Church musings

It’s really struck me how much more Rwandan Christians rely on God than Australians do, and how much more thankful they are for what they have.

A good example of this attitude is the favourite of the ‘modern’ songs sung at the English service at the Anglican cathedral, “Open up the Sky”.

It’s chorus is:

Open up the sky, fall down like fire

We don’t want blessings, we want you

Open up the gates, fall down like fire

We don’t want anything but you

Now, it’s one thing to sing that when you’re comfortably ensconced in your home church, with your car outside and a large house full of food waiting for your return for Sunday lunch. It’s quite another when you’re a student living hand to mouth, who has just had your monthly allowance for food withdrawn by the government, whose family has no means to support you and who sleeps two to a bed in a college dormitory.

Yet this song is consistently the most fervently sung of any in our services. It goes off. Always. Not musically but spiritually.

And maybe in a way, this is economy of the Gospel. It’s only when we are truly vulnerable, when we realise how little power we have over own own destiny, that we can fully surrender our priorities, cares and concerns to God, and instead desire only Him.

It always deeply moves and challenges me to hear my Christian brothers and sisters, who I know are so materially poor, ask God for His presence and not for their material needs.

As Matthew 5:3, the first of the Beatitudes, is rendered in the Message:

You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope.

With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

 

Something to think about. It’s challenging me.