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!