Lately, the different ways people do things and how they react to others has been on my mind a lot. Particularly in refernce to worship.
I find SUCH great joy in visiting other cultures and places, because there's always a little something that is different. Even if it's just the way they fold their napkins, it's interesting to me that they do it that way. Sure, folding napkins in half is more economical than making them into origami flamingoes, but that's the way they do it, so it's cool.
What rubs me wrong is when people judge other people for doing stuff their own way (when they tell them they shouldn't do it that way, I mean). If one of my friends was doing something totally unreasonable like the flamingo-napkin example above, I would be like, "Yo, that takes way more time", but I wouldn't tell them not to do it just because that's not how I would do it. Half the world eats with their hands. Who are we to tell them to use forks?
What I am getting at is this question that has developed in my mind. It comes from a few months of 1) studying the Bible, 2) worshipping the same God in different places, 3) discovering more about myself, and how my personality fits with my style of worship, and my relationships with other people, and 4) listening to people talk about their passions.
If someone asked you what your passion was what would you say?
If your passion was similar to mine, I would be excited, we would get along, or at least have something to talk about. But if your passions were different than mine we would probably have a short conversation, then go our separate ways.
Anyway, what I am struggling with right now is the fact that I go to this church full of people very different from me. And even while I love diversity, I find these differences to be barriers. It's not differences like skin colour or ice cream preference. It's that a whole lot of people at my church love college football, and I really really don't (there are many many other differences). And while I'm vocal about some passions, they are vocal about totally different ones. Now I don't want to get up in their business about what they're vocal about, and what they're not-it's them, I'm me-they don't need to like and talk about everything that I like and talk about. Whatever, you know. I'm just trying to find an answer to the question in my heart....is it alright to leave a church not because anything they do is Unbiblical, but rather because you don't feel like you fit?
Here's the deal: I love worship, I love praise songs, I try to love hymns, but I really don't. They (generally) seem more like death-chants than songs to me. So I want a church where only (or at least more, and more passionate) praise songs are sung. I would also like to worship in a place where people feel free to worship however they want to, and aren't looked at like freaks if they clap their hands, raise their arms, or dance in joy throughout the service. I would like for their to be a church where Megan (my awesome, yet very conservative, and less um...boisterous (annoying) ) friend would not feel weird for worshipping her way, and I would not feel weird for worshipping my way (which are probably very different ways considering we're just about opposites ;). I just don't think God made me the way I am so that I'd stick out like a sore thumb at my church.
I still have no answer, and that's cool. I know God wants me at Covenant Presbyterian right now, because that is where my Dad and Mom want me. The actual decision making comes later. For now, I'm just thinking, and praying, and all that.



Lydia


(Congratulations on making it through the longest post ever)