a tear in my soul...

So the last few weeks or so of my life have been consumed with house projects, yard projects and the wonderful adventure of starting a new job and grad school, we seem to do life transitions big!

Well, the combination of these items have just about pushed me to my personal breaking point but low and behold God is good and He has not let me reach my limit, or in other words I’ve not had a mental break downs yet.

But tonight as the thoughts and plans of projects and school work were pushed out of my mind so my attention could be given to more job training something happened that caused a tear to fall in my soul.

Now, I love my new job, I love my new co-workers and I’m honestly excited about the adventure of partnering with them to open a really exciting retail store in our area. But, as you probably guessed my new co-workers are much different then my old ones. I’d guess that most of the 80 or so people on the team are far from God (which to be honest excites me, cause I can’t wait to see how relationships that are already forming play out and how God gives opportunities to have a special “weight” in some of their lives)

Well back to tonight, my co-workers are far from God.

We have been doing training in a local conference center and tonight we had a special guess next door.

Let’s just say that about half way through the training a rocking sound systems turns on and we (although divided by a wall) where unwillingly invited to join in a sing-a-long of “Open the eyes of my heart Lord.”

As the music grew we realized that there was some sort of worship service next door.

They not only had one song but about 6 more to follow.

Let’s just say it was loud, it was not amazing quality, and it was a really big distraction for our facilitators and for most in the room.

Now, I’m not knockin the groups' faith or excellence of worship; I’m not critiquing that at all.

But what made my soul cry was when one of our managers politely went over and asked if we could reach a compromised and possibly have the volume turned down a little. He was directed to the man who calmed to be the pastor and was rudely told no, and refused to turn the music down.

Well that went over really well with my manager, who returned to our room to inform the 80+ people about how this group who’s singing about loving God and the world were so insensitive and rude, refusing to even talk about a possible shared solution.

This just grated on me.

This embarrassed me.

This made me mad.

This pastor did so much harm to so many people far form God and I don’t know if he even realized what he was doing.

But come to think about it, how often do I do that? How often do I get so caught up in my little world, my list of expectations and totally blow an opportunity to show love? To put God on display?

So tonight as I’m about to crawl into bed with my wonderful wife the thoughts that fill my mind are no longer the evil plans of how to “tell that pastor about his massive screw up” but the questions of

How do I do the same thing?

How do we do the same thing?

And then how do we live in such a way that truly puts God on display in such a way that is true, good, and right?