“It was just an idea but now it’s become a part of us.”
A couple of weeks ago we celebrated what God has been doing here at Orangeville Baptist Church over the last couple of years. Two years ago we embarked on this crazy journey called BEYOND and we began to dream about God using us to transform our region and transform our world. That transformation first began in us and is now happen regionally and globally so we wanted to hit the pause button, in a sense, and come together to remind people what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and that it’s only because of the grace and goodness of God that this is happening.
We invited some artists to come and perform for us to help celebrate the evening and one of them, Phil Aud, wrote a journal with some reflections on his time here with us. Pretty exciting to hear that others who are in our midst are also getting to capture a bit of what God is up to –
Probably my favorite DVD is Sting’s “All This Time”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it…suffice it to say that I can quote most of the lines in the documentary. If you don’t know anything about this recording, it’s basically a small concert on Stings property in Tuscany. He re-arranged and performed many of his well-loved songs. In the documentary section he talked about when it was just an idea and how somebody took the ball and started to run with it. Before he knew it he had a construction crew, band members, video crew, etc. at his house. He said that he felt like saying “Stop, it was only a whim…”. (Hopefully I’m not misquoting since I just said I could quote most of it). In my opinion, this was an incredible “whim” and one of my favorite projects that he has released.
Saturday night Marisa, Tony (our guitarist), and myself went to play at a coffeehouse type event at a church in Orangeville (a place that does not grow Oranges or have orange buildings, or deal in anything orange to the best of my knowledge). We’ve starting doing this stripped down thing and it has been a lot of fun. The church we were at was celebrating what God has done in and through them over the past two years. One of the things that they have involved themselves in is child sponsorship in Uganda. They have also been there to build as I understand it, and have on some level partnered with some folks from there. The Pastor spoke for about 5 minutes and he said, “2 years ago Uganda was just an idea. Now it has become a part of us”. You could sense how much it really had become a part of them. It was awesome to be a part of the night. It got me thinking as I was driving home, how many “whims” or “ideas” do we just pass up and what are we missing out on? Could these whims not be the voice of God at times? I think we often believe that when we don’t pick up the ball and run with some of these thoughts that other people are missing out. This is often true. However, I think that WE are often the ones that are missing out. I could see that these people had a great impact on Uganda. But, I could also see that Uganda had a great impact on them. It was in the air and it was amazing. Maybe we need to start asking ourselves what is holding us back from these whims, and risk a bit more. Maybe some of these “whims” could be the best thing that ever (or never) happened to us.
Okay, I’m going to stop because I’m afraid that I may use the word “whim” one more time.
That is awesome. We are excited to be part of what God is doing here and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.
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By the way, if you want to hear some great, fresh, really enjoyable music you need to listen to Phil’s stuff. He is a great songwriter and an incredible performer. He was definitely the hilight of the night when we brought him to Orangeville! His songs are available on iTunes and he’s available for bookings – buy his music and support what he’s doing.
