Improvising and joy

Yesterday was a busy, but long day. Most Sundays are. It started with arriving at church at about 7:10 AM. Get things set up so that I can rehearse with my Chancel Choir at 7:30. In my previous post, I mentioned they were singing Mendelssohn's "Grant Us Thy Peace". There was a slight problem at 7:30, however. I only had men. So, I waited about 5 more minutes. Still men. So, I said, well, we'll adjust. Instead of an SAB piece, we'll sing a B piece, and I explained what we would do. We sang the closing hymn the worship as a warmup, then got to singing the piece. Nice, but not what was on the page! Then our 3 sopranos made it. But no altos! So, still, we stuck with the improvised plan. It worked and sounded beautiful.

A little later in the morning, during our 10:45 service, in the sermon, we had a boy decide he wanted to come check out the front of church...DURING THE SERMON! The family seemed a little hesitant to come get him, so our pastor improvised. He made the boy a part of the sermon. Not what his intent was when he started the sermon, I'm sure, but it worked and was a beautiful illustration!

So I've titled this post improvising and joy. I've shared 2 examples where things planned aren't always how things go. Isn't that our lives? The things WE plan and the things WE want to do aren't always how things actually end up. But the joy comes when we have opportunity to look back and see how God's hand was guiding and blessing that time. When things don't go the way we want them to in our worship, do we offer thanks to God, or do we complain, grumble and get upset because that wasn't how WE wanted it to go? For a long time, if things didn't go the way I planned and expected them to musically, I chose the latter option. And I was miserable. But then, something changed. I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe it's maturity, maybe it's learning through struggles, but my attitude changed and I looked at the things not going the way I wanted them to in a different light. I looked at them as how God wanted them to be. And that is joy-filling! Sometimes we get so focused on ourselves and our likes and dislikes that we lose sight of the creator of all and how unique and creative He is in His creation, in His action in creation, and in His care for creation. This brings me joy. I pray it does for you as well.