Through the Stained Glass

The picture above is one that I took a week or so ago in the sanctuary of the church where I serve as Director of Music and Organist. I went into the sanctuary to practice on the organ and stopped because the light of the afternoon sun was coming through the windows so beautifully that I wanted to stop and take a quick picture with my phone (then played with it and made it black and white).  I serve a church which has a beautiful building in which worship is held.  However, that can also be a distraction from the purpose.  I remember when I went to Europe with one of my college choirs.  We sang in everything from huge cathedrals in Vienna to tiny country churches which dotted the hillside of the rural European villages we got to visit throughout Hungary and Austria.  That summer choir tour had a great influence on who I am today.  Before I went there, I was always swept away in the beauty of whatever church/sanctuary in which I was serving at the time.  Looking back, I was sometimes more interested in the building itself rather than understanding the true purpose of being there.  So, in many cases, I was worshiping the building, or at least the "prestige" that a certain position gave me in serving there versus worshiping God authentically.  That is something that I notice today more than ever.  When I was visiting these churches in Europe, I found myself constantly distracted by the artwork and the carvings and the ornately decorated naves.  I believe that most churches today suffer from at least some degree of this blindness.  I would be willing to bet that, if their magnificent buildings with beautiful stained glass windows and symbols of religion frequent around them in the sanctuary were to burn to the ground in a horrible fire, they would be unable to "worship."  That is because they have put their focus, and their identity on the building in which they worship (so things built with human hands) instead of focusing solely on the Word of God.  We are all guilty of idol worship...sometimes we just don't realize that what we are doing is worshiping an "idol."  I heard a sermon from a few weeks ago where the pastor related to this, "in the days of the Bible, idols were much easier to recognize to the naked eye than they can be today."  When we place our identity in other objects, then we devalue, and therefore dishonor God.

Being one of the tallest people in the 50 member group that traveled abroad that summer in college, and having a rather short tour guide, I was "assigned" to stay next to her at all times so that, as we moved through the sometimes crowded city streets, so that almost everybody in our group could see and follow "Big Ben."  One thing that I observed during the travels was how, when we sang in a huge cathedral along the "tourist traps" our crowd would be much smaller (sometimes 15-20 people and many of them would be our chaperons from the college), whereas when we would sing in a smaller country church (especially in Hungary), there would be standing room only of 150-300 people who came and packed in to hear us.  Being "stationed" so close to our tour guide, I asked her why that was. She responded with something like, "well the people here are very poor and don't always get opportunities to hear a concert whenever they want...they are few and far between and so they appreciate them more...it isn't that the people around Vienna and Salzburg are not appreciative, but they are literally overwhelmed with concerts all the time, so it is nothing 'special' anymore to have a visiting choir from another country."  I hadn't thought of it that way.  We are so inundated with materials and wealth all around us that we take so much for granted. We neglect to see the little things that others may take as huge things.  I hope we can all start to see how blessed we are.