Roll hair. Dress. Fill cooler with broccoli salad fixings.Grab music. Leave early for church.
Accomplished, I sat in a pew next to Don for most of an early service at our home church. After communion, however, I ducked out to allow ample time for the drive to my parent's church where my accompanying skills had been requested again.
About the time I wrapped my head around the music needed for Palm Sunday, a choir member created unease, "What about the Hallelujah Chorus?" Looking my way she continued, "Susan, can you play it? We always sing it at the end of our Easter service! It's a tradition."
With that, someone dug out a copy, handed me the music, and I sight read the piece while the choir sang through my mistakes. There were many.
But since I hit enough right notes, I was intrigued. So I took the gig.
Ironically, when I mentioned my angst about playing the piece to my oldest son on Good Friday, he said, "Haven't you played it before? Isn't it in your repertoire?"
"My repertoire?" I asked.
"Yeah," he continued. "I think of you as a pianist. Isn't it something you just know?"
Amused by his confidence I struggled to explain, "No. I've never played it before. Never thought I would even try to accompany something from The Messiah. I can sing it from memory. But play it? This is new... and very hard."
By the time I reached page three on Easter Sunday, my hands trembled. Thankful for a last minute page turner, I made it through without a major snag, and almost cried. Overcome and exhausted, I'd accomplished what had once seemed impossible.
My hands hurt. I couldn't have played much more. But the once a year memory had been made. And it mattered.
Lately I've been trying to pinpoint the many ways I wrongly define myself and others with the goal of changing in mind. Dislodging long held perceptions, however, isn't easy. Turning from comfort to unfamiliar territory requires an inner stretching.
But the more I press into the bigness of God, the more I want to plow through mental roadblocks that hold me back.
For the second year in a row, our church spent Easter weekend reading the entire Bible out loud. People signed up for 20 minute slots that began on Friday at 7 am and ended on Sunday morning at a 7 am sunrise service where the book of Revelation was read aloud.
When I showed up to read on Saturday, I started the book of Job. When I returned again an hour later, I finished the book of Job, reading passages like this:
"Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?
Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?" (Job 38: 34 - 38 NIV).
In the closing chapters of this tale of woe, question after question unfolds, jarring us from our dulled understanding to a perspective so vast, we can't really comprehend it.
Which is a good thing.
For the minute we think we have it figured out, we settle.
And I don't want to settle. I want to believe big till I breathe no more.
Most importantly, I want to believe God can and will keep changing me, my wrong thinking, and my unfair judgments, while growing my limited faith.
He rose from the dead, people! Something crazy happened in the dark of a tomb. Evil lost it's hold. Death lost it's sting.
The impossible became possible.
For you and for me. If we'll only believe.
All photos courtesy of pixabay.com
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