Our God Is An Awesome God!

Sitting around after Friday morning Eucharist-and-breakfast today, my friends were talking about their future ordinations. One of them -- who happens to be, like, one of the nicest and best people I've ever met -- was saying that he thinks there will be objections at his oridnation. That, in itself, is a discussion for another time and place, and I won't demean it by putting it here in the context of a blog.

They both agreed a good post-objection hymn would be "Shine Jesus Shine," which I've never actually heard before, though the title is familiar. My friend found it on YouTube and played it on his computer for us. Very Praise and Worshipy: I love it!

It got me thinking about how much I like that style of music: something about it just resonates with me in a very satisfying way. As we played more songs on YouTube, was thrilled to recognize many of them, and to know them well enough that I could sing along.

I like that this music is written in a way that encourages congregations to sing. The melodies are simple enough, and the music is usually written in a key that can be comfortably reached by the normal human voice (unlike much traditonal music: the definition of a hymn is a song sung at least two octaves higher than the congregation's vocal range).

I like that these songs allow me to express emotion when I'm singing them, to play around a little bit and make them my own. I like the passion, the involvement. It makes me wish that I got to sing these songs more often!

I know that some people have problems with this kind of contemporary Christian music, maybe because they feel it's irreverent, or maybe just because the sound is different from the classics they grew up hearing. I'm not saying that we should throw away the classics: by no means! I love that music, too. I just think that praise and worship music can be a breath of fresh air, and we shouldn't dismiss it too easily.

Our God is an awesome God! He reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God!

Sing it out now!


{in other news, I just found out that my church (Anglican) is going to let me preach on the first Sunday after Easter. WOOT!!! Anyway, that's the plan for now. I'm both terrified and really excited. This should be memorable: what a blessing for me!}