Unabridged

I cried at my church today. 

It wasn't sad crying, I have done that quite a bit at church before because my church is the kind that you can come broken to instead of fixing yourself up nice beforehand.

It wasn't really happy crying either.  I've been to weddings and seen countless baptisms and been a part of beautiful things at my church enough to have cried plenty of happy tears there. 

This kind of crying was something, I'm a little sad to say, I don't think has ever happened for me at my church before.  It's happened with my church people at other places, like a camp or a concert or a conference. 

But today, for the first time, I cried at my church in complete awe of who God is. 

Also for the first time at church, I sat through an entire sermon on Revelation without having a minor panic attack. 

Revelation isn't a nightmare or a scary story meant to be told around a campfire.  Revelation is a promise that the God who was and is, is to come. 

Then we sang big songs, old songs, new songs, loud songs, and quiet songs, all about how mighty and magnificent God is.  The man behind me was singing with the loudest church voice I'd ever heard.  People were raising their hands even though our church is not a very hands-raise-y church.  Someone on the platform read from Revelation between songs.

And we would sing.  And our hearts were singing, not just our mouths, you could tell. 

At certain times during the songs, I felt tears well up, as I heard the voices around me, not just of my next-to neighbors that I can usually hear singing but the neighbors next to them and the ones next to them and everyone in front of and behind us.  And our voices were all shouting how great God is. 

And then the band sang this song that I have played on repeat in my car not to sing but to shout along to.  And I couldn't sing parts of it because of how choked up I was in awe of how big and great and mighty and good God is and of how much love he has. 

Then the service ended and our voices and spirits were all a little tired from how much emotion we sang with, but our souls were still rejoicing and our hearts still singing and it didn't matter that the music had made us tired.  In fact, it was a good thing.  It meant we had given of ourselves, the thing that worship was supposed to be about. 

And when the service ended and I looked around the room, it was strange only because I had never felt this way before.  I wanted to meet every person in the room.  I wanted to know the souls with whom I had just finished singing.  I wanted to meet the man behind me and thank him for encouraging me with the way he sang with his whole heart and his full voice.  I wanted to tell the woman who came in alone that I was proud of her and that she wasn't alone, not really.  I saw on people's faces that they were children of God, and I loved everyone in the room in that moment.  I wanted to know everyone's names and their stories.  I wanted to tell each person that I was glad they were at church with me that morning because the body of Christ needs someone just like them.  I wanted to talk to them about how great it was to worship God, not just sing music like we usually do at my church. 

Someone next to me asked me a question, and I forgot this feeling all too quickly.  I didn't meet anyone new that morning or shake anyone's hand.  I never even saw the face of the man behind me with the wonderfully booming voice. 

But I don't want to forget the way that putting God in his proper place and singing his glory with everything made the world look different.  Seeing God for who he is helped me see people for who they are.  Beloved by their Creator and mine and part of His, and gloriously, my, heavenly family.  Knowing God should make us want to know people, and we're told that loving God also means loving people.

1 John 7-21 

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, butperfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.