As many of you know I have a new job as the secretary at my church.  One of my duties as secretary is to put the content for the Sunday morning services into our Easy Worship program for the church service such as the song lyrics, scripture, announcements etc. That information is then projected to the front of the room on the wall during the church service.

I love my new job but it has one small problem. The problem is now I find myself worrying on the Saturday night before and sometimes Sunday morning during church about the service.  I will have things running through my head like…did I put that person on the prayer list?…did I remember to spell check?…do I have things in the right order?  I am my own worst critic and the funny thing is I never paid to much attention to the screen before I started doing the stuff for the screen, so probably nobody else pays close attention to the screen either.

Today at church just as the service was starting the projector came on and there on the wall I saw nothing but a blue screen.  I looked to the back of the room into the booth where the people are that run the screen I noticed they were gathered around the computer and I immediately could tell something was definitely wrong.  Ohhh nooo my worries may be coming true!  The first thing that ran through my head was that somehow it had to be my fault.  Did I forget to upload the file or did I mess something up so bad that they could not use it?

I went back to see what was going on and hoping it was not my fault but most of all hoping that maybe I would have a solution as to how to fix the problem.  When I got back there I was filled with relief to I find out that the problem wasn’t anything I had caused. There seemed to be a problem with the computer equipment for some reason the projector did not have a signal.  I also quickly realized I didn’t have a clue as to how to help fix the problem. Since I could not be of help I returned to my seat where the service was still going on…without anything on the screen.

The announcer did the welcome and announcements which seemed to go just fine without the screen though now all the sudden I was distracted by the screen not working.  We then had the greeting and after the greeting we stood to sing the next song. Today’s singing group sings a lot of older church songs so most people would probably know the songs but because I haven’t been going to church my whole life I didn’t know the song they were singing and there were no lyrics scrolling on the wall for me to read.  I love to sing and was feeling disappointed because I couldn’t sing along.  I was also thinking about how silly I looked just standing there not participating in the singing and also about what could possibly be wrong with that screen?  So there I stood in church with everything but church racing through my head.

As I stood there watching the blue screen fade in and out suddenly I heard a whisper inside my head and the whisper said “listen!”  “Listen to what?” I thought…and then it hit me …all the sudden I realized that while my mind had been whirling round and round and I had somehow forgotten the whole reason that I was here at church and what church was really about.  I was here to worship God today and while I was fretting about the screen not working I had been missing the sound of the beautiful voices of the woman on the stage singing and wow! they were so amazing!  From that moment on all I could hear were those lovely wonderful voices and it was at that moment I felt God in the room. Right there in the middle of my stressing out about not knowing the words to the song and thinking about that blue screen God had slipped in.

As I stood there listening to the ladies as they sang to God His peace began to wash over me.  I could feel His presence in the room so strongly at that moment I just wanted to fall down at his feet and cry tears of thanks and joy. After the song the service went on as it always does, but now I was at peace and forgot about the screen not working.

Later after I got home I thought of something else…I do not think that the pastor’s sermon went as he had planned for it to go either. The only reason I think that is because I had typed the outline of the sermon on the screen and I noticed he did not do the same thing that he  had me to type for the screen.  I wondered could it be possible that he was thrown off by the screen not working just as I had been?  Or did he just have a change of plans today? Or could it be that God had a change of plans for all of us in that room today?

Things don’t always go according to our plans and something I do know is that God has his own plan.  I am not sure about everyone else in that room and but today I am pretty sure that today I saw His plan come into play for me.

Today when the first inkling came that something was not going to go as planned I panicked and thought it was something I had caused and then once I found out that was not the case I let the fact that we did not have a screen for our service throw me off.

Today I realized that we do not need an elaborate fancy power point presentation to listen to a sermon, or cool videos of water falls cascading down while we are singing.  Though words to the songs are important if I want to sing along, sometimes it’s nice just listen to a song.  God speaks to me a lot through music and today I am certain that is why he chose to speak to me right there in the middle of a song.  Today I just needed to be quiet so I could listen, but not only did I need to listen, I also needed to hear Him. He wanted me to just be quiet and hear what he was trying to say to me.

When I go to church I go to worship God with my church family and hopefully learn something about Him while I am there. That time each week is very special to me and I feel so blessed that I have this wonderful church family that I belong to. I also feel doubly blessed that I now get to work there a few hours during the week too.  I am not sure if anyone else had the same experience I had today but whatever they experienced I hope it was something as good as what I felt.   Today I heard two sermons.  The sermon the pastor gave today was good but the most important sermon I receive was the one given to me by God.  Though I love my new job at the church I also realize that also need to leave that behind when I enter the church on Sunday morning.  I also need to remember that I do not need anything at all to worship God except the giving to Him of myself.  Church is not a social club I attend or a place where it needs to be fancy and have modern technology.  It just needs to be a place where other Christians and I come together to worship God.

 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Romans 12:5