Worship, my culture

I was listening to the BBC one night going home and the programme at the time was "World have your say". The topic was about people having to act "White" in order to be looked at as successful in their careers and other aspects of their lives.
The programme unearthed many attitudes that many people have especially here in Africa, Uganda to be specific.
We are slowly being conformed to a certain lifestyle and its not deliberate. That is the direction that the whole world looks to be going. the language is changing. The dressing has changed. billboards are screaming at us to conform. The television insists that we change or else we are left out.
I recently was watching "The bachelorette" on TV and one of the guys said he was a virgin and was keeping himself for that one special person. And how he was made fun of! Hollywood insists it is out of fashion to be a virgin and we are conforming steadily!
How does all this fit on a Worship blog?
The culture of a worshipper determines his response to God's revelation of Himself. God even reveals Himself differently to different cultures. To a nature lover, He reveals himself through this nature. To an astronomy enthusiast, He reveals Himself through a peak into the Cosmos. To a poor hungry man, He is a God who provides food and pays school fees for his children.
Now response to God will definitely be different.
The secret in a true genuine response is in discovering who you actually are and responding to our awesome God respectively.
The danger in trying to be who you aren't is that you say words that you don't mean. You act in ways that are obviously imported from another culture.
You are lying to God if what you say to Him doesn't apply to your life. It is an ingenuine response to what He has revealed himself to be.
How can a poor man from Butambala who has never had a chance to go out of his village sing of vastness of oceans and the beauty of snowflakes and the beauty of autumn? It is not genuine at all! True the oceans are vast and snowflakes are individually unique and beautiful and Autumn(the fall) is beautiful in New England but that from our gentleman's mouth is not genuine.
The reason we are born where we are born, live where we live and in the cultures we have is that through all this we shall derive an honest response to God.
God has entrusted us with who we are for the length of time He has decided that even in the most painful of such times we shall come out with something that would glorify Him.
It is a shame for a person who God has enabled to go through fire to refuse to come up with a creative way he can honor the God that pulled Him through but rather use an off-the-shelf response.
We in Africa should come up with worship that truly and genuinely honors God. Something that comes out of our experiences and speaks of a God who has seen us through. It is painfully sad that the urban African church has distanced itself from making this happen. But rather we want to go with the latest trend and the latest song whether or not it is representative of who we are. The guitarist has lengthened his strap till he plays it from the below the knee. Why? Well some popular worship leader does so, so why not?
God help us.
There has been no better time than this time to effect change in the church. There has been quite an outpouring of God's Spirit in the Church in Africa. The church is growing rapidly. Don't we have enough testimony in our lives that we can't sing about it? Have our dances become so demonic that we can't even dance with our local dances to honour our God? Then why did he give us custom designed bodies that can take on such rigorous strokes?
Come on Africa, arise to your place!

Worship, In pain and suffering

He comes back home to rest only to be met by senseless criminals whose agenda looks more than taking a few bucks. Bludgeoned using whichever objects they could find, he is left there writhing in pain. It is a long brutal night for the loved ones as they struggle to get help. He eventually is taken to Mengo hospital. It is all too painful to take in because we have all know him very closely. Nearly everyone recounts the last time they saw him

This is not a story made up by Jerry Bruckheimer for his latest CSI episode. This is Michael Kaddu. A friend and a fellow minister in the Anglican Youth Fellowship (AYF) Choir.
Family and friends are crying to God on his behalf.

We (AYF) are allowed to enter the hospital room to see him. I don't know what to say. Then he lifts his hand and waves. I smile back. Through the smashed jaws he open his mouth to speak with all the energy that he has and what he says leaves me dumbfounded
"I praise the Lord", he says, "because he spared my life. You would be coming from my funeral. I praise the Lord because the love showed to me is a great testimony. I have been badly injured but thank God my brain is intact. I am thinking straight"

After we prayed for him and family I could not help thinking about this great man of God. He was going through a lot of pain but could trace out whatever was good and give glory to God for that.
I could feel my own inadequacy. Such manifestations of worship make all poetry evaporate.

A report from South Africa where he is right now for further treatment from another dear friend Andrew Mujugira says that when he was discharged from hospital he went and sat at the piano and played "How great thou art!"
There are champions of worship that live among us whose silent displays of worship can only be heard by the LORD.

Maybe what awes us so much about the cross is the raw and crude display of love that makes us backspace our love poems and just gaze at God in amazement.

A great modern hymn writer, Matt Redman has written a song "Blessed be Your Name" that at the moment resounds in my mind

Blessed be Your name when the sun's shining down on me

When the world's "all as it should be"

Blessed be Your name

And blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering

Though there's pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name.

These words echo the words of Job and Habbakuk about praising God in very difficult circumstances. His Spirit He puts in us gives us grace to respond to Him in ways the world in all its craft can never understand.
Indeed Blessed be the name of the LORD!

Worship, The Painter of the painting

The universe is His canvass, His word is His paint brush.
Saying designs and great mysteries into being
Defining science with every brush stroke

Yet we know Him not

He speaks stars, constellations, planets, supernovae and many more into existence
He paints answers to questions encoded in the brain of man but not yet thought of

Yet we know Him not

He displays His painting for us to see at short distances. The longest...? Don't even ask
Of course the shortest distance is only 230,000 light years
We eventually catch a glimpse of the painting and we are thrilled!

Yet we know Him not

Our glory is in the fact that we saw the painting but we forget the Painter
We praise our telescopes but forgot the Painter of the painting
Hi Fives are in the air, this is OUR achievement!
We are engrossed in our folly as we congratulate ourselves and refuse to mention God lest we are frowned upon
We immortalise ourselves with biographies
Our cheers drown out the still small voice:
"Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?"
declares the LORD. " Isaiah 66:2a

Yet we know not the Painter of the painting
The one who painted all that we see.....

O Lord, my God
When I in awesome wonder consider all the works thine hand hath made
I see the stars and hear the mighty thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul my savior God to Thee
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my savior God to Thee
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!