17 February 2013

To serve in Heaven

     Through serving at church and much prayer, I am learning to see the genealogies of I Chronicles as something more than a delineation of family lines. Now when I come to chapters twenty-three through twenty-seven, I begin to see the lists of Israelites as a testimony to God's faithful servants...
     The ESV section headings in these chapters are not exactly riveting - "David organises the Levites," followed by "David organises the Priests," and then "David organises the Musicians," "David organises the Gatekeepers"... Sounds like David is doing a lot of, hmm - organising. Eventually one section is just titled "Treasurers and other officials," like it's gotten to the point where "Gatekeeper" would be an honorific. To be fair, reading "The first lot for Asaph fell to Joseph; the second, to Gedaliah, to him and his brothers and his sons, twelve; the third to Zaccur," and on until number twenty-four can get tedious.
     It can become nearly as mundane as serving the body of Christ in the same capacity day in and day out, especially if you're behind the scenes in a role that's not likely to be recognised unless you mess up by, say, forgetting to turn on the amplifiers for the sound system, or by not advancing the powerpoint to the next line of the song. And at least I'm getting to hear worship - there are others serving in the nursery who don't even get to be blessed by hearing a congregation sing God's praise or a pastor expound God's Word! I imagine that being a gatekeeper would be similarly monotonous, unless you're helping Jehoiada oppose Athaliah (II Chronicles 23:4-8), assisting in Hezekiah's (II Chronicles 31:14) or Josiah's (II Chronicles 34:9) reforms.
     But then we read in Psalm 84:10b, "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God / than dwell in the tents of wickedness." That is astounding - it would be better to simply hold a door open in God's house than spend time anywhere else! In meditating on this truth, I am starting to learn to see my service as holy, a sacrifice of my time worshiping corporately to serve the body so that corporate worship can happen. So trying to figure out the right amount of pre-amp gain on a microphone or gently nudging a fader to just the right output level becomes a sacred moment of worshiping corporately through serving the body. Which is really neat, because body comes from corpus, from which we derive corporate.
     "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body" (I Corinthians 12:18-20). So really, I'm learning to worship through serving.

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