Hard things

One of the things about being involved with leading worship at church is that you get asked, at times, to sing at the funerals of people you don't know. I don't know if you consider it a good thing, or a bad thing, but it's starting to feel more comfortable in my "good" column. Mike Cope once mentioned that it's an honor to be invited into the "sacred places" in peoples' lives: hospital bedsides, weddings, prayer vigils, and funerals. I'm learning to understand the wisdom in that.

Monday evening, I sang with some other folks from church at the funeral for the mother of a young lady from our church. I was given the job of finding some songs to sing, which is often quite difficult for funerals. It's easier when the family has requests, but in this case, they left it up to us to choose the songs. I went through the list of songs that our praise team knows best, and finally settled on two: Hortaio Spafford's "It Is Well With My Soul," and Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name." They both spoke to me of the faith that we need to get us through hard times, like the death of a loved one.

We all have hard times in our lives. Sometimes they're momentary, but generally the real hard times last far longer than we think we can manage. These "hard things" in our lives turn into "firm places" -- stepping stones, if you will. They are the things on which we can track our walk through life, and indicators of the growth of our faith. In a lot of ways, our lives would be more difficult if we didn't go through the problems. We usually think it's the opposite: "If my problems would just go away, life would be easier." That's a silly idea. The troubles in our life help us learn to navigate trouble.

I have had a tendency to think very negatively of moments in my life that I made mistakes, or embarrassed myself. I'm starting to rework that thinking, and learning to live with less regret over those moments, and with more thankfulness for having learned a thing or two along the way.