My mum told me about this video and said I needed to watch it, and I'm really glad she did. There's something weirdly moving about the fact that Jess Gillam has just sent out orchestra parts to anyone who wants to play, of any ability, and all these very different people from very different places have come 'together' to make this music.
I think it resonates with my heart right now in two different ways. The first one is to do with the title of the song she chose, 'Where Are We Now?'. It feels really powerful and true that it's as if musically this crazy array of people who haven't really got much else in common are all asking in the same moment, "Where are we?" What's happening? What is this strange new place we've all found ourselves in and where do we go from here? I was talking to a friend earlier who said something along the lines of, "It's just sort of made me realise that all the things in my life are kind of arbitrary and like... they don't really care about me." And I wonder if everyone is kind of having the same experience of being forced to slow down, look for a bit longer in the mirror, and ask some pretty deep questions about what our lives are really about and what's worth living for.
The other way it gets me is because it actually weirdly reminds me of church! One of the things I've really been missing (and to be honest I'll probably be missing it for a very very long time) is being able to sing together with everyone in our church. And I think automatically I am a bit like, 'Why am I bothered about that? Seems like a bit of an odd unimportant thing to miss doesn't it?' But this video made me think about whether actually there's something really quite deep about it that I'm right to be missing.
Because when we stand shoulder to shoulder in church and sing, what's happening is that hundreds of people, of all different ages, with all kinds of different stories and backgrounds, from different countries and continents, tonnes of whom to be honest would have very little in common otherwise are coming together. (I think for example of my friend Andre - he's absolutely ripped and works as a lorry driver, and he prayed to Jesus as he hit rock bottom in a life of drug abuse and depression and found that Jesus absolutely transformed his life almost instantly - and in November he got baptised on the same day as Christine, an older lady whose sister had been telling her about Jesus for years, and finally it got through to her and she realised it was true as she saw her sister facing death - and you just think, these two people have almost nothing in common. And yet now they have everything in common!) And all of us, this crazy orchestra, stand together to make music: to sing and express together something of our the joy, the beauty, the certainty that we share because we have all put our weight on Jesus who died out of love for us and triumphed over death. And some of us have had wonderful weeks and feel on top of the world, others are deep down in the darkness and can barely see the light, but we sing together because all of us know that Jesus has gone deeper down than any of us, and he will one day raise us all forever. And together our cracked and tuneless voices make music. We all make one song. And the God of the universe smiles wide. Because he sang songs of love over us long before we ever dreamed of singing back to him. And the whole thing is thoroughly human and thoroughly heavenly. And I miss it.
