20 July 2011

After breakfast today, we headed down to the worship room, and an amazing time of worship. Joel led us in a kind of meditation on Psalm 23 – The Lord is my shepherd. It was such a beautiful time; it felt so refreshing. Always so good to remember how good He is, and how well He leads us and lloks after us! I think it was especially great because we are drawing near to the end of our time here, and we’re all perhaps a little nervous about leaving this incredible haven! Here’s an interesting Psalm 23 related thought: it sounds pretty ordinary to us (who have heard that psalm many times) that David compared God to a shepherd. But it would have been a revolutionary thought for that time! David was comparing God to something he knew very well... he was himself a shepherd, and he knew how to lead those sheep well. And perhaps one day he thought to himself: “Hey, God probably leads me better than I lead these sheep!” And so he wrote about it. What if we did the same thing, using what we know? For example: “The Lord is my teacher, I shall not lack for wisdom. He teaches me... etc” What a fresh, new spin that puts on Psalm 23 for me! Try it :o) Next we had the extreme privilege and joy of hearing Molly Skaggs’ story. It is a really beautiful story. She is so abandonedly passionate about the things she loves (especially music and family!) that one can’t help being set ablaze by that passion. She reminded me of something Don Potter said to us a while back – “Jesus is what people love about music”. I think that is so clear in Molly’s life :o)

After lunch, we had another collective session. We’re still figuring out how to arrange the different sections of the song. It’s quite a lengthy, time consuming endeavour, so when our brains all felt a little fried, we went galloping around the field, and played a few silly games for a bit, before coming back and carrying on :o) I taught everyone a fun game that we used to do for drama warm-ups! We really have become a family! These fun moments make it so evident. And we had more fun to come – movie night at the Burbach’s! Pizza and the King’s Speech (definitely one of my favourite movies of the year) is a good way to end a day :o)