act of worship unto God.

It's funny how God is still speaking even when things go terribly wrong.

-Erina (July 8, 2007)